Alyssa Maxwell's Blog - Posts Tagged "excerpt"

CHAPTER ONE



Newport, RI, August 1895

She awoke that morning to an angry sea battering the edges of the promontory, and gusting winds that kicked up a spray to rattle against her bedroom windows. She might simply have rolled over, closed her eyes again and sunk pleasantly back into sleep, if not for the—

Here the nib of my pen ran dry and scratched across the paper, threatening to leave a tear. If not for the what? I knew what I wanted to say; this was to be a novel of mystery and danger, but I was having a dickens of a time that morning finding the right words.

As I pondered, my gaze drifted to another page I’d shoved aside last night. Sitting on my desktop inches from my elbow, the words I’d hastily scrawled before going to bed mocked me with their insipidness. Mrs Astor Plants A Rose Garden, the title read. Who could possibly care, I wondered. Yet people apparently did care, or I wouldn’t have been sent by my employer, Mr. Millford of the Newport Observer, to cover the auspicious event. Not that Mrs. Astor actually wielded anything resembling a garden tool, mind you, or chanced pricking her tender fingers on a thorn. No, she’d barked brisk orders at her groundskeepers until the placement of the bushes suited her taste, and then ushered her dozen or so guests onto the terrace for tea.

I sighed, looking up from my desk to stare out my bedroom window. The scene outside perfectly matched the mysterious one I’d just described: a glowering, blustery day that promised intermittent rains and salty winds. The inclement weather heralded ominous tidings for my protagonist, not to mention reeking real-life havoc on the tightest of coiffeurs.

No matter; I had no plans to stray from home until much later in the evening. I dipped my pen in the inkwell and was about to try again when from behind me a hand descended on my shoulder.

With a yelp I sprang from my chair, shoving it away with the backs of my knees. I sucked in a breath and prepared to cry out in earnest, but before I could utter a sound a second hand clamped my mouth.

“Shush! For crying out loud, Em, don’t scream. I thought you heard me. Ouch!”
I’d instinctively bitten one of the fingers pressed against my lips, even as recognition of the familiar voice poured through me and sent my fear draining from my limbs. Still, I had no intentions of apologizing. Wrenching from his grip, I turned and slapped my brother’s hands away.

“Blast it, Brady! What are you doing here? Neither Katie nor Nanny would have let you upstairs without asking me first.”

“The front door was unlocked. I called out but when no one answered I let myself in.” A flick of his head sent a shank of damp, sandy blond hair off his forehead—and assured me he was lying. That particular gesture had accompanied Brady’s fibs for as long as I could remember. The only truth to his statement was that he’d let himself in.

“You sneaked in, didn’t you?” I folded my arms in front of me. Why?”

“I need your help, Em.”

“Oh, Brady, what now?” My arms fell to my sides, and with a sigh that melted into a yawn, I walked to the foot of my bed and reached for my robe. “I suppose you must be in real trouble again, or you’d never be out and about this early.”

“Are you going to The Breakers tonight?” He referred to the ball our relatives were holding that evening.

“Of course. But—”

“I need you to do something for me.” He threw himself into the chintz overstuffed chair beside the hearth. I remained standing, glaring down at him, braced for the inevitable. “I, uh…I did something I shouldn’t have…”

“Really? What else is new?” Several scenarios sprang to mind. A brawl. A drunken tirade. Cheating at cards. An affair with yet another wife of an irate husband bent on revenge. One simply never knew what antics my half brother, Stuart Braden Gale IV, might stir up on any given day. Or night. Despite hailing from two of Newport’s oldest and most respected families—on both our mother’s and his father’s sides—Brady had seen the inside of the Newport jail nearly as often as the town’s most unsavory rapscallions. And on many a morning, I’d paid the bailiff on his behalf more times than I, or my purse, cared to count.

“I want to make it right,” he hurried on. “The Breakers will be mobbed later and I’ll be able to sneak in, but I’ll need your help.”

“I don’t like the sound of this one bit, Brady. Whatever it is, you know you should just come clean. You can’t hide from Uncle Cornelius for long.”

Before he could reply, a pounding echoed from the hall below. I heard a tread on the staircase and moments later there came a rap at my bedroom door. With an imploring look, Brady shook his head and put a finger to his lips. He jumped up from the chair and moved to the corner of the room where my armoire would hide him from view. A sense of foreboding had me dragging my feet as I went to the door.

“Good mornin’, Miss Emma.” Katie, my young housemaid, peered in at me and tucked an errant red curl under the cap she’d obviously donned in haste. Her soft brogue plunged to a murmur. “Sorry to disturb you so early, miss, but Mr. Neily’s below. Shall I tell him you ain’t receivin’ yet?”

