A Dance in Moonlight (The Fitzhugh Trilogy) (2 page)

For years, whenever he’d sought company, he’d made sure he singled out those who were carefree and lighthearted. Or at least, those who were as
determined
to be carefree and lighthearted as he, so that all his social interactions were characterized by a resolute cheerfulness. He did not quite understand why Mrs. Englewood, who made no effort to be jaunty and breezy, and whose pain was as unmistakable as her mourning gown, should exert such a pull upon him.

But he could not look away from her, this woman who did not hide her heartbreak. Who had perhaps never considered concealing her desolation beneath a frenzy of merrymaking.

“Clearly I have come at an inconvenient time,” he said, staring at her sharp profile. “I shall wish you a good evening and take my leave. But will you allow me to call on you again, perhaps next week?”

She bit her lower lip. “You are very kind, sir. But I will not be here next week. In fact, I plan to never come back again.”

Then he would never know her story. The thud of dismay he felt was out of all proportion with their negligible acquaintance. “But I understand you have signed a lease for an entire year.”

“So I have.” She briefly closed her eyes, as if the mention of the lease caused her actual pain. “But the lease only stipulates payment, not my presence.”

“I hope I have not contributed to—”

“No. No, indeed, sir. My mind was made up this morning. I came back to retrieve a personal belonging, that is all.”

Her hand opened and closed. It was obvious she wanted to be far from him, far from this house. He should be gentlemanly and understanding. Should immediately make himself scarce.

But he did not want to make himself scarce. He wanted to know what had made her kiss him with such devotion—and what made her unable to even look at him anymore. “If I may be so forward, Mrs. Englewood, did you change your mind, however momentarily, when you thought I was someone else?”

She jerked, as if he had slapped her, and turned away. “Good evening, Mr. Fitzwilliam.”

He’d already overstepped the bounds; what did it matter if he were to say something even more hugely inappropriate? “If it pleases you, Mrs. Englewood, you are more than welcome to call me Fitz.”

ISABELLE SPUN AROUND, her throat burning with anger. But at the sight of Mr. Fitzwilliam, she forgot what she was about to say. Even knowing that he was not Fitz, that he was but a stranger who bore an uncanny resemblance to the man she loved, it took a superhuman effort not to once more throw herself into his arms.

She turned her face to the side. It was easier when she didn’t look at him directly. “You do not know who Fitz is or what he means to me. Nor do you have the least idea how cruelly fate has already mocked me. To you I am but a chance for a dalliance, the possibility of one night’s pleasure—my acceptance would mean little to you, my refusal even less. So no, it does not please me to call you Fitz, as dear a name as I have ever known. And I would be forever grateful if I am never to see you again.”

She waited a few heartbeats for him to leave. When he did not, she reached for the door.

“I do have some idea how cruelly fate has mocked you, Mrs. Englewood—your anguish is writ plain on your face,” came his answer, in a deep, slightly gravelly voice that thankfully did not sound like Fitz’s at all. “I won’t deny that I also find you beautiful and that my thoughts may have occasionally turned amorous. But I am far more interested in your story than in your body, if that is what offends you.”

Wasn’t it enough she had already
lived
her life? She had no interest in recounting her sorry tale to anyone, least of all a man she was constantly on the verge of mistaking for Fitz.

“Goodbye, Mr. Fitzwilliam.”

She entered the house and shut the door firmly in his face. Then she sagged against the doorframe, her face numb with pain. She understood in her very marrow that life was cruel. This, however, was cruelty beyond even what she could endure.

She had lost Fitz the first time when she was eighteen, tears streaming down her face, watching him marry an heiress he barely knew, because a distant cousin’s death had saddled him with a title and a bankrupt estate. She had lost him a second time only hours ago, when he’d told her that he could not see himself living in this charming house with her, because he had, after eight years of marriage, fallen deeply in love with his heiress wife.

And now she had to lose him a third time when God saw fit to set in her path a man who looked almost exactly like him but— 

Something struck her with the force of a thunderbolt: God had seen fit to set in her path
a man who looked almost exactly like Fitz
.

And she had been too stupid to understand what a gift it was.

Cursing herself, she lifted her skirts, ran up the stairs, and skidded to a stop before the sitting room window. Mr. Fitzwilliam had not yet vacated the property, but he was near the gate, passing through the long shadows cast by a line of pine trees.

Night was falling. She could not tell the exact color of his hair, except that it was darkish and noticeably longer than Fitz’s, which she did not mind. Fitz possessed a beautiful bone structure that would have carried off longer hair with poetic ease—but he never had because he was old-fashioned that way, always preferring his hair trimmed short.

Mr. Fitzwilliam reached up to pluck a pine needle. His motion was easy and graceful, like Fitz’s. His height was almost identical to Fitz’s. And though in her arms he’d felt more substantial, viewed as a whole he was far from bulky: wide shoulders, trim waist, and long limbs.

