The Luckiest Lady in London

by Sherry Thomas

  An invitation was issued for luncheon, but Mr. Lucas declined with much effusive gratitude for their time and trouble. Louisa suspected that the emotional man was in great need of solitude. They let him go, and watched on the steps before the house as he drove his rented dogcart out of sight.

  Her husband headed straight into the house. “I could do with some whiskey.”

  She did not follow him immediately, except with her eyes, her heart swelling with a ferocious tenderness for this man. His mother had to be one of the most difficult and unhappy subjects of his life. But he had burnished Mr. Lucas’s angelic image of the late Lady Wrenworth, because he recognized that the illusion was what sustained Mr. Lucas, because the belief that he had had the love of a wonderful woman was all Mr. Lucas had to comfort himself in an existence that found neither fortune, fame, nor a family of his own.

  She might attribute Felix’s sweetness to her to the fact that he wanted something from her. But this . . . this was pure kindness, without anything to be gained on his part.

  The sign she had been waiting for, it had come.

  She ran into the house, found him in his study, leaped on him, knocking over the whiskey he was pouring, and kissed him with all her might.

  “I love you. I love you. I love you.” Her words emerged breathless, almost hiccupy.

  He pulled back and gazed at her in astonishment. Then he kissed her hard. “Say that again.”

  “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

  Her words were largely muffled by his lips.

  He broke off the kiss. “I hope you aren’t saying it out of some misplaced sense of my nobility. You saw the man. I could hardly send him home with a broken heart.”

  “No. I haven’t any misplaced sense of your nobility, Felix. I know exactly who you are and I love exactly who you are.”

  He stared at her for a second before pulling her into his arms again. “That’s good enough for me. Now tell me some more; count all the ways you love me.”

  EPILOGUE

  Louisa finally visited the Roman folly in person the following August.

  Her jaw dropped the moment she stepped onto the belvedere. “You said this location was remote. There is a village right there. I can see into the windows of the cottages.”

  “I realized that only when I came to place the dress dummies here before our wedding,” her husband answered, grinning. “It wasn’t as if I visited frequently—silly place.”

  “How come you never said anything to me?”

  “You were willing to make love in the Greek folly in the middle of an outdoor party. You don’t lack for courage—or perversity.”

  She hit him on the arm. “That was at night. I am much more respectable during the day.”

  “We don’t have to do anything naughty. We can just enjoy the view.”

  She linked her fingers with his. The view was quite ordinary, but the day was warm and lovely and she was inexpressibly happy.

  “Still over the moon about your comet?” he asked, smiling at her.

  “It will always be my first.”

  It had been an accidental discovery, as she compared photographs taken of the same patch of sky on successive nights. Together they did the work afterward, comparing the timing and trajectory of the comet to those that had been observed before, eliminating the possibility that it was one of those on a returning trip—and that was when she first learned that Felix had discovered other comets before.

  But now it was confirmed: a previously unknown astronomical body. She hadn’t stopped smiling since the letter from the Royal Astronomical Society arrived.

  And she couldn’t help wrapping her arms around him. “Oh, all right, why not? We came all the way here. Let’s give the villagers an eyeful.”

  He guided her to a corner of the belvedere where it would be difficult for anyone below to see anything. “I know I love you for a reason. I will love you even more when they come for you with pitchforks.”

  She laughed, cupped his face, and looked into his eyes. “And I could never be this happy with anyone else.”

  Read on for a special preview of the next historical romance by Sherry Thomas.

  Coming soon from Berkley Sensation.

  PROLOGUE

  1891

  On a storm-whipped sea, some prayed, some puked. Catherine Blade wedged herself between the bed and the bulkhead of her stateroom and went on with her breathing exercises, ignoring the fifty-foot swells of the North Atlantic and the teetering of the steamship.

  A muffled shriek, faint but entirely unexpected, nearly caused her pooled chi to scatter. Really, she’d expected more reserve from members of the British upper class.

