Page 1 of The Muse of Maiden Lane

One

Hampshire, England

December 1862

Stella Hobhouse raced down the gaslit corridor, the voluminous skirts of her white silk and crepe ball gown clutched in her gloved hands, and the swelling notes of Strauss’s “Lava-Ströme” waltz chasing at her heels.

She was well aware of the ironclad rules that governed the lives of ladies. Those rules were somewhat less rigid among fashionable society than they were in Fostonbury, the suffocatingly restrictive Derbyshire village that she and her pious clergyman brother, Daniel, called home. But one rule remained as inflexible in London as it was across Britain entire: a respectable female did not color her hair.

Only actresses and—Stella blushed to admit to herself—prostitutes would resort to such tawdry tricks. A young lady of Stella’s station would never reduce herself to purchasing a bottle of Circassian gold hair dye. Not even one procured through the post.

Great God, what had driven her to do it?

And what on earth had possessed her to copy, of all things, the exact shade of gilded auburn hair portrayed in the Whistler painting she’d seen on display in the Berners Street Gallery? The very painting that had been recommended to her by the handsome artist she’d encountered sketching at the British Museum?

It was a question she’d been asking herself ever since she’d entered the Earl of March’s grand gothic ballroom and spied that very same man—a person she’d never expected to see again in her life—seated in his wheeled chair at the edge of the polished wood floor. He’d been dressed, not in the plain suit and carelessly knotted cravat he’d worn at the museum, but in flawless black-and-white eveningwear. She’d realized, all at once, that he was a guest here. Not just an eccentric artist who loitered about museum portrait galleries, but a gentleman.

Mortification had rushed over her in a mighty flood, drowning out all rational thought. Her only instinct had been to flee the ballroom before he saw her. And that’s precisely what Stella had done: fled.

She ducked into a dimly lit anteroom at the end of the corridor. Music drifted after her, rising and falling, a waltz she was meant to be dancing with some gentleman or other. Resting her back against one of the shadowy, silk-papered walls, she pressed a hand to her corseted midriff, willing her nerves to steady and her breath to calm.

It wasn’t as though she’d committed a crime. It was only a bit of playacting. A chance to be someone else for a change. To experience the world as a young lady whose hair hadn’t turned completely gray at the age of sixteen.

Aside from her best friend, Lady Anne Deveril, only Anne’s mother, the Countess of Arundell, and Anne’s beau, Mr. Hartford, were aware of what Stella had looked like before she’d dyed it. There was no one else in attendance at the house party who knew her. Even if there were, Stella doubted very much that they’d recognize her. As a young lady with gray hair, possessed of modest breeding and little fortune, she was often dismissed and ignored. No one ever saw her. Not really. Indeed, no one seemed to notice her at all.

But tonight, she’d drawn every eye. Anne had called her luminous. Ethereal. And for the first time in her life, Stella had felt that way.

Until she’d seen him.

And it was him, whatever his manner of dress. He had the same inky black hair. The same turn of countenance, with sharply hewn features and a mouth that curved with equally sharp humor. A dangerous countenance. It was the face of a gentleman who saw too much. A face from which nothing—and no one—was hidden.

Stella exhaled an uneven breath. It wouldn’t do, this ridiculous surge of schoolgirlish embarrassment. She was two-and-twenty. A steady, sensible young lady, not some green girl prone to fits of the vapors.

She must compose herself and return to the ball.

It was the only practical course. Lord March’s house party was a week in length, and would be filled with Christmas festivities. She couldn’t very well hide the entire time. Besides, there was a good chance the gentleman wouldn’t recognize her. He’d met her only once before, and then just briefly.

Perhaps she’d overreacted?

But of course she had!

There was no way the gentleman would remember her. They’d been in each other’s company for fewer than five minutes that day at the museum and had exchanged no more than a handful of words. He’d doubtless forgotten her the moment she was out of his sight.

To be sure, Stella felt a little foolish now she thought of it rationally.

Straightening from the wall, she smoothed her skirts, steeling herself to return to the ballroom. It was then she heard it: the unmistakable rattle of wheels drawing ever closer down the length of the marble corridor. The sound came to an abrupt halt outside the door of the anteroom where she was hiding.

A gentleman’s deep voice broke through the shadows. “Good lord,” he said in cheerful amazement. “It is you.”

Teddy Hayes rolled his wheeled chair into the dim interior of the anteroom. He wasn’t about to wait for a gilt-edged invitation. Not after he’d spent the last three months excoriating himself for not discovering the mysterious young lady’s name on the last occasion they’d met.

He’d been so thunderstruck by her then, so jaw droppingly dazzled, that it hadn’t even occurred to him to ask until after she’d gone. By then, it was too late. There had been no one around who could enlighten him. No fashionable acquaintances who might know her identity.

Such was the price of being new to London.

Teddy was a visitor here. A guest, not a member of polite society. Aside from the small circle of friends that his older sister, Laura, and her husband, Alex Archer, surrounded themselves with, there was no one to whom Teddy could apply for information. Love his relations as he did, he was reluctant to ask them for help in such matters. Some things were private. Especially when it came to the subject of silver-haired goddesses he’d encountered in the British Museum.

“Why did you run away?” he asked.