Chapter One
Selena Dampierre Fiorentino Albescu MacLaren (nee Griffiths) watched the handsome men loitering about the ballroom, determined that none of them would be her next victim. Four—almost five—dead husbands were quite enough for one woman, thank you.
To say she was unlucky in love was an understatement of such a staggering magnitude the phrase was rendered nearly useless. Cursed, would be more apt. It might have taken her a while to learn that unfortunate truth, but she’d nearly come to terms with it. Nearly.
Unfortunately, there was a tiny shred of hope still lodged in her broken heart that she couldn’t quite extricate. She sighed and took a deep sip of her lemonade. Try as she might, she couldn’t let go of the dream of love. Marriage. Perhaps even a family. Despite her dismal attempts in the past.
“Stop it.” Mrs. Jane Haddon, her sister-in-law (from her fourth marriage), came to stand beside her.
“Stop what?” Selena glanced at her, trying to ignore the slight twinge she always felt when looking at the woman who looked so much like her husband Charles.
“Thinking so hard,” she said, her gentle Scottish brogue softening the underlying criticism of her words. “Ye’re allowed to come out of seclusion, Selena. And even enjoy yourself occasionally.”
Selena let out a slow breath. “I am here, am I not?”
Jane’s delicate brow arched. “Due only to coercion and a few well-timed threats on my part.”
Selena snorted softly. “Be that as it may, I am here, and I’m enjoying myself immensely.”
“If this is you enjoying yourself, then I’m afraid I must inform you, you are dismal at it.”
Jane could always be counted upon to point out the uncompromising truth. “Perhaps immensely is a bit of an overstatement…”
Jane let out a harumphing laugh, and though it had been relatively quiet, it still drew a fair number of glances.
Then again, Selena had been drawing glances since the moment she walked in the room. Her eyes darted about, not lingering on any one person too much. Though their eyes lingered on her.
She was a stranger in their midst, one who had arrived in a cloud of rumors.
Of course they stared. A woman of barely five and twenty who had already been widowed?
Multiple times? Their interest was not unexpected.
Though that did not make it easier to shoulder.
Few knew exactly how many times she’d been widowed, or the circumstances of her husbands’ deaths, and she preferred to keep it that way.
One freak accident was dreadful enough. But four? The tongues would never stop wagging.
Still. Just the fact of them was enough to set the gossips agog, even without the details. Even moving soon after each husband’s demise hadn’t stopped that.
Jane’s sympathetic smile soothed her somewhat. “If their whispers bother you, we can leave at any time.”
Selena let out a long sigh. “There will always be whispers, I fear. Leaving Edinburgh didn’t stop them. Nor did leaving Bucharest, or Venice, or Paris. Or,” she said with a grimace, “Geneva.” The site of her most recent debacle.
Jane’s loyal fury lit her face. “No one knows your real story. They wouldn’t gossip so much if they knew.”
They had had this argument before. And Selena still did not agree. “Knowing the truth wouldn’t stop anyone from spreading any tidbit they might have picked up. No matter how untrue, or hurtful, it is. In fact, I think they prefer it to be so.”
Jane couldn’t argue with that, though Selena could tell she wanted to.
“I had hoped London would be different,” Jane finally said. “My offer stands, if you would like to leave.”
And she meant it too, though Selena knew her sister-in-law would prefer to stay.
Truth be told, Selena wished to stay as well, despite all the stares and whispers.
She had been under self-imposed exile for far too long.
The loneliness was beginning to eat away at her.
If she indulged in it much longer, there would be nothing left.
“Thank you. Perhaps I—”
A blond gentleman across the room, lankier than she preferred but handsome enough, caught her eye and gave her a slow smile that sent faint but definite interest swirling about in her head. She blew out a sharp breath through her nose and hid her suddenly flushed face behind her fan.
“Yes?” Jane asked, her amused tone letting Selena know her razor-sharp eyes had missed nothing.
“I—” Selena cleared her throat and looked away, refusing to look back at him. “I think I should like to stay, for a little while longer, at least.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Jane said, a sly smile on her narrow lips.
Selena grimaced at her, which only made Jane laugh. They both knew she wasn’t going to leave. She just couldn’t help herself. She was in love with love. Or the idea of love, in any case. Or perhaps she was just dreadfully lonely and the sight of any kind face sparked interest.