  Then something else. A blunt sound, as if generated by a kick to the back of the neck. She checked for the box of matches she carried inside her blouse.

  There was no light in the corridor—the electricity had been cut off. She braced her feet apart, held on to the doorknob, and listened, diving beneath the unholy lashing of the sea, the heroic, if desperate, roar of the ship’s engines, and the fearful moans in staterooms all along the corridor—the abundant dinner from earlier now tossing in stomachs as turbulent as the sea.

  The shriek came again, all but lost in the howl of the storm. It came from the outside this time, farther fore along the port promenade.

  She walked on soft, cloth-soled shoes that made no sounds. The air in the passage was colder and damper than it ought to be—someone had opened a door to the outside. She suspected a domestic squabble. The English were a stern people in outward appearance, but they did not lack for passion and injudiciousness in private.

  A cross-corridor interrupted the rows of first-class staterooms. At the two ends were doors leading onto the promenade. She stopped at the scent of blood.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Help . . .”

  She recognized the voice, though she’d never heard it so weak. “Mrs. Reynolds, are you all right?”

  The light of a match showed that Mrs. Reynolds bled from her head. Blood smeared her face and her white dressing gown. Next to her on the carpet sprawled a large, leather-bound Bible, likely her own: the weapon of assault.

  The ship plunged. Mrs. Reynolds’s body slid on the carpet. Catherine leaped and stayed her before her temple slammed into the bulkhead. She gripped Mrs. Reynolds’s wrist. The older woman’s skin was cold and clammy, but her pulse was strong enough—she was in no immediate danger of bleeding to death.

  “Althea . . . outside . . . save her . . .”

  Althea was Mrs. Reynolds’s sister, Mrs. Chase. Mrs. Chase could rot.

  “Let’s stop your bleeding,” she said to Mrs. Reynolds, ripping a strip of silk from the latter’s dressing gown.

  “No!” Mrs. Reynolds pushed away the makeshift bandage. “Please . . . Althea first.”

  Catherine sighed. She would comply—that was what came of a lifetime of deference to one’s elders. “Hold this,” she said, pressing the matchbox and the strip of silk into Mrs. Reynolds’s hands.

  She was soaked the moment she stepped outside. The ship slanted up. She grabbed on to a handrail. A blue-white streak of lightning tore across the black sky, illuminating needles of rain that pummeled the ankle-deep water sloshing along the walkway. It illuminated a drenched Mrs. Chase, dressing gown clinging to her ripe flesh, abdomen balanced on the rail, body flexed like a bow—as if she were an aerialist in mid-flight. Her arms flailed, her eyes screwed shut, her mouth issued gargles of incoherent terror.

  A more distant lightning briefly revealed the silhouette of a man standing behind Mrs. Chase, holding on to her feet. Then the heavens erupted in pale fire. Thunderbolts spiked and interwove, a chandelier of the gods that would set the entire ocean ablaze. And she saw the man’s face.

  What had the Ancients said? You can wear out soles of iron in your search, and
you would come upon your quarry when you least expect.

  The murderer of her child.

  A dagger from Catherine’s vambrace hissed through the air, the sound of its flight lost in the thunder that rended her ears. But he heard. He jerked his head back at the last possible second, the knife barely missing his nose.

  Darkness. The ship listed sharply starboard. Mrs. Chase’s copious flesh hit the deck with a thud and a splash. Catherine threw herself down as two sleeve arrows, one for each of her eyes, shot past her.

  The steamer crested a swell and plunged into the hollow between waves. She allowed herself to slide forward on the smooth planks of the walkway. A weak lightning at the edge of the horizon offered a fleeting glow, enough for her to see his outline.

  She pushed off the deck and, borrowing the ship’s own downward momentum, leaped toward him, one knife in each hand. He threw a large object at her—she couldn’t see, but it had to be Mrs. Chase, there was nothing else of comparable size nearby.

