Prologue
September 1821
Freddy had never seen such a chaos in her life. A fact no doubt attributable to another fact—she’d never before attended a wedding breakfast in celebration of the marriage between two circus performers. Max—her cousin by marriage and her deceased husband’s heir—lifted two children into the air at once, and his new wife, Nora Brooks, née Cavendish, flicked a knife at a target across the room. And hit it with perfect precision. The children not being hefted above heads ran around the room screaming in glee, threatening to fling themselves headfirst into the cake, and Max’s sisters were upside down in the corner, men’s breeches covering up any indelicacies as their skirts fell to cover their faces.
An absolute riot. And Freddy had never felt more alone.
Max and the family he’d married into, the Cavendishes, accepted her and her daughters as one of their own, but Freddy could not be more different from them. She need only compare her own wedding breakfast to this one to know the truth of it. Few had spoken and those who did had never raised their voices above a whisper. All had bowed low to her husband, a viscount, and to his new viscountess. Freddy had never worn the title well and was glad to give it to someone else this day.
Invisibility suited Freddy Brooks. She’d been overshadowed by sisters in her youth and overlooked by her husband later. Invisible was part of who and what she was. But she did not like the way it sat about her daughters’ shoulders. Isobel and Bridget hovered at the edges of the boisterous crowd, their bodies vibrating with tension—to join in or to pull back? They seemed poised on the edge of some cliff, and they could either plunge into unknown revelry or take a tentative step backward into familiar safety.
Freddy hoped they plunged.
“Go on,” she whispered, kneeling beside them and wrapping her hands around their thin upper arms. “Have fun. There’s a little girl over there just your age, it seems.”
Her daughters shared a look with her, then with one another, and then stepped together into the chaos. They stood there a breath before running full tilt toward the other little girl across the room.
Freddy stood. For her daughters, the years of loneliness were over. Thank heavens.
For herself …
She backed away from the assembled merrymakers and paced down the hall, letting the silence lengthen around her into a shadowy coolness. She sought out the parlor she’d spent her most recent days in and sat in a chair in the corner. Her knitting basket rested beneath it, and she pulled it out, set her tangled knitting in her lap, and tried to piece the threads together into something useful and beautiful. She’d been knitting since John’s death, for three years, and she’d not managed the useful or beautiful yet. Nothing to do but to keep trying. The click of her knitting needles forever dueling bounced about the room and settled her heart into a steady rhythm. That was destroyed by a bad stitch.
“Blast,” she whispered, trying to recover. No good. She pushed the knitting back into the basket and a flash of creamy white, hidden at the bottom beneath piles of tangled yarn, caught her eye. She freed it, her heart skipping a beat in recognition of the lost pamphlet. She’d forgotten all about it. The Wicked Widows Guide. Her friend Sarah Cavendish, Nora’s stepmother, had given it to her when Freddy and the girls moved to London a month ago to live with Max and Nora. Sarah knew most every book ever written, and just who might benefit from it. Wicked Widows. Ha. A group not for the likes of Freddy. She was far from wicked. The word, despite its sinful connotations, sounded quite … light, a bit delicious, and … fun. Nothing Freddy had ever associated with herself. She’d hidden the guide beneath her yarn, wanting to forget it but not quite able to toss it away.
Perhaps Sarah had been right. Perhaps she needed such a guide. And perhaps she’d known that on some level, so she’d tossed it beneath the yarn not to forget it but to save it for later. Should she retrieve it? Peruse its lessons? Learn from them, and—
“Damn me, if it isn’t the angel.”
Freddy’s heart thumped wildly against her ribs, and she dropped the pamphlet to her lap with a gasp, covering it with both hands.
She knew that voice, rich and musical like a song lilting across the perfect spring day. But deeper, promising the darkness of midnight instead of the brightness of noon. Mr. Webster, a trick rider for Garrison’s Circus, strolled into the room, bringing a halo of golden light with him. He was all gold—skin and hair and smile. His eyes were deep brown, though, as if his sunlight hid shadows if one probed deep enough.
She was a shadow through and through. With a blinding sun of a secret on her lap. She grasped the pamphlet tighter.
“Good morning, Mr. Webster,” she said. “I am pleased to see you were able to attend today. I know Max and Nora are pleased at your presence as well.”
He strolled into the room, a plate of cake in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. “Couldn’t miss the wedding of the century now could I? A strongman turned viscount marries a baron’s daughter turned equestrian sharpshooter?” He raised a brow, quirked a smile. “Best show in London, Lady Woodfeld.”
“Not Lady Woodfeld.”
“Pardon?” His gaze strolled down the length of her body and back up, curling tendrils of something in her chest, the darting buds of flowers growing behind her ribs. “You certainly look like her to me.”
“Nora is now the Viscountess Woodfeld. Lady Woodfeld. I could continue using the title if I desired. I do not. Please, do call me Freddy. Everyone else does.” She preferred it that way, too.
His quirk of a grin slid into a dangerous smile, and the buds behind Freddy’s ribs bloomed into roses, filling her chest with … something. Was that … desire? She breathed into it, investigating, poking. Yes. Desire. Lust. It had been so long since she’d felt that. No wonder she’d not recognized it at first.
The first year of her marriage had been a garden of delights and discoveries. Desires, yes, and intimacy—she’d learned the feel of them well enough under John’s gaze, John’s hands, even though that garden of her husband’s desire had wilted in time, withered away from neglect.
Mr. Webster set the plate and glass on a small table next to her chair. “For you. You looked parched. And famished. Then you disappeared. I was worried.”
Worried? Him about her? How odd. And sweet. She was nothing. Especially compared to him, but he stooped to notice her, to provide for her. She’d always thought this man a bit … shallow. But shallow men did not look after others.
She swallowed, cleared her throat. “Thank you. You should return to the breakfast. They will miss you.” He—all chaotic sunshine—belonged with the crowd, dominated it. She belonged here. Alone.
She reached for her basket of knitting and hid the Guide in the yarn as she retrieved her knitting and tried to make sense of where to begin again.
He stood above her, head tilted, lips curved slightly in amusement. “I should have known you’d slip away from a party to knit blankets for the needy.”