Rhys Bowen: Masked Ball at Broxley Manor

Masked Ball at Broxley Manor

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Rhys Bowen

Royal Spyness Mysteries

HER ROYAL SPYNESS

A ROYAL PAIN

ROYAL FLUSH

ROYAL BLOOD

NAUGHTY IN NICE

THE TWELVE CLUES OF CHRISTMAS

Constable Evans Mysteries

EVANS ABOVE

EVAN HELP US

EVANLY CHOIRS

EVAN AND ELLE

EVAN CAN WAIT

EVANS TO BETSY

EVAN ONLY KNOWS

EVAN’S GATE

EVAN BLESSED

Specials

MASKED BALL AT BROXLEY MANOR

Masked Ball at Broxley Manor

Rhys Bowen

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

MASKED BALL AT BROXLEY MANOR

A Berkley Prime Crime Special / published by arrangement with the author

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley Prime Crime Special edition / October 2012

Copyright © 2012 by Janet Quin-Harkin.

Excerpt from The Twelve Clues of Christmas by Rhys Bowen copyright © 2012 by Janet Quin-Harkin.

Cover photos: Ballroom © JinYoung Lee; Figure Illustration by Lawrence Whitley.

Cover design by Rita Frangie.

All rights reserved.

A story featuring Lady Georgiana before she became Her Royal Spyness . . .

Rannoch House

Belgrave Square, London W.1

October 1929

“Two letters have just come in the post for Georgiana!” My sister-in-law Fig sounded amazed, and a trifle annoyed too, as she took the envelopes from the silver salver the butler was holding. “And they look as if they might be invitations.”

We had been drinking coffee in the morning room of our London house—the easiest room to keep warm on a bleak October day. My brother—Hamish Albert Henry, Duke of Rannoch, usually known as Binky, had been reading the newspaper. I was curled on the window seat, looking out at the gardens in Belgrave Square, watching nannies pushing impressive prams and elderly colonels walking dogs and wondering what on earth I was going to do with myself all day. My brother, Binky, looked up from the Times with a mild display of interest.

I tried not to cross the room too eagerly to take the letters from her outstretched hand. Invitations had been few and far between recently. It was the end of my season. I had been presented at court (and nearly catapulted onto Their Majesties by mistake when I’d caught my heel in the train of my gown). I had been to balls, to Ascot, and done all the things a deb with severely limited funds could do. But I hadn’t found the man of my dreams. In fact I hadn’t even received one proposal—not from a halfway decent sort of chap anyway. At nineteen I feared I was destined to become an old maid.

I perched on the window seat and opened the first envelope, conscious of Fig’s and Binky’s eyes on me.

“It is an invitation,” I said excitedly. “To a masked Halloween ball at Broxley Manor.”

Fig’s jaw dropped in a most unladylike manor. “Broxley? Isn’t that the home of Lord Merriman?”

I glanced at the invitation and nodded. “That’s right. It says ‘Lord and Lady Merriman invite you.’”

“How on earth do you know Lord Merriman?” Fig sounded positively vexed now.

“I don’t. Never met the Merrimans.”

“Then why would they invite you of all people to a ball? They only mix with beautiful people.”

“Oh, Georgie’s not too bad,” Binky said, making my self-esteem sink even lower. “Maybe not beautiful but she’s a healthy-looking kind of girl.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Fig said. “Really, Binky, you are so clueless. I meant the smart set. You know, the Prince of Wales and his chums. Nobody like Georgie.”

“She is the Prince of Wales’s cousin, old bean,” Binky reminded her. It was always a sore spot to my sister-in-law that Binky and I were related to the royals and she wasn’t.

“Yes, but she doesn’t move in the same circles, does she? Monte Carlo and yachts on the Med and that kind of thing.”

“I have no idea why I was invited,” I said.

“Maybe they’ve invited all of this year’s debutantes,” Fig said, obviously trying to come up with an answer that would satisfy her. If I were just one of a crowd she could handle it. “Although I’ve never heard of anyone celebrating Halloween with a ball,” she added with a sniff.

“Lady Merriman is American, remember,” Binky put in. “They make a big thing of it over there.”

“Pagan feast, isn’t it? One step away from devil worship.” She took a long sip from her coffee cup.

“Steady on, old fruit. That’s a bit thick,” Binky said. “I’m sure it will be a fun and respectable ball and Georgie will have a wonderful time. She may even meet a chap, you never know.”

“She’s had all season to meet a chap,” Fig said coldly. She turned her reptilian gaze back to me. “So who is the other invitation from?”

I was about to open it when I noticed the royal crest embossed into the envelope. “I think it comes from the palace,” I said. I tore open the envelope with unseemly haste. “It does. ‘Their Majesties request the presence of Lady Georgiana Rannoch at a reception in honor of Prince Rupert and Prince Otto of Prussia.’”

“A reception? At Buck House? In honor of a couple of Prussian princes?” Fig’s voice had risen dangerously now.

“The war is long over, old bean,” Binky said. “Forgive and forget and all that, you know. And the kaiser is our cousin, after all. So that makes two second or third cousins, doesn’t it? I expect it’s a little family do.”

“Then why is Georgie invited to a little family do when we aren’t?” Fig was positively glaring at me now with undisguised hatred.

Binky shrugged. “It’s up to the king and queen to invite whom they want, Fig.”

“We don’t get out and about enough, Binky. That is our problem.” Fig rose from her chair and paced the room. “Their Majesties probably don’t even know we’re in London. We are not seen in society. They’ll think we’ve gone home to shoot.”

“We don’t get out and about because it costs money to be seen in society, Fig, and you know we have very little.” He paused. “Pretty much zero, actually.”

“We seemed to manage to fund Georgie’s season,” she said bitterly.

“We had to do the right thing for my sister,” Binky said. “She had to come out into society. Surely you agree to that, Fig.”

“And now she’s being invited to Buck House and we’re not.” She glared at me. “Do you know either of these Prussian princes, Georgiana?’

“Never met either of them,” I said. “I’ve never been to Germany.”

“Rupert is one of the kaiser’s younger sons,” Binky said. “I met them when they came over once before the war.”

“Wasn’t Otto the mad one?” Fig asked. “Didn’t they have to lock him away?”

“He was all right when I met him,” Binky said. “We played trains under the table and he wasn’t foaming at the mouth or anything. Of course I was only about five at the time. He spoke English quite well too, I remember. He had an English governess.”

“He’s obviously not foaming now or Their Majesties wouldn’t have invited people to a reception to meet him,” Fig said dryly. “But we do know that insanity runs in all the royal families. That’s the one thing Georgiana can be thankful for—that her father married a commoner.”