Chapter 1 - A Shattered Gem
London 1886
The problem with having multiple lovers is that, at some point, one always ends up mixing up their names.
Lady Lily Lupine finds that the best way to deal with the possibility of such a disaster is never to call them by their names when she’s with them. Instead, she uses the endearment “Gem” for all of them. That is, in fact, what they are to her: precious gems brightening what would’ve been the rather dreary life of a very young and ardent widow.
This is why, as she stares down into the lifeless eyes of the young man lying dead in a tangle of limbs and a splash of blood on the marble tiles of the foyer, her heart breaks at the thought of never again hearing his voice or seeing his wonderful smile, and yet, she cannot, for the life of her, remember his name.
The shock and horror of it all might, of course, also have something to do with it.
Lily was happy when she got out of bed this morning, feeling fresh and well-rested for a change. She slipped off the long frilly nightgown she seldom has any use for these days and thought that the day held the promise of being a good one. Now, as her small, white hand creeps to her throat and her eyes fill with tears, she is quite sure that it is not going to be a good day at all.
“He... he was lying here just like this when you... f-found him?” she asks Andrew Pritchard, her devoted butler. The dapper man on the farthest side of middle age touches his thick moustache (a thing of beauty and a source of envy in his circles) and solemnly nods.
“Yes, my lady. I haven’t touched the body or anything in its vicinity.”
Lily does not enjoy hearing her gem referred to as a body and ’it', but as usual, she carefully schools her features to hide the depths of her despair and returns Andrew’s nod with one of her own.
“Very well, Mr. Pritchard,” she says, swallowing hard to remove the knot from her throat and force her voice to sound almost normal. Her fingers are trembling, giving away her inner turmoil and she hastily links her hands to still them.
“I have sent for the police, my lady,” Andrew informs her, and Lily blinks away the visions she had of wrapping the young man in a thick blanket and depositing him on his doorstep for his poor family to take care of him. Calling the police does make a lot more sense. Her usually quick wit is not coming to her aid at all right now, but her brain has at least found her one piece of important information.
Oliver French... Ollie to his friends and women with their legs wrapped around his neck... Unless that woman is her, then he is passionately called Gem.
She once again has to fight off an overwhelming wave of emotion when memories of callus-free gentleman’s hands (manicured to perfection), soft blond curls and twinkling blue eyes assault her. Eyes that were once alive and bright in comparison to the ones staring up at her now.
Unable to suppress the sob escaping from her lips, Lily steps closer, about to bend down and close the poor boy’s eyes, but Andrew puts out a hand, stopping her. “Best not touch anything, my lady.”
Lily has always been a sensible young woman. Although she’s only 24 years old, she has lived through enough of the troubles and pain life can dish out to know when someone is right and when she should simply turn her back and hurry to the drawing room to have some time to herself.
“His father will, of course, be informed as well,” Andrew speaks again, halting her steps, and she turns to look at him, a frown drawing her perfect eyebrows together over her—currently cloudy—blue eyes. Of course, he has a family, and they will have to be told of this tragedy. Why is Andrew making a point of singling out his father?
“His father?”
“Sir Nicholas French.”
“Oh!” Lily gasps, her hand straying to her chest to fuss with the delicate frill, which provides a touch of modesty to a neckline that has been described as scandalous by bitter spinsters and women beyond their prime. “I met Sir Nicholas French at the theatre once,” she mutters, turning away from Andrew and resuming her flight to the drawing room.
“I remember, my lady.”
She’d met quite a large portion of Sir Nicholas French during that rather tedious performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute. If they’d not both been wearing far too many layers of clothing and the opera had not ended when it did, she has no doubt that Sir Nicholas would’ve used his magic flute on her. At the time, she’d quite looked forward to his performance, hoping it would cause her to sing much more purely than the terrible soprano on stage.
She is now rather glad that Andrew was waiting in the lobby, urging her to hurry home to tend to her late husband’s elderly sister, who was visiting her at the time. The poor woman had woken from her sleep and was feeling out of sorts, desperately asking for her. Fortunately, Lily’s path never crossed that of Sir Nicholas French again, or things might’ve been awkward right now.