  She flipped the knives around in her palms and caught Mrs. Chase, staggering backward—the woman was the weight of a prize pig and the ship had begun its laborious climb up another huge swell.

  She set Mrs. Chase down and let the small river on deck wash them both toward the door. She had to get Mrs. Chase out of the way to kill him properly.

  More sleeve arrows skimmed the air currents. Fortunately for her, his sleeves were sodden and the arrows arrived without their usual vicious abruptness. She ducked one and deflected another from the back of Mrs. Chase’s head with the blade of a knife.

  Catherine kicked open the door. Sending both of her knives his way to buy a little time, she dragged Mrs. Chase’s inert, uncooperative body inside. A match flared before Mrs. Reynolds’s face, a stark chiaroscuro of anxious eyes and bloodied cheeks. As Catherine set Mrs. Chase down on the wet carpet, Mrs. Reynolds, who should have stayed in her corner, docilely suffering, found the strength to get up, push the door shut, and bolt it.

  “No!” shouted Catherine.

  He wanted to kill her almost as much as she wanted to kill him. One of them would die this night. She preferred to fight outside, where there were no helpless women underfoot.

  Almost immediately the door thudded. Mrs. Reynolds yelped and dropped the match, which fizzled on the sodden carpet. Catherine grabbed the matchbox from her, lit another one, stuck it in Mrs. Reynolds’s hand, and wrapped the long scrap of dressing gown around her head. “Don’t worry about Mrs. Chase. She will have bumps and bruises, but she’ll be all right.”

  Mrs. Reynolds gripped Catherine’s hand. “Thank you. Thank you for saving her.”

  The match burned out. Another heavy thump came at the door. The mooring of the dead bolt must be tearing loose from the bulkhead. She tried to pull away from Mrs. Reynolds but the latter would not let go of her. “I cannot allow you to put yourself in danger for us again, Miss Blade. We will pray and throw ourselves on God’s mercy.”

  Crack. Thump. Crack.

  Impatiently, she stabbed her index finger into the back of Mrs. Reynolds’s wrist. The woman’s fingers fell slack. Catherine rushed forward and kicked the door. It was in such a poor state now that it could be forced out as well as in.

  As she drew back to gather momentum, he rammed the door once more. A flash of lightning lit the crooked edges of the door—it was already hanging loose.

  She slammed her entire body into the door. Her skeleton jarred as if she had thrown herself at a careening carriage. The door gave outward, enough of an opening that she slipped through.

  His poisoned palm slashed down at her. She ducked, and too late realized it had been a ruse, that he’d always meant to hit her from the other side. She screamed, the pain like a red-hot brand searing into her skin.

  The ship plunged bow first. She used its motion to get away from him. A section of handrail flew at her. She smashed herself against the bulkhead, barely avoiding it.

  The ship rose to meet a new, nauseatingly high wave. She slipped, stopping herself with the door, stressing its one remaining hinge. He surprised her by skating aft quite some distance, his motion a smooth, long glide through water.

  Then, as the ship dove down, he ran toward her. She recognized it as the prelude to a monstrous leap. On flat ground, she’d do the same, running toward him, springing, meeting him in midair. But she’d be running uphill now, and against the torrent of water on deck. She’d never generate enough momentum to counter him properly.

  In desperation, she wrenched at the door with a strength that surprised her. It came loose as his feet left the deck. She screamed and heaved the door at him.

  The door met him flat on at the height of his trajectory, nearly twelve feet up in the air, and knocked him sideways. He went over the rail, past the deck below, and plunged into the sea. The door ricocheted into the bulkhead, bounced on the rail, and finally it, too, hit the roiling waters.

  The steamer tilted precariously. She stumbled aft, grasping for a handrail. By the time the vessel crested the wave and another lightning bolt split the sky, he had disappeared.

  She began to laugh wildly—vengeance was hers.

  Then her laughter turned to a violent fit of coughing. She clutched at her chest and vomited black blood into the black night.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Lover

  For someone who had lived her entire life thousands of miles away, Catherine Blade knew a great deal about London.

