Here's the opening:
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Fidelity Scott sucked in a shivery breath and froze, knitting needles poised like twin exclamation marks amid her neatly coiled pink yarn. All sensation faded away and around her, the morning room paled to a foggy grey nothingness. The crackling fire warmed her face but lost all color and sound, and the tremor in her hands started in her knitting needles and rippled through to her toes, missing none of her in between.
It happened every time, without fail. Her friend Clarissa Pelham had mentioned that name, the one guaranteed to draw Fidelity into dreamy, mindless yearnings no matter the circumstances, and it did so with its usual heady abandon. The raw emotions shivering through her seemed to suck all the bones from her body, leaving her trembling like some loathsome sea creature.
Her younger cousin, Jessica Alcock, sprawled back across the sofa, one arm falling over her face in a pretended swoon, the other grabbing for one of the overstuffed pillows propped among the cushions. The lower half of her face, all that could be seen through her amateur theatrics, seemed to melt into a gooey puddle of drool. “Oooh, yes, Mis-ter Bright-en-burg!” she trilled in a vibrato sing-song.
A chorus of sighs broke through Fidelity’s name-induced fog and she shook herself awake. Embarrassing, that was. Honestly, if she couldn’t control her reaction when a certain gentleman’s name was mentioned, then she scored no higher on propriety than her two young cousins, which was very very bad indeed.
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Fidelity tries to be the adult in the room, which isn't difficult considering how much fun her two cousins insist upon having. Or at least it isn't difficult until someone mentions that name… and then she's sunk.
Thanks for stopping by. Cheers,
Vivian