“Neily?” A burst of wind rattled the windows sent a chill down my back. “On a morning like this?” My maid didn’t answer, and I managed to refrain from angling a glance into the shadows cloaking my brother. “Thank you, Katie. Tell him I’ll be down in a few minutes. Show him into the morning room, please, and bring in coffee.”

“Aye, miss.” The girl hesitated and then bobbed an awkward curtsy. I closed the door.

“You won’t tell him I’m here, will you, Em?”

With pursed lips I met my brother’s eager blue gaze. “He’s looking for you, is he?”

“One would assume.”

Going to my dressing table, I pinned my braided hair into a coil at my nape, secured the sash of my robe into a secure knot, and slipped my feet into a pair of tattered satin slippers. In the bathroom my great aunt Sadie had installed before she died, I turned the creaky faucet and splashed cold water onto my face.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t dream of greeting company in such a state of dishabille, but this was my cousin Neily, here on a blustery August morning hours before he typically showed his face beyond the gates of his family’s summer home.

Would I keep my brother’s secret? Blindly lend him the help he asked for?
I sighed once more. Didn’t I always?
When I stepped back into the bedroom, Brady was nowhere to be seen, though I thought I heard the telltale click of the attic door closing.

Downstairs, I paused in the morning room doorway. A coffee pot and two cups waited on the table; fruit, muffins, and a tureen of steaming oatmeal occupied the sideboard. Under any other circumstances, my stomach would have rumbled. Not today.

It didn’t appear as if my cousin had brought an appetite either, as he hadn’t helped himself to any of the repast. I pasted on a smile and stepped into the room. “Good morning, Neily. What brings you here so early, and in such weather? Not that it isn’t always good to see you.” Could he hear the hesitation in my tone? “Will you join me in some coffee?”

He had been standing with his broad back to me, staring out at the ocean, his dark hair boyishly tousled in the way that had become fashionable among the sporting young gentlemen here for the summer season. He turned, his somber expression framed by the tossing gray waves and the ragged clouds scuttling past like ripped, wind-born sheets.

“Good morning, Emmaline,” he said curtly, a civility to be gotten over quickly so he could come to the point of his visit. He held his black bowler between his hands. “Is Brady here?”

I blinked and clutched the ruffled neckline of my robe. For once I didn’t bother correcting Neily on my name. I preferred Emma, but my more illustrious relatives insisted on using my full name, as they did with all the girls in the family.

“Brady,” I repeated. I paused, hating to lie, but for now I’d do what I could to protect my brother, at least until I knew more.

I discreetly crossed two fingers. “You know Brady’s never up this early. Is something wrong?”

“He’s up today and yes, something’s wrong.” His overcoat billowing behind him, he came toward me so quickly I almost backed up a step, but managed to hold my ground. “If I were to look around, are you sure I wouldn’t find him?”

Only if you looked in the attic. But please don’t. Then again, by now Brady might be somewhere on the first floor, perhaps in the adjoining service hallway, listening to every word.

Aloud I said, “Look all you like.” I was sure Neily could hear my heart pounding. “Did you check around town?”

“He’s not at his digs, and he’s not sleeping it off at any of his usual haunts. This is important, Emmaline, and I need your help. So does Brady, as a matter of fact.”

Good heavens, did he think I hadn’t figured that out for myself? But I raised my eyebrows in a show of ignorance.

Neily’s grip on his hat tightened, leaving fingerprints on the rain-dampened felt. “If you happen to see him, if he shows up here…”

“Yes, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him. Now, about that coffee…” I started toward the table, but Neily’s next words stopped me cold.

“No. Don’t tell Brady anything. Call the house. Immediately. Ask for me. Tell no one else anything. No one. Not even Father.”

That reference to Cornelius Vanderbilt II held just enough emphasis to send a lump of dread sinking to the pit of my belly. “You’re scaring me, Neily. What exactly has Brady done?”

In a rare occurrence, Cornelius Vanderbilt III, heir to a fortune that had surpassed the $200 million mark a generation ago, shifted both his feet and his gaze, obviously no longer able to meet my eye. “I…I don’t like to say, Emmaline, not just now. It could all just be a…a misunderstanding.”

I strode closer to him. Realizing I was clutching my robe again, I dropped my hands to my sides and squared my shoulders. “What could be a misunderstanding, Neily? Stop being mysterious. If Brady’s in trouble I have a right to know.”

“It’s railroad business.” A faint blush stained those prominent cheekbones of his, raising my curiosity tenfold and making me wonder, Brady’s present crisis aside, what business machinations the family had gotten up to now. “Please, Emmaline, that’s all I can tell you.”

I knew I wouldn’t get any more from him. “All right. If I see Brady or hear from him, I’ll call. He was invited for tonight, wasn’t he?”

