Courtney Milan (47 page)

“I’m afraid I won’t help you with the respectable part, either. There was my precipitate departure from town. With Frost and Lawson going to trial, the details of my father’s embezzlement will come to light. And if that isn’t bad enough, before you arrived, I inquired at the public assembly hall. They’ve officially asked me to play the pianoforte. And”—This last came out quite defiantly—“They’re going to pay me two guineas a month.”

“I see.” But he didn’t. He was even more puzzled.

“I’m officially going to be paid for my labor. And I don’t intend to limit myself to playing at assemblies. That’s just a start. Respectable married ladies do not do such things, and so I refuse to be a respectable married lady.”

She hadn’t let go of him.

“I see,” he said again, with perhaps a little more understanding this time. “But that leaves
married.
What of that?”

“I will never be just your wife.”

“Why would you, when you have so much more you could be?”

He’d wanted her the moment he saw her. But the way he felt now, he was beyond want. She wouldn’t just be a beautiful possession to trot out to prove his luck to other fellows. Mary was more than a pretty picture to hang upon the wall and gaze at lovingly.

She was going to do amazing things. And he was going to help her do them.

“There’s only one way to be respectable.” She leaned her head against him. “But there are so, so many ways to be married. I think we’ll find a thousand variations on a theme of marriage, John. All of them magnificent. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

He kissed her, long and slow. And because that wasn’t enough, he kissed her a second time, and a third, and more, until he lost count of all their kisses, until a maid came into the room to clear away the dishes and gasped out loud at the sight.

And just to be sure that they’d caused a scandal, he kissed her again.

Epilogue

Forty years later, on the road to Doyle’s Grange

T
HE
E
XMOOR HILLS SHIMMERED
on the horizon, indistinct in the morning haze.

It had not been so much of a struggle to climb the hill to Doyle’s Grange all those years ago. Now, Mary could feel the strain in her back, her hips. Nothing uncommon, just age taking its usual toll. But then, what age took, age returned. There was no need to hurry now. Doyle’s Grange wasn’t going anywhere, and they had all the time they wished to explore. She stopped at the rise just before the path dipped into the windbreak and turned to look around.

John squeezed her hand in his. “I’m not going too fast for you, am I?”

“No. Just my back again.”

They’d walked more than a mile from the railway station, but she hadn’t really felt the exercise until they’d reached the hill.

“That’s a shame.” He set his arm around her waist and pressed his fingers into the small of her back. After all these years, he didn’t need to ask where it hurt. He simply rubbed his thumb in a circle right where the tension had gathered, pushing lightly until the gathered pain began to dissipate.

“That’s nice,” she said. “It’s quiet here.”

In comparison, it was. There were no trolley cars, no sellers hawking oranges or flowers. There was only a farmer plowing a field off in the distance and a kestrel circling overhead. It was louder than it once had been—there’d been an actual stand of cabs waiting at West Aubry—but still quiet.

“Quiet is nice.” John smiled. “For now. It’ll be loud enough once we’re in Vienna.”

“It’s different. Not the way I remember it.”

She didn’t remember it being so
bright,
for one. The spring air had only a hint of a bite to it. It was too quiet here, too quiet at home. Caroline, George, and Jacob were long since out of the house. Even Caroline’s children were off at school. Aside from a few last students, Mary had too little to do. So when John had suggested that they retrace their most important moments together as a second honeymoon, she’d jumped at the chance.

“Ready?” he asked.

Maybe he was asking about her back. Or maybe…

This, the first portion of their journey, was the only part she’d fretted over. Doyle’s Grange brought to mind a darker time, one she’d been glad to leave behind her. She feared that visiting this place again would bring back all those long-settled memories. But she shrugged and started up the hill again.

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to see when she came through the trees. Doyle’s Grange was the same—and yet so different. Someone had planted a hedge of shiny green leaves between the house and the lane. The drab front shrubberies had been torn out and replaced with beds of dark soil, sprouting the green beginnings of spring flowers. And in the meadows that surrounded the property, growing amidst the new grass, were crocuses—thousands of them.

And then she heard a sound—a shriek; not one of horror or pain, but a child’s excited squeal.

“You can’t catch me!” someone taunted. Another shriek, and the taunter tore into view, dashing across the road and into the tall grass across the way.

“Hyacinth!” came the return shriek, from far off. “You had better hide well.”

