There are two things I do before I leave the house that night. Two snippets of time to be preserved in the amber of memory, publish until the gleam sun-bright.
After August falls asleep, I slide from our bed and pull on
the riding dress I secreted away before we retired. He groans,
and I still go, my heart hammering. At a thump behind me, I
turn, barely daring to breathe. He's on his back now, eyes
closed, sound asleep.
I exhale. As I do, clouds shift beyond the window, and
moonlight hits him. That sliver of light plays across his bare
chest and face, and three years seem to disappear, and
instead, it is our wedding night and I'm looking at my new
husband, my breath catching as the moon glides over him.
I will never be this happy.
That is what I thought. I'd been almost shamed by my joy,
as if I did not deserve it. I'd been afraid for it, too, wanting to
swaddle it in wool, lest it shatter.
How did I get so lucky? I'd thought that, too. August Courtenay was the third son
of an earl, and for a young woman like me—with a good
name but nothing more—our marriage should have been the
achievement of a lifetime. His family and his fortune meant
nothing to me, though.
Perhaps, then, my joy should come from what that
moonlight revealed: a man with the face and body of a Greek
god. I'd be lying if I said I didn't thoroughly enjoy the sight
of him. Yet again, that wasn't the source of my happiness.
If anything, August's wealth and good looks had been
detriments to our union, sending me fleeing his early
pursuit. Only a fool falls for a man like that. A fool who
thinks she'll win more than a few nights of passion and a
cheap bauble for her finger instead of a wedding band.
No, my joy in that moment, waking beside my
bridegroom, was the happiness of finding that most elusive
of romantic prizes: love. Love from a man who saw to the
core of me, past all my rough edges and idiosyncrasies. And I
saw everything in him and loved him back. Loved him
beyond imagination, beyond measure.
That was three years ago. Now . . . ?
I have a secret passion for Gothic tales, and I know how
this one should go. Penniless girl weds an angel and finds
herself shackled to a demon instead. There is nothing
demonic in August. Just something small and frightened that
I desperately want to soothe, and I cannot.
In each of us, we carry a shadow of the child we were, and
August's is a very sad and lonely boy who is certain every
woman he loves will leave him. One would think that
marriage, and then a child, would cure his fear, but the more tightly we are bound to one another, the more fearful he
becomes, that fear manifesting in an anger and a jealousy
that has begun to frighten me.
I picture the bride who woke beside her husband three
years ago. I imagine what she'd think if she could see herself
now, slipping from bed, pulling on a riding gown, preparing
to sneak back to Thorne Manor and retrieve her wedding
band, innocently left in the kitchen as she helped the
housekeeper fix an uncooperative bread dough.
That bride would laugh at her future self. Why all the
intrigue? August knows she helped with the dough. He'd
understand her removing her ring. What else would he
think? That she'd taken it oŷ for a tryst with the owner of
Thorne Manor . . . August's oldest and dearest friend? How
absolutely preposterous.
That is the extent of my husband's jealousy. The sick and
sorry truth of it, that I have done nothing to ever give him
cause for concern. I would never do anything, still being as
madly in love with him as I was on our wedding night. Yet he
cannot rest his watchful gaze when I am around other men,
even his most trusted friend, who has treated me like
nothing but a dear substitute for the younger sister he lost.
And so I must slip from bed to ride through the night and
retrieve my wedding band while praying—praying—my
husband does not wake to find me gone.
As I rise, I watch August, and my chest tightens with love
and with loss, and with the determination that we will get
past this. We must. I won this incredible man, and I will not
give him up so easily.
I ease from the room to the second thing I will do before I
leave. The second memory I will unknowingly create. I tiptoe
into the room beside ours, where I creep to a bassinet. Our
son—Edmund—sleeps as soundly as his father.
I bend and inhale the smell of him, his milky breath, his
sweet skin. I cannot resist brushing my lips across his head,
already thick with his father's curls. One light kiss, and then
I slip away, whispering a promise that I will be back before
he wakes.
Escaping the house is not easy. It is the Courtenays'
ancestral estate, a "country home" that would fit five of our
London townhouses. Having grown up in London, I'd
shuddered when August first invited me to his family's
Yorkshire estate. Afterward, he joked that I very
coincidentally fell in love with him on that visit, and it was
the countryside that truly won my heart. Not so, but
Courtenay Hall ignited a fierce passion for place that I'd
never experienced before. It is, of course, his eldest brother's
estate, yet the earl abhors the countryside, and we are free to
summer here.
