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  That sweet passion she had given him in the library might even now be dying.

  He could not let that happen. The time for diplomacy had passed, and it was now time for action. That was the reason he was now creeping toward Copley Grange in the dead of night with a satchel slung over one shoulder and a rope around the other. In a vest pocket he carried a special license to marry, which he had ridden all the way to Dorchester to obtain.

  The windows were dark at the grange, as he had hoped they would be. He took a handful of gravel from the drive; such stones were the time-honored choice of swains for waking maidens in their bowers. He stood beneath Vivian’s window and tossed them at the glass, one by one, wincing at each plink of sound.

  He was only on his third stone when she appeared, a pale wraith behind the glass. She must have been awake. A moment later she opened the window.

  “Richard!” she whispered.

  “Shhh! Stand back. I’m going to toss up the end of a rope.” He wasn’t going to give her the chance to tell him to go away. He was going to rush up, sweep her off her feet, and carry her to safety. This was something he’d always wanted, and he’d finally found someone who was worth his affection. He wasn’t going to let her escape—no matter what happened.

  He coiled several lengths of his line into a loop heavy enough to throw, and when she had moved away he gave it a heave.

  And missed. The rope fell down the side of the house and into the shrubberies.

  “Damn!”

  “Where’s the rope?”

  “Shh!” He scrounged around in the bushes, untangling the line, hoping no one in the house heard him thrashing through the branches like a deranged animal.

  Coils once again in hand, he gave them another heave, and this time they sailed through the window. He heard the thunk as they hit the floorboards, and grimaced.

  Vivian appeared again in the window. “What now?”

  “Tie it off to the leg of your bed.”

  “Right.” She disappeared, and the dangling rope jerked and swayed in the faint moonlight as she set to work. “Done,” she said, appearing again.

  He pushed through the shrubberies to the wall of the house, and gave the rope an experimental tug. It felt sound. He jumped up and grabbed as high as he could on the rope, and was rewarded with a groaning screech from above and a slow sinking back to the ground.

  “The bed! It’s moving!” Vivian whispered.

  “Damn! Is there anything heavier in the room?”

  “No, nothing. But wait, I think I can brace it.”

  He waited while she did so, flinching with each sound of dragging furniture, expecting at any moment to see the front door open and an outraged Captain Twitchen appear with pistol in hand. The man would certainly shoot him.

  “All right! I think I’ve got it, but I’m going to have to go sit on the chair.”

  He didn’t inquire what she meant, he just climbed. The rope held, sinking only a few inches, the sounds from the room mere creaks of strained wood rather than groans. His head was almost at the sill when he suddenly dropped several inches. That, and the cry from Vivian were his only warning before he began to fall.

  He caught himself by one hand on the sill, releasing the rope that snaked past him and tumbled to the ground. With a grunt of effort he pulled himself up to the window, Vivian grabbing his arm and helping him to where he could straddle the sill.

  “My knot gave out,” she said.

  “I gathered.” He released a shaky breath, peering back down at the twenty foot drop to the ground, and to the shadows where their escape route lay twisted in the dirt.

  He turned to Vivian. Her hair was down, thick and dark against the white of her nightgown. A nightgown under which, he suspected, she wore nothing at all.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. She looked surprised, bewildered, and awfully pleased.

  “Penelope wrote and said you were being starved. I’ve brought you tarts and cakes.” He swung his other leg inside, then took the satchel off and opened it, holding it out for her to see.

  “You risked your life to bring me pastries?” She looked a bit sheepish, but moved closer, brushing against him, the satchel ignored. He could smell a hint of flowery soap, and under it the scent that was Vivian’s alone.

  “I came to take you away.” He dropped the sack to the floor and wrapped his arm around her waist, drawing her close. Her flesh was soft and warm under his hand. “Only, I seem to be proving an inept rescuer. I don’t know how I’m going to get you safely to the ground without the rope.”

  “Don’t you?”

  He was about to say “No, I don’t,” but then she kissed him and was touching him everywhere, and suddenly there were more important things to do than talk. His other arm went around her, and they stumbled backwards, tripping over the chair laid on its back on the floor as a brace, barely making it to the bed before falling together, sinking into its deep mattress.

  Vivian was going to be his wife. If he could not take her through the window, he would take her here, on the bed. Then she would be his forever, and no one could put a door between them ever again.

  Chapter Nine

  The Feast of the Epiphany

  “It’s almost morning.”

  “It was the nightingale you heard, and not the lark,” Vivian said, and giggled at her paraphrase of Juliet’s famous words. She stretched as she lay naked against him, loving the feel of her skin touching his, then threw a leg over his thigh.

  “Perhaps you’re right.” He lay his hand on her leg, his palm gliding up to her buttock.

  “Don’t move,” she said, and slipped from beneath his hand. She found the satchel and brought it back to the bed. “I’m hungry.”

  “After what we just did, I am not surprised.”

  She dug a tart out of the satchel and handed it to him. He took it, and she found a half-crushed pastry for herself and downed it. “Heavens, that tastes good.” She found another and devoured it while he laughed.

  “I have a confession to make,” he said, as she handed him a small cake.

