Page 48 of The Grand Mistletoe Assembly
SURPRISING CAPTAIN DAVIES BY JEMMA FROST
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Copyright © 2023 by Jemma Frost.
All rights reserved.
CHAPTER 1
NOVEMBER 18, 1820, LONDON, ENGLAND
The stranger desired her.
Bryony Chapman knew it to be true from the odd intuition that came with dreams. Reaching out a hand, she tried to touch his shoulder, to make him face her so she could identify him, but the air became molasses, slowing her movements.
“Sir?” The word refused to be spoken—had she lost her voice?
But the man must have felt her presence behind him because he turned around, revealing himself to be none other than Captain Nathaniel Davies, her brother’s best friend. The man who’d occupied all of her girlhood fantasies.
“Nathaniel …” Again, no sound filled the space between them, but he smiled anyway as if happy to see her.
He desired her.
As she did him.
But then his visage transformed into a far less welcome sight. Oscar. Her dead husband.
Except it wasn’t truly him. Garish fangs filled his mouth. A menacing gleam shone in his sunken black eyes. Hideous laughter erupted as his clawed fingers lunged forward, scratching at her hair and skin.
No! No!
She tried to run away but her feet were frozen, the molasses turned to ice with no escape in sight.
No! No!
“No!” Bryony shot awake from the nightmare with a yelp, sweaty tendrils of hair sticking to her forehead while her blankets lay tangled between her legs. The morning sun peeped through her closed bedroom curtains, and she flopped back to her pillow with a groan, leftover fear slowly abating to be replaced by frustration.
Another restless night.
Another dream turned nightmare.
All because of those cursed paintings.
One would think all vestiges of her late husband’s affairs had been eradicated years ago after his death. Once the appropriate amount of mourning time had passed, Bryony had ordered his possessions to be locked away in the attic, forever out of sight and unable to plague her with painful memories.
Until last week.
An industrious maid had found the key to an old, locked closet and found five miniature paintings Oscar had commissioned for his mistress. How the man could still taunt Bryony from beyond the grave truly astounded her. But she would have the last word this time. Tonight, in fact.
Her evening plans, the Grand Mistletoe Assembly, provided the perfect solution for ridding her home of the paintings once and for all. They would be auctioned off for charity, and the proceeds would help the foundling home.
Bryony could return home free of the cursed things. She couldn’t wait.
Her lady’s maid, Nancy, knocked on the bedroom door before peeking inside. “My lady, are you all right? I heard a shout.”
Flushing—this was the second time this week Nancy had caught her shouting after a nightmare—Bryony dragged forth an expression of calm. “A spider ran across my slippers,” she fibbed. “Or so I thought. Turns out it was just a trick of the light. Shall we prepare for breakfast?”
The girl nodded, apparently accepting the explanation, and retrieved a morning gown from the armoire as Bryony stretched her arms high overhead before easing out of bed. “Mrs. Healy said everything’s set for this evening. She removed the wax stain with a hot coal wrapped in a rag. I’d never heard of such a thing, but it looks good as new!”