  By memory she could produce a map of its thoroughfares and landmarks, from Hyde Park in the west to the City of London in the east, Highgate in the north to Greenwich in the south. On this map, she could pinpoint the locations of fashionable squares and shops, good places for picnics and rowing, even churches where everyone who was anyone went to get married.

  The London of formal dinners and grand balls. The London of great public parks in spring and men in gleaming riding boots galloping along Rotten Row toward the rising sun. The London of gaslights, fabled fogs, and smoky gentlemen’s clubs where fates of nations were decided between nonchalant sips of whiskey and genteel flipping of The Times.

  The London of an English exile’s wistful memory of his gilded youth.

  Those memories had molded her expectations once, in distant days when she’d believed that England could be her answer, her freedom. When she’d painstakingly made her way through Herb’s copy of Pride and Prejudice, amazed at the audacity and independence of English womenfolk, the liberty and openness of their lives.

  She’d given up on those dreams years ago. Still, London disappointed. What she had seen of it thus far was sensationally ugly, like a kitchen that was never cleaned. Soot coated every surface. The grime on the exterior walls of houses and shops ran in streaks, where rain, unable to wash off the encrusted filth under windowsills, rearranged it in such a way as to recall the tear-smudged face of a dirty child.

  “I wouldn’t judge London just yet,” said kindly Dr. Rigby, whom she’d “met” in Shanghai three months ago, before the start of her journey.

  She smiled at him. It was not London she judged, by the foolishness of her own heart. That after so much disappointment, she still hoped—and thus doomed herself to even more disappointment.

  “There they are,” cried Mrs. Chase. “Annabel and the Atwood boys.”

  It was impossible to know Mrs. Chase for more than five minutes—and Catherine had known her five weeks, ever since Bombay—without hearing about her beautiful daughter Miss Chase, engaged to the most superior Captain Atwood.

  Such boastfulness was alien to Catherine, both in its delivery—did Mrs. Chase not fear that her wanton pride would invoke the ill will of Fate?—and in its very existence.

  Parental pride in a mere girl was something Catherine had never experienced firsthand.

  At her birth, there had been a tub of water on hand—to drown her, in case she turned out to be a girl. In
the end, neither her mother nor her amah had been able to go through with it, and she’d lived, the daughter of a Chinese courtesan and the English adventurer who’d abandoned her.

  She’d been a burden to her mother, a source of worry and, sometimes, anguish. She’d never heard a word of praise from her amah, the woman responsible for her secret training in the martial arts. And the true father figure in her life, the Manchu prince who’d brought her mother to Peking and given her a life of security and luxury—Catherine had no idea what he thought of her.

  And that was why she was in England, wasn’t it, one last attempt to win Da-ren’s approval?

  On the rail platform, a handsomely dressed trio advanced toward them, a young woman in a violet mantle flanked by a pair of tall men in long black overcoats. Catherine’s attention was drawn to the man on the young woman’s left. He had an interesting walk. To the undisciplined eye, his gait would seem as natural as those of his companions. But Catherine had spent her entire life in the study of muscular movements and she had no doubt that he was concealing an infirmity in his left leg—the strain in his back and arms all part of a mindful effort to not favor that particular limb.

  He spoke to the young woman and a strange curiosity made Catherine listen, her ears filtering away the rumble of the engines, the drumming of the rain on the rafters, the clamor of the crowd.

  “. . . you must not believe everything Benedict says, Annabel,” he said. His head was turned toward the others, the brim of his hat and the high collar of his greatcoat obscuring much of his profile. “My stay on the subcontinent was marked by nothing so much as uneventfulness. The most excitement I had was in trying to keep a friend out of trouble when he fell in love with a superior’s wife.”

  She shivered. The timbre of that quiet voice was like the caress of a ghost. No, she was imagining things. He was dead. A pile of bones in the Taklamakan Desert, bleached and picked clean.