  She stopped chewing, her heart skipping a beat, a sudden fear taking hold of her. “What is it?” She almost didn’t want to hear the answer.

  “I seduced you for my own selfish reasons.”

  “Oh?”

  “I was afraid I might not manage to get you out of this house, so I made you mine to be certain Captain Twitchen could not separate us again.”

  She released her breath and smiled, then started to laugh.

  “What?”

  “You!” she said, her relief making her giddy.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  His frown made her laugh all the harder. Then she said, “You didn’t seduce me, I seduced you!”

  “Nonsense.”

  She leaned close, her breasts brushing against his chest, and kissed him. Five minutes later they emerged from a tangle of limbs, sheet, and satchel, hearts thumping with newly aroused passion.

  “I seduced you,” she said again.

  He shrugged, and she could see he was trying to subdue a smile. “All right. But why would you try?”

  “For the same reason you gave, and—” she started, and then cut herself off, not knowing if she should continue.

  “And what? Speak your heart, Vivian. You know you can always do that with me.”

  “And I wanted to be sure you could not be rid of me.”

  He pushed himself upright and grasped her by the shoulders. “Rid of you? I would never want to be rid of you. What could have possibly given you such an idea?”

  “Mrs. Twitchen told me about your broken engagement to that other girl,” she said weakly.

  “Oh, Vivian.” He pulled her to him and held her cradled against his chest. “I caught my fiancée pinching Sara, and calling her a little bastard. She had pretended to me that she adored the children, and I had not been wise enough to see the lie.”

  “She hurt Sara?” Vivian asked in horror, trying to
look up at him and seeing only the hard line of his jaw. “How could she? How could anyone?”

  “She thought she had the right.”

  “Why then did you take the blame for breaking the engagement?”

  “Because I did break it. She would have gone through with the marriage.”

  “But the public apology…” she asked, confused.

  “I thought it easier to give them what they asked. I did not need vengeance: I just wanted to be free of her.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  “It was not one of the happier times of my life, and I’m afraid it has attached itself to my name. People think I have no honor.”

  She reached up and lay her hand against his cheek, coaxing him to look at her. “You are the most honorable man I have ever known.”

  He met her gaze, his dark eyes sheened with tears. “I love you,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “You do not know how long I have waited to find you, Vivian Ambrose.”

  “And I you, my love.”

  And that was when the door opened, and with a gasp and a cry Mrs. Twitchen fainted to the floor.

  *

  “I think it was only that special license in Mr. Brent’s jacket that kept Papa from shooting him,” Penelope said, putting the finishing touches to Vivian’s hair. “I have never seen him so angry! And the words he used! So vulgar! I’ll have a hard time of it in London, with the way he’ll be watching me after all this, afraid I’ll come to the same bad end. I suppose I deserve it.”

  “Do you think he’ll allow you to visit me?”

  “He’ll soften in time. Mr. Brent is, after all, a good catch once you overlook a few small details.” She paused to examine her work. “There. All done. You look like a princess, as every bride should.”

  Vivian grasped Penelope’s hand, and held it. “Thank you. For everything.”

  “It’s only a gown.”

  Vivian squeezed her hand and released it, both of them knowing that it was more than the gown that she meant.

  And yet, the gown was the gift that, from Penelope, was worth more than all the treasures of the Indies. It was her court presentation gown she had given to Vivian, in which to be wed.

  Vivian rose, and together they left the room and walked down the hall to the head of the stairs. Penelope stood to the side and nodded for Vivian to go first, sole focus of the eyes of those who waited below.

  She felt like an angel, the heavy white silk of the gown flowing round her in crystal-shimmering waves. She knew she had been blessed, for never in her life had there been a Christmas season as this, where the dearest wishes of her heart had come true.

  She descended to the earth, and to the arms of the man she loved. And her family was there to see.

  Back to Table of Contents

  A Midnight Clear

  Chapter One

  Woodbridge, Vermont

  December 1, 1878

  Her breath misted before her, a faint drifting ghost in the cold night air. The train platform looked empty, illuminated by a yellow gaslight that was dim and soft against the winter darkness. All was quiet but for the hiss of the engine’s steam and the rumbling of a freight door. Catherine stepped down from the train onto the wooden planks, her heeled shoes thudding on the hollow surface. She was used to the frantic rush of New York, and had forgotten the slower pace of home. Only a few others were disembarking at this station, already walking toward the exit, leaving her alone beside the blackened steel wheels.

  With each stop the train had made, each familiar place-name called out, her excitement had built, and she had peered blindly out the window at the depths of the night, searching vainly for some known landmark, restraining herself from telling the others in the carriage that this was where she was from, this was where she was born and raised. And here she was at last, standing on the planks of the Woodbridge platform, unable to believe she had finally arrived.

  “Catherine!” her father’s voice called.

  “Papa!” she cried, her nearsighted eyes searching him out, and finding him at last, a figure that became clear as he moved toward her. She hurried to close the distance, the long back hem of her velvet skirt, with all its folds and flounces, dragging fashionably across the wood, the opening of her silk-and-mink coat flapping. She was showing unseemly enthusiasm, she knew, and Aunt Frances would not have approved.

