“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.
“I find Nocturne to be quite enough on its own at the moment,” she whispered to Freddy. “The stories in that particular periodical are educational as well as entertaining.” She assumed a superior attitude and punctuated her statement with a nod.
“That publication is pure smut,” Reese said, leaning in so that the three of them formed a triumvirate again. “Which is why everyone adores it, of course.”
Lenore and Freddy both laughed like naughty schoolchildren who had been caught with the journal in question. In fact, Nocturne had been captivating London audiences for over a year with its highly erotic content. Mostly because every scandalous story contained in its pages was clearly about someone in society whom everyone knew, based on their behavior at various parties and events throughout the season. The new season had yet to officially begin, but London was buzzing with enough activity that high and low both were waiting with baited breath for the latest edition, which was weeks overdue, as far as everyone was concerned.
In more ways than one, Lenore considered herself lucky to have avoided inclusion in Nocturne. She was exactly the sort whom its author—whoever that may have been—included in its pages. She was young, beautiful, wealthy, and American. And she wasn’t particularly shy about making her presence known at social events. But it was all the things that society didn’t know about her, all the things that even Freddy and Reese didn’t know about her, that she dreaded the author of Nocturne getting wind of. As flattering to her saucy sense of vanity as it might have been to be included in Nocturne’s pages, she had too many things to hide.
A burst of shrill laughter shook Lenore out of her thoughts, and she glanced across the room to see Lady Agnes nearly hyperventilating as she clung to Lord Granger’s arm. The circle of waiting theater patrons near the pair took a step back, affording the couple a bit of space. Lady Agnes seemed to be dancing on her spot and fanned herself furiously as her laughter continued unabated. Lenore frowned. Whatever Lady Agnes was up to, it was more than simply flirting. If she had been a betting man, like her father, she would have said something was wrong with the poor woman.
No sooner had that thought struck her than Lenore spotted a shadowy figure beyond Lady Agnes, near the theater door, staring straight at her. Her heart leapt in her chest, and she suddenly felt every bit as agitated and amorous as Lady Agnes.
“Is that Mr. Mercer staring at you as though he’d like to take a bite out of you?” Freddy asked with a teasing grin.
“I believe it is,” Lenore said with feigned casualness, fanning herself as she made eye-contact with Mr. Phineas Mercer.
“Have you two spoken since that coup you pulled to get old what’s his name to confess to burning down Danny Long’s pub?” Freddy asked on.
“Only in passing, at parties and the like,” Lenore said, cursing herself for sounding so breathless. “We had quite a conversation
