Somerville Farce (25 page)

Turning into his arms, Trixy raised one
eyebrow as she smiled up at her husband. “Depraved dukes, Harry? Do
you mean to say you’ve become depraved and I didn’t notice? And I
thought we had no more secrets from each other. Shame on you.”

He reached behind her to begin working on
the long row of covered buttons that ran down the back of her gown.
“It’s only a limited depravity, my pet—and it has a lot to do with
what I’d like to do with the glories hiding beneath this gown I
wish you were no longer wearing. Why, the way I feel right now, we
might just begin trying to balance out the general intelligence of
the next generation by providing England with some offspring of our
own.”

As the gown slipped from her shoulders and
her husband lifted her high against his chest, heading
unhesitatingly toward the wide tester bed, Trixy buried her head
into his shoulder to hide her delighted smile. “Good Old Harry,”
she complimented him, giggling as she used Willie’s favorite name
for his brother. “You’re always so adept at finding ways to even
things out. But just think of it—what if we should end by bringing
another enterprising blackmailer into the world?”

Harry considered this possibility for a few
moments as he shrugged out of his jacket and shirt, then smiled
down at his wife, who was lying comfortably on the coverlet,
waiting for him.

“A farce in
three
acts? Personally,
my love, considering how we managed to find each other,” he said,
blowing out the bedside candle before joining his wife on the bed,
“I can’t think of any more perfect way we could all be assured of
living happily ever after.”

It must be added here that precisely nine
months and six days later, the lustily howling, red-faced,
dark-haired Henry Lyle Augustus Townsend II entered the world in
the master chamber at Glyndevaron—to be instantly dubbed “Black
Harry” by his overjoyed parents, who greatly enjoyed their private
joke.

Thank you for reading
The
Somerville Farce
. Please read on for an excerpt from
Moonlight
Masquerade
,
Vincent and Christine’s story,
another delightful Regency romp from Kasey Michaels.

One

The English Countryside, 1814

“O
h, we’re going to
die, we’re going to die. I just know we’re going to die!”

Christine Denham hung tightly onto the coach
strap—and her temper—as she listened to her beloved but
exasperating aunt recite this singsong litany of doom and disaster.
Wasn’t it enough that the constant jolting of the coach was rapidly
making her rue her choice of rabbit stew for luncheon? As a matter
of fact, considering the way she felt now, she just might not ever
eat again.

“We’re not going to die, Aunt Nellis,” she
assured the older woman through gritted teeth.

“A fine lot you know, Christine,” Aunt
Nellis retorted, reaching up to clamp her feathered hat more firmly
to her head. “I’ve traveled before—to Bath, when I was your age. It
was a most pleasant excursion, both coming and going. This is quite
different, I assure you. I know disaster when I look it in the
eye.”

Christine had heard about Aunt Nellis’s trip
to Bath numberless times and knew that it had taken place in June,
when snow was as scarce as hen’s teeth, but she didn’t feel it
necessary to point this out. “You were the one who wanted to get to
town early in order to have everything ready for the Season,” she
could not resist saying. “Besides, I’m sure the coachman wouldn’t
have said we could continue the journey after luncheon if there was
any great danger. He travels this route all the time.”

Aunt Nellis widened her slightly protuberant
hazel eyes and shakily pointed to the scene outside the off-window.
“No danger? No danger? It has been snowing like this for the past
three hours, Christine. Snowing so heavily that I cannot even see
the trees as we pass by them. And you say there is no danger? What
would constitute danger to you, Christine? An avalanche?”

Shrugging, Christine smiled, trying to put a
brave face on things. “At least now you won’t have to worry about
all those highwaymen you told me were waiting for us to come along,
giving them two nice white throats to slit. I’m sure they’re all
sitting quite happily in their little thieves’ warrens, their bare
toes pointed toward the fire, telling each other whooping lies
about the money and jewels they have taken from honest folk like
us.”

Aunt Nellis sniffed her disdain and lifted
her head a fraction, forgetting that the movement would accentuate
the beaklike appearance of her thin nose and give her niece an
unimpeded look at the double chin she usually tried so hard to
conceal. “Don’t be impertinent, Christine,” she said haughtily,
pulling up the canvas shade to block the distressing vision of
falling snow. “Gentleman don’t like impertinent young ladies.”

“Then, dear aunt, I suggest you immediately
tug on that rope and order the coachman to turn this equipage about
for our return to Manderley, for my debut is bound to be a dismal
disappointment to you. You see, I find I have a definite attachment
to impertinence.”

Nellis Denham shook her graying head. “Hush,
child. If your poor departed father heard you he would simply
perish from the pain of your ingratitude,” she declared feelingly,
her garbled statement causing her niece to bite hard on her inner
lip to keep from laughing aloud. “He so wanted you to go to London
and be a success.”

