The Earl's Mortal Enemy

by Issy Brooke

  The Discreet Investigations of Lord and Lady Calaway

  Book Four: The Earl’s Mortal Enemy

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  THE EARL'S MORTAL ENEMY

  First edition. June 10, 2020.

  Copyright © 2020 Issy Brooke.

  Written by Issy Brooke.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Prologue

  Thringley House, southern England

  November 1893

  Author’s note: this book is written in British English. It has been edited professionally, but the grammar, spelling and vocabulary may be unfamiliar to some readers.

  THE LETTER WAS ADDRESSED to Adelia Caxton, the Countess of Calaway. It was brief and anonymous.

  “Prendergast is an ill choice of man for the Earl to favour so openly. He ought to be better advised. You have been out of the area for some time and perhaps are not aware of who is who in current society. We write this note to you in deference to your past status. Consider your allegiances. Respectfully, a well-wisher.”

  She had only been back at the family’s ancestral home of Thringley House for a few weeks. One liked to think that society never changed; that was what one was taught, after all. Certain families, certain titles, certain people had historical influence. It might be local influence or it might be an influence rooted in London. But one was led to believe that if one were at the top of society, one would remain there in perpetuity.

  And perhaps it was true, if you looked at it from afar. When you were thoroughly back in your own little set, such as Adelia inhabited in the south of England, you became more aware of the peaks and troughs, the tides of community and society. For a while, you could be in the ascendancy. But just let your attention waver – make the wrong friendship, cultivate the wrong alliance, indulge in the wrong connection – and soon the waves would close over your mouth. And who would throw out a lifeline? No one. The others, waiting on the life-rafts, were poised not to help, but to seize their moment and rise up in your place.

  Adelia filed the spiteful note with the others she’d received.

  She knew exactly who they were from.

  One

  Ivery Manor was adorned with a rather distasteful amount of ivory and cream-coloured marble. Adelia was used to opulence and splendour but her daughter’s new home was almost obscenely dazzling. Perhaps the effect was partly because everything was so very new: though the hereditary title of the Barons Ivery was an ancient one, going right back to the Norman conquerors, the original Ivery Manor was nothing more than a heap of crumbling stones. This new place had been built alongside the ruins as recently as the eighteenth century, and as a silly joke referring to the Ivery name, the predominant colour was a rich shade of off-white. Where ivory couldn’t be used, marble took its place. The effect at first was one of being in a well-scrubbed dairy. If dairies were lit by lavish chandeliers, that was.

  The manor was filled with all the very best people from the local area, and a handful of irritating ones besides. The only notable absence was Lady Purfleet. Her haughtiness was legendary in the local area and beyond. Apparently, while Adelia had been away visiting her various daughters around the country, the noble Duchess had descended on the region and quite taken over. Now she had gone back to London to hang on the Duke’s arm for a little while, but she remained the main topic of conversation. If Adelia heard one more sentence beginning with “Of course, Lady Purfleet says...” she was going to scream. She had met the woman socially over the years, but had never pursued any closer friendship with her. It was something of a shock to come back to the county and discover one had almost been – well, Adelia hated to think it, but she really had been usurped in her absence by the Duchess.

  At least being in London meant that Lady Purfleet was not at the party. But there was someone else she was avoiding: there was another woman who Adelia disliked with an intensity she usually reserved for anchovies and that was Mrs Ingram. Mrs Ingram had never liked Adelia and indeed the feeling was thoroughly mutual. But while Adelia was content to avoid her, Mrs Ingram seemed to be on a mission to pick and prod and poke at her every time she had the chance, seeking her out to tease and taunt.

  Luckily, avoiding her this particular evening was easy enough, due to the press of people. It was Adelia’s daughter’s twentieth birthday party and it was also the first large extravaganza Edith had hosted since becoming Lady Ivery just a few months previously.

  Adelia still felt a pang of uncertainty when she thought about the marriage. Edith was the youngest of her seven daughters, but she was no baby of the family; headstrong, straightforward, frighteningly independent, she had surprised them all by declaring she was going to marry her old childhood friend Gregory Ivery.

  No. Perhaps not everyone had been surprised. Adelia’s husband Theodore had supported the match entirely, and that had put Adelia somewhat on the back foot. She was the match-maker, not him; he was a medical man and unwilling earl, and lately he had become something of a private investigator too. What he wasn’t, however, was a man who was wise in the ways of the heart.

  But it had all been taken out of Adelia’s hands. If Edith wanted something, she made sure that she got it. And anyway, Gregory was a lovely and charming man with a sensible head on his shoulders. Adelia liked him. So now here she was at Ivery Manor, sipping champagne on a blustery November evening, safe and warm inside and surrounded by good company.

