Moonlight Wishes In Time
Read Moonlight Wishes In Time Online
Authors: Bess McBride
The full moon shone brightly as it crowned the sky in a large, round sphere of luminescence. Mattie pulled her robe tightly around her as a cool breeze brought goose bumps to her arms.
“Well, Mr. Moon
?” she asked whimsically. “Any ideas? Where do you think I can find a Lord Ashton?”
She tried again
. “How about it, big boy? You can see everything from where you are. Is there any man like that out there for me? Asking you the same question? Do they even make men like that anymore?”
Mattie leaned her arms against the railing and ignored the lights of the condominiums across the sidewalk—so close she often wondered if she could throw a coin onto the balcony opposite
. She was pretty sure, however, that she didn’t want to throw a coin onto the balcony opposite to test the theory. Coins were pretty dear at the moment, especially since Tom had moved out. He’d helped with a few of the living expenses—groceries, anyway.
“Hey, up there!” she called out
. “Are you listening to me? How about a sign? Some hint that this isn’t the rest of my life!”
A dog barked in the distance and a door slammed somewhere
. Mattie waited, half expecting the moon to actually drop the man of her dreams onto her balcony.
The dog barked once again. Then it was silent.
Mattie held her breath and listened. Nothing. No sign. No riding-booted footsteps. No tall figure in yellow silk pantaloons and a blue cutaway coat magically appeared on her balcony. No raven-haired man arrived to pull her into his arms.
She shivered in the cool night breeze and hugged herself
. Living in such a vivid fantasy world wasn’t good for her—she realized that. She was fully aware she had to stop her obsession at some point in the near future, and return the book to the library. Take up knitting, watch TV, study calligraphy.
Mattie’s mind raced with a number of activities s
he could and should pursue—activities that would be much more productive than fantasizing about a character in a book who could never exist outside of the imagination of the author…and readers.
With a last pleading look at the unresponsive moon, she sighed and turned back toward the door
. Her knees buckled, and she felt herself falling.
by
Bess McBride
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents are either the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Moonlight Wishes in Time
COPYRIGHT
2013 by Bess McBride
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or
reviews.
Contact information: [email protected]
Cover Art by
Tamra Westberry
Published in the United States of America
Other Books by Bess McBride
Together Forever in Time
Across the Winds of Time
Jenny Cussler’s Last Stand
A Train Through Time
A Penny for Your Thoughts
Caribbean Dreams of Love
A Trail of Love
On a Warm Sea of Love
A Shy Woman in Love
A Sigh of Love
Love of My Heart
For all my time-travel romance reader fans. Here’s something new for you. I sincerely hope you enjoy it!
For Diana Coyle, who has helped me in immeasurable ways, including beta reading this book for me!
For Tamra Westberry, who always does such wonderful covers for me. As I always tell her when she delivers a masterpiece, “You get me, you really get me!” This cover is no exception.
Thank you for purchasing
Moonlight Wishes in Time.
Moonlight Wishes in Time
is Book One of the
Moonlight Wishes in Time
series, a series of Georgian-era time-travel romances featuring time travel by moonlight.
Like many of you, I grew up reading Regency romance novels, especially Georgette Heyer. While I cannot pretend to do justice to Georgette Heyer’s work, here is my humble attempt at a Georgian-era romance.
Moonlight Wishes in Time
is set in England in 1825 following the Regency era.
Although I am American, I am an Anglophile in that I love all things British and Irish. I love the lyrical language of Georgette Heyer’s and Jane Austen’s dialogue, and I enjoyed trying to incorporate some of the dialogue into my own story while keeping the book a little more “readable” for modern-day romance enthusiasts. My advance apologies to my British and Canadian reader friends who will note that the majority of the story is written and spelled in “American English” though the majority of the characters are English.
I know that I, like many of my fellow time-travel romance readers, have wondered: What if I traveled back in time somehow and fell in love with someone from the past? What would I do if he asked me to stay with him…in his time? Could I really give up all the things I’ve grown up with—the comfortable amenities, modern medicine, clean water, sanitation? Matilda Crockwell from
Moonlight Wishes in Time
wonders that very same thing.
The other thing I’ve always wondered is what would it be like to be as successful and prolific as Georgette Heyer! But that’s another story…
Thank you for your support over the years, friends and readers. Because of your favorable comments, I continue to strive to write the best stories I can. More romances are on the way!
You know I always enjoy hearing from you, so please feel free to contact me at
[email protected]
, through my website at
http://www.bessmcbride.com
, or my blog
Will Travel for Romance
.
Thanks for reading!
