She placed her fingers against his palm. “Not a lady,” she said. “A lady wouldn’t have gone to London and discovered the circumstances of the money. A lady doesn’t plot to help women get divorces. A lady doesn’t force her employer to pay wages by enlisting the help of a viscountess. I’ll never be a lady.” She smiled, and squeezed his hand. “I think…I rather think I’m something better.”
He pulled on her hand. “And the rest of it?”
“I’m afraid I won’t help you with the respectable part, either. There was my precipitate departure from town. With Frost and Lawson going to trial, the details of my father’s embezzlement will come to light. And if that isn’t bad enough, before you arrived, I inquired at the public assembly hall. They’ve officially asked me to play the pianoforte. And”—This last came out quite defiantly—“They’re going to pay me two guineas a month.”
“I see.” But he didn’t. He was even more puzzled.
“I’m officially going to be paid for my labor. And I don’t intend to limit myself to playing at assemblies. That’s just a start. Respectable married ladies do not do such things, and so I refuse to be a respectable married lady.”
She hadn’t let go of him.
“I see,” he said again, with perhaps a little more understanding this time. “But that leaves married. What of that?”
“I will never be just your wife.”
“Why would you, when you have so much more you could be?”
He’d wanted her the moment he saw her. But the way he felt now, he was beyond want. She wouldn’t just be a beautiful possession to trot out to prove his luck to other fellows. Mary was more than a pretty picture to hang upon the wall and gaze at lovingly.
She was going to do amazing things. And he was going to help her do them.
“There’s only one way to be respectable.” She leaned her head against him. “But there are so, so many ways to be married. I think we’ll find a thousand variations on a theme of marriage, John. All of them magnificent. I love you. I love you. I love you.”
He kissed her, long and slow. And because that wasn’t enough, he kissed her a second time, and a third, and more, until he lost count of all their kisses, until a maid came into the room to clear away the dishes and gasped out loud at the sight.
And just to be sure that they’d caused a scandal, he kissed her again.
Epilogue
Forty years later, on the road to Doyle’s Grange
THE EXMOOR HILLS SHIMMERED on the horizon, indistinct in the morning haze.
It had not been so much of a struggle to climb the hill to Doyle’s Grange all those years ago. Now, Mary could feel the strain in her back, her hips. Nothing uncommon, just age taking its usual toll. But then, what age took, age returned. There was no need to hurry now. Doyle’s Grange wasn’t going anywhere, and they had all the time they wished to explore. She stopped at the rise just before the path dipped into the windbreak and turned to look around.
John squeezed her hand in his. “I’m not going too fast for you, am I?”
“No. Just my back again.”
They’d walked more than a mile from the railway station, but she hadn’t really felt the exercise until they’d reached the hill.
“That’s a shame.” He set his arm around her waist and pressed his fingers into the small of her back. After all these years, he didn’t need to ask where it hurt. He simple rubbed his thumb in a circle right where the tension had gathered, pushing lightly until the gathered pain began to dissipate.
“That’s nice,” she said. “It’s quiet here.”
In comparison, it was. There were no trolley cars, no sellers hawking oranges or flowers. There was only a farmer plowing a field off in the distance and a kestrel circling overhead. It was louder than it once had been—there’d been an actual stand of cabs waiting at West Aubrey—but still quiet.
“Quiet is nice.” John smiled. “For now. It’ll be loud enough, once we’re in Vienna.”
“It’s different. Not the way I remember it.”
She didn’t remember it being so bright, for one. The spring air had only a hint of a bite to it. It was too quiet here, too quiet at home. Caroline, George, and Jacob were long since out of the house. Even Caroline’s children were off at school. Aside from a few last students, Mary had too little to do. So when John had suggested that they retrace their most important moments together as a second honeymoon, she’d jumped at the chance.
“Ready?” he asked.
Maybe he was asking about her back. Or maybe…
This, the first portion of their journey, was the only part she’d fretted over. Doyle’s Grange brought to mind a darker time, one she’d been glad to leave behind her. She feared that visiting this place again would bring back all those long-settled memories. But she shrugged and started up the hill again.
She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to see when she came through the trees. Doyle’s Grange was the same—and yet so different. Someone had planted a hedge of shiny green leaves between the house and the lane. The drab front shrubberies had been torn out and replaced with beds of dark soil, sprouting the green beginnings of spring flowers. And in the meadows that surrounded the property, growing amidst the new grass, were crocuses—thousands of them.
And then she heard a sound—a shriek; not one of horror or pain, but a child’s excited squeal.
“You can’t catch me!” someone taunted. Another shriek, and the taunter tore into view, dashing across the road and into the tall grass across the way.
“Hyacinth!” came the return shriek, from far off. “You had better hide well.”
She and John exchanged amused looks.
“Well,” Mary said with a sigh, “you were right, after all.”
“About what?”
“I’ve got forty good years behind me. This—” she waved her hand at the cottage “—this is nothing in comparison. I’m bigger than it now.”
He smiled. “You always were.”