Tonight’s ball was to be both a coming out party for my cousin Gertrude and a housewarming event for Alice and Cornelius Vanderbilt’s newly rebuilt summer “cottage”—an affair that promised to be the most extravagant Newport had ever seen.

“He’s invited, but it’s doubtful he’ll show.” Neily started past me, then hesitated, staring down at the patent leather toecaps of his costly boots. “I couldn’t help but notice that…that Katie isn’t…”

Ah. Earlier that spring, a few weeks after the family had come up from New York to supervise the final touches on The Breakers, a young maid in their employ had shown up at my door, distraught and with nowhere else to turn. Katie Dillon had told me little more than what was obvious, but I’d surmised the rest. I’d been furious with Neily, and vastly disappointed with the cousin I’d known all my life and had come to admire.

“No, Katie isn’t,” I said coldly. I tugged my robe tighter around me and pushed away images of that awful night of blood and pain and tears. Katie had been in her third month, had hardly begun to show yet. “Not any longer. The child died and nearly took Katie with it.”

For the briefest moment Neily hung his head, quite a show of remorse for a Vanderbilt. “But she is…she’s…”
“Fine now, thank you for inquiring.” My tone rang of dismissal. I had far more important concerns than soothing his conscience.

Neily lingered a moment longer as if searching for words. Then he was gone, leaving me staring past the foggy windows to the waves pluming over the rocks that marked the end of the spit of land on which my house, Gull Manor, perched boldly above the Atlantic Ocean.
A half an hour earlier I’d been imagining mysterious happenings, but suddenly I’d entered a very real mystery of my own. Who was the villain? Who the victim?

A step behind me broke my troubled trance. I didn’t bother turning around. I knew my brother’s skulking footsteps when I heard them. “Right now Neily only suspects I did what I did,” he said softly. “If I undo it, there’ll be nothing to hide. All I need for you to do is be my lookout later.”

I walked to the window and reached out, pressing my palm to the cool pane. “Brady, I don’t see why I should help you if you won’t trust me enough to tell me what you did.”

“Of course I trust you. But it’s better you don’t know too much. I don’t want you implicated.”

I whirled, true fear for Brady knotting my throat. His clothes and hair had dried, but his rumpled appearance lent him a vulnerable, lost air that tugged at my heartstrings. “Oh, Brady. If you don’t change your ways, someday you’ll be beyond anyone’s help.”

He held up a hand, palm up. “Just keep an eye on the old man, Em. That’s all. Right before midnight. Everyone should be in that cavernous hall of theirs toasting cousin Gertrude before the midnight supper. But if you see Uncle Cornelius edging toward the staircase at any time between eleven forty-five and midnight, do something, anything, to stop him. All right, Em? Can you do that for me?”

I regarded his trim, compact frame, his fine, even features, and the smudges of sleeplessness beneath his eyes. Brady was my elder brother by four years. Our parents were alive and well but living in Paris among all the other expatriated artists searching for inspiration, many of whom had once, in a simpler time, called Newport home.

Arthur Cross, my father, was a painter and yes, a Vanderbilt, but a poor one, descended from one of the daughters of the first Cornelius. Brady wasn’t a Vanderbilt at all but Mother’s son from her first marriage. His father had died before he was born, a Newport dandy with a penchant for spending rather than earning and who had been presumed dead in a yachting accident, though his body was never found.

With no available parents, somehow I had become the guiding force in Brady’s life. Even at twenty-one I was the steadier of the two of us, the more practical, the one who remembered that food and clothing and a roof over one’s head couldn’t be won at poker or dicing. But when I couldn’t guide him, I picked him up, dusted him off, gave him a lecture and fed him honey cakes and tea. Why that last? Because despite his many failings—and they were numerous—there remained some endearing quality about Brady that brought out my motherly instincts. What can I say? I loved my brother. And I would do what I could to keep him on the straight and narrow.

“Promise me your intentions are honorable,” I demanded in a whisper.

“I swear it, Em.”

With a nod and an audible breath I agreed to help him. I just prayed I wouldn’t regret it.
***

Murder at Ochre Court releases Tuesday, July 31st!


At the end of book 5, Murder at Chateau sur Mer, Emma Cross had a big decision to make, and yes, readers, I left you hanging. I'm sorry! In Murder at Ochre Court, we learn what her decision was and how it affected her life. We also may have the answer to another pressing question or two, but shh... no spoilers! As most of you know,

I've brought up Emma's role model, Nellie Bly, on numerous occasions during the series. Here, Emma actually meets her, and while what ensues is completely fictional, Nellie's views concerning marriage are taken from history.

Without further ado . . .