Bess
William Sinclair stood in the garden of Ashton House with his hands clasped behin
d his back, staring at the moon and wishing for he knew not what. A vague, ill-defined sense of yearning, of longing, plagued him, but he could not put a name to his desire. He was not happy. The course of his life was not as he might have wished. He felt…empty. Without joy, without hope. Incessant dinner parties and country balls, dreary evenings of cards and drink, and the attentions of vapid young women who fawned over his fortune no longer held any interest for him. He grimaced and shook his head. No, that was untrue. They had
never
held any interest for him.
Perhaps it was time for him to take a wife as his mother wished
. Perchance a wife would help fill the void. But which one of the insipid young ladies in his circle could possibly interest him for a lifetime—or even for one month? It seemed as if each one been educated by the same governess in the arts of fanning, blushing and pouting. None of the young women his mother invited to her parties appeared to have even the slightest notion that a gentleman might want a companion of intelligence and conversation, perhaps even a bit of wit.
Other than his sister, and occasionally his mother, he had yet to meet a
woman who made him want to smile or laugh. As was expected, most of the young ladies in their circles were encouraged to make advantageous marriages. Too often, he had seen the desire for wealth and luxury in their eyes.
He did not fault them for desiring to better their lives, but he had hoped for so much more from a marriage
. His parents’ marriage had been tolerable—perhaps they had even grown fond of each other over the years—but they had not loved each other. As a young girl, his mother had been urged to marry his father for position and comfort, and she had acceded to the dictates of her parents.
He
supposed it was possible the yearning to be loved for all that he was—in the absence of riches—was the thing he desired most in the world. How else would he know whether the lady loved him, or loved his fortune? He was not, however, of a mind to dispense with his estate to prove the thing, nor could he as his family depended upon him.
“When will you grant me that which I desire most?” he murmured to the moon
. Knowing from long practice no response would come, he turned away with a restless sigh to return to the house, at present gaily lit for one of his mother’s dinner parties. A dinner party in which his mother hoped he would meet his future wife.
He tripped over something soft and pliable on the ground and cursed as he sought to avoid injury to th
e creature by leaping over it. Losing his balance, he fell, rolled over onto his knees and came up sputtering. One of the dogs? Injured?
“What in the infernal blazes—”
He jumped to his feet and peered at the pale, fluffy creature rolled up into a ball. The lights from the house cast a faint glow on the animal. No, not an animal. Long hair flowed away from a white face. A woman? Surely not!
Fresh and squeaky clean from her shower, Mattie Crockwell shook out her still-damp hair, climbed into her favorite overstuffed easy chair and settled in to spend another evening with the man of her dreams. She tucked her beloved tattered pink thermal blanket around her legs and eyed the novel on the small table beside her chair with anticipation.
As she had every night for the past several months, she opened the well-
worn library book and leafed through the pages until she found her bookmark.
“The moon shines for us because it has given me my heart’s desire.”
Mattie mouthed the hero’s words as she read them for at least the twentieth time. She was sure she knew almost every word of dialogue by heart. Hokey, her practical side said. Purple prose, she’d heard it called. But she didn’t care. In the privacy of her own bedroom, no one needed to know about her secret fantasy life in the Georgian era. That was just for her.
Luckily, the library computer had not balked at her fifth consecutive three-week renewal
. The out-of-print book wasn’t available for her to have as her own,
to possess
, and she occasionally toyed with the idea of just not returning it.
But that was the wrong thing to do, and Mattie tried very, very hard not to do the wrong thing
. Thanks in large part, she suspected, to her parents’ Midwestern values.
As she had so many times before, she turned to the cover to study the colorful depiction of the hero—a tall, raven-haired man whose distinctive cheekbones, chiseled
jaw and broad shoulders screamed confidence and assurance. The heroine—a voluptuous redhead with masses of flowing curls, impossibly long dark eyelashes, and a graceful swan neck—luxuriated in the capable embrace of Lord Ashton of Sinclair House as he lowered his face to hers.
Mattie sighed and resisted the temptation—yet again—to plant a kiss on the hero’s face
. Had she given in to her whimsical urges, it was likely the cover of the book could have rapidly approached the conditions of the Blarney Stone in Ireland—not that she had ever seen that icon in person. She read on.
“And mine! Now kiss me, William,” the heroine breathed.
Mattie rolled her eyes, as she always did. Okay, so the dialogue could improve, she thought. She remembered her mother giggling when she read passages of her favorite romance novels to then sixteen-year-old Mattie. Mattie had dutifully groaned with the scorn of youth, but read every single one of her mother’s books as soon as she stuck the finished novels in a bookshelf.