A house of this size, of course, requires staŷ, and I must
exit as stealthily as any burglar would enter. At one time, the
staŷ was accustomed to their young mistress creeping out
for a moonlit ride. I'd gallop under the stars, across the
estate's vast meadows and through its game forests, and
never encounter a single person who felt obliged to tip his
hat or who looked askance at my windswept hair. I'd return
after an hour or so and crawl into bed, drunk on moonlight
and freedom, and August would sense the cool draft of my
night-chill body and roll over to greet me with lovemaking.
Last month, when we arrived at the summer estate, I'd
slipped away for a ride, and August had followed. He'd stuck
to the shadows, and when I caught him, he insisted he'd only
been concerned for my safety. If that were the case, he'd
have said so and ridden with me. No, he'd been following me.
So while I do not fear being stopped by staŷ, I do fear
them innocently mentioning my moonlit ride to August. Yet I
am prepared, and soon I am on my horse, riding from the
estate without attracting any notice.
Thorne Manor is not, unfortunately, over the next hill or
down the next dale. It's nearly seven miles away. I am only
glad that I have a young and healthy gelding and that the
roads are empty at this hour.
When I near the village of High Thornesbury, the sound of
voices drifts over on the breeze. Drunken male voices. I skirt
the village at a quieter pace and then set my mount galloping
up the hill to the manor house.
The house is dark and empty. William had business to
tend to in London, and so August insisted he take our coach.
Yes, a lord, particularly one with William's income, should
have his own coach, but our William is even more eccentric
than I. As for household staŷ, he has only his aged
housekeeper and groom, and he gave them two nights off to
stay with their adult children in High Thornesbury.
I don't stable my horse. I'll give him a quick grooming
before the return journey. For now, I leave him at the water
trough and then slip in through the kitchen door, which
never quite locks properly and needs only a certain lift-andpull to open it.
My goal is less than ten paces from the door, where I'd
helped the housekeeper, Mrs. Shaw. Baking is my passion. It
had also been my salvation when my parents died and left
their three daughters with a comfortable home and a small
income but no money to bring into a marriage. As the oldest,
I considered it my responsibility to provide that for my
sisters. There'd been an easy and acceptable way: marry one
of several rich suitors. Or a diŸcult and scandalous way:
open my own bakery. Naturally, I chose the latter.
My wedding band is exactly where I left it, tucked behind
a canister of flour. I'm putting it on when a scream sounds
overhead, and I jump, my riding boots sliding on the kitchen
floor.
Eyes wide, I press myself into the shadows as something
thumps on the floor above. I hold my breath and measure the
distance between myself and the door. Another thump, and I
turn instead to a hanging meat cleaver.
I ought to run. That is the sensible thing to do. Yet I keep
imagining that scream. A high-pitched screech like that of a
terrified woman.
William is away, and most of High Thornesbury will know
it. How many also know about that broken kitchen door? For
a man with William's dangerous reputation, one would think
he'd be far less trusting. Or perhaps he expects his
reputation will keep invaders at bay.
There is another possibility. Not burglary, but a man
luring a woman to this empty house.
I touch the handle of the cleaver before thinking better of
such a sharp and unwieldy weapon. I take a poker from the
hearth instead. Then I creep, sure-footed, to the stairs.
I'm halfway up before a sound comes again, and it stops
me in my tracks, my mind struggling to identify what I'm
hearing. It's hollow and haunting, half yowl and half
keening, raising the hairs on my neck.
I climb slower now, poker gripped in both hands, gaze
straining to see in near darkness.
I reach the top, and the sound comes softer, hauntingly
desolate. I swallow and continue until I reach an open door.
Moonlight floods the small room. A child's room, yet I've
stayed in this house often enough to know it's William's. His
childhood bedchamber, which he inexplicably insists on retaining.
The sound comes again, but there is no sign of anyone within. The noise seems to emanate from the vicinity of the bed. Could someone be prostrate and injured on the floor
behind it? I grip the poker tighter and take two steps before
my ears follow the noise instead to the box at the end of
William's bed. A storage chest.
Am I hearing a trapped child?
One hand still wielding the poker, I heave up the heavy lid
of the box to see a calico kitten trapped within and yowling piteously.
"Who put you in there?" I whisper, and I'm about to throw the lid completely open when—
The box disappears. One second, I'm gripping the halfopen lid, staring at a kitten, and the next, the lid disappears,
leaving me staggering. I stumble forward and catch myself
on the foot of the bed.
