Chapter 1
Amelia
As iconic vacation experiences went, waking up in the viscount’s bedchamber of a stately home in England was up there with kissing the Blarney Stone.
Amelia Bennett had kissed the Blarney Stone, two weeks ago. It’d tasted of disinfectant.
Not so the delicious Lord Moorleigh, whose naked, sleeping form was curled up beside her in scandalously twisted bed linen. Amelia’s eyes took a second or two to focus, and when they did, she got the same kick of attraction that had led her to this happy predicament. Tom looked solemn without his characteristic half-grin, though she could just make out a scar-like imprint where his dimple usually sat. Like the sheets, he was much more rumpled than yesterday. Espresso-brown hair on the messier side of wavy. Five o’clock shadow, or rather, nine o’clock-the-next-morning shadow. Parallel lines etched into the calico winter skin between his dark eyebrows, as if he were concentrating deeply on his dream. At the same time coolly aristocratic and classically hot.
“What if this is fate, you and me finding each other?” he’d whispered at some point during the night, as he’d traced the line of her cheekbone with a fingertip. It was a weird memory,hazy and drifting like a dream, but she would swear it was real. Even as she thought about it, she could feel his touch, though his hands remained at rest, one on the sheets, one on her hip. She could hear him speak, though his rose-quartz lips remained closed, bunched up against the feather pillow. A shimmer went through her belly, exactly as it had then.
She blinked hard, her eyes stinging and watering. What wasinthat wine? It had turned into one heck of thePride and PrejudiceExperience promised in the estate flyer. Not that this was one of the suggested stops on Amelia’sSelf-Guided Jane Austen Tour of England. Visit Jane’s house in Chawton. Take a walking tour of Bath. Spend a steamy night with an aristocrat in a manor where the latestPride and PrejudiceTV series was filmed. She’d come to Sundew Abbey to admire its “Georgian architecture, fine furnishings and pretty gardens,” and then she’d moved on to admiring a far more attractive seat.
As she slipped out from under Tom’s heavy arm, he adjusted position and murmured something indecipherable, though she would swear it was in his divine English accent. She stilled, half in, half out of the bed, before he settled back into sleep.
She tiptoed across the carpet—hand-knotted Axminster, mid-eighteenth century, going by the tiger lily and magnolia motifs—and headed to the bathroom. The wind shuddered against the windowpanes, but it was warm inside. Tom had kept the fire going through the night. At one point she’d woken alone and looked around in panic until anchored by the sight of him crouched before the fireplace, his bare skin warmed by the flame, the flickering shadows contouring his strong, honed body. She’d drifted into dreams of him—vivid, kaleidoscopic. She couldn’t pin them down now, but they’d involved whispered promises, firm hands, and a frantic waltz in an eighteenth-century gown made of Spitalfields silk in the palest blue withsilver brocade. She could still feel the cool, textured cloth against her skin.
Or had that actually happened? Between the wine, the dreamy aristocrat, and the otherworldly setting, the border between reality and imagination was so blurred as to be seamless. Evidence suggested that stripping each other naked by firelight had happened, but the red and yellow dragon that had loop-de-looped through the kitchen probably hadn’t.
She quietly closed the bathroom door behind her and pulled a cord to switch on a little wall heater. It felt like a room she’d visited in the distant past, and she took a few seconds to reorient herself. Cracked clawfoot tub, rudely superseded by a 1980s glass and steel shower box. Antique French Savonnerie rug fragment used (shockingly) as a bathmat. Her textile-conservator brain ordered her to step off it, but the floorboards were too cold for bare feet. She leaned into the shower and turned it on. Icy water sprayed her arm, and she pulled back with a gasp. She caught a scent that was unmistakably Tom. She hadn’t identified a scent as his until now. Bergamot and citrus, she decided, looking around in vain for the source—like the Earl Grey tea she’d had with yesterday’s breakfast at the village tearoom. She made a mental note to stop in on her way out of town and buy some tea leaves.
Oh yes, Tom was quite the “dishy” aristocrat. Far too charming to be a Darcy. As Jane Austen characters went, he was less the reserved hero ofPride and Prejudiceand more the spirited, amiable Frank Churchill ofEmma. He could even tip over into a charismatic rogue like Darcy’s nemesis, Wickham. Amelia had probably fallen for the oldest trick in the Jane Austen playbook.
And what if she had? She’d enjoyed it. She’descaped, which was the whole point of this vacation. And she wasn’t going to stick around long enough to find out whether Tom was trulya hero or a rake. Though to be fair,shewas the one about to love and leavehim, so who was the true Wickham? She’d had a couple of unsatisfying one-night stands back in her early twenties that had forever sworn her off the concept, and though she was pretty sure this one had been far more fulfilling—what little she could remember of the actual act—she wasn’t keen to face the morning-after awkwardness. Been there, done that, bought the postcard.
