Regency Romance: An Intriguing Invitation (Historical Billionaire Military Romance) (19th Century Victorian Romance)

by Sarah Thorn

  She hesitated for a moment, looking up at the painting again. Her favorite. She sighed.

  She dialed the number and slowly put the phone to her ear, sighing again.

  “Hey,” he said when he answered.

  “Hey. What’s up?”

  “Did you pay extra for those carpet cleaners the other day?”

  “Did I what?” She was immediately confused.

  “There’s more money out of the account than what was supposed to be used.”

  Eve remembered the carpet cleaners. Two guys that came in, cleaned the carpets, gave her papers to sign and left. She wasn’t impressed with either one of them while they had been there but the carpets looked really clean afterward.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t spend anything extra. Haven’t been anywhere or done anything.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” She felt the hairs on the back of her neck bristling. She could hear the contempt in his voice through the phone.

  “I just said uh huh. We need to make sure we’re telling each other when we spend extra money somewhere.”

  “If I had, then I would have told you. But I didn’t so I had nothing to tell.”

  “Okay.”

  She could hear it so plainly. He didn’t believe her. He never believed anything she said. Why was she still going through this? They hadn’t been in love for months, long, miserable months. No physical intimacy at all. She could barely get a hug and a kiss from him.

  “Look, I’ll be home later, and we can talk about this okay?” She whispered hastily in the phone, not wanting anyone else in the museum to hear how upset she was. She was going to break up with him. She couldn’t take it anymore. Without another word, she hung up on him.

  She knew that would make him mad and expected it when her phone buzzed with a text message. She didn’t check it until she got outside in the sunlight. She regretted when she did check it. His text was profanity laced. It made her heart hurt to read it. They had been happy for several years. It had all changed in the last six months. They had grown apart.

  Eve slid into the driver’s seat of her car and adjusted herself so that she could sit comfortably. She hadn’t bought this car. It was her boyfriend’s choice, and he had surprised her with it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a good fit, and there were several things wrong with it. If he regretted the choice, he didn’t seem like it to her. But for now, she had no choice but to drive it.

  She sat in the seat for a moment, feeling depressed. Why couldn’t she be with a man who really loved her? Someone who had class and dignity and cared about her, like the men in the novels she loved so much. She needed to live in a time over a hundred years ago.

  Her familiar deep sigh escaped from her lips. She started the car and pulled out, deciding she needed to see her grandmother. Her grandmother had been telling her stories of her ancestors since Eve had discovered her interest in their family tree. She had been tracing it back generation by generation for months. She was related to some of the most powerful players back in the Victorian days. There was a story Grandmother Anne had told her several times about her aunt, Helen. Helen was a major member of society, well liked until a love affair that ended tragically. Helen had never been the same afterward, living as a spinster for the rest of her life, unhappy and alone, by her own choice.

  She didn’t want to end up like her aunt Helen. Grandmother Anne had made sure to relate Helen’s existence to Eve’s. She knew Eve wasn’t happy and Eve hadn’t even told her about it.

  She pulled into the long driveway to the enormous house and immediately felt better. There were huge trees lining both sides, and they made a canopy over the car. She breathed a sigh of relief this time. The house had been passed down for generations, and she had found so much history in the attic, it was unreal. Items and documents from the very time she longed to be in.

  She pulled around the circular drive and parked in front of the great pillars that led up to the house. It was such a beautiful house. She was delighted that her family had kept such good care of it. Someday, she felt it would be hers. She only had one older brother, and he was married with his own house and a small family.

  She went in the front door without knocking.

  “Grandma? Grandma?”

  There was no answer. She regretted calling out, in case her grandmother was taking an afternoon nap. But then, the house was large, and her bedroom was not nearby. It was upstairs and down the hallway. There was too much room for one elderly lady, but Grandma Anne was active and had many friends and family over. Eve’s grandfather had passed away two years previous, and Anne had not shown any interest in another man since then.

  She didn’t rule it out, though, and the thought made Eve smile. Grandma Anne wouldn’t have any trouble if she put herself back on the market. She was still slender and energetic, though she took the time she needed to do some tasks that would not take younger people long to do. She even had a long mane of strawberry blond hair that she kept back in a braid ninety percent of the time.

  Instead of calling out to her grandmother again, she turned and locked the door before taking the circular stairs to the second floor. She continued up to the third floor and walked with quiet steps to the door that would lead to the attic. It was small. A fat person would not fit through the door or the narrow stairwell leading up to the attic. She could barely make it in herself, now that she wasn’t a child. She had no idea how they had originally gotten all the furniture and other things up there until her grandmother told her the reduction in size was necessary for the renovations.

  She took the narrow stairs, running the tips of her fingers along the wall as she went up. She took the steps slowly. This was her personal museum. She had spent the last month going through the items and still had a lot more to look at. It excited her, one of the only things that she cared about anymore and made her smile.