I push up sharply, shaking my head as I hold the foot of . . .
The foot of a bed that is not William's.
There are two things I do before I leave the house that night. Two snippets of time to be preserved in the amber of memory, publish until the gleam sun-bright.
After August falls asleep, I slide from our bed and pull on the riding dress I secreted away before we retired. He groans, and I still go, my heart hammering. At a thump behind me, I turn, barely daring to breathe. He's on his back now, eyes closed, sound asleep.
I exhale. As I do, clouds shift beyond the window, and moonlight hits him. That sliver of light plays across his bare chest and face, and three years seem to disappear, and instead, it is our wedding night and I'm looking at my new husband, my breath catching as the moon glides over him.
I will never be this happy.
That is what I thought. I'd been almost shamed by my joy, as if I did not deserve it. I'd been afraid for it, too, wanting to swaddle it in wool, lest it shatter.
How did I get so lucky? I'd thought that, too. August Courtenay was the third son
of an earl, and for a young woman like me—with a good name but nothing more—our marriage should have been the achievement of a lifetime. His family and his fortune meant nothing to me, though.
Perhaps, then, my joy should come from what that moonlight revealed: a man with the face and body of a Greek god.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't thoroughly enjoy the sight of him. Yet again, that wasn't the source of my happiness.
If anything, August's wealth and good looks had been detriment to our union, sending me fleeing his early pursuit. Only a fool falls for a man like that. A fool who thinks she'll win more than a few nights of passion and a cheap bauble for her finger instead of a wedding band.
No, my joy in that moment, waking beside my bridegroom, was the happiness of finding that most elusive of romantic prizes: love. Love from a man who saw to the core of me, past all my rough edges and idiosyncrasies.
And I saw everything in him and loved him back. Loved him beyond imagination, beyond measure.
That was three years ago. Now . . . ?
I have a secret passion for Gothic tales, and I know how this one should go. Penniless girl weds an angel and finds herself shackled to a demon instead.
There is nothing demonic in August. Just something small and frightened that I desperately want to soothe, and I cannot.
In each of us, we carry a shadow of the child we were, and August's is a very sad and lonely boy who is certain every woman he loves will leave him.
One would think that marriage, and then a child, would cure his fear, but the more tightly we are bound to one another, the more fearful he becomes, that fear manifesting in an anger and a jealousy that has begun to frighten me.
I picture the bride who woke beside her husband three years ago.
I imagine what she'd think if she could see herself now, slipping from bed, pulling on a riding gown, preparing to sneak back to Thorne Manor and retrieve her wedding band, innocently left in the kitchen as she helped the housekeeper fix an uncooperative bread dough.
That bride would laugh at her future self. Why all the intrigue? August knows she helped with the dough.
He'd understand her removing her ring. What else would he think? That she'd taken it off for a tryst with the owner of Thorne Manor . . .
August's oldest and dearest friend? How absolutely preposterous.
That is the extent of my husband's jealousy.
The sick and sorry truth of it, that I have done nothing to ever give him cause for concern.
I would never do anything, still being as madly in love with him as I was on our wedding night.
Yet he cannot rest his watchful gaze when I am around other men, even his most trusted friend, who has treated me like nothing but a dear substitute for the younger sister he lost.
And so I must slip from bed to ride through the night and retrieve my wedding band while praying—praying—my husband does not wake to find me gone.
As I rise, I watch August, and my chest tightens with love and with loss, and with the determination that we will get past this. We must. I won this incredible man, and I will not give him up so easily.
I ease from the room to the second thing I will do before I leave.
The second memory I will unknowingly create. I tiptoe into the room beside ours, where I creep to a bassinet.
Our son—Edmund—sleeps as soundly as his father.
I bend and inhale the smell of him, his milky breath, his sweet skin.
I cannot resist brushing my lips across his head, already thick with his father's curls. One light kiss, and then I slip away, whispering a promise that I will be back before he wakes.
Escaping the house is not easy.
It is the Courtenays' ancestral estate, a "country home" that would fit five of our London townhouses.
Having grown up in London, I'd shuddered when August first invited me to his family's Yorkshire estate.
Afterward, he joked that I very coincidentally fell in love with him on that visit, and it was the countryside that truly won my heart.
Not so, but Courtenay Hall ignited a fierce passion for a place that I'd never experienced before.
It is, of course, his eldest brother's estate, yet the earl abhors the countryside, and we are free to summer here.