This place wasn’t a box, to hold her worst memories. It was only a bright, sunlit house—a place of happiness for a new generation.
And the last forty years had brought quite a bit of happiness. From here, they’d go on to London. With the money Mary had recovered from the partnership, they’d spent a few months of their first winters there. She had played in salons, enough to get her name out. From London, they’d move on to Vienna. She’d never played at the grandest halls—living in Vienna only during the winters, when the farm was quiet, had restricted her choices—but she was the only musician she knew whose husband never missed a performance.
There had been no professional reason to visit Paris, which made those few weeks in 1870 all the more memorable. She was looking forward to seeing that new tower they’d erected. After a week there, they had passage on a steamer to Boston—that was where John had displayed his new, more efficient water turbine, the one that had truly secured their future.
It had been a good life.
She took his hand again, and together, they started down the hill. Halfway to the station, though, she heard a noise—a faint little whimper, so high-pitched that she almost didn’t hear it.
“What’s that?” she said.
John shrugged. “What?”
She listened, turning her head to one side. “That noise—there it is again.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
Mary shrugged this off. Likely, the noise was too high for his ears. He couldn’t hear half the notes on the upper register of her piano anymore. She turned to the side of the road and rustled through the early summer foliage of the hedge.
“I knew I heard something!” she said, leaning down and moving branches aside.
“What is it?” He had come up behind her.
It was a dirty burlap sack, the end tied in a knot. Under the fabric, something moved.
“Oh, no.” Mindless of the branches that snagged her sleeves, she reached in. Her fingers closed around the edge, barely gripping,
and then yanked the burden high—eliciting a high-pitched yip from the residents of the sack. She sank to the ground. Her fingers tore into the knot, her hands shaking.
And when the sack was opened—
“Oh, John.” She’d scraped her arms rescuing the bag. But she could scarcely feel those scratches for the feeling that almost overwhelmed her. The bag contained two tiny puppies—tawny all over, barely palm-sized, their eyes still creased closed.
“Oh little ones,” she crooned. “Who would do this to you? We’ll have to get you something to eat. John?”
He was looking at her with a small smile on his face.
Maybe another man would remind her of the expensive hotel that awaited them in Vienna, or the long voyage to America that would follow. Another man might have mentioned that puppies needed to be trained, or he might have made noises about needing his sleep at night.
John simply smiled. “Well. I guess it’s not going to be quiet any longer.”
Mary hugged the puppies to her and stood. She had forty good years behind her—a life that anyone would be lucky to live. Was it selfish to be glad that it still felt like the beginning?
“I wonder who’s at Beauregard’s farm now?” he said. “I think they’ll have milk.”
John put his arm around her and she snuggled up against him.
“I think,” she said, “I’m going to need another forty years of you.”
More about Courtney’s other works, and an excerpt from her upcoming release, The Duchess War, can be found at the back of this book. Click here for a shortcut.
About Courtney Milan
COURTNEY MILAN IS A New York Times and a USA Today bestselling author. Her books have received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Booklist. She’s twice been a RITA® finalist, and her second book was chosen as a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2010. Courtney lives in the Rocky Mountains with her husband, a medium-sized dog, and an attack cat. She’s working on a garden, an older house, and her next book.
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Chapter One
Summer 1896, Somerset, a few miles south of the Exmoor hills
THE WOMAN WAS BACK.
Ralston Fitzwilliam had seen her once before, two days ago. He had been on the tail-end of a fourteen mile walk, up and down hills so gentle they were barely bumps in the ground, across rain-swollen streams, and alongside green, sheep-dotted pastures.
Given that dark rain clouds, so low he could almost touch them, had crowded the sky from horizon to horizon, he should have gone straight home to Stanton House, set at his disposal by the Duke of Perrin for the few weeks a year Ralston spent in England. But the walk had not been sufficiently tiring for a man who wanted his limbs aching and his mind blank, so he had traversed Beauregard’s farm and headed up the slope at the top of which sat Viscount Northword’s country seat.
Only to have the rain come down hard halfway uphill. He veered toward Doyle’s Grange, a smaller property of the Northword estate. It was vacant at present, and he could take shelter under its ivy-covered portico without being fussed over and lectured about the foolishness of being abroad in such weather, without even an umbrella. As he approached the garden gate behind the house, she had appeared on the garden path, a young widow all in black.
She was beautiful—tall, regal, her hair as dark as the beads of jet that trimmed her hat. But what had truly caught his eye was the story of her life that had been written on her otherwise exquisite face.
It had not been the easiest of lives. There was an air of fragility to her—not an inborn timidity, but the residual fear of someone who had been burnt by the vagaries of fate.
He recognized himself—as he had been for many years, and perhaps even as he was now.
She hurried into the house without noticing him. But he thought of her as he waited out the rain beneath the eaves of the garden shed, for the entirety of his walk home, and when he extinguished his light at night.
He called on Doyle’s Grange the next day, but the front gate was locked, the house shut tight.
