Author/Uploaded by Shana Abe
Table of Contents Praise Also by Title Page Copyright Page Dedication PROLOGUE Part I - The Champagne Girl CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 Part II - The Mistress ...
Table of Contents Praise Also by Title Page Copyright Page Dedication PROLOGUE Part I - The Champagne Girl CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 Part II - The Mistress CHAPTER 13 CHAPTER 14 CHAPTER 15 CHAPTER 16 CHAPTER 17 Part III - The Shadow Wife CHAPTER 18 CHAPTER 19 CHAPTER 20 CHAPTER 21 CHAPTER 22 CHAPTER 23 CHAPTER 24 CHAPTER 25 CHAPTER 26 CHAPTER 27 CHAPTER 28 Part IV - The Lover CHAPTER 29 CHAPTER 30 CHAPTER 31 CHAPTER 32 CHAPTER 33 CHAPTER 34 CHAPTER 35 CHAPTER 36 CHAPTER 37 CHAPTER 38 CHAPTER 39 Part V - The Second Wife CHAPTER 40 CHAPTER 41 CHAPTER 42 CHAPTER 43 CHAPTER 44 CHAPTER 45 CHAPTER 46 CHAPTER 47 CHAPTER 48 CHAPTER 49 CHAPTER 50 CHAPTER 51 CHAPTER 52 CHAPTER 53 Part VI - The Widow CHAPTER 54 EPILOGUE AUTHOR’S NOTE Teaser chapter Also by Shana Abé The Second Mrs. Astor Shana Abé is the award-winning New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of sixteen novels, including the Sweetest Dark series and the Drákon series. She has a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Southern California and currently lives in the mountains of Colorado. Visit her online at ShanaAbe.com EPILOGUE MRS. COLLIS P. HUNTINGTON WEDS NEPHEW —special cable to Town Topics Manhattan, New York July 17, 1913 After many years of rumors of an impending engagement (always answered with steadfast denials), it has been confirmed that the wealthy widow of famed railway baron Collis Potter Huntington, Mrs. Arabella Duvall Huntington, has indeed wed the nephew of her late husband, Mr. Henry Edwards Huntington. The ceremony took place yesterday in Paris. It may be recalled that Mr. H. E. Huntington was sued for divorce by his first wife, Mary Alice Huntington, in 1906 on grounds of desertion. Since that time, he has been seen in the company of his aunt nearly nonstop. H. E. Huntington, formerly of the Southern Pacific Company, also inherited millions from his uncle. But as the founder of the electric railways in and around Los Angeles, he is prosperous in his own right, and has built a tremendous Beaux-Arts mansion on the idyllic grounds of the old Shorb Ranch near Pasadena, California. The parcel is five hundred acres large, and a place some claim was purchased by H. E. H. with the wooing of his aunt forefront in his mind. Mrs. Huntington is known to have offered her invaluable advice regarding the planning and construction of the new residence and its gardens, as well as on matters of décor and rare objects of art for the home. The newlywed couple, both of an age (it may be delicately stated) when one typically dreams of endings rather than beginnings, plan to divide their time between California and New York. Cheers to them. AUTHOR’S NOTE About a zillion years ago I went to the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens (www.huntington.org) in San Marino, California, for the first time. I was a college student, dead broke, no car, so I’d taken the bus to get there (if you’ve ever traveled across the labyrinth of Los Angeles by bus, you know what an exercise in surrealism and fatigue this is). I’d heard about this fantastical place, this marvelous, gorgeous, astounding place that housed priceless paintings and tomes and objets d’art inside Beaux-Arts mansions, all amid acres of lush, themed gardens featuring flora from around the world. None of it disappointed. I wandered around enthralled, came back again and again. I brought my friends and family there, showed them my favorite garden walks, my favorite paintings, my favorite quiet nooks often overlooked by the other patrons. Once I even saw a ghost in one of the gleaming halls, no kidding. (I was with a friend and she saw it too, so there.) It was not the ghost of Arabella, but a man, smiling at me. Even so, something like that sticks with you, stays shivery down in your bones. Arabella likewise has stuck with me over the years. It took a while for me to recover enough from the gilded splendor of The Huntington to contemplate the couple behind it, Belle and Henry Edwards Huntington. Belle, the scandalous second wife of Edward: his aunt, his contemporary, his equal in wealth and ingenuity. Belle, the unabashed mistress of Edward’s uncle; the unabashed woman who didn’t care that high society never liked her, who accepted their shunning of her with grit and grace and went on to live her fabulous life exactly as she wished. My hero. Belle worked very, very hard to shroud her origins. She lied freely and frequently about her age, about where she had been born and even her first (maybe!) husband, Johnny Worsham. (An image I found of her 1908 passport application showed she’d coolly knocked eight years off her real age and then signed the document, under oath, with aplomb.) What isn’t in doubt is that she became the mistress of Collis when she was either in her late teens or early twenties, and that she rose from obscurity and poverty in Richmond, Virginia, to suddenly have a lovely home in Manhattan, not far from Collis’s Park Avenue mansion (as did her family). From then on, she only soared higher. She became a great philanthropist in her lifetime, giving freely to a variety of causes. Devoted abolitionists, both she and Collis gave important sums to the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute and the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. Among his and her many other public gifts and interests: the Huntington Free Library and Reading Room in Westchester, New York; the Hispanic Society of America; the