Courting Midnight

the long version

1813, Regency, England. Lucius White is the oldest living vampire in the world - a powerful, shape-changing upyr. But for the last several hundred years, his life on earth has paled to mere existence. He needs little and feels less.... Then a chance roadside encounter gives him the opportunity to assume a mortal identity, and Lucius experiences the throb of human hungers with an intensity he can't remember having felt before. Taking on the guise of a prosperous - if eccentric - local squire, he becomes a tempting prize for local matchmaking mamas. His attempts to evade them lead him to a most unsuitable object of desire; poor but spirited Theodora Becket. For he uses his vampire thrall to bring them both indescribable ecstasy. Soon, despite a thousand years of ennui, Lucius is ablaze, an impossibly powerful upyr in love. The question then becomes can any woman trust a man whose passion can't withstand the light of day?