Moonlight Mist

by Laura London

Genres: Historical Fiction; Erotic & Steamy Romance; Historical Romance; Regency Romance

Synopsis

From the author of the beloved romance classic The Windflower comes a novel about a reckless girl, a notorious rake, and the rollicking scandal that brings them together-for better or worse. Known as the "naughtier twin" of Downpatrick Hall, Miss Lynden is far more brash and adventurous than her sister Lorraine. After flying a kite into a tree and climbing out onto a branch, she is saved from a terrible fall by Lord Justin Melbrooke, who pulls her through his open window . . . and into his bedroom. It's all quite innocent, of course. But when an unannounced visitor walks in-and sees Lord Justin untangling Lynden's skirt-there is only one way to salvage her reputation: marriage. In a whirlwind ceremony, Lynden finds herself exchanging vows with one of England's most sought-after bachelors. Neither one is truly ready to settle down, but their heated words soon turn to heated kisses, and their marriage of convenience may just turn out to be the match of a lifetime.

Release date: April 1, 2014

Publisher: Forever Yours

Print pages: 288

Sample

The high-chimneyed, brickwork manor house had been built much earlier in the reign of poor mad King George III, but never before in its prosperous, if not particularly distinguished career had it been honored with so notable a guest as now stood before its threshold. The house looked smug today, as smug as a house could in late February after a winter’s battering. It condescended more than usual to the small neighboring cottages; its pseudo-Gothic swirls and furbelows glared with pomposity, accented by a spiky frieze of blue crystal icicles that lined the eaves like over-abundant jewelry on the bosom of a pretentious matron.

It is a common reflection that a dog will absorb its owner’s personality. The same might be said for a house. And all the self-satisfied respectability of this house was reflected in the demeanor of its master, Mr. Monroe Downpatrick, who stood by his handsome wife, Eleanor, at the top of the front steps, beaming in obsequious welcome as a tall impeccably dressed gentleman descended gracefully from an elegant bay stallion. The stallion’s satiny coat shimmered as the animal turned and pranced away, led by a waiting groom. An attractive blaze on its forehead shone like white marble in the late sun.

The expression of the tall gentleman himself was bland, even distant, as he turned to face his hosts, but as he responded politely to their greetings it was impossible to tell whether he found the effusive warmth of his reception distasteful or whether it was merely his habit to appear noncommittal.

It was the opinion of at least one of the three young women watching the scene from behind a well-trimmed yew hedge that the tall gentleman’s sentiments fell into the former category.

“Depend upon it,” this young lady remarked in a censorious tone, “he despises them! Ugh! Did you ever see Uncle Monroe toady so? Only consider how Aunt Eleanor will lord it over her acquaintances about Lord Melbrooke there having been a guest, when in fact he is only spending one night here to break his journey to his home in the Lake District.” These words were accompanied by a sweeping movement of the hand to indicate the tall visitor being subjected to her uncle’s handshake. “And I daresay he wouldn’t have stopped here at all, despite Aunt Eleanor’s flagrantly fawning letters, if Downpatrick Hall had been as much as one mile out of the way! As for Lord Melbrooke himself—why, he’s not at all what I was led to expect! I must say, Lorraine, I was never before so taken in!” The speaker, Miss Lynden Downpatrick, had been kneeling on the frozen grass, peeking beneath a low-hanging evergreen branch, but as she spoke, she rose to her feet, brushing bits of twig from the front of her French blue velvet winter cloak.

Miss Lynden was a diminutive lady of seventeen summers with heavily lashed brown eyes that had the oddly enticing ability to change shape with her passing moods, becoming wide and almost round with wonder one minute and then narrowing with amusement into slanting, sparkling gems. Her hair was inky black and curled in wild, lustrous exuberance beneath the rabbit lining of her cloak’s hood, as though the hair had absorbed the liveliness that was so much a part of the lady’s character. Add to this a pair of shallow mischievous dimples and it was easy to see why Miss Lynden’s fond Papa, unhappily now deceased, had called her his “elf.” Papa’s elder brother and Miss Lynden’s current guardian, Monroe Downpatrick, had continued his brother’s habit of describing Lynden in supernatural terms though, unfortunately, in his less fond eyes she was “the imp” and sometimes, when he was more than usually enraged with her, “that little witch.”

