—Charles Simmons
PROLOGUE
London, 1889
“I SHALL NEVER MARRY AGAIN!”
Deborah, Lady Orwell, faced her interlocutors bravely, chin up, dark hair perfectly coiffed in spite of her prolonged state of grief. She still wore black even after eighteen months of widowhood.
Nuala sighed. A quick glance about at her fellow widows convinced her that Lady Orwell’s bid for membership would face less than unqualified support. Most had been out of mourning for at least two full years, and none found their grief so intolerable as this young girl who could not possibly have much experience of the world.
I shall never marry again. That was the credo of the Widows’ Club, the common ground that brought them together. For her part, Nuala had few doubts about her fellow members’ sincerity. But this girl—this naive girl who had married so young—would have ample opportunities to love again.
Not that her suffering should be taken lightly. Nuala still grieved for her husband of six months, Lord Charles Parkhill, though she had known from the beginning that their union would be of short duration. Had he lived longer, she might have come to love him, might have become more than a companion and nurse to comfort him in his declining days.
But never could she feel the sort of love Lady Orwell professed. That was almost two and a half centuries behind her.
“My dear Lady Orwell,” Tameri, the dowager Duchess of Vardon, said gently, “we must consult on your case. Will you make yourself comfortable until we return? Shenti will provide you with anything you require.”
Lady Orwell sniffed very quietly. “Of course,” she said. “I quite understand.”
The ladies rose. They followed Tameri out of the Gold drawing room and into the larger Silver, where they settled themselves in the somewhat uncomfortable wooden chairs the former duchess had commissioned when she had furnished the town house in the Egyptian style. Reproductions of ancient gods gazed down upon them with various degrees of severity and benevolence: gods with the heads of cats, of crocodiles, of jackals. Not for the first time, Nuala found herself distracted by their glittering stares.
Once such gods had presided over a potent mystic tradition, perhaps the precursor to the magic Nuala’s own people had practiced for millennia. That which she had once practiced, before…
Nuala brought herself back to the present and looked at each of her fellow widows in turn. Frances, Lady Selfridge, sat in her chair with the straight back of a lady born, but her “mannish” clothing—tailored jacket and nearly bustle-less skirt—conveyed a decided air of austerity. Lillian, Lady Meadows, was her precise opposite: dressed in flowing pastels with a modest bustle, her pretty peaches-and-cream coloring was a direct contrast to the vivid tones of the orchids she adored.
Mrs. Julia Summerhayes, who tended to dress in drab browns and grays, was a spiritualist, a follower of Madame Blavatsky. She regularly held séances in her own town house, though Nuala herself had never participated. Nuala had withheld judgment as to whether or not the young woman really possessed the powers others claimed she did.
At the moment, the young woman was looking intently from one face to another as if she were attempting to read her companions’ minds.
Garbed in loose, Aesthetic dress, Margaret, Lady Riordan, was as ginger-haired as Nuala herself, with aqua eyes that might have been painted on one of her colorful canvases. A brilliant artist, she had just begun to have her works shown in some of the smaller London galleries. Her gaze was far away, focused on some interior landscape; she would doubtless hear only a small part of what was said.
Clara, Lady John Pickering, was, at the settled age of thirty-three, the eldest of the group save Nuala herself—a devotée of the sciences of chemistry and astronomy. In spite of her unusual interests, hardly considered suitable for a woman of any age, she wore a very traditional dress complete with corset and heavily draped skirts. As she met Nuala’s gaze she pushed her spectacles higher on the bridge of her nose and smiled encouragingly.
Last, but hardly least, was the dowager duchess herself. Her given name was Anna, but she called herself Tameri and would answer to nothing else when among friends. In keeping with the fantastical nature of her surroundings, she wore a dress modified to suggest both a woman of fashion and the reincarnated Egyptian princess she purported to be. Pleated linen draped her arms and fell in cascades from the front of her bodice, and a heavy, bejeweled collar decorated her long and graceful neck. She possessed such a regal air and such a large fortune that few in Society dared to mock her, even in their own most private circles.
Compared to Tameri, Nuala was only a dull country mouse. For years she had taken on so many forms, so many personae, that it had been strange to fall back to what she had been when she was born: a not-unattractive woman who appeared to be no more than twenty-five years of age, with untidy ginger hair and very ordinary gray eyes. Charles, who had died in the countryside he so loved, had left her a courtesy title, a house in the city and all the money she might need to make her way in London; his mother, Victoria, the dowager Marchioness of Oxenham, had done the rest. All the appropriate introductions had been made, cards and calls exchanged, and Nuala was free to move in a society that had never been a real part of her world.
Now she was bound to pass judgment on a young woman who, in some ways, was not much different from herself…a girl who had been married a mere three years and had little experience of London. Deborah was quite alone, her husband, the late Viscount Orwell, having broken off with most of his relations long ago, and though she had a modest town house and income, she had few real friends in the city.
Tameri almost inaudibly cleared her throat. She caught up the circle of widows with her green-eyed, majestic stare and brushed the spotted cat from her lap.
“We shall take the usual vote,” she said in her quiet, commanding voice. “Frances?”
Frances rose, tugging at the hem of her jacket. “Ladies,” she said with a tinge of reluctance, “I vote no. It is my opinion that Lady Orwell has insufficient experience to commit herself to our way of life. I find it very likely that she will wish to marry again.”
“I agree,” said Lillian very softly. “She is so lovely and amiable…she is sure to find just the right husband before another year is out.”
“Perhaps,” said Clara. “But some of us were just as young when we made the decision to remain free.”
“Indeed,” Tameri said. “It is quite impossible to know the girl’s mind, but she has a sincerity about her that I find admirable.”
“She must be here,” Julia Summerhayes murmured. “There is a purpose in this, though I cannot yet see it.”
Tameri arched a black brow. “Indeed?”
But Julia had nothing else to say. Tameri turned to Lady Riordan. “Margaret?”
Maggie lifted her head, blinking as if she had just been woken from a deep sleep. “I beg your pardon?” she murmured.
“You must listen, my dear. What is your opinion about Lady Orwell? Shall she be permitted to join our little club?”
Aqua eyes blinked again. “I should like to paint her.”
Frances rolled her own intense blue eyes. “That is all she ever thinks of,” she said tartly. “Perhaps she ought to abstain.”
“I agree,” Tameri said. “The count is two nays and three ayes.” She fixed her gaze on Nuala. “And you, Lady Charles? What is your opinion?”
Nuala knew that the matter of Lady Orwell’s acceptance lay in her hands. She could not fault Frances and Lillian on their logic. But Lady Orwell’s grief was deep, and she would not surrender it easily.
The companionship of a group of women both older and more experienced than she would surely