And now here she was again, a lovely, somber silhouette in the waning light of a summer evening, stepping down from a hansom cab, a satchel in hand. His heart leaped until he realized that the hansom cab, parked on the country lane before the blooming rhododendron hedge, did not leave. It was waiting for her to come out from the house and would ferry her elsewhere.
He hesitated. But before long, he found himself slipping into the front gate and walking up the drive. A movement of an upstairs curtain caught his eye—he had been sighted. Under the portico, as he raised his hand toward the bell pull, the door flung open, and she launched herself into his arms.
He was over six feet in height and sturdy of build. But she was at least five foot nine and no skeleton. He stumbled back a step.
Before he could quite recover from his surprise, she gripped his face and kissed him.
He’d kissed women to whom he hadn’t been properly introduced, but never before he’d uttered so much as a greeting. She was ravenous, almost barbarous, as if she wanted to level him to the ground and lay waste to him.
The next moment her kiss turned tender. Now she was kissing her beloved, thought to be lost on the battlefield, but found alive and well, needing only to be cared for and cherished. Her fingers, which had been digging hard into the sides of his head, relaxed. Her body fitted itself to his. And he, who’d until now been largely stunned, wondering how to disentangle himself without giving offense, was suddenly caught in the kiss.
She smelled of roses. Not the smothering scent he’d encountered at times, as if he’d been stuffed inside a perfume bottle, but light and fresh, like a single petal held beneath the nostrils. Her cheek beneath his hand was wondrously soft. And her body was all velvet—her mourning gown was made of the stuff—plush, smooth, sensational.
“Oh, Fitz,” she murmured, her arms banding tighter about him. “My darling Fitz.”
His nickname at school had been Bosh—he liked to roll his eyes and say “bosh” when his mates sprouted nonsense. But he supposed one could call him Fitz, short for Fitzwilliam. Which raised the question, who was she? Where had he met her before that she considered their acquaintance to merit such a passionate kiss at this reunion? And if indeed they knew each other so well, how was it that he did not have the least recollection of her?
But that was for later. For now, he pulled her closer and kissed her back.
ISABELLE ENGLEWOOD ALMOST COULD NOT withstand the wild burst of joy in her heart. Her Fitz, her beautiful, beloved Fitz. He had realized his mistake and returned to her at last.
He smelled wonderful—but different, of cedar and bergamot, with the faintest underpinning of oriental spices. And he was more substantial than she remembered—good, she preferred a little more meat on his bones. And how she loved the way he kissed her, with a gentleness that nevertheless scorched.
Since her return to England, he’d been reticent to be physically close to her. But not anymore. Now he was unhesitating. Now he was hungry.
As was she. She’d been dreaming of this moment. It had been more than eighteen months since she’d lain with a man, more than a decade since she understood that she wanted to wake up next to him every morning of her life.
She broke the kiss when she could no longer breathe. Locking her fingers together behind his neck, she rested her head against his shoulder and panted, all the while pressing kisses into his cheek and jaw.
At last he was hers to have and to hold. To love and to cherish. Tears welled in her eyes, but she did not care; it had been far too long since she’d wept tears of happiness.
Happiness, what an alien sensation.
She nibbled him just above his collar, and the sound that emerged from his throat was full of suppressed desire. And his body—she
could feel his unsuppressed desire against her, making her giddy even as a tear escaped the corner of her eye.
She smiled. And giggled—she loved being dizzy with hope.
“Let’s go inside,” she said, reaching up to touch his hair. “But let me dismiss the cabbie first, before he begins to wonder what…”
She forgot what else she was about to say. The hair beneath her finger was brown, with perhaps the slightest reddish tint. Fitz’s hair was not brown; it was black, like her own. Not to mention when she last saw him, this very morning, his hair had been at least two inches shorter.
Dazed, she looked up into his eyes. “What happened to your—”
The eyes that gazed back at her were green. Green. A man could conceivably dye his hair—or put on a wig. But how did he change the color of his eyes?
She leaped back from him. “You are not Fitz. Who are you?”
A SIMPLE CASE OF mistaken identity.
Which would have been rather funny, a woman kissing the wrong man, if she did not look so shattered.
She stared at him as if he were a piece of art for which she’d bartered all her worldly possessions, only to realize that he was but a forgery, an inferior copy of what she truly wanted. She blinked furiously, then, forgetting—or perhaps no longer caring—that she’d asked for his identity, she turned her back to him and reached for the door of the house.
“Mrs. Englewood,” he blurted out.
He’d spoken to the estate agent who had overseen the letting of Doyle’s Grange. He knew her name. He knew that she was the mother of two young children. He knew that she had lost her husband, a cavalry officer, in India.
“My apologies, Mrs. Englewood. I did not mean to…disrupt your evening. My name is Fitzwilliam and I live nearby. I was informed that you have taken Doyle’s Grange and hoped to make your acquaintance.”
The breath she took was audible. Stiffly, she turned her head enough to look at him. “I should apologize to you, Mr. Fitzwilliam. The mistake and the responsibility were both mine.”