Porco miseria, how much laudanum had he put in her glass?
She looked up at her supposed friend.
The world spun on its axis, turning one Fabrizio into three.
“W-why?” she whispered.
The three Fabrizios smiled in unison, an unpleasantly hard expression on his handsome face.
He saluted her with his own glass. “Your brother sends his regards, my lady.”
Of course.
That bloody bastard.
But before Allie could muster the energy to scream her frustration and anger, darkness claimed her.
1
London, England
May 1847
Ten months later
Ethan Penn-Leith had not set out to become the most famous person in London.
His ambitions had always been modest in scope—appease his uncle, write poetry, marry a suitable lady . . . goals listed in that particular order.
Instead, his fame had arrived like flood waters rising along the River Dee, a slow trickle that had increased gradually until—like a heedless fisherman—Ethan had found himself floundering in the rushing tide of his celebrity.
Take this evening, for example.
He sat on the first row of a large assembly—the gatheredhoi polloiof the Londontonthronged around him—preparing to give a reading of his most acclaimed poem to date, “Auld MacDougall in His Cups Reminisces; or One Kiss Alone.”
Ethan’s escapade with his lovely wee thief the previous summer had indeed been material for the most monumental of poems. Why, even Queen Victoria herself was to have attended tonight, but Her Majesty had cried off at the last minute due to a megrim.
Granted, Her Majesty’s withdrawal had done nothing to dampen enthusiasm for the evening. The Earl of Aberdeen’s crowded ballroom vacillated between sweltering and stifling despite the May rain pattering against the windowpanes.
A distant relative, Lord Aberdeen had been eager to host one of Ethan’s rare public recitals. White-haired and standing rigidly on a small dais at one end of the room, the earl greeted his guests, introducing Ethan in resounding terms.
“I have never been more proud to call a gentleman kinsman than tonight,” Lord Aberdeen intoned, voice carrying easily due to his years of giving speeches in Parliament. “Mr. Penn-Leith is a credit to our family line, and I have long looked upon his accomplishments with great pride. His first book of poetry,Poems from the Highlands, astounded us all with the fluidity of his words and the profundity of his ideas. His second book,Of Lovers and Madmen, solidified Mr. Penn-Leith’s place as one of the most gifted poets of our age. However, it is his latest slim volume,Romances from Italy, that will ensure Mr. Penn-Leith’s place alongside Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth as one of the most celebrated writers of the English language. And to think, he has accomplished all this before the age of thirty years. Tonight, I am pleased to have coaxed Mr. Penn-Leith—the Highland Poet himself—from his home in Scotland to grace us . . .”
The earl droned on, lauding Ethan and simultaneously taking credit for his successful rise from obscurity. Ethan understood that the evening was one of political posturing for Lord Aberdeen. After all, the man had just finished a term as Foreign Secretary, and it was no secret he wished to replace Lord John Russell as Prime Minister.
At Ethan’s side, his uncle, George Leith, shifted in his seat, clearly chafing at Lord Aberdeen’s credit-taking. After all, it had been Uncle Leith who had seen the potential in his sister’s son and plucked Ethan from a lowly farm in rural Angus to raise him as a gentleman. It was no exaggeration to say that a large portion of Ethan’s current success originated from Uncle Leith’s largess.
Of course, in exchange, Uncle Leith led Ethan about like a prized sheep, leveraging his nephew’s fame and social connections to further his own business ventures. Tonight would be no different.
Despite Uncle Leith’s current discomfiture, he and Lord Aberdeen had much in common regarding how they viewed Ethan himself—
Everyone wanted something from him.
Nobles, like Lord Aberdeen and the frighteningly-ambitious Duke of Kendall, sought to exploit Ethan’s popularity to further their own political aims. Uncle Leith expected Ethan to use his renown as the charismatic Highland Poet to prosper his business endeavors. Ethan’s publisher wished to line his coffers with the profits from Ethan’s writing. Ladies, both noble and otherwise, courted his attention, his body, and optimistically, his heart. The adoring public wanted his time, his voice, and at times, torn bits of his clothing.
It was all a sort of madness.
Some days, Ethan felt as though he would give up all his successes to find one person who wished nothing from him other than his own company.
