Under An English Moon

by Bess McBride

“Very well,” Reggie said. “The wedding is set for Tuesday fortnight.” He came around the sofa to stand behind Phoebe and lay a hand on her shoulder. Phoebe realized he did it as if to protect her from his stepmother.

  “Lady Hamilton has just been inviting us to call her mom,” Phoebe said with a mischievous grin.

  “Miss Warner jests, gentlemen.” Lady Hamilton rose. “I think my daughter-in-law and future daughter-in-law might address me as Lucy if they were of a mind to, but not mom!” She inclined her head and nodded. “I am so pleased to hear that preparations for the wedding progress. Please let me know if there is any way in which I may assist. Now, may I see my granddaughter?”

  Mattie sent for Mia who ran to her grandmother when Jane brought her in.

  “Grandma!” she cried out happily as Lady Hamilton picked her up.

  “A walk in the garden, my pet?” Lady Hamilton asked. “We will return directly.” She carried Mia out and Jane followed, leaving the men staring at her back in some disbelief.

  “What has possessed my mother?” William said.

  “I don’t know,” Mattie said, “but I like it. Did you hear Mia call her grandma? Your mother didn’t blink an eye.”

  “Lady Hamilton seems to have softened,” Reggie said in a voice of wonder.

  “I think she’s realized that we’re not all going to disappear on them. You know, take off for the Colonies,” Mattie said. “She seems pretty tickled to hear that Reggie isn’t leaving either, or maybe his father is.”

  “Yes, she did mention that your father assumes you’ll stay in England since you’re buying a house here.”

  “I believe that is our wish, is it not, Phoebe?” Reggie looked down at her.

  “Your wish is my command,” Phoebe couldn’t resist saying with a grin.

  “Never a command, my dear one,” he said, bending and speaking near her ear. A delicious shiver ran up her spine.

  “I’d say get a room, but don’t,” Mattie chuckled. She rose. “Come on, William. I think we’d better leave these two alone and go see if your mother really does chase after Mia.” William smiled broadly, and they left the drawing room.

  Phoebe pulled Reggie down and kissed his lips. “It’s an old saying, Reggie. You know I don’t mean that.”

  “A lord can only hope that his commands will be obeyed,” Reggie whispered against her lips.

  “Oh, puhleeezz,” she breathed. “Try wishing for that on the moon.”

  Epilogue

  Annie thanked the bank clerk and stared at the safety deposit box. So, Phoebe really had gotten a safety deposit box. Would anything be in there? Phoebe had only been gone for a couple of months. It wasn’t like Annie missed hearing Phoebe’s voice every day since she and her cousin had often gone for months without talking on the phone or seeing each other. But knowing that she might never see Phoebe again felt like death, and Annie had come to London to see if Phoebe had bought a safety deposit box as she’d promised.

  Annie found it hard to think in terms of the time travel. If Phoebe had only been gone for a few months, had she had time to find anything to put in the box? With a wedding to plan? And a house to move into?

  Yet in reality, Phoebe had actually been gone almost two hundred years, plenty of time to make memories and include them in the box. Annie felt nauseous, as she always did, at the thought that Phoebe had already lived her life and died. She had seen the date of Phoebe’s death when she looked at the computer that night in her apartment months ago. Phoebe had lived a long life, but it didn’t change the fact that she was now dead.

  And Annie was now without family—and without Johan, the flake. She had no idea what she had been doing with him anyway. He was nothing like her. He shared none of her interests really, not even a common culture, and she hated skiing. The high mountains scared the dickens out of her. He had been the proverbial fish out of water in Hawaii. She had said goodbye to him in Hawaii after only two days.

  Annie hadn’t wanted to admit it to Mouse at the time, but the thought of going to Hawaii, knowing she was saying goodbye to her cousin forever, had been too much to handle. She had gone but could not forget Phoebe, and she felt she had left something behind, something unresolved.

  When she returned to New York, the apartment seemed empty but filled with Phoebe’s things. She had packed them up and stored them, unwilling to get rid of anything—just in case Phoebe was able to come back or had to come back. It was possible that things had gone wrong, that Phoebe couldn’t abide life in 1827—no matter what the Internet showed. Since Annie hadn’t looked at Phoebe’s information during the past two months, she didn’t know if it had changed. Maybe the past did change by the actions of those in the future.

  She sat down on the stool in the vault and stared at the box. Well, clearly, Phoebe had made it back to England because here was a safety deposit box in Annie’s name and in Lady Phoebe Hamilton’s name. The bank clerk had informed her that other relatives of Lady Hamilton’s had also been authorized to access the box, and Annie worried they had taken things out of it meant for her—letters, photographs.

  With a shaking hand, she inserted the key into the old-fashioned steel box and opened the lid.

  The box was filled almost to the brim in an untidy mess of papers and photographs. Photographs!

  Annie pulled out the pictures on top and examined them, surprised to see them in color. Various groups of people posed on a lawn in the first picture—almost as if it were a picture of several generations of a family. A summer photo—some wore jeans or shorts, a few wore dresses and suits, especially the older ones. Small children sat cross-legged in the front. She turned the picture over.

  The Hamiltons, Summer 2010, Bedfordshire

  Summer 2010? Had Phoebe come back to the present but stayed in England? She scanned the picture for Phoebe’s face but didn’t recognize anyone who looked like Phoebe.

  The next picture, also in color, looked much like the first but was dated 2000. Other pictures in earlier decades with the same composition showed the family group changing—new people showed up, some disappeared.