  Yet she could not escape the fact that some of that company filled her with yet more foreboding and uncertainty. And it wasn’t just Mrs Ingram about whom she was concerned. It was the gossip and the chatter which made Adelia feel as if she had been away for longer than a few months. Not only was Lady Purfleet now the dominant force, even in her absence, but everyone was looking forward to a charity dinner to happen in a few weeks’ time, and when people mentioned it, they looked sideways at Adelia, and fell into an uneasy silence.

  Adelia knew why, even if no one spoke openly about the matter.

  The dinner was to raise funds for the widows of soldiers, and the guest of honour was to be the newly-promoted Inspector Prendergast of the local police. The problem was that Prendergast was a young, energetic man who had long been championed by Theodore. Mrs Ingram’s own husband was a police Inspector of very long standing and until recently he had been stationed in a nearby city.

  But Inspector Joseph Ingram was one of those men who seemed destined to rise only so far in life, before life said “No. This is your limit.” Such a juddering halt to her husband’s career path had preyed on Mrs Ingram’s sense of fair play ever since. He ought to be commissioner by now, she said; not put out to pasture in a backwater of southern England.

  And now poor Inspector Joseph Ingram had been overlooked once again. Mrs Ingram told everyone who would listen that he was the natural choice for guest speaker at the charity dinner, due to his experience, but he had been “snubbed” by “those wh
o have been unduly influenced by certain parts of society” and “superseded” by the cocky young upstart, Inspector Prendergast.

  Prendergast, and his rise, was very much seen as Theodore’s pet project.

  And so by extension, Adelia was to blame too. It was yet one more blow that Mrs Ingram perceived Adelia to have made against her in a catalogue of imagined slights that stretched back years. It was as if she thought Adelia had nothing better to do than sit at home and plot the downfall of Mrs Ingram and her family and her ambitions.

  And of course, while Adelia had been away, Mrs Ingram had done her very best to talk to everyone about her feelings on the matter. Hence the sideways glances, the gossip, and the sudden silences.

  It made things all very awkward, Adelia thought. She looked around. People filled the ballroom, the ladies in their magnificent shimmering gowns, the men in clean lines of black and white, while music drifted from the string quartet in the corner. Another room was laid out with tables of food. People gathered in little groups. Everyone knew one another. They were not so very far from London, and indeed Ivery Manor lay only a five-mile walk from Thringley House where Adelia and Theodore lived. Edith had never been a social butterfly, unlike some of her sisters, but she was clearly trying to set a good example and follow society’s expectations, at least for one day of the year.

  Adelia scanned the assembly, hoping rather uncharitably that Mrs Ingram had eaten some warm prawns and had had to retire early with gastric distress or something equally unpleasant. She didn’t see her enemy, but she winced as she caught sight of Edith standing in a most unladylike way, her hand on her hip, her usually-beautiful face made almost plain by its expression of annoyance and exasperation. The young woman tipped her head back and looked at the ceiling, her shoulders rising and falling in an exaggerated sigh.

  Adelia could not help herself. She drained the last of her champagne and passed the empty glass to a nearby servant before swishing her way across the corner of the ballroom towards the little gathering around Edith. Edith was standing by a window that ran floor to ceiling and looked out onto a raised area of the garden that was all lit by orange lanterns. A few chairs were scattered around. In the daytime, this was a pleasant little cubby-hole to sit and watch the birds on the lawn but now people faced the other way, inwards, watching the dancers as they whirled.

  The two ladies that were sitting on the wide chairs were not actually watching the dancers. They were nudging one another, and looking up at the disdainful figure of Edith.

  One of the ladies seemed as if she wanted to cry.

  Adelia vaguely recognised them. Gregory Ivery’s family was an ancient one, and that meant it had grown and spread over the centuries to become a vast and rambling morass of cousins and branches and long-lost relatives, some with only the most tenuous of connections to the main family tree.

  Both ladies were young, around Edith’s age, and neither were blessed with conventional beauty though they were striking and not unpleasing. The one in the pale blue dress was trying not to cry and the other, who seemed to be her sister and was in a corresponding rose-pink, got to her feet as Adelia approached, and managed a little curtsey. “My lady,” she said. The other one started to get up, sniffing, but Adelia waved her back to her seat.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked, not looking at Edith. She sat down alongside the two sisters and smiled warmly.

  It would not be the first time Edith had upset someone, leaving Adelia to smooth over ruffled feathers.

  “Oh! Perfectly all right, thank you!” the lady in rose-pink said hastily. “Poor dear Angelina had something in her eye.”

  “Perhaps that wouldn’t happen if she stopped staring around herself like a moonstruck donkey,” Edith said disdainfully.

  “Edith!” Adelia snapped. That sort of talk had been frowned upon when it had happened between Edith and her sisters as a child; it was certainly inappropriate now.

  Angelina dabbed her eye and whispered, “No, no, she is right, you know. But Claire and I find this all so very wonderful, you know. Oh, dear Edith, you are so lucky! Isn’t she, Claire? So lucky. One day we shall be this lucky.”

  “Are you hoping to do away with me and marry your own cousin?” Edith said drily.

