Ballgowns & Butterflies: A Stitch in Time Holiday Novella Read online

  “I’m not—”

  “You can’t take your eyes off them. Particularly this one here.” He rises and picks up a gift I couldn’t even see, tucked behind the tree.

  “Fine,” he says. “I surrender to your relentless curiosity. You may open it.”

  He hands me a long narrow box, unduly heavy. I weigh it in my hands. Then I smile. “You bought me a clothing iron. How delightful.”

  He shakes his head and motions for me to get on with it. I untie the ribbon and take my time unfolding the paper, enjoying his obvious impatience. Finally, I lift the lid off the box. Inside is a brass plate engraved with “Epona.”

  I look up at him.

  “You are as easily fooled as young Edmund,” he says. “Did you really believe I’d sell your favorite filly?”

  “You said she’d been sold since before her birth.”

  “And now she is unsold. The buyer was more interested in a colt, and so I convinced him to wait for that with the added incentive of a reasonable discount.”

  “So she is mine?”

  “No, I simply bought a brass nameplate for her door until I find another buyer.”

  I throw myself into his arms for a fierce hug. “Thank you.”

  “She will not be ready to ride for a year or so, but you said you’d like to participate in training.”

  “I would very much. Thank you.”

  He reaches into the pile of gifts and hands me another heavy box. This one is addressed to Will Jr.

  I open the gift, faster this time, and discover another brass plate. This one reads Gringolet—the name of Sir Gawain’s horse. Beneath it is the bill of sale for a young gelding pony.

  I laugh. “You’re already buying our daughter a pony?”

  “Never too early to start.”

  I lean in to kiss his cheek. “She’ll love him.”

  “And now a gift for me,” he says. He picks up the one in brown-paper wrapping. “Oh, I am most curious about this present.”

  “The one you bought yourself?”

  “Nonsense. It clearly says it’s from you.”

  He settles into the spot beside me again, his hip rubbing mine. I reach for a candied nut, and as soon as I snag one, he tugs me onto his lap.

  “I do believe we should open this one together,” he says. “Since you seem to have forgotten what you got me.”

  “Baby brain,” I say.

  “Undoubtedly.”

  He pulls the string, and I unwrap the paper, which has been carefully folded and secured without the use of tape.

  “Books!” he says. “You bought me a trio of tomes. How kind.”

  “Because you obviously need more,” I say, waving at the overstuffed shelves surrounding us. “I’m not even sure where you’ll put three more.”

  “Not in here, given the publication dates.”

  “Ah, I see. They’re modern books.” I lift the first one. “An Introduction to Baking.”

  “So I can learn to bake for you,” he says. “Excellent choice. I can only hope it includes instructions on operating modern appliances.”

  “Well, this one does. Though not for the kitchen.” I hold up an ‘idiot’s’ guide to smartphones.

  “Thank you,” he says. “I do need that.”

  I sputter a laugh and then flip to the third and final book. “A Father’s Guide on What to Expect in the First Year.”

  “Now that,” he says, “is definitely a modern book. I do believe the current version would have exactly one page, telling me to cede all responsibility to the angel of the household.”

  I make a choking noise.

  “Yes,” he says. “I have a feeling my angel would like me to change a soiled cloth or two. I also have a feeling that I will want to do so, not only for her, but to fully experience fatherhood.”

  “Changing diapers is the best way to do that,” I say. “All the diapers.”

  He frowns and flips through the book. “I’m quite certain it doesn’t say that.”

  “I’ll write it in.”

  He laughs softly and turns me to face him. “So yes, these books are to me from me. My way of saying that I intend to be a complete and active participant in your world”—he holds up the phone guide—“and in our household”—he lifts the cookbook—“and in our child’s life. While I know you’d expect me to do more than a man of my time and background, you might also make allowances for my time and background. That is unnecessary. We are in this together.” He puts his arms around me. “You, me and our child-who-will-not-be-named-Melvina.”

  “I actually had some thoughts on alternatives.”

  He exhales dramatically. “Thank you.”

  “I was thinking Amelia. Amelia Judith Thorne.”

  A moment of silence. “After my mother and your aunt.”

  I nod. “Is that all right?”

  “It is very all right. However, if Judith is more common in your day, we could reverse the order.”

  “I like Amelia Judith.”

  “Might we sneak in Dale? As a second middle name?”

  I smile. “We could do that.”

  “Amelia Judith Dale Thorne.”

  “It’s quite a mouthful.”

  “A beautiful mouthful.” He bends to my stomach. “Happy Christmas Eve, Amelia.”

  My eyes fill with tears, and I twist to hug him.

  “Happy Christmas Eve, Lady Thorne,” he says.

  “Happy Christmas Eve, Lord Thorne.”

  Thank you for reading!

  I hope you enjoyed Bronwyn and William’s Christmas story. As you may have guessed, Rosalind didn’t ride off a cliff or abandon her husband and infant son. A Twist of Fate comes out October 5, 2021, and tells the story of what happened to Rosalind when she disappeared…and what happens when she finally gets back to her family. She’ll also to solve the mystery of the ghost Bronwyn met here, during the ball at Courtenay Hall.

  You’ll find more details here. You can also turn the page to read the first three chapters.

  A Twist of Fate: Chapter 1

  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, polished until they 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 go still, 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 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 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’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 staff, 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 staff, 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-and-pull 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 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 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 half-open lid, staring at a kitten, and the next, the lid disappears, leaving me staggering. I stumble forward and catc
h 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.

  A Twist of Fate: Chapter 2

  The bed is but an empty steel frame, listing to one side, in a room that stinks of disuse. The moon shines through a curtainless window.

  I look around. It is structurally the same room, yet entirely different in its furnishings. There’s a narrow bed frame and an odd white-painted chest of drawers. A vanity sits to one side, its top scattered with jars, all of them coated in a quarter-inch of dust.

  I walk to the vanity and lift one bottle. It looks like red glass, but the material is like nothing I’ve seen before, lightweight and covered with glossy printed paper that has faded with age. Big letters proclaim “Sun In,” and the picture . . . Is that a photograph of a young woman?

  I turn the bottle into the light and nearly drop it. The photograph depicts a naked woman. I blink and stare. No, she’s not entirely unclothed, but she might as well be, dressed only in scraps of blue fabric over her breasts and nether regions. She’s at a beach, holding some sort of ball-like sphere, and I can only stare in horror and fascination.

  I gingerly set down the bottle and pick up a tiny tube made of the same strange material. It bears the words Dr Pepper. Some kind of remedy, then? I open the cap to find a waxy sweet-smelling stick. A third container is white with a bright pink lid. The glossy paper is covered in lips and hearts, and the typeface screams “Teen Spirit” and proclaims it to be something called deodorant. A deodorizer? I have heard of such a thing to cover the scent of manure. As for “teen spirit,” I know what spirits are—either alcohol or ghosts—but whatever is a teen?

  Clearly I am sleeping. I only dreamed that I awoke and rode to Thorne Manor. I’ve never been an imaginative sort—my sister is the writer—but some latent talent has arisen in this fantastical dream.

  I set down the “deodorant” and walk from the room. It does look like Thorne Manor. Pictures line the hallway, but it’s too dim for me to see them, and I don’t pause to look closer. Downstairs, a clock strikes the hour, and it is unmistakably the same clock.