Free Beautiful Lies by Clare Clark

Cody said to Edward, who smiled and gingerly flexed the fingers of his right hand.
    ‘My husband pays me not the least attention at the moment and you are entirely to blame,’ Maribel said, laughing. ‘He has eyes only for the Wild West.’
    ‘Ma’am, if that is even a little bit true then we are set for success beyond my wildest dreams.’
    ‘Is there any question of that? You are the toast of the town.’
    Cody grinned.
    ‘This week maybe. Till the next new excitement comes along.’
    ‘Whoever that is will have their work cut out. Your show is perfectly thrilling.’
    ‘Well, ma’am, it’s the truth and that, I think, is the secret to it. No acting or sham, just an exact reproduction of life on the frontier as we have lived it.’
    ‘A romantic version, though, surely?’
    ‘There’s fewer chimneys in the West, that’s true, and not such a crowd of Englishmen either, but all else wise it’s the genuine article.’
    Maribel smiled. To her surprise she had enjoyed herself enormously. She had not wanted to come, had complained several times to Edward when he collected her that she had not the faintest interest in cowboys. As they inched their way through the traffic to Earls Court her mood had worsened. From South Kensington railway station the crush of carriages had choked the Old Brompton Road, the press of pedestrians seething among them like boiling porridge. The shouts of drivers and the rattle of conveyances and harnesses and the smell of drains and unwashed bodies had thickened in the unrelenting glare of the afternoon. Never had London been less congenial. And then, as if by magic, the coal smoke and the choke of mean housing had cleared into a wide expanse and the city was gone. Beneath the blue sky the spacious prairie swept upwards in waves of undulating green. At the foot of the hill were pitched clusters of white tents with pathways winding between, and dotted about them, the shrouded figures of Indian braves, their shoulders swathed in blankets of scarlet and blue. Behind them masses of shrub-choked rock rose cliff-steep over thick copses of trees, and further still, in the distance, colossal mountain ranges shimmered purple and gold, like a heat haze. If one disregarded the distant shriek of railway engines and the smoke that rose from one hundred hidden chimneys to smudge the cerulean sky, one might imagine oneself in the New World.
    Beside Cody Major Burke gave a discreet cough. He had with him a tall, well-built gentleman with thick dark hair and whiskers, who, despite the hour and the occasion, wore an old-fashioned tweed coat of the kind favoured by prosperous provincials on market day. In demeanour, however, he could not less have resembled a country tradesman. Though he did not speak, there was a vitality to him, a heat that quickened the air about him. Maribel had never seen him before, and yet there was something familiar about his appearance that she could not quite put her finger on. Perhaps he was simply the kind of man who expected to be recognised.
    ‘Colonel, if I may introduce Mr Alfred Webster?’ Burke said. ‘Mr Webster is the editor of the
City Chronicle
, one of London’s most prominent newspapers.’
    Maribel blinked. Like everyone else in London she knew of Alfred Webster. She looked around for Edward but he had drifted with the tide of the party and was conversing some distance away with a cowboy of immense height whose ruddy good health made Edward look positively anaemic. Beside him a stand bore a wooden hoop, like an embroidery frame, from which hung a shock of human hair, stuck with feathers. Edward leaned close, examining it, and Maribel shuddered. She wondered what Charlotte’s boys would give for the chance to touch such a thing.
    ‘Delighted to meet you, sir,’ Cody said, pumping Webster’s hand. ‘I am so glad you could join us.’
    ‘The privilege is all mine. I thought your show marvellous.’
    ‘Then I shall hope that you make a habit of printing your