A Dance in Moonlight (The Fitzhugh Trilogy) Read Online Free

had remembered her requirement for dim light. She panted in relief, only to have her heartbeat race for a different reason altogether.
    She set down the hairbrush and hoped her voice would hold. “Come in.”
    She’d left a lamp in a far corner of the room, the wick trimmed so short it was practically drowning in lamp oil. In this gauzy, barely-there light, the man before her bore such an uncanny resemblance to her erstwhile sweetheart that she could not quite suppress a gasp.
    Fitz, her heart cried.
    Just this one night. This one bittersweet night, so that she could look back as an old woman, when she had forgotten everything else, and remember what it was like to have her beloved in her arms.
    Her palm hurt. She realized that she was clutching Great-Gran Cumberland’s miniature portrait and the frame was digging into her skin. She let go of it and beckoned him to approach her.
    He did, but he did not fall upon her, as she’d meant him too. Instead, he reached past her for the miniature portrait and studied it. Then he studied her face.
    They did not look much alike, she and Great-Gran Cumberland, except for the pitch black hair they shared—and even that was hardly discernible, as Great-Gran Cumberland’s coiffure, done up in the style of Madame Pompadour, had been enthusiastically powdered.
    “She is an ancestress from six, seven generations ago,” she offered, made uneasy by the silence. Silence, to her, manifested grief. Or unhappiness. Or the distance of two lovers drifting apart. “Each of her four husbands cherished her. Her eleven children all survived her. On her seventy-fifth birthday, she had what she declared to be the best meal of her life at the dinner her favorite granddaughter threw in her honor, then she retired to bed and, with truffles and a forty-year-old claret in her stomach, passed away in her sleep.”
    He nodded.
    It didn’t feel terribly odd to speak of Great-Gran Cumberland—she had yet to tell Fitz about the latter. In her younger days, when she’d believed herself invulnerable, tales of Great-Gran had been just that, stories about a woman who lived in a different century. Then she’d had no need for anyone else’s luck; now she put her faith in legends and relics, no longer quite trusting her own ability to navigate life’s bitter seas.
    He returned the miniature portrait to its place. Belatedly she noticed that in his other hand, he held a bottle of wine by its neck, two wineglasses, and a corkscrew.
    Several times since her return she’d suggested to Fitz that they could have something more potent than tea or coffee, but he’d always turned her down, leaving her to recall wistfully those occasions years and years ago when he’d come to visit, and all the young people in the house would sneak out at night. They’d always had a bottle of something and a handful of thimbles. Hidden behind a high hedge, they’d pass around thimbles of the night’s tipple, tittering all the while, drunk as much on youth and the first taste of freedom as on port, sack, or champagne.
    He set down the wine on the nightstand and extended a glass toward her. Their fingers brushed as she took the glass from him. A harsh heat sizzled along her nerve endings, but he did not seize on the moment or even remark upon it. Instead, his attention turned back to the bottle and he removed the cork with an audible pop.
    He poured. The wine landed with a beautiful sound, nectar on glass. She took a sip; the claret flowed over her tongue, cool, delicious, leaving a trail of reassuring warmth in its wake. “Good idea,” she said. “The wine.”
    He poured for himself, casting her a glance as he did so. Now she began to feel odd, carrying on this monologue, even though it was by her request that he remained silent.
    “Nice claret,” she went on, unable to stop herself.
    He turned the bottle so she could read the label. “Château Haut-Brion. I see from your pride that it is probably the Mona Lisa of wines. But I