An Enchanting Regency Christmas by Edith Layton

Author:Edith Layton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Regency Romance
Publisher: Untreed Reads
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Dark Man

It was a perfect lovers’ night. The moon drifted over London like a great phosphorescent excursion balloon—so close to the earth it drowned even the gaslights in its eerie radiance. The night was bright and still and clear, uncommonly warm for late autumn, but just chilly enough so that a lady might take a shivering step closer to a gentleman, so that he might put an arm around her without feeling like a cad. And then, of course, anything might happen, from a stolen kiss to an honorable proposal. So then it was odd that when the tall, broad-shouldered gentleman accompanying Miss Swanson led her out onto the balcony at the ball, and after a moment passed staring at that incredible moon finally began to make his proposal to her, she’d have the nervous notion that it was somehow inappropriate.

It might have been because of her nervousness.

She was very anxious. She’d been expecting his declaration while at the same time doubting that it would come, with equal certainty. Or it may have been because she’d felt a kiss would have been more appropriate than words at that moment, and he’d never kissed her. Or it could have been because of the way he finally said it. For he didn’t ask it, he said it…that was the crux of it.

Of course, she didn’t think so at that moment. She wasn’t thinking at all just then. Only waiting her turn to speak. And she knew that time had come when she realized he’d fallen silent and was waiting for her reply.

It took only a second’s hesitation before she answered, and it was nothing like the second a drowning man was supposed to experience; not even a fraction of her life flashed before her eyes. There wasn’t very much of it to review anyway—she was only just twenty years old, however long in the tooth that might be considered to be for an unmarried maiden of her class. And she’d done little enough in that brief time, except for being a devoted daughter, a splendid sister, and a very good friend to all those she called friend. That might have been many more people if she’d done all those excellent things in London rather than in the countryside where she’d grown to her present great age. But at eighteen her come-out had been forestalled by a distant uncle’s demise, and at nineteen by an absurd outbreak of chickenpox that had involved all the children in the nursery, including, humiliatingly enough, herself.

But now she was here, unscarred by either event, in London and in fashion, and only recently introduced to society. And here was Francis Dayne Sutherland, Earl of Poole, Viscount Acton, himself, standing before her, putting every inch of his impressive six-feet-plus of spectacular manhood forever at her service by begging her to do him the honor of becoming his wife. Everyone had told her he’d do just this for days now, but she still couldn’t quite believe it—hence the second’s pause, which was hours longer than any other woman in London would have hesitated.

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