Free A Dance in Moonlight (The Fitzhugh Trilogy) by Sherry Thomas

his, her eyes wide and deep with gratitude. “Thank you for being so kind. Let me talk to her. I promise I will present you no later than tomorrow.”
    He had not expected such an emphatic pledge. Perhaps at the back of his mind there had been a small fear that she might want to keep him hidden and never publicly acknowledged, for at her reassurance he suddenly felt as light as one of the clouds floating overhead. “I will wait for your word, then.”
    She took a deep breath and, with her sister as witness, set her hands on his shoulders and kissed him on his cheek.
     

     
     
    LOUISE WAS ALREADY PACING in the sitting room of Isabelle’s suite, her skirts rustling with the agitation of her gait. “Is that Mr. Fitzwilliam? Is he here to visit the lakes or to visit you?” she demanded almost before Isabelle had closed the door behind herself.
    Trust Louise to waste no time on the preliminaries.
    “He is here to visit me,” said Isabelle. That still gave her little starbursts inside.
    “Then why didn’t you invite him for tea? I should meet him, if he has traveled hundreds of miles to woo you.”
    Isabelle crossed the room. Her window overlooked the front of the hotel; the hills stretched green and glossy into the distance. “There is something about Mr. Fitzwilliam you don’t know.”
    “What is it?”
    She had meant to idly toy with an edge of the curtain, only to find that she had to unclench her fingers from around a handful of fabric. If her brother thought her mad, perhaps she wouldn’t mind so much. But Louise had always been her champion, her shoulder to cry on. “He bears a great resemblance to Fitz.”
    Dead silence. Then, “No, Isabelle. No. Please tell me it isn’t true.”
    Her heart sank. She swiveled her head a few degrees from side to side, trying to loosen the tension in her neck, before she closed the window and turned around—there was certainly no turning back from this point. “You have twins, Louise. You know that a superficial resemblance is just that, a superficial resemblance.”
    “No.” The jut to Louise’s jaw only made Isabelle’s heart plummet further. She recognized that expression—Louise was digging in and not even a steam locomotive would make her budge. “Victoria and Cordelia are both my children. Your situation is not remotely analogous. Imagine if your son was taken away from you. Then you accidentally came upon another child who looks exactly like him and brought him home to raise as your own. How would that look?”
    Desperate, that was how it would look.
    “And this isn’t fair to Mr. Fitzwilliam either,” Louise went on inexorably. “You wouldn’t have been interested in him at all if he didn’t look like Fitz.”
    “I will admit that on the day we met, I would not have given Mr. Fitzwilliam a second glance had he not looked like Fitz. But—”
    “See, you admit it yourself.”
    Elder siblings—sometimes they were wonderful; sometimes they conveniently forgot that she was no longer twelve. “Let me finish, Louise. It took me no time to begin to see Mr. Fitzwilliam for himself. He has led an entirely different life from Fitz and is an entirely different person. I like him for who he is, not whom he resembles.”
    Louise looked at her as if she were a child trying to deny having stolen a sweet, with that very same piece of confection still in her mouth. “No, Isabelle, that is wishful thinking on your part. Maybe you don’t mind him for who he is, but make no mistake, you want him because of whom he resembles.”
    This was exactly what she’d been afraid of, being buried beneath Louise’s anxious concerns with no way of changing the latter’s mind. “That is not true. That is simply not true,” she could only repeat.
    Louise clasped a hand on Isabelle’s arm. “I’m sorry, Isabelle. I should have realized something was amiss when you didn’t return home bawling. I know what I say hurts you now and will hurt you for some time to come, but you