A Winter`s Romance with Christina Dudley
A Winter’s Romance: A Regency Anthology on preorder now on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Winters-Romance-Regency-Anthology-ebook/dp/B0DG3R12L1
Can blindness and deception keep them from love? When scandalous James Thornton suffers a hunting accident, he is carried broken and unconscious to Ardenmere, where schoolteacher Eliza Blinker is spending her holidays. All hands are required to nurse the patient, but for Eliza’s protection Lady Arden insists she pose as an older, plainer woman. Blinded as he is, Thornton may be told anything, after all. But what if love truly is blind, and he begins to care for Eliza despite what he’s been led to believe?
“Epiphany Day” is a short story found in A Winter’s Romance: a Regency Anthology.
Excerpt
The maid trailed her to the bottom of the stairs like a faithful mastiff and hovered while Eliza gave instructions to the footman Hoskins. Then, when she glanced toward the drawing room doors, Kirby said, “Lady Arden says I am always to accompany you, if you are a-going in there. ‘Don’t you let her be alone with him, Kirby,’ she told me.”
“Well then, together it is. But perhaps we need not go in. I don’t hear anything now.”
As if to spite her, a protracted moan struck their ears, one ending in a sudden whuff.
Oh, dear. Suppose he had rolled from the sofa and could not right himself? Or that he had pulled off his bandages and was dragging himself across the room in search of light? Eliza found herself regretting her earlier bravado about broken bones. What precisely had she imagined she knew about injuries? Especially injuries the magnitude of Mr. Thornton’s!
Taking a deep breath and nodding at Kirby, she opened the doors quietly and crept around the side of the lacquered screen. To her great relief, the man still lay upon the sofa, his bandages intact, though one hand fumbled at them.
“No, no,” said Eliza, hurrying forward. “You mustn’t. Your eyes must not be exposed.”
Though she had not touched him, his hand froze in its exploration.
“Can you hear me, sir?” she asked. “Do you understand me?”
There was a long, long pause. Was he too muddled to speak?
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