She and John exchanged amused looks.

“Well,” Mary said with a sigh, “you were right, after all.”

“About what?”

“I’ve got forty good years behind me.
This
—” she waved her hand at the cottage “—this is nothing in comparison. I’m bigger than it now.”

He smiled. “You always were.”

This place wasn’t a box, to hold her worst memories. It was only a bright, sunlit house—a place of happiness for a new generation.

And the last forty years had brought quite a bit of happiness. From here, they’d go on to London. With the money Mary had recovered from the partnership, they’d spent a few months of their first winters there. She had played in salons, enough to get her name out. From London, they’d move on to Vienna. She’d never played at the grandest halls—living in Vienna only during the winters, when the farm was quiet, had restricted her choices—but she was the only musician she knew whose husband never missed a performance.

There had been no professional reason to visit Paris, which made those few weeks in 1870 all the more memorable. She was looking forward to seeing that new tower they’d erected. After a week
there,
they had passage on a steamer to Boston—that was where John had displayed his new, more efficient water turbine, the one that had truly secured their future.

It had been a good life.

She took his hand again, and together, they started down the hill. Halfway to the station, though, she heard a noise—a faint little whimper, so high-pitched that she almost didn’t hear it.

“What’s that?” she said.

John shrugged. “What?”

She listened, turning her head to one side. “That noise—there it is again.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

Mary shrugged this off. Likely, the noise was too high for his ears. He couldn’t hear half the notes on the upper register of her piano anymore. She turned to the side of the road and rustled through the early summer foliage of the hedge.

“I knew I heard something!” she said, leaning down and moving branches aside.

“What is it?” He had come up behind her.

It was a dirty burlap sack, the end tied in a knot. Under the fabric, something moved.

“Oh, no.” Mindless of the branches that snagged her sleeves, she reached in. Her fingers closed around the edge, barely gripping, and then yanked the burden high—eliciting a high-pitched
yip
from the residents of the sack. She sank to the ground. Her fingers tore into the knot, her hands shaking.

And when the sack was opened— 

“Oh, John.” She’d scraped her arms rescuing the bag. But she could scarcely feel those scratches for the feeling that almost overwhelmed her. The bag contained two tiny puppies—tawny all over, barely palm-sized, their eyes still creased closed.

“Oh little ones,” she crooned. “Who would do this to you? We’ll have to get you something to eat. John?”

He was looking at her with a small smile on his face.

Maybe another man would remind her of the expensive hotel that awaited them in Vienna, or the long voyage to America that would follow. Another man might have mentioned that puppies needed to be trained, or he might have made noises about needing his sleep at night.

John simply smiled. “Well. I guess it’s not going to be quiet any longer.”

Mary hugged the puppies to her and stood. She had forty good years behind her—a life that anyone would be lucky to live. Was it selfish to be glad that it still felt like the beginning?

“I wonder who’s at Beauregard’s farm now?” he said. “I think they’ll have milk.”

John put his arm around her and she snuggled up against him.

“I think,” she said, “I’m going to need another forty years of you.”

About What Happened at Midnight

What Happened at Midnight
is a novella in the “Midnight Scandals” saga, a series of novellas all set at the house of Doyle’s Grange. Each novella was written by another author.

The other books in the series are
One Starlit Night
, by Carolyn Jewel, and
A Dance in Moonlight
, by Sherry Thomas.

For OuiOui. With a kiss on the cheek, perhaps a little too close to the ear.

Chapter One

A small village in Kent, Spring, 1845

S
IMON
D
AVENANT HAD JUST
three days to woo and marry a woman.

Not just
a
woman—
the
woman.

Right now, the only things standing between him and the object of his affections were an exuberant field of colored tulips, a walkway of white crushed stones, and seven years of pointed silence on his part.

It had been that long since last he’d set foot in Chester-on-Woolsey—seven long years in which he’d buried himself in his work, trying to forget dark hair and darker eyes, the feel of her skin, the sound of her laugh.

It hadn’t worked. Everything he’d done had reminded him of this place.

Simon had walked to Barrett’s Folly—the little property she had inherited from her aunt—from the railway station three miles distant. He’d diverted from his destination only long enough to leave his valise at the inn in town. The man who had assigned him his room was new to the area; he’d not even blinked in recognition when Simon gave his name.