“Well, Lynnie,” said the young lady who had been addressed as Lorraine, “Lord Melbrooke has received as many blessings as one human being can. He’s wealthy, titled, connected by birth with the first families in England, and he’s…”

“He’s handsome as sin!” chirruped the third member of the trio, a heavyset, round-faced girl whose mobcap and the white apron showing beneath her woolen overcoat proclaimed her status as a chambermaid.

This remark drew a smile from Lorraine. “Yes, Peg, and handsome, too,” she said. Lorraine was near to Lynden in coloring. It was easy to place them as sisters; they were, in fact, twins, having arrived into the world within minutes of each other, Lorraine in the lead. It was the last time in Lorraine’s life that she would lead, however, for Lynden was clearly the captain of the pair, the chief instigator of mischief, the more willful.

Lorraine was five inches taller than her twin, with a straight, willowy figure and black hair that lay in wide, well-ordered waves; her eyes were the same warm brown tones of her sister’s, but their message was more consistent and sweetly serene, though without insipidity. She continued: “But what I had planned to say was that Lord Melbrooke is one of the nation’s most renowned young poets. Imagine, the gentleman that His Highness himself labeled the Bard of the Lakeland, knocking on our front door!”

Lynden sniffed and rubbed the cold tip of her nose with one mittened hand. “As for knocking on our front door, why, he never got the chance, what with Aunt Eleanor and Uncle Monroe practically falling over each other to meet him! Besides, it is his being a poet that makes his… well, his gentlemanly appearance so disappointing. They call them the romantic poets, don’t they? Lord Melbrooke doesn’t look in the least romantic! Where’s his brooding expression? The disordered shock of tumbling curls? Why isn’t he wearing a cape that he whips from side to side as he walks and carrying a silver-tipped cane? Romantic poets, indeed! If you want my opinion, I think the public is being gulled by a lot of cagey publishing firms! And no one, Peg,” she ended, emphatically, “who ties his cravat with such painstaking neatness could have such a wicked reputation with women as you’ve led us to believe.”

Peg had known the twins since childhood; the three girls were much the same age and had shared many childish adventures, but her loyalty to the twins did not prevent Peg from bridling slightly at this aspersion of her credibility.

“A lot you know about wicked reputations,” said Peg, with spirit. “I’ve heard tales of Lord Melbrooke from Mademoiselle Ambrose, Lady Eleanor’s lady’s maid herself, who’s been with Lady Eleanor these seven years and more, long before she came to marry your Uncle Monroe two years ago. And Mademoiselle Ambrose has lived in London for years, which is more than you’ve ever done!”

“Much I care,” retorted Lynden, bending over to pick an apple-green kite from the ground where she had laid it some few minutes earlier. “From what I hear of London, it’s a smelly place full of disagreeable, snobbish people. And as for Mademoiselle Ambrose’s tales, if the one you’re talking about is how Aunt Eleanor tried to set up a flirtation with Lord Melbrooke before she married Uncle Monroe, why, I’ve heard that already, and let me tell you, it does nothing to romanticize Lord Melbrooke’s reputation. Quite the opposite! Because the way I recall the story, Lord Melbrooke barely even noticed her existence and Aunt was mad as fire. That’s hardly the meat of which scandal stew is made!”

“There are other stories,” said Peg darkly, trying to look mysterious and world-weary. “Stories repeated around the wide kitchen fireplace in the servant’s hall late in the night, when the young ladies of the house are tucked snug in their feather beds.”

“Of all the bouncers!” exclaimed Lynden. “As though you ever stay up late at night when you know very well that you get up at the crack of dawn every morning so you can flirt with Farmer Judd’s son when he brings the milk! And the only people who have feather beds in this house are Mama and Aunt Eleanor. Besides, I’d like to know how anyone could tell a tale around the fire with Cook there, because she never lets anyone steal in a word edgewise.”

“Cook wasn’t there at the time,” said Peg, undeterred. “And Mademoiselle Ambrose gave us lots of tales about Lord Melbrooke and his seducing ways.”

“Well, I, for one, don’t believe he’s ever seduced anyone,” said Lynden, pulling a soft pastel scarf from the capacious pocket of her cloak. “If the way Aunt and Uncle slaver over My Lord is any indication of the way other people behave toward him, I don’t imagine he would ever learn to be seductive because it must be easy enough to get all the women he wants as it is.” She pulled another silk scarf from her pocket and began to knot it to the first.

Lorraine had been watching Lynden’s actions with a puzzled frown, then suddenly she gasped and said, “Lynnie, aren’t those Aunt Eleanor’s zephyr scarves? What in the world are you doing with them?”

