Julia Quinn
Dancing At Midnight
The second book in the Blydon series, 1995
For my father, who never forgets to tell me how proud he is of me. I'm proud of you, too!
And for Paul, even though he seemed to think the story could be improved by moving the whole thing to the rain forest.
Chapter 1
Oxfordshire, England, 1816
If, one by one, you weeded all the world- Arabella Blydon blinked. That couldn't be right. There weren't any gardeners in The Winter's Tale. She held the book farther from her face. Even worse. She pulled the book closer. The type on the page slowly focused. If, one by one, you wedded all the world-Belle sighed and leaned back against a tree trunk. That made a lot more sense. She blinked a couple of times, willing her bright blue eyes to focus on the words that lay before her on the page. They refused to obey, but she wasn't about to read with her face pressed into the book, so she squinted and plodded on.
A chilly wind passed across her, and she glanced up at the overcast sky. It was going to rain, no doubt about that, but if she were lucky she'd have another hour until the first drops fell. That was all the time she'd need to finish The Winter's Tale. And that would mark the end of her Grand Shakespearean Quest, the semi-academic endeavor that had occupied her spare time for nearly six months. She'd started with All's Well that Ends Well and proceeded alphabetically, wending her way through Hamlet, all the Henrys, Romeo and Juliet, and a host of other plays she hadn't even heard of before. She wasn't exactly sure why she'd done it, other than the simple fact that she liked to read, but now that the end was in sight she was damned if she was going to let a few raindrops get in her way.