It was over a year ago, and she doubts that the man would recognise her in the bright light of day while completely sober. She’d never given him her name while they were testing the endurance of the seats in the opera box they’d shared. Still, she would rather not remember the tickle of Sir Nicholas’ moustache on her breasts or his hands passionately trying to find her thighs beneath her petticoats while his son is lying dead on the tiles in her foyer.
Closing the drawing room door behind her, she scurries over to the plush settee and, finally allowing the gut-wrenching sobs to overpower her, she collapses onto it, vividly remembering collapsing onto it in a similar way with Ollie clutched to her heaving breast, only a couple of days ago.
After crying some of her makeup onto the red and gold upholstery, Lily finally sits up straight, still hiccupping softly. Now that she’s released the worst of her pent-up emotions, she is ready to think straight again, and the first thought on her mind is quite a simple question but impossible for her to answer.
Why was Oliver French in her home today?
The second question would, of course, be: why was he dead? But she needs the answer to the first question to be able to answer that second, more important question.
Rising from the settee, Lily crosses to the window alcove where her writing desk is enjoying the gentle rays of a far too cheerful mid-morning sun. She’s gathering her skirts to sit at her desk when a light tap on the door precedes Andrew entering with a tray laden with some comforting tea.
She can always rely on the man to take excellent care of her, much in the same way he’d taken care of her late husband, Lord Percival Lupine. She offers him a watery smile while she tries to navigate the difficulties of wearing a bustle when attempting to sit on the dainty chair behind her desk. Though she rather likes the cheekiness the revival of the bustle has brought to the latest fashions, it is somewhat cumbersome to deal with at times.
“Allow me, my lady,” Andrew says, setting the tray on her desk and moving behind her to hold the chair in place. He expertly helps her drape the yards of apricot fabric, which had seemed so cheerful when she got dressed, ignorant of what was waiting for her downstairs.
Now, it simply feels out of place and inappropriate.
“Did Mr. French tell you why he was here when you let him in, before... before...” She cannot complete the sentence, her voice breaking on a dry choke.
Watching Andrew carefully fill a cup with steaming tea and stir honey into it with steady, well-practised hands is rather comforting, and she is able once again to bring her rising emotions under a measure of control.
“No, my lady. I did not answer the door to let Mr. French into the house,” he tells her. “When I saw him, he was already...” He pauses, placing the cup next to her hand, trembling on the desktop. “Inside.”
Someone else must’ve let him in... or... did Ollie sneak into the house? How? Why?
Surely, he was not going to rob her?!
“How dreadful for you to make such a horrible discovery, Mr. Pritchard!” she exclaims, laying a hand over his. She hastily removes it again when he stiffens, reminding her of all the rules governing the butler-lady relationship.
“Thank you for the tea,” she whispers, picking up the delicate cup and bringing it to her lips to take a careful sip and feel some comforting warmth pooling in her stomach almost at once.
“You’re welcome, my lady. I thought that drinking something stronger might cause you discomfort once the police arrive.”
“Of course! How thoughtful of you,” Lily smiles. Sometimes, the man knows her simply too well, or she’s been giving the cabinet displaying a variety of filled decanters and crystal glasses one thirsty look too many since his arrival in the drawing room.
“I’ve taken the liberty of cancelling your billiards appointment this evening with Lord Ford Woodward, the Earl of Penrith.”
“Ah! Thank you!” Lily exclaims, surprised. All the details of her day had flown from her mind the moment she saw Ollie lying on the floor. “That was astute of you. I am not in the mood for billiards at all right now.”
Well, the billiard table was certainly going to play a large role in their activities, and Ford has a rather sturdy cue... and he is not afraid to use it liberally and with quite some force.
Lily bites her lower lip, fighting the regret stirring in her belly. Perhaps a rowdy game of billiards that leaves her bruised and breathless is exactly what she needs right now.
“Did you re-schedule?” she asks a little hoarsely.
“No, my lady,” Andrew disappoints her, removing the plate holding one lonely cupcake with frosting like sparkling snow from the tray and placing it within her reach. “It is hard to tell when you’ll be able to receive guests again, my lady. What with police officers in and out and questions and whispers heading your way each time you make an appearance in public.”