A house of this size, of course, requires staff, and I must exit as stealthily as any burglar would enter.
At one time, the staff was accustomed to their young mistress creeping out for a moonlit ride.
I'd gallop under the stars, across the estate's vast meadows and through its game forests, and never encounter a single person who felt obliged to tip his hat or who looked askance at my windswept hair.
I'd return after an hour or so and crawl into bed, drunk on moonlight and freedom, and August would sense the cool draft of my night-chill body and roll over to greet me with lovemaking.
Last month, when we arrived at the summer estate, I slipped away for a ride, and August had followed.
He'd stuck to the shadows, and when I caught him, he insisted he'd only been concerned for my safety.
If that were the case, he'd have said so and ridden with me.
No, he'd been following me.
So while I do not fear being stopped by staŷ, I do fear them innocently mentioning my moonlit ride to August.
Yet I am prepared, and soon I am on my horse, riding from the estate without attracting any notice.
Thorne Manor is not, unfortunately, over the next hill or down the next dale.
It's nearly seven miles away.
I am only glad that I have a young and healthy gelding and that the roads are empty at this hour.
When I near the village of High Thornesbury, the sound of voices drifts over on the breeze. Drunken male voices.
I skirt the village at a quieter pace and then set my mount galloping up the hill to the manor house.
The house is dark and empty.
William had business to tend to in London, and so August insisted he take our coach.
Yes, a lord, particularly one with William's income, should have his own coach, but our William is even more eccentric than I.
As for household staŷ, he has only his aged housekeeper and groom, and he gave them two nights off to stay with their adult children in High Thornesbury.
I don't stable my horse.
I'll give him a quick grooming before the return journey.
For now, I leave him at the water trough and then slip in through the kitchen door, which never quite locks properly and needs only a certain lift-andpull to open it.
My goal is less than ten paces from the door, where I'd helped the housekeeper, Mrs. Shaw. Baking is my passion.
had also been my salvation when my parents died and left their three daughters with a comfortable home and a small income but no money to bring into a marriage.
As the oldest, I considered it my responsibility to provide that for my sisters.
There'd been an easy and acceptable way: marry one of several rich suitors. Or a difficult and scandalous way: open my own bakery.
Naturally, I chose the latter.
My wedding band is exactly where I left it, tucked behind a canister of flour.
I'm putting it on when a scream sounds overhead, and I jump, my riding boots sliding on the kitchen floor.
Eyes wide, I press myself into the shadows as something thumps on the floor above.
I hold my breath and measure the distance between myself and the door.
Another thump, and i turn instead to a hanging meat cleaver.
I ought to run.
That is the sensible thing to do. Yet I keep imagining that scream.
A high-pitched screech like that of a terrified woman.
William is away, and most of High Thornesbury will know it.
How many also know about that broken kitchen door? For a man with William's dangerous reputation, one would think he'd be far less trusting.
Or perhaps he expects his reputation will keep invaders at bay.
There is another possibility. Not burglary, but a man luring a woman to this empty house.
I touch the handle of the cleaver before thinking better of such a sharp and unwieldy weapon. I take a poker from the hearth instead.
Then I creep, sure-footed, to the stairs.
I'm halfway up before a sound comes again, and it stops me in my tracks, my mind struggling to identify what I'm hearing.
It's hollow and haunting, half yowl and half keening, raising the hairs on my neck.
I climb slower now, poker gripped in both hands, gaze straining to see in near darkness.
I reach the top, and the sound comes softer, hauntingly desolate.
I swallow and continue until I reach an open door.
Moonlight floods the small room.
A child's room, yet I've stayed in this house often enough to know it's William's.
His childhood bedchamber, which he inexplicably insists on retaining.
The sound comes again, but there is no sign of anyone within.
The noise seems to emanate from the vicinity of the bed.
Could someone be prostrated and injured on the floor behind it?
I grip the poker tighter and take two steps before
my ears follow the noise instead of the box at the end of William's bed.
A storage chest.
Am I hearing a trapped child?
One hand still wielding the poker, I heave up the heavy lid of the box to see a calico kitten trapped within and yowling piteously.
"Who put you in there?"
I whisper, and I'm about to throw the lid completely open when— the box disappears.
One second, I'm gripping the halfopen lid, staring at a kitten, and the next, the lid disappears, leaving me staggering.
I stumble forward and catch myself
on the foot of the bed.
I push up sharply, shaking my head as I hold the foot of . . . the foot of a bed that is not William's.