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.