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Prelude to the Night By Angela Plowman

Victorian England is a place of double standards and hidden mysteries. A chance meeting at the opera propels dutiful, innocent Christian into the seductive arms of an older man.

Valentine has come to England searching for a reason to live. He walks in the darkness listening for that sirens song which will recall him to life. He may have found it in beautiful young Christian but can he persuade Christian to give up the conventions of society and walk a more dangerous path?

Between the two there are perils in the London fog which could separate them forever.

The conflict of his comfortable life on one side and the dangers of loving Valentine on the other threaten to tear Christian apart. Whichever path his choose, listening to the music of the night is likely to cost Christian his soul.

Genre: Paranormal Historical M/M Romance
Release Date: January 22, 2013
Publisher: Loose Id

Excerpt:

The opera was one I had seen two seasons earlier, performed by an inferior company who lacked the talent needed to bring the difficult piece to its full glory. This night’s production was far superior, taking place as it did in the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, but my attention was not fully on the music for once.

Sometime during the second act it bore in on my consciousness that I was being watched. This was no rare occurrence at the opera or theater; I think sometimes more than half the people there attended just to watch the other half and exchange gossip with their cronies.

That night, though, I felt I was the subject of more than passing attention, and it irritated me that I could not identify where the gaze was coming from. Every time I leaned a little out of our box to look around, I could detect no opera glasses trained our way. Of course, I reasoned, it was most likely Constance who was attracting all the attention.

I could not shake the feeling that it was my own person that was being subjected to intense scrutiny. Normally I would have been so engrossed in the music I would not have noticed anything else. I loved the final aria of the first act in particular, but that almost physical itch of awareness of being watched was damnably annoying. The feeling lasted until the curtain went down at the end of the act and we rose for the intermission.

The theater was rife with speculation that night. It seemed amid the usual smattering of minor nobility there was a mysterious newcomer to gossip about, a foreign aristocrat. I was not much interested and left my mother happily chatting to two of her set while I made my way to my friend’s box to finalize arrangements for that evening.

It took me a while to reach my goal, stopping and being stopped now and again to exchange polite greetings, inquiries as to health, and enjoyment of the evening.

I turned precipitously into what I thought to be the box of my friends. I closed the door behind me, stepping forward. “Save me, I beg you!” I intoned in dramatic humor, only to find myself facing a total stranger who was sole occupant of the box into which I had let myself.

I was sure my heart skipped a beat.

He sat a little back from the balcony with the curtain partly drawn. No doubt from the outside it would look as though the box were empty. He was turned away from the stage as though expecting someone to arrive, as I had done.

The light from the auditorium fell upon a face that would have been more at home on the bust of a Roman emperor. He was as pale as some of those marble visages too. Dark hair fell back in a glossy wave from a high brow to flow around his shoulders. His features were commanding, lips full beneath an elegantly long nose, but it was his eyes that caught and held me. They were the eyes of some wild animal, gleaming in the half-light, predatory. If he had licked his lips then and there, he could not have strengthened the impression more.

“I am so sorry.” I was mortified. “Forgive the intrusion. I have mistaken my way.”

When I straightened from my apologetic bow, it was to find him smiling and putting a hand out to me as he rose from his seat.

“Not at all,” he said in a voice that bore a slight but unmistakable foreign accent. “Such beauty should never apologize for intruding. Indeed, such beauty could never be an intrusion.”

I bristled slightly at the description. Has I been mistaken or a woman to be described thusly? Not to mention that in my eyes the beauty was all his. I had never seen a man so worthy of that epitaph.

“Forgive me,” he said. “My imperfect knowledge of your language has caused me to stumble. Handsome, I should say. But you startled me.”

“The pardon is all mine to beg,” I said, starting to back my way out, but he crossed the space to place his hand upon my arm before I could gain the door. He was broader and a few inches taller than me, with a presence that spoke of being used to obedience. No fallen angel could have been so compelling.

“Stay awhile.” His voice dropped almost in a command, and my feet took it as such, for they would move me no farther. His hand shifted from my arm to my chin. As he touched me, I felt a chill, like stepping into a draft. His gaze bore into me, seeming to pierce through me, to know all my secrets, knew me to the very heart of my being and all that I did not yet know of myself.

I swayed a little beneath his touch, as if I had stood up too quickly after drinking strong wine. As though contemplating a purchase, he tilted my head to one side.

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