Masked Ball at Broxley Manor lg-1

by Rhys Bowen

  Lady Merriman got up. “Thank you, Inspector. And if your men would like to come in for some supper in the servants’ hall, they would be most welcome.”

  “Good of you, my lady,” he said, “but I think they should stay on duty around the house at least until it’s light. Just in case. We can’t be too careful where these foreign assassins are concerned, can we? Look what started the Great War.”

  “Then I’ll have some food sent out to them,” Lady Merriman said. “Tell me, do they like smoked salmon? Maybe pasties would be safer. And are they allowed to drink on duty? We’ve a very innocuous punch.” And she went out of the room before the stunned man could answer any of these questions.

  Before he could leave the room, I went over to him. “Tell me, Inspector,” I said. “What did this man you arrested look like?”

  “Nasty, foreign-looking chap,” he said. “Unshaven. Big dark fellow. Shabbily dressed. He put up a good fight too, when our lads brought him to the ground. Biting and snarling like some kind of wild animal, he was.”

  Now I was even more confused. That didn’t sound like my dancing partner either.

  Prince Otto had now come to join me. “Do not concern yourself, liebchen,” he said. “I am sure we are safe and all is well. Listen. The music has begun again. Shall we go and dance?”

  I could hardly refuse as other couples were now making their way back to the ballroom. As we walked he said to me, “I have been thinking. You seem to be a pleasant young woman. It is true you are not a great beauty, but you look wholesome and healthy enough. If I really must marry, then I could do worse. It will stop the family from constantly reminding me of my duty.” Then to my horror he slipped his arm around my waist and drew me closer to him. “And you would have an agreeable life with me. Berlin is a delightful city with many amusements. And I would allow you much freedom. You would even be free to take a lover, providing you were discreet.”

  “And you would be free to take a mistress?” I asked innocently.

  He chuckled. “But of course. That is how it is done with our kind of people. But at least a marriage fits the bill, so to speak, doesn’t it? It cements family ties across Europe. It provides each of our countries with a valuable connection.” I was about to remind him that his grandfather the kaiser and our King George were first cousins but it hadn’t prevented the worst war the world had ever known. But I decided there was no point. Otto went on cheerfully, “Everyone would be happy.”

  “Not me,” I said and was amazed at my bravery. “I wouldn’t be happy, Otto.”

  He stopped and looked stunned. “You do not like me?”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’re very nice,” I said, “but I don’t know you. And I certainly don’t love you. When I marry, it will only be for love.”

  He laughed. “You are still young and inexperienced. I understand this. When you grow older you will realize that marriage is only a formality, designed to keep wealth and power among the right families. And to produce an heir. Love does not come into this.”

  “Well, it should,” I said. “I do not wish to spend my life with someone I don’t love, watching him sneak off to be with his mistresses. That’s not for me. I want to marry for love and live happily ever after.”

  “Your trouble is that you have too much of your great-grandmother Queen Victoria in you,” he said.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’m proud to be like her. And until I find my Prince Albert, I shall remain fancy-free.”

  “Your king and queen will not be pleased about this.”

  “I think they’ll understand,” I said. “And if they don’t like it—I’m only a very minor member of the family. Of no consequence at all. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m feeling very tired.”

  I pulled away and gave him a polite sort of bow and went upstairs. I was feeling rather proud of myself by the time I located the room I had changed in and took off my costume. I had turned down my first real proposal. I had not let crowned heads of Europe push me around. I had stood up for what I believed in. I was not a child anymore. Before I fell asleep I conjured up the strong jaw and lovely smile of the man who’d danced with me, and I heard his voice in my head. And I wondered if I would ever see him again.

  * * *

  I awoke to the sun streaming in through long windows, and came downstairs to find guests at breakfast, still in their costumes. I didn’t feel like joining them and being jolly all over again. I found Lady Merriman and asked if I could be driven to the station.

  “Are you not feeling well, my dear?” she asked. “You are looking pale. Too much champagne last night, maybe. Tell me, did you sleep alone?”