“Papa
perished
when I was two years
old, Aunt Nellis,” Christine stated, “chasing after Mama because
she ran away with Mrs. Warburton’s wastrel brother. I doubt he took
the time to relate the many detailed instructions and hopes for my
future you have quoted all these years before he mounted his horse
and rode off into the night.”

“Christine!” Aunt Nellis pressed a hand to
her mouth and slowly counted to ten. The child was breaking her
heart; absolutely breaking her heart! “Well, he did too,” she said
at last, knowing her niece was right but refusing to acknowledge
it. “He distinctly told me he wanted you to go to London for a
Season.”

“And he—also before charging off after his
naughty wife—told you that I was forbidden to ever ride horses, and
I was to sew a fine seam, and I was to never leave my fork propped
drunkenly on the edge of my plate, and I was forbidden to cross my
legs, even at the ankle, and I was never,
ever
to allow any
man to—”

“Enough, Christine!”

Christine reached across the coach to lay
her free hand on her aunt’s arm. “I’m sorry, dearest,” she said
sincerely, as she had only been hoping to draw the woman’s mind
away from the storm raging outside. “But don’t you see? I know that
it was you who raised me, you who wants me to have this Season. You
love me, Aunt Nellis. You love me, and I love you. You don’t have
to hide your hopes for me behind the father I don’t remember. Now,
why don’t
you
ask me not to be impertinent and see what
happens?”

Nellis looked at her niece in silence for a
long time as the rising wind howled outside the coach, then slowly
nodded. “We’ll probably freeze to death in this awful coach before
we ever reach London anyway,” she groused halfheartedly, summoning
a weak smile.

Christine gave up her attempt to sidetrack
her aunt from her usual pessimistic thoughts—for after all, they
seemed to bring her so much joy—and agreed: “The coachman will
probably hop down off his perch once we’re in front of the town
house you rented on Half Moon Street and pull open the door, just
to have the two of us topple out onto the cobblestones like huge
blocks of ice. Why, they’ll have to wait until we thaw in order to
bury us.”

Her niece’s words conjured up a mental
picture that, while depressing, turned Aunt Nellis’s mind to the
problems involved with such an occurrence. She was always happiest
while planning strategies for dealing with disaster. “Our knees
will be rigidly bent, of course, because we’re seated. We couldn’t
fit very neatly in a coffin that way, could we? How embarrassing!
Do you suppose we should tie a few ribbons about our skirts at our
ankles? Just so that we don’t show too much leg as we topple?”

Christine was saved from answering as the
coachman drew the horses to a stop and opened the trapdoor that
looked down into the interior of the hired coach. “It’s snowin’
pretty awful, ladies, an’ it be more ’an five miles to the nearest
postin’ house. We ain’t goin’ ta make it iffen I doesn’t spring ’em
as much as I can in this bloody—er, that is ta say, in this bad
storm. Yer’ll have ta hold on, ma’am, miss. It’s bound ta be a
bumpy ride.”

Before the trapdoor had slammed shut once
more Aunt Nellis was already well launched into her second chorus
of, “Oh, we’re going to die, we’re going to die. I just know we’re
going to die!”

Holding onto the strap with both hands,
Christine, her queasy stomach forgotten, did her best to console
her distraught aunt, who now appeared to be a most creditable
prophetess of doom. The coach was swaying violently as it moved
along the highway, its wheels sliding rather than rolling over the
packed snow and ice.

Forgotten also was the fact that her toes
were freezing, or the knowledge that she was heading toward London
and the Season she hadn’t wanted in the first place. All Christine
could think of at the moment was keeping her aunt calm. That, and
trying very hard not to panic herself.

Deciding to investigate—just to double-check
the coachman’s assertions—she rolled down a window to look outside,
only to have her cheeks viciously stung by the sleet that was now
pelting the countryside. It was only three o’clock but it was as
dark as midnight.

The coach slowed to a crawl as the weary
horses worked to haul their passengers and a small mountain of
baggage up a steep incline and Christine called out to the
coachman, warning him to remember that what goes up must eventually
come down, and there could be a dangerous descent waiting for them.
Her words were snatched away by the wind just before Aunt Nellis,
grabbing her niece most inelegantly about the waist, hauled her
back inside.

“Whew! It looks like the end of the world
out there,” Christine said as she collapsed against the seat.
Looking at her aunt’s ashen face, she quickly regretted her
thoughtless words. “Oh, Aunt, I’m so sorry,” she began, letting go
of the strap to reach out her hands in comfort, “I didn’t really
mean it actually is the—
oh
!”

The howling wind had turned the road at the
crest of the hill into a mass of deep, treacherous frozen ruts. The
off-leader stumbled, regained its balance, then stumbled once more,
this time losing its footing completely. One moment the horses were
straining to move forward, and the next moment they were wild-eyed,
plunging and twisting in their efforts to avoid the fallen
horse.