  “No, of course not! What I meant was, that we should one day be lucky enough to marry a man as good as our dear Gregory and have such a wonderful, wonderful place to live,” Angelina said.

  “I know what you meant.”

  Angelina frowned. “But why did you...”

  “I was making a joke.”

  The two ladies paused, then tittered dutifully. Even Adelia could understand why Edith might be tired of talking with them. But it still wasn’t fair to be rude to them just for sport. Adelia stood up, which automatically made the two ladies stand as well. She leaned in close to them and said, “It is such a delight to see you both again.” She searched her memory. She had seen them before, she was sure of it. “Is your ... mother keeping well?” She had no idea who their mother was and hoped she wasn’t actually dead.

  “She is recovering now but she is terribly sad she wasn’t able to come tonight,” Claire said.

  Adelia made a sympathetic face and said, “Do tell her she was missed and I look forward to seeing her in company again soon.”

  The two ladies exchanged a glance, murmured their thanks, and took their leave.

  Edith snorted. “You won’t be seeing old Mrs Edgbaston in company again, you know. The fire took half her face off.”

  “What fire?”

  “I don’t know. Some new gas-fired range in their house. I don’t know why she was even in the kitchen. It’s not a place for a lady.”

  “Have you ever been in your own kitchen?”

  “Yes, of course. Last month, in fact. I wanted to look at our own range when I heard about her accident. I can see how it happened. There’s a problem with the gas, you know, generally. The pressure isn’t consistent so sometimes the flame goes out.” Edith shook her head. “The men who invent these things don’t actually know how they get used in everyday life. Then, boom! Someone loses their eyebrows.”

  “How dreadful.”

  “Oh, they can be painted back on, I’m sure.” Edith sat down on one of the chairs with a heavy thump. “Oh, mama, when are all these people going to go away? Must we really dance all night? There’s a breakfast prepared and everything. I’d only agreed to a small party but then – I don’t know how this all happened. Now it’s a huge event. Don’t they want their own beds? I certainly do. I want to be up early tomorrow.”

  “And do what?”

  Edith shrugged. “I have a day of study planned.”

  “Study?”

  “Fossils. Well, how they are found and analysed and categorised, really. Those chaps, those friends of papa, they’ve got me thinking. Don’t you find it interesting? Gregory and I were talking about it all morning. Except that people kept interrupting me to talk about food.”

  Adelia stood in front of Edith, blocking her view of the ballroom. “Stop thinking about exploding stoves and fossils, Edith, and listen to me. You have been unutterably rude to those two ladies. I am sure that Angelina was crying.”

  “She is too soft, mama, and being soft won’t get anyone anywhere these days. They were whining on at me for at least half an hour about their lack of marriage prospects. I started out listening to them very sympathetically, I promise you. But what is one to do? They won’t help themselves. Mama, you know me. I will help anyone who wants to make a difference. What I cannot bear is when people whine and whine and whine, ceaselessly, and yet do nothing.”

  “What can they do? Just waltz up to a man and demand that he marries them?”

  “They can stop being so ... so ... so limp, mama. And it’s not just them. I’ve been here five months and I swear I have not had a moment of peace. There has not been one week when we have not had guests. Every distant member of Gregory’s family has invited themselves to stay. I cannot keep tr
ack. You walk into a room carrying a good book, expecting to be alone, and there’s another one of them just sitting there and smiling expectantly. It’s like an infestation of mice, but at least I would be allowed to trap mice. I wouldn’t be forced to make polite and pointless conversation with them. They won’t talk about fossils. It’s always dresses.”

  Adelia had to sigh. “I do understand. But you are so young and so newly married that they all want to see that you are settled here. They’re here to offer you support.”

  “No, they are here to stare around themselves and make remarks about the carpets. Why would I need support?”

  “You clearly need guidance on how to be a polite member of society.”

  Edith got to her feet and tossed her head. “Society is not what it was, mama. I am a new sort of woman.”

  “God help us all,” Adelia muttered. But Edith did not hear her. She had already flounced away.

  IF IT HAD NOT BEEN a party for his own daughter, Theodore would have faked any manner of illness to get himself out of attending, up to and including typhoid. He was not a man inclined to enjoy loud, lively social gatherings. This one was made far more bearable, however, by the presence of a small group of men whose proposed business venture was an intriguing one.

  Gregory Ivery had invited them into the sanctuary of his study. They could hear the party carrying on elsewhere but there was a more intimate and convivial atmosphere in the wood-panelled room, one of the few places that had not been decorated in the cooler and more elegant style of endless marble and pale silk. Gregory was a mature man in his late twenties, and Theodore had known him since he had been born. He felt almost fatherly now as he looked at the young baron, lately come into his inheritance, as he passed around the cigars and brandy.

  Another of the company, Bablock Halifax, inhaled deeply and half-closed his eyes before sitting forward and launching into his explanation of the plans. “Froude’s the main financier, of course – where is he?” He looked around.