  I blushed. “Of course.”

  “I thought as much. Otto was in a bad mood. I gather you turned him down.”

  I nodded. “I can’t agree to marry someone I’ve never met before.”

  “I quite agree. And you’re far too young.” She patted my hand. “Travel the world. See life and then marry. That’s what I did and I am blissfully happy with my dear Podge.”

  I tried to phrase the question in my head. “Tell me, Lady Merriman, was there another guest wearing a devil’s outfit last night?”

  “Were you seeing double? All that champagne, honey. No, you two were the only devilish pair.”

  And so I left, not knowing, believing I should never know the truth. When I arrived home that afternoon Harrison met me in the front hall and helped me off with my coat.

  “Did you have a delightful time, my lady?” he asked.

  “It was very grand,” I said. “All a little overwhelming.”

  “I understand, my lady. Always better to be among one’s own kind, I think.”

  I nodded.

  “Their graces have gone out, so you have the house to yourself,” he went on. “Should I have some tea sent to the drawing room for you?”

  “Thank you, that would be lovely.”

  “And a note came for you, my lady. Delivered by hand earlier today.” He held out the salver to me and I took the letter, addressed in strong black script. To a fallen angel.

  I rushed into the drawing room, sat by the fire and opened it.

  My dear fallen angel,

  I am sorry that I had to run off like that last night and we never had a chance to say good-bye. Maybe it’s better that way. Did you accept Prince Otto’s proposal? He told me he intended to propose.

  I told you I was a gate-crasher and it was true. I was not on the guest list. I came only to do my friend Otto a favor. You see, there is a certain married woman of whom he is rather fond. She finds it hard to give her husband the slip, so I was brought in to be the decoy while they were dallying upstairs. I hope this doesn’t shock you too much. It’s the way of the world, I am afraid. Although I am sure that you will never dally. When you have made your choice, you will be faithful forever.

  I wanted to say that I didn’t intend last night to be any more than harmless fun. I didn’t intend to have feelings for you. And since I am not in a position to offer you a palace or a crown, then it is better that we part this way. Still I hope our paths might cross some time in the future. You never know.

  Your devil companion,

  And under this was written three letters that looked like DOM.

  * * *

  And in the next day’s Times there was a small paragraph on page two:

  Attack on German Prince Foiled.

  An attack on visiting Prince Otto of Prussia by a bomb-wielding terrorist was thwarted by the gallant efforts of a young guest attending a ball at Broxley Manor. The young man in question wrestled the bomb away from the man, believed to be a communist agitator, and hurled it away from the building, where it exploded harmlessly. He then helped subdue the man but declined to give his name and disappeared when the man was taken off to the police station. It was hinted that he was actually working for British secret service and was assigned to guard the prince, although Whitehall has denied this allegation. Prince Otto was unhurt and returns home to Germany to
morrow.

  * * *

  And so I put the incident from my mind. I was never invited to Broxley Manor again and understood that Prince Otto finally married a cabaret singer from Berlin, much to the disapproval of his family. It never occurred to me that I would ever be involved with danger and acts of terrorism again, or that some day in the future it would be my own detecting skills that thwarted a similar plot against our own king and queen. And it was only several years later that I rediscovered that letter in bold black script and realized that the initials on it stood for Darcy O’Mara.

  Keep reading for a special excerpt from Rhys Bowen’s next Royal Spyness Mystery . . .

  THE TWELVE CLUES OF CHRISTMAS

  Available in hardcover November 2012 from Berkley Prime Crime!

  Castle Rannoch

  Perthshire, Scotland

  December 14, 1933

  Weather: cold, dreary, bleak.

  Atmosphere here: cold, dreary, bleak.

  Outlook: cold, dreary, bleak. Not in a good mood today. I wonder why. Could it have something to do with the fact that Christmas is coming and it will be utterly bloody?

