Regency Romance: One Perfect Moment

Regency Romance: One Perfect Moment

<i><b>Regency Romance: One Perfect Moment</b></i><b> is a short story by Amelia Fernside.</b><br /><br />Her horse, spooked by an adder, was running at breakneck speed. Lady Mary-Anne felt her saddle slipping to her left side. She sensed a pressure around her abdomen and then a force, pulling her from the falling saddle. She watched, as though in a dream, as her horse raced through the grass without her. <br /><br />And yet she went on, as if somehow carried by a strong wind. The world slowed. She looked down and ran her gloved hand along the neck of a horse. <br /><br />Someone’s arm was cinched around her waist. What had happened? <br /><br />She looked up to see a young man above her. <br /><br />He tilted his square chin and looked down at her. “My lady,” he said. “It is my usual habit to remove my hat when I meet a lady, but as you can see, my hands are full.”<br /><br />He took her home, then disappeared, in typical regency romance fashion.<br /><br />Years later, Mary-Anne still dreamed her hero would reappear. Meanwhile, her parents insisted she marry the son of a Duke who lived nearby, a man who someday would be a Duke himself, a man she abhorred. She strenuously rejected the idea, but in the end she relented.<br /><br />She walked alone beside the circular edge of the fountain at her family’s posh manor. “I have waited five years. My family thought me foolish, and I think now they have been right. I’ve waited for you because I truly believed we shared one perfect moment, a special rapport that comes so very rarely.” A tear prickled at the corner of her eye, but Lady Mary-Anne refused to cry. “I must move on,” she said.<br /><br />But, dear reader, an untimely death, not so typical in regency romance, ignited the ending. <br /><br />