  She dug further into the box, pulling out black and white photographs. The clothing changed in the 1960s and 1950s, as it did in the 1940s and 1930s. The quality of the photography changed as well as did the background. Occasionally, a large imposing house could be seen in the background. In others, family members posed on a terrace of some sort with a river visible in the background.

  Annie smiled as she pulled out pictures from the turn of the century—the twentieth century. Such beautiful dresses, and the men were so handsome. None of the women wore slacks by then as they had in the photographs beginning in the 1920s or so.

  At last, she pulled out a photograph where she recognized Phoebe. 1890. Phoebe with white hair, in a dark Victorian dress with a brooch visible at the high neck, sat in a rocking chair with a wide smile. Reggie, looking much like his male cover model self, albeit with white hair, rested a hand on her shoulder. Young men and women lounged around them in lighter shades of clothing as if they had been playing tennis. Small children hardly seemed to sit still in the photograph.

  The Hamiltons, Summer 1890, Bedfordshire

  The earliest image was 1850, a daguerreotype, showing Phoebe and Reggie, younger now, with several young adult children and two who looked like teenagers, all in Victorian dress.

  Underneath those were several small painted portrait miniatures of Phoebe, Reggie, and their children. Annie snatched one up. The wedding portrait! She smiled.

  The portrait, probably painted before the marriage, showed Phoebe in a white empire-waisted dress of some shiny material, sitting next to Reggie. White flowers were interspersed throughout the curls on top of her hair, and she looked like a woodland fairy. Reggie looked resplendent in a cutaway coat of royal blue and beige pantaloons, a top hat perched dashingly on his head.

  She found a thick folded note beneath the pictures, sealed with wax, and she stared at it for a moment. Her name was written
on the front: Miss Annie Warner. She hesitated to break the seal and wondered if she should take it to an expert in historical documents. It looked old.

  But she knew it was from Phoebe. Who else? And written in the last two months, or almost two hundred years ago.

  Annie pried the wax off the letter and opened it carefully. She unfolded the thick paper and read, the writing clearly done by ink with a few splotches.

  Dear Annie,

  It’s me! If you’re reading this, then you found the safety deposit box. I’m so glad you did. I’ve run up to London several times to put things in it, and had Reggie drop some things into it as well. I instructed my children to toss in a family portrait every decade, and I left a note in my will, stating I hope their children continue the tradition. I wanted you to see that we’re doing well. I’m happy and well and so is Reggie. We’re still chugging along. No terrible plague or anything yet!

  Annie ran her finger over the smiley face Phoebe had drawn.

  If I had it to do all over again, I’d probably bring a few more things with me, but the recipe for holistic antibiotics has been a blessing. It has gotten me out of a jam or two! And Mattie was so happy to have central heating installed. William and Reggie worked together to install it in both of our houses. I think it saved us during last year’s wet English winter.

  We have a baby now, a little girl! You’d love her. I never thought about children before I got married, but now that I have one of my own, I think about you, and I wonder if you married and had your own children. I’m sure you did. I wish I could meet them.

  I don’t know when you’ll check the box, or if you ever will, so I don’t know how many years have passed since I left...in your time. I’ve wracked my brain but can’t think of a single way you can “drop me a line” to let me know how you’re doing. There’s still no way to send me a care package, or at least a photo of you and your family.

  I hope you and Johan are well. Maybe marriage? Little Swiss children yodeling? I can see it now.

  Another smiley face was drawn.

  I’ll let you go for now. I miss you, Cousin, and I wish I could see you, but you’ll remember that we don’t dare try to travel back while we have a child. The risk is too great. I love you, Annie.

  Minnie Mouse

  Annie smiled tenderly and folded the letter to return it to the box. Everything had gone well. Phoebe had lived a full life and her descendents lived on through her, even carrying out her wishes. She picked up the photograph at the bottom of the stack—the one dated 2010.

  The Hamiltons, Summer 2010, Bedfordshire.

  Bedfordshire.

  Her next destination.

  Books by Bess McBride

  Time Travel Romance

  Forever Beside You in Time

  Moonlight Wishes in Time

  (Book One of the Moonlight Wishes in Time series)

  A Smile in Time

  (Book Three of the Train Through Time series)

  Together Forever in Time

  (Book Two of the Train Through Time series)

  A Train Through Time

  (Book One of the Train Through Time series)

  Love of My Heart

  Contemporary/Romantic Suspense

  Will Travel for Romance Boxed Set Books 1-5

  A Shy Woman in Love

  A Sigh of Love

  A Trail of Love

  A Penny for Your Thoughts

  Jenny Cussler’s Last Stand

  Contemporary/Ghost Story

  Caribbean Dreams of Love

  On a Warm Sea of Love

  About the Author

  I began my first fiction-writing attempt when I was fourteen. I shut myself up in my bedroom one summer and obsessively worked on a time-travel/pirate novel set in the beloved Caribbean of my youth. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to hammer it out on a manual typewriter (oh yeah, I’m that old) before it was time to go back to school. The draft of that novel has long since disappeared, but the story still simmers within, and I will finish it one day soon.

  I was born in Aruba to American parents and lived in Venezuela until my family returned to the United States when I was twelve. I couldn’t fight the global travel bug, and I joined the US Air Force at eighteen to “see the world.” After twenty-one wonderful and fulfilling years traveling the world and the birth of one beautiful daughter, I pursued my dream of finally getting a college education. With a license in mental health therapy, I worked with veterans and continue to work on behalf of veterans. I continue to travel, my first love, and almost all of my books involve travel.

  I write time-travel romances, light paranormal/fantasy romances (lovelorn ghosty stuff), contemporary romances, and romantic suspense. Visit my website at www.BessMcBride.com