To Eric, always.
Chapter One
London, June 1821
Archie stepped inside the Five Graces theater, holding a mug of beer in each hand, and felt immediately at home.
Not that he should.
He was a lord, after all. Lord Daniel Windermere, Viscount Archer, in fact.
And the Five Graces?
Well, it was a theater of “low” entertainment. A place where London accents ranged too broadly for the narrow confines of Mayfair drawing rooms. A place where bodies jammed up against each other without anyone giving such proximity a second thought. A place that, frankly, stank.
A place that Archie loved down to the marrow of his noble bones.
“Archie!” came a shout.
Above the fray, he found his best friend in the world, Lord Rory Macbeth, Viscount Kilmuir—his world overflowed with titled gentlemen—waving at him from their usual spot—fifth row, dead center. Archie was adamant on that point. Whoever arrived first secured that pair of seats. From them, one could sink into the performance and, most importantly, the music.
His eye flicked toward the edge of the stage. Half hidden behind musty brown velvet curtains sat the piano, emitting the jangly tunesthat would serve as the musical accompaniment tonight. Sitting at the keyboard was George Fry, his nimble fingers flying across the keys, only missing a note here and there. The man was quite proficient for never having had a proper piano lesson in his life.
Archie, on the other hand, had plowed through years and years of lessons. Sure, he’d groused and complained like any child, but he and his instructor had known the truth.
That Archie’s very soul was contained in those keys.
He entered the fifth row of seats, an apologetic smile on his mouth, one meant to charm as he jostled through, avoiding the knees of those already seated and stepping over entire laps when necessary, all without spilling a single, solitary drop of beer.
Still, his smile got him through. His was the sort of smile that charmed both women and men—women into his bed and men into friendship.
“Rory, old chap,” he called out.
“You’re late. I thought you were going to miss tonight.” Rory accepted the mug of beer into his massive bear paw of a hand. He was a great lumbering fellow by anyone’s measure. With his head of auburn hair and towering height, he lacked English elegance and refinement, which was just as well, given he was Scottish. Since the day they’d met at Eton, Archie and Rory had been fast friends.
“Not a chance,” said Archie, holding up his mug in a silent toast before knocking back a large swallow.
“What do you know about tonight’s entertainments?” asked Rory, swiping foam off his top lip.
“It’ll include a scene from Shakespeare, I believe,” said Archie.
Rory groaned. “Not bloody Shakespeare.” He took another great swallow of drink. With the surname Macbeth, Rory had suffered through enough Shakespeare jokes to last three lifetimes, half of them told by Archie. “I was hoping they’d got that lass on the swing back.”
Archie snorted. “Don’t we all.”
Rory’s bright blue eyes lit up in a wistful smile. “She was truly quite skilled with the way she could flip up and down and around that swing. It never failed to impress.”
“Or leave much to the imagination,” said Archie, wry.
“Well,” said Rory, his grin turned boyishly roguish, “two things can be true at once.”
The stage lights flickered three times, informing the audience that the night’s entertainment was set to begin.
Archie settled back into his seat, careful not to give the impression that he was wholly, utterly, perhaps desperately, invested. For him, music was no idle or trifling thing, even in a place like the Five Graces, whose stage offered up all manner of entertainments on any given night. Singers… Musicians… Acrobats… Magicians… He’d once seen a bear with a white ruff around his neck dance across this stage.
But it was the music that drew him in Thursday after Thursday. To be sure, it wasn’t refined or remotely elegant, but it pulsed with a raw energy one didn’t find in the tame drawing rooms of theton.
This place held the promise of inspiration. Something that had been in short supply since he’d returned from Italy with his sisters last year. For him, these Thursday night entertainments were serious business, even if to all the world he looked like nothing more than a carefree aristocrat out for a lark—a look that was his particular specialty.
