Chapter 1
London – October, 1887
Lenore Garrett was perfectly happy with the way her life had turned out, though she was certain that almost every one of her friends back home in Haskell, Wyoming would balk and make faces at her if they knew the truth of her situation. The letters she received from home were full of awe and amazement that a rancher’s daughter—albeit a wealthy one—could pull up stakes and create a brand-new life for herself amongst England’s high society.
And if they all believed that she had dashed off to foreign shores as one of dozens of American Dollar Princesses, intent on marrying a titled gentleman so that she could lord it over folks back home, then that was what they could believe. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.
Lenore knew better.
She’d traveled to England a year before with her father, who had made the trip for business purposes. Lenore had begged him to let her tag along. Indeed, her life had depended on it in very real ways. Her dear papa always had been indulgent, so of course he had allowed her to accompany him on his business trip. He might not have been so quick to bring her to London, if he’d known she had no intention whatsoever of returning to America. Ever. Returning to America, let alone Haskell, would be a death sentence.
“Do you need a drink of something?” Freddy—that is, Lord Frederick Herrington, Earl of Herrington, her fiancé—asked, leaning closer to her as they stood in the crowded lobby of The Concord Theater in Drury Lane.
“Oh. What?” Lenore blinked her way out of her pensive thoughts and turned to Freddy, fanning herself furiously to cool her suddenly overheated face. “Do theaters serve refreshments before the show has started?”
Freddy shrugged, a genial smile on his handsome face as he glanced around the lobby for the answer to her question. “Probably not,” he said. “But you look a bit piqued, so I thought I’d ask.”
“Dear Freddy.” Lenore grinned, resting her free hand in the crook of his arm. “You really are a gem.” She raised her fan to hide her face from casual onlookers and proceeded to say, “Reese is a lucky man indeed.”
“I most certainly am,” Lord Reese Howsden said, leaning into Freddy’s other side so that the three of them formed a secretive cluster. He winked for good measure.
Lenore knew full well he was winking at Freddy, even though, to the outside observer, it would look as though he were teasing Lenore instead. Lenore had been aware from the start that Reese and Freddy were lovers, and that they were passionately devoted to each other in a union that was stronger than most marriages she knew. They’d even adopted a baby girl, Rose, from a tenant on Reese’s country property to raise together, along with Reese’s son, Harry, from his long-deceased wife. To the rest of the world, it seemed like nothing more than Reese’s generosity at taking in a foundling child to keep his son company. In fact, it was the happy couple’s way of starting a family together, the same as any other married friends Lenore had. Indeed, she considered herself a co-conspirator in her friends’ love story.
And if she were honest—which she hadn’t been, not for a long time, not as she should—the false engagement she had entered into with Freddy did far more to protect her than it ever would to protect Freddy and Reese, as was its intention.
“You do look a bit anxious,” Reese picked up where Freddy had left off, frowning gently at Lenore. “Is it the crowd?”
“I’ve never seen a crowd so large or so boisterous at an opening night for an untested play,” Freddy added, glancing out over the packed lobby.
“You can’t go wrong with one of Niall Cristofori’s plays. And all of London has been buzzing about this young upstart, Everett Jewel,” Reese said with a slight shrug, nodding to the poster hung on one of the far walls. It depicted a dazzlingly handsome man with dark hair and startling eyes, Mr. Jewel, dressed as the character he would be portraying that evening. “They say he’s the greatest talent since Edmund Kean.”
“Well, he’s better looking than Kean at any rate,” Freddy added with a laugh. “Much better looking.”
“Don’t get any ideas, love,” Reese teased him in a voice low enough that only Freddy and Lenore could hear.
“It’s hard not to with a figure like that,” Freddy murmured, swaying closer to Reese.
“Are you trying to make me jealous?” Reese all but whispered in return.
“Stop,” Lenore laughed loudly, drawing attention from some of the expectant theater-goers near them. “The two of you will land in hot soup if you don’t behave with a little more decorum.”
“Land in hot soup?” Reese snorted. “Is that an Americanism?”
“No one would dare to suggest I am guilty of any impropriety when I have such a dazzling and clever fiancée,” Freddy said, inching closer to Lenore and hugging her arm to his side in a move that was scandalously informal for a public setting. But that was the point. Freddy knew how to play his part and avoid scrutiny over his true nature well.
Lenore chuckled and smacked him with her fan. She would never be in love with Freddy, for obvious reasons, but he was the best friend she ever could have hoped for. Reese as well. The three of them made the perfect team. The antics they got up to—with or without involving the children—were enough to content her with the blunt fact that she would never find real love.
Almost enough.
“Are you certain you’re still happy with our arrangement?” Freddy asked, as if sensing her thoughts. Or perhaps he’d read her expression, which had fallen as her attention was snagged by a particularly amorous couple at the far end of the lobby. She knew Lady Agnes Hamilton vaguely. The way the woman smiled adoringly—or perhaps it was anxiously—at Lord Granger, her color high and her eyes bright, left Lenore with a wistful feeling in her chest that she couldn’t avoid.
“I am perfectly happy,” Lenore said, standing straighter and insisting inwardly that she wasn’t saying that to convince herself. “I have a delightful life here in England. I have wonderful friends. And I get to attend opening nights of plays that all of London will be talking about tomorrow.”
“True,” Freddy said, tilting his head to the side, then leaning closer to go on with, “But I’ve come to know you well enough in this last year to know that you would be much happier if you could end the evening in bed with a bloke who fancies you instead of curled up with yet another issue of that erotic journal, Nocturne, that has all of London talking, and the unmentionable item you failed to hide fast enough when I knocked on your boudoir door to see if you were ready earlier.”
Lenore’s already flushed face went beet red at Freddy’s mention of the artifact in question. “You’re not supposed to even know about such things,” she hissed, “let alone mention them in public.”
“Darling,” he said with a smirk. “I not only know about those things, Reese and I have an entire set for when we’re in particularly high spirits.”
Lenore laughed so hard she snorted, drawing far more attention than she needed to. She found herself feigning a coughing fit just so that the middle-aged matron who frowned at her would glance away instead of attempting to listen in on the conversation. Most of London already thought she was an unrefined heathen from the Wild West. She didn’t have to prove they were right at every turn.