  Her father caught her in a hug, enveloping her in the scents of wool and pipe tobacco, reminding her for a moment of her childhood. He patted her on the back, his broad hand over-strong in his enthusiasm, and then released her. He blinked rapidly, a suspicious sheen in his eyes.

  “Did you get something to eat? Was the trip comfortable?” he asked. “Did you have any problems switching at White River Junction?”

  “I’m fine, Papa, just tired. Two o’clock in the morning is a weary time for a train to arrive.” Her original train had left New York at four in the afternoon, and she was stiff and sore from sitting on the poorly padded seats, her tight, elegant travel ensemble a constant reminder to sit straight and not lean back. She was exhausted, and the space between her shoulder blades ached with tension.

  “Your mother is waiting up, and I shouldn’t be surprised if Amy is still awake as well,” he said, leading her into the station, where porters would bring in her trunks. “Your visit is all Amy’s been able to speak of for weeks.”

  “I’ve missed her.”

  He glanced at her, the sheen still in his eyes. “We’ve missed you, too,” he said, then looked away. “Porter!” he called, his voice loud in the quiet station, and went to fetch her luggage.

  *

  “Good gracious, where did you get that?” Amy asked, staring with wide green eyes, the plumed purple hat in her lap forgotten. The girl was sitting cross-legged atop her bedcovers, clad in a white nightgown.

  Catherine looked down at herself in surprise, at the red French corset and white silk chemise she’d just revealed by removing her bodice and camisole. “In Paris. There are dancers there who wear nothing but scarlet corsets and short petticoats, and they lift even those up to show their legs to the men.”

  “You saw them?” Amy asked, incredulous.

  “Once. Aunt Frances thought it would be educational to go to such a dance hall show. She says that one can on occasion be daring if one is sure to behave like a lady whilst doing so. Of course, she also said it is even better if one can count on the silence of one’s friends.”

  “What was it like at the dance hall?” Amy half-whispered, eyes widening. “Were there ladies of the night there?”

  Catherine laughed. “And what would you know of them?”

  “I would know much more if anyone thought I was old enough to discuss them.”

  “I’m afraid you’d find them more sad than fascinating.” She went to hang her bodice in the wardrobe. Talking with her younger sister was increasing the sense of unreality and unexpected disconnection she felt, being back in the room in which she had grown up. Everything was strangely familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Amy in person was somehow different than Amy in letters, where Catherine had let her imagination fill in her sister’s spoken intonation and expression. Was this Amy the same girl she had thought she had stayed close to through the mail for two years? Even Mama had been altered, more gray in her hair, her cheeks a little fuller than Catherine remembered, her figure a little heavier. It was a surprise to realize that her family had been living their own lives, growing up and growing older, while she had been away.

  “So there were such women there?”

  “I don’t know for absolute certain, for all that I tried to look,” Catherine admitted. “Aunt Frances forbid me to gawk, and it was too dark and smoky to see much, anyway.”

  Amy’s covetous gaze went once again to the corset. “Mama doesn’t have anything like that.”

  “You like it?” Catherine asked, striking a pose with one hand on her hip, the other lifting her skirts to show a bit of stocking-clad leg.

 
“Do I! I got my first corset this year, you know, but it’s a plain thing, all white cotton without any trim or lace or anything. I don’t even need it yet,” she complained.

  Catherine chuckled. “You wouldn’t remember, but I was the same shape as you at thirteen. In two years you won’t recognize yourself.” She remembered as well her own young fascination with pretty under-things, and how they had seemed both forbidden and unattainable, things that belonged to a very adult world. In her trunks was a pink, beribboned corset for Amy, and a chemise and drawers “combination” trimmed with Valenciennes lace. They were innocent enough for a girl, but pretty enough for any woman.

  “Truly, you looked like me?”

  “Truly. But you’ll be much prettier than I, with your green eyes.”

  “I like your brown ones,” Amy said. “They look like weak tea in white china cups.”

  “Do they?” Catherine laughed, and turned to look at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were slightly bloodshot, her pale skin showing the shadows under her eyes. Her irises did indeed look the same color as weak tea. “I suppose you’re right.” Her dark brown hair was still piled up at the back of her head, the large loose braids pinned over small cushions to give the arrangement the great mass that was fashionable. Her scalp and every muscle atop her skull ached with the weight, and she felt the weariness of the long day of travel pressing heavily upon her.

  She heard Amy moving behind her, the bed creaking as she climbed off.

  “Cath, look! It’s snowing!”

  A spark of delight lit inside her and she turned to the window, where Amy was already raising the pane, heedless of the additional chill to the room. Catherine stuck her head out beside her sister’s, watching the fluffy flakes fall silently in the light from the window.

  “It’s the first snow of December,” Amy said. “Do you remember what that means?”

  “Of course I do. Wasn’t I the one who told you in the first place?” Catherine said, remembering the myth her grandmother had told her. “With the first snow of December, the snow fairies come to celebrate the Christmas season. They grant the wishes of those with pure hearts, and then with the ringing in of the New Year, they return to their lands in the north.”