Moonlight Masquerade (24 page)

Hawk’s Roost

C
hristine bent to
lightly press her nose to the blood-red rose, the last bloom of
summer, a beautiful flower just like the ones Vincent had brought
to her the morning after their marriage.

It was fully dark, hours past the time he
usually arrived home from his frequent visits to London, where he
had taken up his seat in the House of Lords, but she wasn’t
worried. He would be home soon, he always came home to her. She
would have gone with him, as she often did, if it weren’t for the
fact that she was carrying their first child and Aunt Nellis and
Lazarus both had forbade the trip.

She turned to walk down the path leading
back to the house, dressed in the white silk dressing gown that
covered the sheer, lacy nightgown Vincent always asserted was his
particular favorite—a sentiment he usually voiced just before
ridding her of the gown and pressing her back against the soft
pillows of their bed.

She looked up as she heard a slight noise,
having been concentrating her gaze on making her way over the
moss-covered bricks in the darkness, and saw a masculine shape at
the end of the path.

“Vincent?” she asked, knowing the answer,
and she quickened her pace, her arms held wide. “I’ve been waiting
for you, darling.”

He stepped out of the shadow of the trees,
his riding cloak still swinging around his knees, his head
uncovered, and moved into the light of a full moon. “I’m here,
Christine. I’ll always be here.”

He moved toward her, her beloved Vincent of
the moonlight, and she ran to the heaven of his arms.

Thank you for reading
Moonlight Masquerade
. Please read on for an excerpt from
A Difficult
Disguise
, Fletcher Belden’s story, another delightful
Regency romp from Kasey Michaels.

W
hen titled Britain went toddling off to do battle with
Napoleon Bonaparte and his Grande
Armée
, it did it
with stylish English panache (more than a few handy umbrellas to
keep the rain off their uniforms) and a patriotic fervor liberally
mixed with a healthy appetite for adventure, war being regarded in
the way of a highly desirable romantic escapade.

But now, at long last, Napoleon was safely
locked up on Elba, and the war was over.

The Prince Regent—Prinny to his friends and,
increasingly, Swellfoot to his enemies—who had never spent a long
night in the cold rain with an empty belly or fought deadly
hand-to-hand combat with a relentless enemy, viewed the victory as
the perfect excuse to indulge in his most favorite thing in the
whole world: a party of truly monumental proportions.

London’s organized and
spur-of-the-moment festivities, which had begun early in the year,
intensified in June with the arrival of the Czar, as well as that
of
Blücher
, a hard-drinking man who fast
became the favorite of John Bull (as the everyday citizens of the
metropolis were called), Prussia’s spartan King Frederick, Count
Platoff, commander of the Cossacks who had so successfully harassed
Napoleon throughout that man’s ignoble retreat from Moscow, and a
host of other luminaries Prinny was hell-bent to impress with his
entertaining genius, his outlandish, specially designed military
uniforms, and his social largess.

By the second week in June the whole of
Regency London was operating at a fever pitch, the usual hustle and
bustle of the busy city magnified a thousand times, which was
altogether wonderful if a person was in the mood to be
entertained.

For the hardened veterans of battles in
Salamanca and Badajoz, like Fletcher Belden, who was at the moment
propping up the wall in a very hot, very overcrowded ballroom as
all around him overdressed men and giggling women cavorted in a
frenzy of celebration, all this carrying-on was not only frivolous,
it was fast becoming downright dull. Turning his back on the crowd,
he sauntered into the card room to try losing his boredom in the
bottom of a deep glass.

Kasey Michaels began her career scribbling
her stories on yellow legal pads while the family slept.  She
totally denies she chiseled them into flat rocks, but yes, she
began her career a long time ago. Now Kasey is the
New York
Times
and
USA Today
bestselling author of more than 110
books (she doesn't count them). Kasey has received four coveted
Starred Reviews from
Publishers Weekly
, three for historical
romance,
The Secrets of the Heart
,
The Butler Did it
, and
The Taming of a
Rake
, and for the contemporary romance
Love To
Love You Baby
(that shows diversity, you see). She is a
recipient of the RITA, a Waldenbooks and Bookrak Bestseller award,
and many awards from
Romantic Times
magazine, including a
Career Achievement award for her Regency era historical romances.
She is an Honor Roll author in Romance Writers of America, Inc.,
and is a past president of Novelists, Inc. (NINC), the only
international writers organization devoted solely to the needs of
multi-published authors. Please visit Kasey on her website at
www.KaseyMichaels.com
.