“Knotting them together to make a kite tail.” Lynden gave one scarf a yank, to see if it would hold, before drawing a third scarf from her pocket and connecting it to its hapless fellows. “I had the idea when I saw Aunt Eleanor riding yesterday with her pink scarf caught up by the wind behind her. It looked elegant and put me right in the mood to fly kites today!”

“Kite tails, indeed!” cried Peg. “Lady Eleanor will have your tail if she finds out you’ve made off wi’ her scarves. She’s straightway forbid you to touch her clothes again. And don’t say she won’t find out neither, because that’s what you said when you took her cashmere shawl to make bedding when the barn cat had kits. Well, she found out, didn’t she? And pret’ near screamed the roof down, too! Not to mention that she boxed your ears red, and locked you in the school room for a day wi’ only bread ’n water to sustain ya.”

“Lynnie, Peg’s right,” said Lorraine, worry filling her soft brown eyes. “There’ll be the most awful row if it’s discovered and you know how Aunt Eleanor can be.”

Lynden had finished knotting a fourth scarf to the train and held her finished product aloft to test it in the breeze. “There!” she said. “It looks grand! Don’t worry, you two. The shawl was a much different matter because it absorbed the dirt so and no matter how we tried we couldn’t get the stains out. The scarves will fly high in the air; how could they get dirty? And I’ll have them off this evening and back into Aunt Eleanor’s drawer before she’s any the wiser.”

From around the corner of the brick house came the dull clank of a heavy brass bell.

Peg groaned. “That’ll be the housekeeper signaling me in to help ready the guest rooms.” Looking over her shoulder at Lynden, she cast a final pleading glance, entreating her to see sense, and then fetched up the folds of her skirt in one hand and hurried around the corner of the building toward the kitchens.

Lynden secured the end of the scarf tail to the kite and grinned at her sister. “So. You’ve lost your ally, Rainey. Will you come kite flying with me like a sport or will you keep on scolding?” She felt in her pocket for a moment before bringing her hand out empty and saying, in an exasperated tone, “Botheration! I’ve forgotten the string.”

Lorraine sighed, drew a bobbin of thin cord from her pocket, and handed it to her sister, whose face brightened with delight.

“You remembered it, Rainey! Don’t I always say you’re the best of sisters? Come on, you know it won’t do the least good to argue with me and it will waste time when we could be aloft in the meadow. Race you!” she said, and went running down the lane without waiting for an answer.

Downpatrick Hall sat on the edge of a small Yorkshire village, cradled at the foot of a steeply wooded limestone hill. A row of picturesque cottages clustered near the Hall and a short tree-lined lane led to a red sandstone church. Lorraine chased her twin down the lane, following the brightly colored scarves of the kite tail as they whipped in the frigid wind. Her ears and nose grew numb from the stiff February breeze, and she tried to shout, calling on Lynden to slow down, but her words were blown back at her and left behind. She could only run harder, her mittened hands reaching up beneath her hood to cover her ears lest they freeze solid and crack off in the cold.

Lorraine saw her sister’s hood blow back from her head, leaving her tangled brown curls dancing and streaming in the wind as she passed the tidy, half-timbered cottage of Mr. Helm, the apothecary-dentist-barber. The varnished oak door opened and Mrs. Helm, grimacing from the chill wind, waved a cloth and hailed Lynden.

“Ho there, Miss Ruckus! Where are you going like the Fiend From Someplace Else is after you? And no covering on your head! Come in the parlor this minute and get yourself warmed up.”

Lynden halted midpace with a curtsy and a dance step, and then went over to Mrs. Helm, a plump lady in an old-fashioned lace cap. Lynden laughingly held up the apple-green kite for her inspection.

“Thank you, ma’am, but we’re off to sail our kite,” announced Lynden, as Lorraine ran up behind her, out of breath. “Would you like to come?” asked Lynden with a mischievous sparkle.

“Ho! Kiting at my age? And in February, too! I’m not such a dandy young hoyden as you, Miss, nor never was, neither! And look at your poor sister! You run that gal ragged! If you’re in a rush, let me give you a bit of warm plum cake I’ve just had out from the oven. You can eat it on the run.” She disappeared into the cottage and returned, bearing two warm pieces of cake which sent out streamlets of steam that rushed away in the breeze. She shook her head sadly as the girls ate the cake, Lynden munching with one hand, and holding on to the kite with the other. “Look at the appetites they’ve got. Don’t they feed you girls at the Hall?”