  The door creaked a little when she opened it, and she thought she would have to get some WD-40 for that. She poked her head in first and flipped on the light switch. It flooded the room with a soft white, and she looked around at the odds and ends. Half of the room was organized from where she had begun going through it. The other half was still chaos, old toys, games, furniture and trunks of all shapes and sizes taking up the space in a haphazard fashion.

  She couldn’t wait to go through it and see what she would find. She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her, placing one hand on her chin and the other on her hip. She looked around. Where would she start today?

  Near the window to her left, the sunlight was spotlighting a brown trunk with an arched lid. That looked like a good place to begin. She hurried to it, kneeling in front of it when she got there. It had a flat metal latch on the front, and it locked with a key. She had encountered trunks like this before. Her grandmother had, at some point, taped every matching key she could find to the side of the trunk it belonged to. Eve hoped this one had a key. She moved her fingers gently along the metal framework around the trunk, peering at the front and sides closely. She reached over the trunk and felt the back side. Relief flooded her when her fingers made contact with the taped key. She dug at the tape with her fingers until it was released.

  Eve put the key into the lock and turned it, enjoying the small click she heard. She lifted the latch and then the lid, using her strength against the heavy wood.

  “Good grief, you’d think people wouldn’t have made these so heavy.” She murmured. Finally, the lid came up and slammed back when she lost her grip on it. It made a loud clunk but stayed open. She held out her hands as if to block it from falling again, though if it had, it probably would have broken her bones. When she was sure it wasn’t going to come slamming down on her, she looked down at the contents.

  She gasped. The trunk held several neatly folded dresses. The one on the very top was familiar to her. She stood up, pulling the top dress out with her. She held it up in the sunlight, blinking in quiet amazement. Turning, she mov
ed to another area of the attic where she had placed several of the portraits and paintings she had found. Laying the dress gently to the side, she pulled a few forward, looking for one in particular. When she found it, she pulled it out from between two others and held it up in front of her.

  It was a portrait of her ancestor Helen. She had always borne a striking resemblance to Helen. Her grandmother had told her that when she was young but it was confirmed by this very painting. Helen was almost her twin.

  Chills ran up her arms. She would have bet that if she put the dress on that she had found, which was the very same one her ancestor was wearing in the painting, she would look just like her. Except for the hairstyle, of course. And the shoes.

  Eve shook her head. It couldn’t be an exact match. She didn’t have the shoes or the hairstyle that Helen had worn. But she could still put on the dress.

  She looked at the gown, setting the painting down next to her, leaning it up against the ones it had been boxed in with. She wondered if she should put it on. Was it appropriate? Was it ethical?

  “You’re a silly girl, Eve,” she said out loud to herself. “Who is going to mind if you just try it on?”

  It looked like it would be a perfect fit.

  Giving in to herself, she slipped off the shirt and jeans she was wearing and pulled the dress over her head. She wasn’t able to fasten it in the back but even without that; she could tell it was a perfect fit.

  She looked down at it, breathing in quietly. It was a beautiful green dress with gold lacing through it, making an elegant design down each side. She ran her hands down the lacing.

  As she did, the gold lacing changed. She narrowed her eyes. She brushed her hands down the front of the dress. The green fabric brightened and the clean color spread slowly down the dress like water.

  Eve’s eyes opened wide, and she looked up at the room around her.

  Chapter Two

  It was nearly empty. The walls and floor looked almost new. The cobwebs and dust were gone. So was most of the furniture. Eve heard the sound of music playing below her.

  She began to breathe rapidly. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she fearfully moved across the room to the door that would lead to the lower floors. The dress was somehow fastened behind her, and she didn’t notice it until she opened the door and saw what was below her.

  The stairs leading to the second floor were wide and looked new. She took one step down and saw that she was now wearing the shoes that Helen was wearing in the painting. She made a small squeaking sound and covered her mouth with one hand. This wasn’t possible. It wasn’t possible!

  She took another step down and then glanced back up to see that the door she had first gone through had been replaced by one that was much taller and wider.

  “I can’t believe this!” She felt anxious and excited at the same time. Could her dream possibly have come true? She moved carefully down the stairs, completely unused to the layers she was now wearing and the high-heeled lace-up shoes she had never worn before. She giggled, thinking she would look like a clumsy fool. She straightened her back and when she stepped out of the stairwell, she tried her best not to look shocked by what was around her.

  It was beautiful, grand and elegant. The furniture, the draperies, the walls, it was all so new and different from what she was used to. She tried not to stare around her at the taller ceilings, the bigger rooms. The renovations that her family had made over the years had completely transformed the home from what it had looked like.

  She wondered what year it was. There were a few people wandering in the huge hallways and she glanced up at them as they passed, catching fleeting glimpses of them as they went by. They smiled at her but there was something in their smiles that made her pause. Their smiles weren’t in their eyes. They were like masks. She smiled back, noticing that hers was also not in her eyes. She didn’t know them. But they knew her. So why weren’t they genuinely smiling?

  She went toward the music. It was a waltz. She didn’t recognize it.

