Scandal Meets Its Match (The May Flowers #7) - Merry Farmer
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.