  Ah, Christmas: chestnuts roasting; Yule logs crackling merrily; tables groaning under roast goose, turkey, mince pies and flaming plum puddings; carols and mistletoe, goodwill to all men. I’m sure there were some houses in Britain where this was going to be the case, in spite of the depression—just not at Castle Rannoch, on the bleak Scottish moors, where I was currently trapped for the winter. No, I was not snowed in or being held prisoner. I was there of my own volition. I happen to be Lady Georgiana Rannoch, sister to the current duke, and that bleak castle is my family home.

  There is actually no way to make Castle Rannoch festive even if one wanted to. Firstly it would be impossible to heat those cavernous great rooms no matter how many Yule logs you piled on the fire, and secondly my sister-in-law, Hilda, Duchess of Rannoch, commonly known as Fig, was in full austerity mode. Times were hard, she said. The country was in the grip of a great depression. It was up to us to set an example and live simply. We even had to endure baked beans on toast as our savory at the end of dinner, which shows how dire our situation had become.

  It is true that times are hard for the Rannochs, even though we’re related to the royal family and my brother inherited Rannoch Castle and a London house in Belgravia. You see, our father lost the last of his fortune in the great crash of ’29, then went up on the moors and shot himself, thus saddling poor Binky with horrendous death duties. I had my allowance cut off on my twenty-first birthday and have been struggling to keep my head above water ever since. Not that our situation is as dire as those poor wretches in the soup lines. I was supposed to marry well, to one of those chinless, spineless and half-imbecile European princes, or, failing that, become lady-in-waiting to an elderly royal aunt.

  So far I had chosen neither of the above, but as Christmas approached and the wind whistled down the hallways of Castle Rannoch, either option began to seem more desirable than my present situation. You might wonder why I stayed in such dreary surroundings. It had started through the famous Rannoch sense of duty that had been rammed down our throats since birth. We’d been raised with stories about ancestors like Robert Bruce Rannoch, who had kept fighting when his arm was hacked off in battle, merely changing his sword from his right hand to his left. I don’t think my sense of duty was that strong, but it was definitely there.

  You see, that summer, in London, my sister-in-law Fig had given birth to a second little Rannoch. Although she looked as if she had the constitution of a cart horse, she had been rather ill. She had gone home to Scotland to recuperate and had actually begged me to come to keep her company (which shows how jolly sick she was!). I, being a kindhearted soul, had agreed.

  Summer had turned to autumn and there were the royal relatives at Balmoral to visit, house parties, grouse shoots—all of which we hoped might bring Fig out of her blue funk. But she had remained languid and depressed, hardly showing any interest in little Adelaide—yes, that was what they named the poor child. Adelaide Gertrude Hermione Maude. Can you imagine saddling any poor baby with such monstrosities? They hadn’t even come up with a good pet name yet. One could hardly call her Addy or Laidy, could one? Then she’d be Lady Addy or Lady Laidy and that wouldn’t do. To date she was addressed as “baby,” or occasionally “diddums.”

  And so I had stayed on. Nanny coped admirably with little Adelaide, Fig lolled about, getting more and more petty and bad tempered, and Binky wandered the grounds looking worried. I was starting to wonder how long I could endure this, when things were decided for me. Fig’s mother, Lady Wormwood, arrived to take charge. It only took an instant to see where Fig’s pettiness and bossy nature came from. If Fig was a trial, Lady Wormwood was utterly bloody. (Yes, I know a lady is not supposed to use words like “bloody,” but in describing Lady Wormwood the adjective is actually rather mild. Alas, my education was sadly lacking. If I knew stronger words, I’d have used them.)

  She had been in the house for about a week when I came back from a walk to hear her strident voice saying, “It’s not healthy, Hilda.” (She was the only person who called Fig Hilda, being responsible for the ghastly name.) “It’s not natural for a young girl to shut herself away like this, doing nothing all day. Does she not think at all about her future?”

