A Dance in Moonlight (The Fitzhugh Trilogy) (15 page)

“A marvelous, magical adventure set in a beautifully imagined world. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.”—Bestselling Young Adult Author Rae Carson

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About
Midnight Scandals

Welcome to Doyle’s Grange, a charming house near the hills of Exmoor, where the garden is beautiful in every season, and the residents are respectable year-round.

Except when the clock strikes midnight…

Doyle's Grange isn’t just the setting for Isabelle and Ralston’s story, but also the backdrop for two novellas by acclaimed and bestselling historical romance authors Courtney Milan and Carolyn Jewel. Together these three stories form
Midnight Scandals
, an anthology of one fine house, three fascinating periods, and three remarkable couples.

One Starlit Night
by Carolyn Jewel: Excerpt

March 13, 1813, the rear lawn of Doyle’s Grange, Somerset, near the Exmoor hills, England

CRISPIN HOPE, FOURTH VISCOUNT NORTHWORD, stood to one side of the lawn and prayed for a miracle. None arrived. He remained unable to summon a blessed word. He twitched with the need to do something besides stand mute. Words, any words, would be better than his damnable silence. Action, any action, would be better than inaction. He managed to force a smile. A minor miracle, then. Hallelujah.

Naturally, a woman was involved in his present difficulties. A particular and specific woman. Was any man’s heart ever brought to its metaphorical knees except by a woman? Minor miracle or no, he needed to say or do something to convey how unmoved he was by her.

He tapped the side of his left leg with two fingers. Next, he cleared his throat. Portia sent a questioning look his way. Of course, words failed him. He affected what he hoped appeared to be mild interest in the proceedings; practically nonexistent. He coughed again and dug into his store of conversational inanities. “A fine day.”

“Mm.” She arched her eyebrows. “A touch cold for me.” Her attention returned to the sapling that was the reason he was standing out here in the first place.

He’d known Portia Temple since he was a boy of eight and she a girl of six. Twenty-one years. For the first ten years he’d never thought of her as anything but a friend and companion who by a quirk of fate happened to be female. Pity for her when boys were so superior, and how annoying that she’d disagreed.

For the second ten years he’d managed to set her neatly into a box in which she was devoid of femininity yet continued to exist as his best friend’s sister. A woman he avoided, but with whom he kept a friendly correspondence. Friendly. Nothing more.

He did his best not to think about the time between those bookends of decades. Silence reached out and set fire to his nerves. “It’s spring,” he said. Oh, Jesus. Had he really said that? “One ought not be cold in spring.”

That got him another careless glance, and he was convinced that she, unlike him, had found a way to forget. But then, in all their years of friendship, he’d always been the one who felt more deeply.

She stared at the sapling, head tilted. “You’ve been away too long. You’ve forgotten our weather.”

Resentment boiled in him, and he required a monumental amount of sang-froid to let that pass. Forgotten? He bit back a retort but could not quash the sentiment that came with the impulse. He’d not forgotten a damned thing. It was no accident that this was his first visit to Doyle’s Grange in ten years. Nor that this was his first time socializing since his wife’s passing nearly two years ago. Outside the circle of his most intimate friends and women of a certain reputation, that is. He straightened the lay of his coat and said with sharp intent, “I’ve not forgotten anything.”

“We’ll disagree on that.” If he’d not been watching her so closely, he might have missed the distress that briefly replaced her pleasant smile. But he had been watching, and he did, and it ripped him to shreds.

Jesus. They’d made their peace in letters and it was all a lie, all those words they’d written to each other were now stripped of that fantasy pax now that he was here. Instead of the two of them moving on in person as they had in letters, they were mired in the past.

She put a hand on one of the slender branches of the sapling. One would think that in ten years she’d have changed more than she had. He had. Her brother Magnus had. She was remarkably unaltered. Smiling, too-tall-for-a-woman, auburn-haired, full of life. It was—almost—as if those second ten years had never been.

While he watched her, she lifted the hem of her muslin skirt and tamped down the last shovelful of dirt around the tree she’d just planted. She was wholly unconscious of his stare. No. He’d not forgotten anything.

Mud coated the bottom and sides of her plain leather half-boots. Spatters of dirt clung to her hem. She’d not been careful when she pinned her hair this morning, for there were curls, and not the fashionable sort. Hers came loose every which way. In daylight, there was no disguising that her hair was more red than brown, and of all things, that was what doomed him. That dark red hair.

