One Moonlit Night (Moonlight Square: A Prequel Novella) Read online

  “An earring, you say?” she asked with a last, brisk sniffle, tucking his handkerchief into her pocket. “What does it look like? I’ll help you find it.”

  “Why, that’s very neighborly of you,” he said in surprise, looking askance at her. “Diamond chandelier of some sort, apparently.”

  “Oh.” She nodded. “Well, the moonlight ought to help.”

  “Moonlight always helps.” He sent her another knowing, wistful smile.

  She returned it ruefully, aware he was alluding to her tears. “I suppose it does, a bit.”

  Then she turned away and lifted the hem of her skirts as she stepped down off the garden folly stairs, joining the hunt in that area.

  While she crouched down and searched the flowerbeds beside the gazebo stairs for any promising sparkle in the dirt, she noticed, out of the corner of her eye, that Lord Roland was studying her.

  “So why the tears?” he asked after a moment, as though he could not resist.

  She sent him a dubious glance, and one of her infamous “odd duck” questions escaped her. “Why do you want to know? So you can gossip about me?”

  “I don’t gossip.” He scowled. “Suit yourself, then. I only asked to pass the time. You don’t have to help me—”

  “I don’t fancy going home right now. I might as well.”

  He shrugged off her answer and resumed his search, now looking slightly offended.

  Trinny’s heart sank. There you go again. Being quarrelsome with men.

  “I got some bad news tonight, is all,” she offered after a brief pause.

  Hunting under the bench that ran around the perimeter of the gazebo’s interior, he glanced over at her curiously. “Sorry to hear it. Someone die?”

  “Oh, no. Not that bad.” Trinny heaved a sigh. “I just found out tonight that someone I thought was courting me has got engaged to someone else.”

  He straightened up and turned to her indignantly. “Bounder led you on?” he asked, bristling.

  “No, I wouldn’t say that,” she answered, a bit startled by his emphatic response. “I probably just deluded myself into thinking he was even interested in the first place. He was probably just being polite. And wondering what planet I came from,” she said under her breath.

  “Really?” His lips quirked in amusement, and the dear fellow attempted to rouse a smile out of her. “Well, this is very exciting for me. I’ve never met a lady from another planet before.”

  “Ha-ha,” she replied.

  “Which one? You must tell me, for I’m something of an amateur astronomer. I even have a telescope. So tell me of your homeland. I do hope it’s Saturn. I love all those dramatic rings. I have a theory that they’re horseracing tracks. Am I right?”

  She smiled at him. “Are you trying to cheer me up?”

  He smiled back. “Is it working?”

  She nodded with a slight blush.

  “I really do have a telescope, though,” he informed her. “I find the sciences rather interesting.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “So do I.”

  “No, you don’t. You’re a girl.”

  She arched a brow at him and shrugged. “Yes, but I’m an odd duck, you see, and something of a bluestocking. So I’m told.”

  “A bluestocking who just got her heart broken, hmm?” he replied as he came down from the gazebo and began searching the next flowerbed around the white lattice-clad foundations of the garden folly.

  “I don’t know.” Trinny shook her head. “The truth is…I didn’t even like him very much. Maybe that’s why it stings.”

  He stopped and looked at her. “Because you were willing to marry him if he had asked?”

  She just looked at him, then bit her lip in guilty silence.

  Lord Roland shuddered seemingly down to his bones at her answer.

  Taken aback, Trinny felt her cheeks flood with heat at the genuine disapproval emanating from the bachelor at her willingness to marry a fellow she didn’t love.

  She couldn’t believe it. A rakehell of his ilk, judging her? Of all the nerve!

  “I have a duty to my family!” she informed him.

  “Oh, I understand completely,” he replied. “I have a father who badgers me constantly about preserving the almighty family line. That doesn’t mean I give in to it. Miss…?”

  “Lady Katrina Glendon,” she corrected with a smirk, annoyed. “As in, the eldest. I have a houseful of younger sisters who cannot marry until I get out of the way. But that is proving to be something of a problem.”

