Courtney Milan (16 page)

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.”

Thank you!

Thanks for reading
What Happened at Midnight
. I hope you enjoyed it!

• Would you like to know when my next book is available? You can sign up for my new release e-mail list at
www.courtneymilan.com
, follow me on twitter at
@courtneymilan
,
or like my Facebook page at
http://facebook.com/courtneymilanauthor
.

• Reviews help other readers find books. I appreciate all reviews, whether positive or negative.

If you’d like to read an excerpt from
The Duchess War
, the first full-length book in the Brothers Sinister series, please turn the page.

What Happened at Midnight
is linked to two other novellas, all set at Doyle’s Grange:
One Starlit Night
, by Carolyn Jewel, set in the Regency period, and
A Dance in Moonlight
, by Sherry Thomas, set in the Edwardian era. Short excerpts from both of those books are also included.

The Duchess War: Excerpt

The Duchess War

available now

Miss Minerva Lane is a quiet, bespectacled wallflower, and she wants to keep it that way. After all, the last time she was the center of attention, it ended badly—so badly that she changed her name to escape her scandalous past. Wallflowers may not be the prettiest of blooms, but at least they don’t get trampled. So when a handsome duke comes to town, the last thing she wants is his attention.

But that is precisely what she gets…

Excerpt from Chapter Three…

“W
HAT A SURPRISE,” THE DUKE SAID,
his voice low and teasing. “Never say that
you
have something in your past you wish to hide.”

Minnie stared into the brown liquid in her cup. “Easy for you to find this all so amusing. But my future is no game. I have worked hard to get where I am, and I will fight to keep what little comfort I’ve earned, small though it may be. I don’t wish to have my actions examined too closely. Neither, I suspect, do you. If you stop, we’ll both be safe.”

“Safe.” He drew out the syllable, as if savoring the word. “I don’t much care for
safe,
myself. And I’d be doing you a favor if I separated you from your suitor.”

She could hardly argue with that. But she shook her head. “It’s no favor if you make it impossible for me to find another. I live on fate, Your Grace. When my great-aunt passes away, the farm will go to her cousin. My Great-Aunt Elizabeth and I will have nowhere to go. I
must
marry.” She lifted her head now, and looked him full in the eyes. “I haven’t any choice.”

His gaze softened. “Your past… It’s so bad that you’re worrying that someone
might
poke into it because of a handbill?”

For one mad moment, she considered laying the whole story at his feet. He looked so open, with his head tilted in that welcome, beguiling manner. Surely, she could…

Even the thought of confession brought a chill to the air, a cramp to her lungs.

She looked back at her tea. “Do you know what it is like to be a woman in these modern times? Gentlemen marry less and less these days. I read that thirty-four percent of genteel young ladies reach the age of twenty-seven without marrying. I don’t need anything shameful in my past. Anything outside the ordinary, no matter how harmless it might seem, is a catastrophe.”

He sat back in his chair and considered this. “Then I see an alternate solution to our mutual problem. I, apparently, need a more believable reason to stay in town. If you didn’t believe what I said, others won’t either. You need to be in the top sixty-six percent of marriageable women, such as it is.” He shrugged. “So I’ll set up a flirtation with you while I’m here. You can reject me; I’ll moon about morosely. The whole thing will do wonders for your reputation. I keep writing; you get your husband.”

He said it so matter-of-factly, but the image that brought up—of
him
dancing attendance on
her,
of his hand resting over hers in a waltz—made her stomach flutter uncertainly. She gave her head a fierce shake. “That’s a terrible idea. Nobody would ever believe that you had any interest in me.”

“I could make them believe. Not one in ten thousand would have figured out what you just did. Not one. I could make everyone believe in the woman who saw that—quiet, yes, and perhaps a little shy in company—”

Minnie made a rude noise, but he waved her quiet.

“You have steel for your backbone and a rare talent for seeing what is plainly in front of your face. I could make everyone see that.” His eyes were intense, boring into her. There was no escaping him, it seemed. He dropped his voice. “I could make everyone see
you.”

Was it just her stomach fluttering? No. Her whole body seemed on the verge of trembling. It had been years since anyone pretended to have an interest in her. To have his attention fall upon her in such concentrated fashion… It was too much.

But he wasn’t finished. “Then there’s your hair. Hair shouldn’t change color, just by curling, but the edges seem to catch the light, and I can’t be sure if it’s brown or blond or even red when it does. I could watch that for hours, to try and figure it out.”

Her heart was thudding in her chest. It wasn’t beating any faster; just more heavily, as if her blood required more work to move.

But this was an exercise in hypotheticals, and Minnie was too desperate to be anything other than practical.

“Go on with you.” She’d intended the words to be dismissive, but her voice trembled. “What would you say when it was just men about? When they were asking you what the devil you saw in that mousy Miss Pursling? I daresay you’d never tell them that you were entranced by the curl of my hair. That’s the sort of thing a man says to convince a woman, but men don’t talk that way amongst themselves.”

He’d obviously expected her to swallow that codswallop about her hair, because he paused, slightly taken aback. And then, he gave her a shake of his head and a grin. “Come, Miss Pursling,” he said. “Men wouldn’t ask any such thing. They’d already know what caught my eye.” He leaned forward and whispered in conspiratorial fashion. “It’s your tits.”

Her mouth dropped open. She was suddenly very aware of said tits—warm and tingling in anticipation, even though he wasn’t anywhere near them.

He murmured, “They’re magnificent.”

He wasn’t even looking at them, but Minnie’s hands itched to cover herself—not to block out his sight, but to explore her own curves. To see if, perhaps, her bosom
was
magnificent—if it had been magnificent all these years, and she had simply never noticed.

If another man had said that her tits were magnificent, it might have been in a leering, lustful way—one that would have made her skin crawl. But the Duke of Clermont was smiling and cheerful, and he’d thrown it out there as if it were merely one more fact to be recounted.
The weather is lovely. The streets are paved with cobblestone. Your tits are magnificent.

“Don’t protest,” he said. “You did ask, and after furthering our acquaintance over a spot of blackmail, we’ve no need to encumber ourselves with false modesty.”

Minnie squared her shoulders, all too aware that the act of doing so brought her bosom up a notch.

“Look in a mirror sometime,” he suggested. “Look beyond
this.”
He touched his cheekbone, mirroring the spot on her face where her scar spread. “Look at yourself sometime the way you are now, all fire and anger, ready to do battle with me. If you’d ever once looked at yourself that way, you wouldn’t question whether I’d want a flirtation with you. You’d
know
I would.”

Want to read the rest?
The Duchess War
is available now.

Other Books by Courtney