“Oh, my word, Mr. Pritchard!” Lily snaps, feeling anxious at the thought of spending days on end alone in one of her husband’s mansions. “If I’m to hide in my rooms whenever I receive a lot of attention and unwanted questions and remarks when I appear in public, I would be best served to join a convent.”
It is true. Lady Lily Lupine, the Dowager Marchioness of Chudleigh, Dawlish, Hatherleigh and a few other places, turns heads wherever she goes. She has become extremely skilled at letting streams of unwanted questions and remarks slide right off her back.
“Still, for Ollie...,” she sniffs, swallowing against a new wave of heartache. She picks up the sad cupcake, forlornly petting the icing with a dainty fingertip. “For Mr. French’s sake, I shan’t receive guests or make public appearances for a while. Please direct the police to the parlour when they arrive; I’ll receive them there.”
“Very well, my lady,” the older man says, refilling her cup before removing himself and his tray from her presence.
Lily takes her time undressing the cupcake with her fingertip, popping small dollops of sweetness onto her tongue. Her thoughts are lost in memories of the little time she’d spent in Ollie’s arms.
Of all her lovers, he was the only one who did not value her discretion when it came to their relationship. Most of the others have too much to lose if it ever becomes public knowledge that they spend their free time up the skirt of the youngest and prettiest widow in all of London.
It suits Lily just fine, as it means that they will never know about each other, become jealous and cause more scandals than she can handle. They will never attempt to bind her to themselves and force her to become part of their tough lives, either.
Oliver was also the youngest of the men she spent time with. He was barely older than her, if not younger. She never asked him his age. He had the passion and ridiculous idealism that come with youth, and Lily found it endearing—refreshing.
Against her better judgment, she allowed him to seduce her anyway, something she regretted when he was still alive, with a wonderful future stretching out before him.
She doesn’t regret it anymore now that his future is gone. She’d enjoyed the little time they’d had together, and in all her memories, he was happy.
Quite ecstatically so.
Still, it hurts to remember his zealous requests to court her officially with an eye on marriage. The sweet fool had no idea what he was getting himself into.
Lily valiantly and skillfully eluded his quests for her hand in marriage by allowing him to enjoy her hand in his pants instead.
Biting into the soft flesh of the cupcake and licking the creamy, sugary goodness from her lips, she wonders how long it would’ve taken for Ollie to become a man of his time. Jaded, driven by ambition, a hunger for power, money and unashamed lust to fill the voids in his life.
In a way, she is glad that he died when he was still fresh and young, his eyes sparkling with idealistic dreams and his heart beating with valour. He never had the chance to be disillusioned by life and all the bitterness it loves to puke on its survivors.
A wave of nausea crashes over her, and she drops the cupcake she’d systematically been destroying with her fingers and teeth back onto the plate. Lifting her cup, she swallows the content in one long draught and rises to her feet. Clutching the cup between her two sticky hands, she crosses the floor to the liquor cabinet, uncorks the first decanter and pours herself a few large splashes of amber liquid into the teacup.
It burns from her throat down her gullet to her stomach when she swallows it, the warmth spreading in her veins to every area of her body, and she gasps in relief, closing her eyes and savouring the fleeting pleasure of her body coming alive.
Lily doesn’t often feel the need to have a drink.
The alcohol in the crystal decanters and bottles all belonged to her late husband, and the more recent purchases were done solely for entertainment purposes.
One or two of her five gems tend to be a bit heavy-handed when it comes to filling their glasses, and she lets them, leaving the complaints and cautioning to their wives (if they have one) or parents and friends.
She only saw each of them for a couple of hours every week or two. When they’re with her, they’re allowed to behave as badly as they want to.
Honestly, they need a break from the stiff responsibilities and love-less realities resting on their shoulders day after day.
Lily carefully replaces the stopper in the decanter’s neck, happy to see that her fingers are no longer trembling. Holding onto the top of the carafe, lowering her forehead to the backs of her fingers, she shivers as one last sob tears itself from the depths of her chest.
She only has four gems now...