  “Why?” he demanded, flicking a glance over her that was not unadmiring.

  But she was too embarrassed to recognize the compliment, and huffed at him. “Nosy, aren’t you? Humph. Why don’t you answer a question this time? Whose earring are we looking for?” she asked knowingly.

  “Er,” he said.

  “As I thought. So don’t send me your disapproval, sir. I know what goes on,” she said sagely, then continued looking.

  The twist of his lips seemed to suggest he found her assurance of worldly wisdom terribly amusing. “Well, I’m sorry if I offended you with the question, Lady Katrina. It just seems strange, that’s all.” He glanced her over again, taking a closer look, almost rudely. “I’m something of an expert on the fair sex, and I don’t see anything particularly wrong with you. So what seems to be the problem?”

  She looked over at him with another slight huff, still on her knees in the grass at the edge of the flowerbed.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You’re very blunt, aren’t you?”

  “Not usually. I feel bad you were crying.” He shrugged. “Just trying to help.”

  “Why?” she asked in suspicion.

  “Because you’re helping me—obviously!” he pointed out, nodding at the flowerbeds. “But suit yourself. If you don’t wish to talk about it, I hardly care.”

  Despite his words, he clearly seemed miffed at her rejection of his offer of a willing ear. Trinny looked at him in astonishment. God, he was more of an oddment than she was, him and his science jokes. Who’d have thought it?

  “Fine,” she said. “You really want to know?”

  “Not really. I don’t care, as I told you.” He shrugged, but she knew better.

  “Whenever I think a chap might like me—because sometimes, they actually almost do—I get so nervous I start bumbling like a nincompoop. I make bad jokes. I ask the same question twice in a row because I forget what they just told me. I say things that accidentally insult them, and somehow…” She sighed. “I ruin it every time.”

  He was silent for a moment, hunting among the flowerbeds. “Well, there’s a simple explanation.”

  “There is?”

  “You undermine yourself unwittingly,” he said with a shrewd glance at her, “because it isn’t what you want.”

  His low-toned observation struck her with the force of an arrow to the heart. Her defenses recoiled. “Oh, you think I do it on purpose?”

  “Hit a nerve?” he asked softly.

  “You think I like being lonely? You think it feels very good not having anybody want me? But, you… Look at you. How could you possibly understand that?”

  “Because I do the same thing,” he replied.

  She blinked. “You…? How?”

  “Chase the wrong women. My father tells me so. But the truth is, I’m well aware. You want to know what I think?”

  “I think you’re going to tell me either way.”

  He turned to her. “The problem isn’t us. The problem is this whole blasted business of marriage.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, the whole thing’s insane, inn’t it?” he declared. “Who wants to end up locked in a cage with someone who despises you?” He scowled, pausing. “The earring we’re looking for belongs to someone in that situation. I would hate to see you end up like her. So take my advice—I’ll give it to you because you seem like a nice girl. If there’s not a man out there who wants to make you hap
py, then make yourself happy, and let ’em all go hang.”

  Her eyes widened slowly.

  “That’s what I’d do, anyway,” he added.

  When she finally recovered from her shock at his defiance, she couldn’t help but scoff. “Well, all that’s easy for you to say. You’re a man. Lack of marriage doesn’t mean social death for your kind. For us, it’s…” She made a slicing gesture across her throat.

  His eyes twinkled as he gazed at her. “You are a quiz, aren’t you?”

  “I told you.”

  He grinned. “I kind of like it.”

  She eyed him distrustfully as a fond, quiet laugh escaped him, then he kept looking.

  Unsure what to make of her new friend, she continued poking among the pansies, hellebores, and all the way back to the tall foxglove, very much hoping that she didn’t accidentally touch a spider.

  They fell silent as they searched.

  Suddenly, right at the base of the gazebo, Trinny spotted something shimmering in the dirt. She carefully reached between the cool, succulent leaves of some daffodils, and her fingers closed around the sharp edges of the jewel.