“They do,” said Lynden between bites. “But they’ve hardly the time today, what with the company they’ve got. Lord Melbrooke is staying tonight, but of course you know that already, as well as Mrs. Gilray and that horrid friend of Aunt’s, Lady Marchpane. She’s been here for three days already and”—here she paused to take another bite—“and I wish she’d go. Every time she passes one of us in the hall, she quizzes us on our Latin. Ugh! It’s fine for Rainey, but I got by with as little studying as possible, and when she nabs me, I’m at a loss.”

“It is too bad,” agreed Lorraine, brushing a crumb from her collar. “Aunt Eleanor doesn’t like Lady Marchpane much, either, but she is such a gossip, and Aunt Eleanor likes, of course, to have someone spread the news back in London that Lord Melbrooke is staying.”

Mrs. Helm clucked in disapproval. “I never did hold with your Step-aunt Eleanor making you girls fill your wee heads with that foreign tongue that nobody speaks no more. Not to mention those doings of the ancient gods which don’t bear repeating in modest company! But if kite flying you be at, then kite flying ye’d better do. It’s the kind of strengthy wind that bears moving about in! Just take care that kite don’t carry you to France!”

The twins blew around the corner of the red sandstone church like two crisp brown leaves. A gust set the old church bell in motion to send random peals ringing over the hills. Lorraine stopped to rest, leaning on the ancient Saxon cross, then followed her sister to the meadow behind the church. There was abundant space for kite-flying in the meadow and adjacent fallow field, but the gusty wind did the work for them. Lynden, to Lorraine’s excited exclamations, was hard put to let the string out rapidly enough; and after a heart-stopping violent dive toward the hard-frozen, stubbly ground, the kite receded into the cold gray sky, its green paper flapping as if in protest and the bright pink tail dancing beneath, trying to escape.

“Let out all the string, Lynden, I want to see it go!” shouted Lorraine.

“I’m doing it as fast as I can,” answered Lynden, laughing. “It wants to fly away!” The kite string whipped from the dowel in her hand with a pleasant hum. “It’s singing to us, Rainey,” she giggled. The kite grew small in the gray vault above their heads, where it danced and swirled like a green and pink pinwheel. “It’s pulling so hard,” said Lynden. “Isn’t it beautiful, like a comet?” Suddenly there was a strong blast of air; the kite string went rigid in her hand, then lax, and far above them the kite began a slow, forlorn descent, blowing away from them as it dropped, flapping loudly. The girls watched in openmouthed disappointment.

“What bad luck!” cried Lynden. “Our comet’s a falling star.”

“Lynnie, we’ll have to chase it. Remember Aunt Eleanor’s scarves in the tail!” said Lorraine, a hand covering her brow as she bent back to watch the kite’s erratic path. “Look, the wind’s shifted and the kite’s blowing toward the Hall!”

They ran after it, watching with dismay. As they ran, the kite floated and dipped lower to the ground. Their dismay turned to jubilation as the kite string caught on the spire of the church bell tower, causing the kite to lag in the breeze and come gently to rest, hanging upside down and undamaged against the red sandstone blocks.

The girls ran, puffing from the exercise, and had almost reached the church when another gust came and the kite took flight again, heading high above them down the tree-lined lane and toward the Hall.

“Lynden, I believe it will catch in the tree behind the house! Look, there it goes!” Lorraine pointed as the kite, after a swooping dive, came to rest in the crown of the lofty Scots pine which towered from the rear over Downpatrick Hall. The kite hung limp in the crown, a small apple-green splash of color against the blue-gray boughs.

“I think I can get to it from the attic,” exclaimed Lynden.

The girls entered the house through the side door, mounted the servant’s stairway, and clambered up three flights of wooden steps. The attic was nearly as cold as outside and smelled of old magazines and camphor. The sisters’ footsteps reverberated as they crossed the floor, moving between shipping trunks, a mahogany writing chair piled with age-yellowed landscape paintings, and a tailor’s dummy. A dim, sea-blue light slipped in through the octagonal stained-glass window at the rear wall. Lynden slid back a small bolt and pushed open the window.

“I see it,” she said excitedly, “not four feet away. It’s a peach; I’ll only have to step out on that limb and grab it!” She tugged off her mittens, tossing them on the hardwood attic floor, and then pulled at the frogs binding her cloak, and it joined the mittens. When she sat down on the cloak and began pulling off her boots, Lorraine ventured a protest.