  One of the large double doors opened, and the music became louder. The gentleman who came through the door looked up at her and stopped, holding it open.

  “Good evening, Miss Helen,” he said. “How are you feeling tonight?”

  It was the first friendly face she had seen. She smiled at him. “I’m feeling good. How are you?”

  “I’m doing well, also.” He bowed slightly, but she saw the changed look on his face. He was surprised. She wondered why. She lowered her head and passed him, entering a room that was filled with laughing, dancing, talking people. There were ladies in fine gowns all around her and men dressed to the nines. She looked down again to make sure she was dressed correctly and watched closely how the ladies around her were behaving. She saw a lot of flirting, but she saw a lot of haughtiness, as well. When the men looked at her, they had mixed reactions. She could see mostly negative looks. It unnerved her.

  She pulled in a deep breath and swept into the crowd, picking up a fresh glass of wine as she moved. She wondered who she should approach and searched the faces for one that looked friendly like the man at the door. Most of the people were already involved in conversations and averted their gazes whenever she caught their eye. Finally, she spotted a young man and woman by a nearby table. They were waving frantically at her. She avoided bumping into a couple that swirled right next to her and hurried to join the waving couple.

  “Helen! Helen, dear, where have you been?” The woman stood up and grabbed her shoulders, air kissing her left cheek and then her right. “We’ve been waiting ages for you to return! What were you doing?”

  “Maybe she found a nice suitor in the hallway and decided to stop and have a chat!” The young man nodded at her. “How are you feeling now, Helen?”

  “Oh, Richard!” the woman said. “You can be such a tease! Our Helen isn’t going to simply stop and chat with a strange man. Are you, Helen.”

  “I’m sure I wouldn’t do that.” Eve tried to sound like the people around her. How would she ever fit in, knowing what she knew about the future? It was a good thing she had read so much about this time but even with her love for it, she was noticing a few negative things as well. The ballroom was extremely hot. She wondered how she would go to the bathroom with no running toilets anywhere. The large window doors that surrounded the ballroom were open, letting in a night breeze that was extremely refreshing.

  “Have you lost your fan, Helen?” Richard asked. “You look a bit peaked.”

  Eve nodded. “I have. I feel like I should go home. But…” She stopped. This was her home. She felt like an idiot and couldn’t escape the looks of confusion on her friend’s faces. She wished desperately that she knew the woman’s name and the names of all the people in the room. “I was wondering…” She lowered her voice and leaned toward the two of them. “Would you two like to play a little game?”

  The confusion was taken over by surprise. Richard’s eyes widened, and he sat back. “A game? You want to play a game, Helen?”

  Eve was beginning to think her ancestor had not had many friends and was not an outgoing person in the least. Perhaps that was why she never found love again after only one failed attempt.

  “Yes.”

  Richard looked at his companion with wide eyes. “Virginia, would you like to play a game?”

  Virginia’s eyes sparkled with enthusiasm. Eve could tell her smile was real. “I would!”

  “Wonderful!” Eve smiled at them both and sat back. “Let’s go around the room and you two tell me who you think I should dance with. I am having trouble with my own opinion. I would like to hear yours.”

  “Who you want to dance with?”

  “Oh Richard, you keep repeating what she’s saying! I think it sounds like a fun game! We should play!”

  “But…” Richard shook his head. “I didn’t think you were interested in any of these men, Helen. You’ve talked to and danced with a number of them and had nothing but negative things to say of the e
xperience.”

  “Perhaps not,” Eve responded. “But that’s why I said I don’t trust my opinion and would like yours. Do you not have my best interests at heart?”

  “Of course I do, cousin!” He responded, jolting her memory. One of the branches on her tree of the family held the name, Richard Webb. She assumed this was that cousin and smiled at him.

  “Well, then, give me your opinion of these fine gentlemen we are surrounded by.”

  Richard laughed. “Fine gentlemen! You are a laugh, dear cousin. All right, let’s play this game.”

  He and Virginia sat forward, putting their elbows on the table and smiling wide. “Okay,” Eve turned and looked behind her. She pointed to a group of three men standing nearby. “Let’s start with them.”

  Richard shook his finger in their direction, pointing each one out as he spoke. “You have no affection for Lord Sadler there, I know. What with his big bulging eyes and his groping hands.” She could tell which one he was talking about when one of the men turned to pick up a glass from the tray as the server passed him. His eyes were big, brown and bulging. She could tell why Helen had not been attracted. “Our fine gentleman,” He said the word sarcastically. “Lord Wentworth there, well, we all remember what happened when you danced with him.”

  Eve couldn’t think of a good way to ask what had happened with Lord Wentworth, but she didn’t pursue it. If he said it like that, it couldn’t have been anything good.

  “That’s for certain.” Virginia nodded, a disapproving look on her face. Eve was surprised but stayed quiet. Virginia looked at her, glancing at the three men. “And you can’t forget Lord Barnaby, either. He’s not the one for you. You nearly sank into the floor when he began to do that spinning dance for everyone, you know, the one he learned when he visiting Peru?”