  “Found it!” With a beaming grin, she picked it up and brushed the soil off it, examining the earring. “Oh, that’s beautiful.”

  “Yes.”

  “Here.” But when she turned to offer it to him, Lord Roland wasn’t looking at the sparkly diamonds.

  He was staring right at her.

  Trinny instantly felt self-conscious. “What? Did I say something daft? Because I didn’t even notice if I—”

  “No.” He tilted his head, studying her intently and making no move to take the jewel.

  She eyed him. “Uh, what’s wrong?”

  He spoke abruptly after a pause. “My lady, I know you’re not interested in me, nor do I want you to be, but after all you’ve been through, I think there’s something you need to know…and something I’d like to do.”

  “What’s that?” she asked, puzzled.

  “This.” He took her chin between his thumb and finger, and gently tilted her face upward as he leaned down, lowering his head.

  Trinny gasped just a little as his lips alighted on hers. She went very still, her heart pounding loud enough to be heard in the Midlands. The light pressure of his warm, satin mouth became a caress, with the barest hint of a world of masterful skill beyond it.

  Though brief, his gentle kiss left her dizzied on her knees beside him on the grass. When it ended, a long, dreamy second passed before she could open her eyes.

  “Is this you chasing the wrong women again?” she breathed.

  “No. This is me proving a point.”

  She lifted her lashes and stared at him, slightly entranced. “What point is that?”

  “Ah, you didn’t get it,” he whispered. “Let’s try that again.” This time, his arm wrapped around her waist; he pulled her firmly against his lean, much larger body, and his kiss deepened, coaxing her lips apart.

  The earring dropped from her grasp. If it was lost again, well, so was she. Astonishment, perhaps, kept her from protesting while his tongue swirled in her mouth, enthralling her, and a hundred realizations eddied through her mind.

  So this is what a rake’s kiss tastes like. Liquor and danger and smoke, while the pleasant roughness of his day’s beard chafed against her chin.

  Her hand slid up his chest to his shoulder, in search of something solid to cling to, for his embrace made her want to melt onto her back in the cool spring grass. She wasn’t even sure when she’d begun actively returning his kiss, seeking more of it, and trying things, instead of merely accepting its deep, luscious rhythm.

  But then the other realization floated in. Hmm, so this is why young ladies aren’t left alone with rakehells.

  Ack! What am I doing?

  When her senses came back in a rush, she nearly threw her neck out, pulling back violently, the dangerous taste of him on her tongue, the scent of his cologne on her clothes.

  “How dare you?” she panted in rather feigned, belated outrage.

  He arched a brow, his eyes afire, chest heaving.

  “I mean—what do you think you’re doing?” she demanded a little less emphatically.

  “My dear young lady,” he ground out, “if you still didn’t get it, you’re not a quiz. You’re an idiot.”

  She huffed with still-dazed indignation. But when he rose from his knees and offered her a gentlemanly hand up, Trinny found herself briefly on eye level with the front portion of his tight pantaloons.

  Good God! All thoughts promptly flew out of her head.

  Because the effect that their kiss had made on his…his person, she thought, was abundantly obvious. Indeed, it was right in front of her face.

  And then, slowly, she got the point he had been making.

  “Ohh,” she whispered, blushing scarlet as she whipped her gaze up to meet his uncertainly.

  He stared down at her matter-of-factly, looking more amused than embarrassed that she had seen the great, manly swelling.

  Well, the rogue had cause to look proud, she supposed, while he stood there waiting, hand outstretched, to pull her to her feet.

  Trinny accepted his help but was still speechless.

  Too abashed to meet his gaze, she busied herself dusting the bits of grass and dirt off her skirts.

  Lord Roland bent down and picked up the earring from where she had dropped it. He straightened up, tossed it lightly, and caught it in his hand, then tucked the bauble into his breast pocket. He cleared his throat wryly and adjusted his nether regions, turning away.