  I froze in the entrance hall, shielded by a suit of armor. I expected Fig to leap to my defense and tell her mother that I was only shutting myself away at Castle Rannoch because she had begged me to stay with her. Instead I heard her saying, “I really don’t know what she thinks, Mummy.”

  “She can’t possibly expect that you’ll go on supporting her. You’ve done your duty and more. The girl has had her season, hasn’t she?” (People like Lady Wormwood pronounced the word “gell”). “Why isn’t she married? She’s not bad looking. She has royal connections. You’d have thought someone would have taken her off your hands by now.”

  “She’s already turned down Prince Siegfried of Romania,” Fig said. “I don’t think she has any idea about duty. The queen was really angling for that match. They are Hollenzollern-Sigmaringens, you know. Related to the queen’s family. And Siegfried was a charming young man, too. But she turned him down.”

  “What on earth is she waiting for—a king?” Lady Wormwood asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “It’s not as if she’s next in line to the throne, is it?”

  This was true. I had been thirty-fourth until Adelaide was born. Now I had been relegated to thirty-fifth.

  Fig lowered her voice. “Between ourselves, she’s mooning after some disreputable chap called Darcy O’Mara. Absolutely rotten sort.”

  “O’Mara? Son of Lord Kilhenny?”

  “That’s the one. Their family is in a worse state than ours. One gathers his father has had to sell off the family seat and the racing stables to cover his debts. So there are no prospects in that quarter. This O’Mara chap has no fortune and no career. He’ll never be able to support a wife.”

  “Well, she wouldn’t be allowed to marry him anyway, would she?” Lady Wormwood’s voice echoed around the great hall. “They are a Catholic family. As a member of the line of succession she’d be barred from marrying a Catholic.”

  I took an involuntary step back, knocking into the suit of armor and just managing to grab the mace before it clattered to the floor. I knew that the royal family was not allowed by British law to marry a Catholic, but surely that didn’t apply to me. It wasn’t as if I’d ever find myself queen, unless a particularly virulent epidemic hit or invaders wiped out numbers one through thirty-four. Not that Darcy had asked me to marry him. In fact, we did not even fit the traditional concept of sweethearts. When I was with him it was bliss, but most of the time I didn’t even know where he was. I certainly didn’t know how he earned his living. He appeared to be another young man-about-town, spending his days in idle pursuits like most peers’ sons, but I suspected he was also employed by the British government as some
kind of spy. I had questioned him on several occasions but he remained enigmatically mum. When I last heard from him he was on his way to Argentina. I felt a lump come into my throat.

  “The girl needs taking in hand, Hilda.” Lady Wormwood’s voice boomed again. “Make it quite clear to her that she is expected to do her duty like everyone else. None of us mooned around waiting for an unsuitable chap, did we? We married whom we were told to and got on with it. Such a stupid notion that one marries for love.”

  “Hold on a minute, Mummy,” Fig interrupted. “I’m jolly fond of Binky, you know. I consider myself very lucky in that department.”

  “Nobody is saying that love doesn’t come later in some cases,” Lady Wormwood said. “If I remember correctly you had a distinct crush on the local curate until we set you straight. So will you speak to the girl, Hilda, or shall I? Give her an ultimatum—tell her you can support her no longer and it’s up to her to find herself a husband right away.”

  I couldn’t stand there for another second. I turned and pushed open the front door, stepping out into the full force of the gale that had begun brewing during my walk. It had started to snow, a driving kind of sleet that stung like needles then stuck to my clothing, hair and eyelashes, but I didn’t care. I walked, faster and faster, away from the house and out into the storm. As I walked I concentrated on my anger, to keep my fear at bay. How dare she! Castle Rannoch was my ancestral home, not hers. She couldn’t turn me out. And then the fear began to creep in . . . if they did turn me out, where would I go? God knows I’d tried to find ways to support myself, but with the world in the grips of a great depression even those with qualifications and experience were standing in bread lines. And then the bigger fear—the real fear. What if I couldn’t marry Darcy? Was I waiting for an impossible dream? Hadn’t I better start facing reality?