It wasn’t until she was in the shower that she remembered being in there with Tom during the night. They’d made up for the lack of water pressure by creating their own steam.Thathad definitely happened, even if she was only now remembering it. She was almost tempted to walk back into the bedchamber and wake him for an encore before she returned to her travels, if only to hear that accent one more time… Just the way he said her name…
But no. This had been a pleasant interlude, but all love affairs were pleasant at the beginning. If you looked hard enough in those blissful early days, you’d see the signs of what would eventually kill the relationship. The toilet seat left up that signaled a lack of consideration. The week-old takeout boxes that marked him as a slob who’d be a nightmare to share a home with. The casual brush-off when you mentioned your feelings that warned he wouldn’t be there when you needed him. Problem was, at that early stage of a relationship, you didn’t want to look hard, or you deliberately overlooked the irritations, because you so desperately wanted to believe in the impossible dream.
Sure, there were no takeout boxes in these corners, and the toilet seat was where it should be, but no doubt there was some clue right in front of her that would snowball into the thing that broke them up. Maybe it was the way he changed the subjectwhenever the conversation threatened to get serious. But she couldn’t judge him for that. She’d done the same.
Anyway. Once she was out of here and had located some Advil for her thumping hangover—or whatever passed for painkillers in Britain—she would continue to the next stop of her tour: Cream Tea and Scones of Bath. She’d be sure to give Sundew a five-star internet review, though:The abbey was more rundown than expected, but the host went above, below, and beyond to make it a memorable experience.
If only she could remember more of it.
After showering, she tried to restore some order to her hair, before deciding to rock regrowth-heavy bed-hair as a style choice. She located her scattered clothes in the bedroom and dressed, though it took some time to nudge her bra off the chandelier, a feat eventually achieved with the help of a 1949 Trinity College rowing oar pulled from a wall display. She concluded that her purse was still in her rental car outside. The whereabouts of the car key was, however, a mystery. Not in the pocket of her pants or coat, not on the antique nightstand, the antique washstand, the antique writing table, the antique dressing table…
Had she left it somewhere in the house? Dropped it? Where had they been in the last twenty-four hours? Wherehadn’tthey been? The tour guide had declared, upon stepping into the grand entrance hall the day before, that the abbey had a hundred rooms.
The kitchen. She and Tom had spent a lot of time in the big old kitchen on the ground floor. She’d shown off her baseball pitching skills with grapefruit and potatoes, and he’d countered with his cricket bowling talents, before cooking them a midnight snack.
She took one last look at the lanky form on the bed and backed out onto the chilly landing, closing the heavy woodendoor behind her. The hinges groaned and she winced. Was that a murmur from inside? She paused, but there were no further sounds to indicate he’d woken. Which was both a reliefanda pity.
She sat on the oak flooring, partly to get her bearings, partly to tie her sneakers, and partly because that had all taken a surprising amount of effort. Her breath seemed unduly loud. Diffuse light glowed down from a dome in the roof above the enormous stairwell, coolly accenting pale blue walls and ornate white paneling. A hundred years ago, the abbey would have been alive with family, staff, and guests, who would have been shocked to see a disheveled woman emerge from the viscount’s chambers. Or possibly not.
These days, Tom was the only soul living in the house—though an old groundskeeper occupied a cottage somewhere—and the entire estate was due to be sold to a tech billionaire. “He’s drawn up plans to gut the interior,” Tom had said, “and install a bowling alley, a VR gaming room, a flotation tank, and a nine-person Jacuzzi.”
The way Tom had air-quoted “Jacuzzi” identified the buyer as American, and Amelia had apologized on behalf of her country, though he’d politely waved it away.
The abbey had certainly seen better days—better centuries—and Tom had declared he was done fighting its decline, along with the family finances. But he was evidently hurting more about its impending loss than he cared to let on.
Amelia stood, wiping dust from her bright blue pants. She was tempted to tuck the pant hems into her socks. Outlandishly wide pant legs were a fun fashion choice, but they didn’t keep out the draft of an English winter. She hunched into her cream turtleneck sweater, fixed her scarf, and made her way along the landing to the nearest staircase, buttoning her camel coat.
Nearby, a door slammed, and she spun, her breath catching. Just the wind, she concluded after a few seconds of stillness. Or the ghosts. The tour guide, a young local woman, had claimed that several were in residence.
“Like what?” one of the tourists had said.
“For starters, a ghostly figure who stands on the lane and pretends death.”