  “Well, then!” he said. “Good night, my lady. Nice meeting you.” With that, he went and collected his tailcoat from the railing.

  Trinny marveled at his splendid composure, given her own quasi-hysteria. She was still standing there, at a loss, exactly where he’d left her, when he sauntered across the gazebo and looked down over the railing at her.

  “Do you need me to walk you home?” he asked.

  She shook her head dazedly, wide-eyed.

  He searched her face, his own chiseled and princely in the moonlight. “You’re sure?”

  Mute, she nodded.

  “All right, then, if you’re sure. Thanks for the help.” His lips twisted. “And the kiss.”

  She bit her lip, for the word alone made her rather crave more of his mouth.

  “Ciao, bella.” He slung the tailcoat over his shoulder as before and strolled away.

  Perhaps proximity to that man had clouded her mind, for it wasn’t until he was several yards away that she found her tongue and her wits again.

  She walked around from the back of the gazebo to the front, brow furrowed, fists bunched at her sides. “I am not a charity case, you know!”

  “Absolutely not. I believe you noticed how much I enjoyed that.”

  A fresh burst of flame shot into her cheeks, burning in the cool night air.

  “You didn’t have to kiss me just to make a point,” she called after him, taking care to sound indignant, though she was unsure herself if she was angry or secretly delighted.

  She heard his wicked laugh in the darkness. “Oh yes, I did. Believe me.”

  She refused to smile at his flattering jest, throwing up her hands. “Why can’t a man just say things? You know, with words?”

  He cast an extremely roguish glance over his shoulder and merely called, “Go home! Your parents will worry!”

  Oh, you cheeky thing, she thought, shaking her head and trembling with confusion and excitement as he disappeared amid the park shadows.

  Well, at least he got what he came for. She, however, had got a great deal more than she had bargained for.

  Egads, he’s right. I’d better head home. She had lost all track of time and had no idea how long she had been out there. She blew out a steadying exhalation, then ran a hand over her hair in case he had mussed it.

  Blazes, never in her life had she imagined she would ever be the sort of girl who engaged in passio
nate kisses with a stranger in—let alone behind—a garden folly. Yet she had to admit it had been exciting, and he had certainly cheered her up. But he had shown her something important in the process, too. Something that made her square her shoulders and lift her chin as she headed homeward.

  Lord Roland had proved to her that, despite her lack of success in the love department—and after so much painful rejection had eroded her confidence—all hope was not lost. To be sure, he was not on the marriage mart himself, which was a little disappointing, but at least he had been totally honest about that. The important thing was that, oh yes, she had got the message quite clearly: She was beautiful. She was a desirable woman.

  It was his own seductive way of telling her not to worry—some man out there would eventually want her.

  After all, he did.

  Though this was wildly flattering, not to mention a sweet, unexpected balm to her much-bruised heart, it lit a sudden spark of rebellion deep in her core. Maybe it was contagious, and she had caught it from him.

  But honestly, if someone that delicious could genuinely want me, then maybe there’s nothing wrong with me at all. And if not, then why the devil am I putting myself through all this?

  She paused mid-stride on the path home, as though struck by a thunderbolt. Maybe the problem really was marriage, not her.

  Oh, what a boon it would be to stop agonizing over it. Having her pride trampled continually, putting herself through this torture, all to win a prize she didn’t even want!

  Hope soared through her, greater even than when Cecil Cooper had asked her to go out on a drive with him in his open carriage in Hyde Park. Maybe there was some way she could just embrace her spinsterhood and…what had the rogue said?

  Make herself happy.

  She shivered at the revolutionary notion, unsure. To her ears, it sounded a bit like giving up. It sounded like defeat. But to her heart, it felt like victory, and to her soul, it felt like freedom.

  Stop trying to get a husband?

  Her tears long gone, a tremulous smile spread across her face. Oh, to be free of that burden. To tell her parents she just couldn’t do it anymore, that she was stepping aside, giving up her privilege as the eldest to let Abigail marry her Freddie, and so be it.