Under An English Moon Read Online Free Page B

awakened in the future? Or was this some fantastical dream—of twinkling lights, buildings which touched the sky, lamps which glowed without candles, and beautiful, if scantily clad, young women? Were it true, what a delightful dream he had engineered. If not, then some mystical force had transported him to the future—a future he could not possibly have imagined.
    “1827,” she gasped. Then inexplicably she began to laugh, a tinkling sound that soon devolved into something resembling a cackle. She clutched her sides and howled unbecomingly. Tears rolled down her face.
    Reggie stiffened. “I beg your pardon, Madam. Your raucous laughter is unseemly at best. Please desist. What can you possibly find so amusing?”
    Miss Warner stopped chortling, but the tears continued, accompanied by an occasional sob.  Reggie was appalled. He had thought her tears to be from laughter but could see now that she wore an expression of alarm. Much as he felt.
    “Come, Miss Warner. There now,” he murmured, producing a kerchief for her. “Dry your tears. Forgive my harsh words. I suspected you to be mocking me. I cannot bear to see a woman cry, and have little enough experience with it. I have no sisters.”
    Miss Warner pressed the kerchief against her eyes and slumped ungracefully onto the settee. “No sisters,” she murmured inconsequentially.
    “No, alas, only a brother and a father, and lately a stepmother, but I have never seen her shed tears, not even at the birth of her first grandchild.”
    “You’re not married,” she stated.
    “No, Miss Warner, I am not, but I hope to remedy that some day.”
    “Oh! Are you engaged?” He almost imagined he saw her mouth droop.
    “No, not as yet.”
    “Thinking about it?” A small twitch of her lips charmed him.
    Reggie grinned. “One always thinks about one’s future. However, I think our most pressing concern should be just that—the future. Either I hit my head when I fell and am now dreaming, or I have somehow been transported almost two hundred years into the future.”
    It seemed as if his own legs failed to hold him upright and he slumped into the chair opposite the settee.
    Miss Warner straightened. “Did you fall? Hit your head?”
    “Yes, I thought I mentioned that. While I was walking Sebastian back to my father’s house, I tripped in a rut on the road and fell. I awakened here on your floor.”
    “Okay, but maybe you fell somewhere else, in the present time, and you’ve had a concussion, and you’re kind of delusional.” Her forehead creased as she contemplated her words.
    “I think time travel would be preferable to the scenario you describe, Miss Warner. A delusional state of mind does not appeal to me.”
    “But maybe it’s temporary. I could take you to a doctor.”
    Reggie shook his head. “And have them dispatch me to an asylum? I think not.”
    “They don’t do that anymore, Reggie.”
    “I am pleased to hear it, Miss Warner, but no, no physician. He would as likely bleed me as anything, and I do not relish the thought.”
    Miss Warner stared at him intently, and Reggie squirmed under her gaze. Not so long ago, he had wished for the ardent look of another American woman. However, Miss Crockwell had but smiled at him kindly, having eyes only for William Sinclair.
    “Miss Warner? Is there something amiss with my clothing? My hair?” He ran a hand through his thick unruly hair.
    She blinked and shook her head. “Oh, no. No, nothing. You’re all zipped up, if that’s what you were asking. I’m just so confused.”
    “Zipped up?”
    Miss Warner’s cheeks reddened, and she smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I’m beginning to think that you really don’t know about zippers...or electricity.”
    Reggie shook his head. “I am afraid I fail to understand either word.”
    Miss Warner rose from her seat to approach the window. She seemed to stare at the moon.
    “How do you think this happened?” She turned to face him, resting on the windowsill.