But interest from afar would have to be good enough. She’d tried, and failed, too many times to put herself back on the marriage mart. Not that anyone would have her anyway. Not with the rumors of her past swirling about her. That would prove even worse if they discovered the truth.
Saying “I do” to her was as good as a man signing his death warrant.
Jane called such thoughts maudlin and dramatic.
But Selena could not stop them from intruding.
She might not have physically killed her men, but she had been cursed.
That was evident enough. Every one of her husbands had perished before the ink was even dry in the marriage register.
As far-fetched as it seemed, what other explanation was there?
She’d given fate enough chances. She was done. Finished with silly dreams. Hopes for a happy future with a loving husband. She’d find her own path to happiness. Alone.
Which was why she’d ventured to London. Hundreds of miles away from the string of misery she hoped to leave behind.
“So. See anything you like?” Jane said.
“Absolutely not.” Selena tried to inject as much polite horror into her voice as possible. “I’ve had enough of all that, thank you. I’ve given up the quest for matrimony… while there are still men left alive in the northern hemisphere,” she added under her breath.
Jane, with her ears like a fox, heard her anyway. “There’s always the southern hemisphere.”
“Jane!”
“Oh, don’t go working yourself into a lather,” Jane said, waving her off. “I merely jest.”
“Um hum,” Selena rumbled.
She adored Jane, but if her parents had hoped Jane would prove a sobering influence on her, they had been sorely misled.
Perhaps willfully so. After marrying their daughter off multiple times only to have her return home to lick her wounds time and again, they hadn’t protested too vehemently when Selena had voiced her desire to return to England to stay with Jane after her disastrous fifth attempt at wedded bliss.
They had agreed with alacrity. She couldn’t truly blame them. After all, how many times must they give her away before she stayed gone?
“Make what excuses you like,” Selena said, “but I am the common denominator in my past relationships. I think at some point we must acknowledge that I am obviously a danger, a threat. Like an unlucky coin that keeps turning up.”
“Oh tosh. You are nothing of the sort. Though you are maudlin this evening.”
“With cause.”
Jane scoffed. “Very well, I will admit you’ve had a bit of bad luck—”
“A bit?” Selena said with a mirthless laugh.
Jane pursed her lips together and glanced at her side eyed. “All right. Perhaps a bit more than a bit.”
Selena snorted delicately, a noise Jane steadfastly ignored. “Charles would want you to find some happiness,” Jane said, leaning toward her to speak quietly.
Ah Charles. Her favorite of her husbands. The only one she might have truly loved, given time. Not that it had made one lick of difference in the end.
“I tried that. I gave it one more chance after Charles. And I was left with nothing but an empty church and a host of regrets.”
Jane’s petite face grew fierce. “The only regret you should have when it comes to Otto von Richter is that he didn’t die like the rest of them.”
“Jane!” Selena gaped at her, truly stunned.
Jane pursed her perfect, bow-shaped lips together and then huffed. “My apologies, Lena. But the man was a scoundrel. I will never understand why you agreed to marry him.”
Selena sighed. “Neither will I, in truth. It seemed a good idea at the time.”
Jane harumphed and took another sip of her lemonade.
It always seemed like a good idea. With the promise of that fortune teller ringing in her head, that she would marry and find happiness if she trusted her instincts and took a leap of faith, she’d jumped into relationships with all of them.
She just never seemed to realize, until it was too late, that her instincts were abysmal and she leapt way too far. Too quickly.
Then again, it was rather difficult for one’s instincts to warn one of impending doom when each of their deaths seemed more a stroke of cruel fate than anything she could possibly control.
All the more reason to avoid such possibilities in the future.
At least Otto had left before the wedding, rather than risk leaving her a widow for the fifth time.
“It had,” Selena insisted. “Otto was so dashing and…spontaneous and exuberant. He was a breath of fresh air after my melancholy over Charles’s death.”
Jane’s exasperation softened at the mention of her brother, and she reached out to squeeze Selena’s arm.
Losing Charles had deeply saddened Selena.
The others…oh, she’d regretted their deaths, of course.
They’d been good men. But little more than strangers when they wed.
Each one had swept her off her feet and whisked her through whirlwind courtships that had gone from bridal veils to widow’s weeds in distressingly short periods of time.