“You’ll be cold, Lyn,” Lorraine said. “And the bark will scratch your feet.”

“I’ll only be out there for a minute,” replied Lynden, pulling off the other boot. “I can’t climb a tree with boots on. You’ve got to feel the way the branches take your weight.” She whipped off her bedraggled sash, held up her skirts to knee-length, and commanded Lorraine to tie the sash around her waist to secure them.

“Give it an extra knot, Lorraine. I don’t want my skirt to fall and trip me up.” Lynden, ready for the expedition, leaned out the window with one hand on the side sill and stretched out her other hand to lean on the trunk of the Scots pine. It felt cold and scaly against her palm. The crisp tang of pine surrounded her as she gave her full weight to the trunk, carefully bringing her feet to rest on the branch beneath her. The pine needles encompassed her like a stinging gray-green cloud, pricking her cold-numbed skin through her gown. The kite was resting against the deeply fissured black bark, its tail of scarves entwined around the branch above.

Letting go with one hand, Lynden leaned out to snatch it and missed. She tried again and missed again. Carefully repositioning her feet, she tested her balance, and, holding out one steadying hand, she made a quick successful snatch for the kite. Elated with victory, she pulled herself upright and felt for the branch she had been holding on to, but the sudden motion was too great for equilibrium and Lynden heard her sister’s quick cry of alarm as she fell backward.

Clutching the kite, Lynden grabbed for a purchase but managed only a lacerating handful of gummy resin and stripped needles. The thick stratified branches acted as a yielding, but prickly, cushion, which handed her down, rapidly but gently, until she was brought to a stop at the junction of three thick, piny branches. The tree swayed and bobbed from the shock as she found a handhold, lying on her back and reaching out. A heavy, scaly gray cone bounced after her, hitting her sharply in the forehead and landing saucily in her lap.

“Rainey?” called Lynden in a voice that shook slightly. “I’m alive. Barely. I’ve got the kite, so stay where you are. I think I’ll be able to get in through one of these rooms.”

Lorraine’s relieved reply was muffled by the soft squeak of an opening window.

Lord Melbrooke had been in his room, preparing rather unenthusiastically for dinner, when he heard an unlikely crash outside his window. He debated with himself for a moment, and then decided it warranted investigation. Clad in his dressing gown, he strolled to the window, flipped the bolt, and raised the pane. His interested gaze fell upon the shapeliest pair of legs he had seen since attaining manhood. He leaned his elbows on the sill, erasing a smile as his gaze traveled to the indignant face of the owner of the legs.

“You needn’t grin at me in that odious fashion,” said Lynden crossly. “I’m not always to be found like this, you know.”

“Are you not?” he replied. “It seems a pity.”

“Well, it may seem a pity to you, though I think that a very odd opinion, but it is not,” she snapped, “to me.” She wiggled to a sitting position. “You are the poet, aren’t you? It’s difficult to see with the light in back of you.”

“Well,” he said cautiously, “I am a poet. Have we been introduced?”

“No,” Lynden replied. “And we’re not likely to be because I’m probably going to die of pneumonia from being up a tree in the cold.”

“Now that would really be a pity,” said Lord Melbrooke. “Which emboldens me to ask if there might perhaps be some way I could assist you?”

“Yes! I wish you would pull me out of this tree! But the needles may rub on your clothes and perhaps resin will get on the sleeves and you may not like it, because I’ve heard that London poets are excessively foppish!”

“Well,” he said in a chastened voice. “I will try to be, er, unfoppish for a moment and lift you in. Do you think it would inconvenience you to lean forward a little more?” He leaned out as she leaned toward him, and, placing his hands firmly on her sides, he plucked her from the tree branch and swung her effortlessly in through the window and set her on her feet.

The poet was housed in the best guest room that Downpatrick Hall could offer, appointed with Indian carpets and rosewood furniture from fine London warehouses. Inside the well-lit room, Lynden had her first opportunity for a close view of her rescuer. He was, as Peg had said, handsome as sin. His body was long and fluid. Because she was short, his tallness made him seem high above her; she had to bend back her head to meet his eyes. The soft lamplight shone full on his wheat-colored hair, setting off sharp amber sparks where it curled loosely against his wide forehead and temples. Below blond eyebrows were gray eyes—sensual, cool, and as sheer and subtle as lake mist. They were eyes that might have been intimidating if one failed to notice the softening humor shaped into his mouth. This afternoon when she had seen him from a distance, the self-confide. . .