As if sensing her gaze, he glanced up over his shoulder. Her heart roared in her chest. Fitz, her dear, dear Fitz who had lingered beneath her window all those years ago, waiting for a glimpse of her, except he would pretend to be examining something in the garden, as if her mother’s rather scraggly rosebushes could sustain the interest of a young man with no particular fondness for horticulture.

How she’d loved holding herself flat against the wall and spying on him, to count how many times he looked up from his supposed botanical study to scan her window. Seven, eight, nine. She usually rewarded him after the tenth time by opening her window, leaning out, and calling his name.

Before she quite knew what she was doing, she opened the window, leaned out, and shouted, “Wait! Wait!”

Chapter Two

RALSTON COULD ALMOST HEAR the pounding of his heart in his ears.

She ran toward him, stopping bare inches away, her breaths audibly uneven in the quiet country twilight. Soon it would be too dark to make out her features, but for now her eyes shone with a wild, almost ferocious light. “Mr. Fitzwilliam, are you married?”

He blinked. “No, I am not.”

“Are you promised to anyone, explicitly or implicitly?”

“No.”

She exhaled, as if in relief, only to tense again the next moment. He tensed too, a long breath held. He could not predict in what direction her questions were headed. Or perhaps he could and he was not quite ready for it yet.

She looked down. In the last remaining rays of the day, her lashes cast shadows over her cheeks. She licked her lips. And suddenly he thought of their kiss, the heat and urgency of it, the willingness of her body against his.

“You said I was welcome to call you Fitz, Mr. Fitzwilliam,” she said, her gaze somewhere to the left of him. “I can’t do any such thing, unless—unless you agree to pass for him.”

Somehow he managed not to exclaim aloud, though shock jolted through him. “Do I look that much like him?”

“The resemblance is uncanny, except for your coloring and your voice. If you remain silent and stay away from strong light, it would require no effort at all for me to believe that you are him.”

“I see,” he said slowly.

He’d expected something, but this was far beyond what he could have imagined.

She still did not look at him directly. “If you are willing to assume the role, then come back here at ten o’clock. I’ll leave the front door unlocked. I’m sure you can find your way to my room.”

Had she been a different woman, had the occasion been trivial and frivolous, he might have agreed, in exchange for a new, interesting experience. But reducing himself to a jointed dummy for her to pose and fondle when he wished to… He didn’t know exactly what he wanted, but it was not becoming a mindless substitution.

“If you are against the idea”—her voice caught—“you have but to walk away and I will never trouble you again. If not, you have also but to walk away—and dismiss the hansom cab on your way out. I’ve already paid the cabbie for the wait.”

Ralston could just see the very rear of the hansom cab from where he stood. He should bow, walk out of the gate, and go home, leaving her to deal with the cabbie and her mad desires.

And never see her again.

Silence escalated. Her fingers clasped tightly together. She stole a peek at him, then glanced away just as quickly, almost as if she could not bear the sight of him.

The cabbie’s horse snorted. A breeze rustled the pine needles overhead. Somewhere deeper in the gardens, a bird took flight, the flapping of its wings startling her.

“Before I can consider your request, Mrs. Englewood,” he heard himself say, “I need to ask you a few questions in return.”

MR. FITZWILLIAM’S FIRST QUESTION Isabelle could guess. “Fitz is the man I would have married, had he not inherited a bankrupt earldom that required him to marry an heiress instead.”

His brow lifted slightly. “You speak of Earl Fitzhugh?”

The dissonance of Fitz’s face and another man’s voice still flummoxed her, even more so when that voice brought up his name. “Do you know him?”

“Not personally. But I’d heard talk—his seat is not that far from here.”

Doyle’s Grange’s proximity to Henley Park, Fitz’s estate, had been one of the reasons she’d chosen the place.

“It must have been a number of years since Lord Fitzhugh married his heiress,” Mr. Fitzwilliam went on. “Does it still matter so much to you?”

She took a deep breath to steady herself. “I came back from India not long ago. Fitz and his wife had always lived in a platonic marriage. So when he and I met again, for the first time in eight years, we decided that we would pick up our old dreams where they had fallen apart.”

How she missed those first sweet moments of their reunion, when everything—the sun, the moon, entire constellations—had appeared not only possible, plausible, or probable, but absolutely, staggeringly certain.

Ironclad.

But soon Fitz’s conviction had begun to waver. He never said anything to the effect, but she’d sensed, increasingly, that his mind was not so much on her as on the girl he’d married most unwillingly eight years ago. During Isabelle’s long absence, he and his wife had grown close—much too close.

It was stupid to sign the lease for Doyle’s Grange without first having his firm agreement, but as Isabelle’s vision of happiness slid from her grasp, she’d needed to do something. And securing the house had felt like a solid something.