To no avail, he reminded himself she was Magnus’s younger sister. He had years of correspondence from her. He’d not realized how her spirit had stolen into the pages and words she’d written. Every time he’d read one of her letters, she’d filled a space in his heart he ought to have closed off. He’d not even known it was happening until now. Far too late.

“What do you think, Crispin?” She wore thick gloves of the sort ladies wore when they gardened, and when she swiped a wisp of hair out of her face the careless motion left dirt on her cheek. The breeze sent the curl free to dangle at the side of her face. An undeniably red wisp of hair. Most women with hair that color insisted it was brown. Hers was a deep, dark, secret red. Soft in a man’s hands, a river of curling, mysterious color that glinted with strands of gold.

He had been careful, over the last two years, never to make love to a woman with red hair.

“Well? What do you think?”

Want more? You can read the
first chapter on Carolyn’s website
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What Happened at Midnight
by Courtney Milan: Excerpt

“John.” She shut her eyes.

“Swear to me that you don’t know where he is.”

Like everyone else, he was thinking only of her father. But unlike the others, at least he believed her. For now. Mary’s thoughts went to her trunk, to the ache in her arms.

“If I had to guess,” she told him gravely, “I would say that he went straight to hell. He left me—” All that angry fury raged within her for a moment, startling in its heat. No place to put it now; she had too much to do.

“Did he tell you where the money was?”

“Not a word.”

“What are your plans? Is that your trunk over there?” His tone was curiously flat as he spoke to her—not devoid of emotion, but withdrawn, as if he’d turned away from his own feelings.

She hadn’t dared to look at the massive steamer trunk where it lay. It had followed her from Southampton to Vienna, and then back for more holidays than she could count. It was large enough to fit all the many components of a lady’s wardrobe, and that made it very large indeed. The rope she’d used to lower it was still fastened to one handle; the brass fittings dented where it had banged against the ground when it had gotten away from her. She glanced over, bit her lip, and nodded.

He didn’t rush over and open it. Thank God.

“Do you have anywhere to go?”

“My father’s second cousin lives in Basingstoke. He’ll take me in.” The lies came easier now.

“And you have a plan.” He nodded. “I wish…” His voice was still flat, but his lips pressed together.

She turned away. “Don’t wish. You’ll only say something that we’ll both regret. After last night, anything more is impossible.”

And yet the possibility of that
more
kept intruding on her. Was it so little, then, that they’d had between them? She had liked the look of him, the way that he laughed. He’d liked the look of her. That was all. A few months’ acquaintance.

A few kisses, a few conversations—not much, but enough to spark a lifetime of hope. Enough that she’d chosen the possibility of him and family over…

No. She couldn’t let herself think that way any longer. Those memories belonged to another woman entirely—Miss Mary Chartley, the daughter of a respected member of the community. She wasn’t sure who she was in this skin any longer, but she’d ceased to be that person. No matter what she and John might once have been to one another, it wasn’t enough to survive the cataclysm of discovering that her father had taken thousands of pounds from their partnership.

She took off one glove, removed the ring from her finger, and held it out to him.

His flat façade finally cracked. His hand slapped against his trousers, and he turned his head from her. “God damn it.”

“Set it against my father’s debt.”

His jaw worked. It took him a few breaths to regain his composure, but when he turned back, he didn’t take the ring from her. “You’ll need help getting to the station.” Before she knew what was happening, he was reaching for the handle of her trunk.

She couldn’t let him touch that. If he tried to lift it, he might wonder what made her luggage so heavy.

“Really, John,” she said sharply, stepping in front of him. “I should think you’ve done enough.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“Doesn’t it? Say you love me, that you would marry me without any fortune, with my father in disgrace. Say your sister would welcome me into the family, knowing that my father stole her son’s future.”

He met her eyes. She wasn’t sure what she saw reflected there. Regret? Anger? “You’re right,” he finally said. “I can’t say anything of the sort. But—”

“I don’t love you, either. If I did…” She slipped the ring into his hand. “If I did, surely I could not give you this with my head held high.”

If he’d put her in mind of thunder before, that flashing look in his eyes was the lightning, spearing her through in one instant. For one second, she thought he was actually going to grab hold of her. But he didn’t move. He didn’t even frown. He simply took a deep breath and shoved the ring into his pocket.

“Well, then.” Another breath, and he looked away. “Good riddance.”

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