Newport, Rhode Island

July 1898


“Take my advice, Miss Cross, and marry a rich man. Then you may do whatever you like.”

The train from New York City to North Kingstown, Rhode Island, jostled me from side to side on the velvet seat while trees and shrubs and the occasional house streaked past the window to my right. The car was about half full, and soft murmurs and light snores provided accompaniment to the rumble of the tracks. I had faced forward as I usually do, not at all liking the sensation of being propelled backward through space at unnatural speeds. The woman in the seat opposite me, however, seemed to have no such qualms. She sat upright—not rigidly, but proudly, one might say, the kind of bearing that spoke of an unwillingness to bend to the persuasion of others.

“But,” I said and paused, still baffled by her last bit of counsel, “you achieved so much before you were married, ma’am.”

“True enough. But I was lucky, and I was willing to do whatever it took. Are you so willing, Miss Cross?”

Why, yes, I believed I was, but before answering, I studied her, taking in the square chin, the blunt though not unpleasing features which, like her posture, projected an air of uncompromising confidence. I sighed. I’d spent the past year in Manhattan reporting for the New York Herald and pursuing my fondest dream—only to find myself enveloped by the same frustrations that had thwarted my career in my hometown of Newport. What was I doing wrong?

Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, better known to the world as journalist Nellie Bly, smiled slightly at my hesitation. “There is only one sure path to personal freedom, Miss Cross. Money. And for a woman who has none, there is only one sure way of obtaining any. Marriage.”

“But—”

“Ah, you’re going to argue that marrying for money is wrong, that such a woman is destined for unhappiness and will find herself subject to her husband’s whims.”

I nodded.

Her smile grew. “I didn’t say to marry just any man. Do you imagine I’d be willing to exist in anyone’s shadow, husband or otherwise?”

A face with patrician features and dark eyes formed in my mind’s eye, but I dismissed it, or at least the notion of marrying a certain man for his money. That opportunity had come and gone and I had never regretted, for a moment, standing on my convictions. No, that wasn’t quite true. I would never marry for money, but there were times I wondered what my life would be now had I given in to temptation . . . .

A jolt brought be back to the present. “Your living in someone’s shadow is hard to fathom, Mrs. Seaman, with everything I’ve read about you. But your husband is—” I broke off, appalled at the impertinence of what I’d been about to utter.

“Forty years older than me, yes, that is correct.” Unfazed, she darted a glance out the window, blinking against the rapid flicker of sun and shadow against the moving foliage. “Still, we are compatible. I am quite fond of my husband, Miss Cross, and we are happy together. I have compromised nothing, yet I have achieved my goals and am living the life I desire. That is precisely because I have always known what it is I want, and I have never veered from the course that would take me exactly where I wished to be.”

The train jerked as it switched tracks, tipping us a bit to one side. I caught myself with the flat of my palm against the seat. Mrs. Seaman merely swayed as a willow in a breeze, then steeled her spine. The train slowed as the trees yielded to the wooden platform and green-painted depot darkened by soot. The sign read North Kingstown. I unsteadily got to my feet and reached to retrieve my valise from the overhead rack. Even though I stood on tiptoe, the bag, having slid from its original placement, eluded my grasp. A gentleman from across the aisle intervened, easily sliding out the thickly brocaded piece and swinging it down into my arms.

I thanked him before turning back to the individual I’d idolized for more than a decade, who now left me confused and not a little uncertain whether my admiration had been warranted or not. Everything I’d believed about this remarkable woman, this brilliant journalist, tumbled about my mind in chaos. Was she no different from my Vanderbilt aunts and all the other society matrons, whose lives seemed to me as empty and artificial as paper flowers?

She winked at me. “You see, Miss Cross, men are not the enemy. Find one you can trust, one who makes you laugh, and most importantly, one with enough money to make your dearest desires come true.
***

For more, go to https://www.alyssamaxwell.com/single-...

Cowes, Isle of Wight, April 1920


Phoebe Renshaw pressed a hand to her stomach in a futile attempt to ease the incessant gnawing inside. At a stern look from the countess, her grandmother, she remembered she shouldn’t set so much as a finger against her frock, lest she wrinkle the ivory silk organza and ruin the effect of the folds and tucks and artful draping. Despite Phoebe turning twenty-one on her next birthday, her grandmother still had the ability to command her behavior with a twitch of a silvery crescent eyebrow.


Her sister, sixteen-year-old Amelia, wore the same frock, and they sported matching cloche hats covered in organza, lace, and coral silk roses, which seemed rather much for Phoebe’s plain features but on Amelia looked a picture of springtime beauty, as if she had stepped off the cover of the latest edition of La Mode. Yet Amelia’s features mirrored Phoebe’s own ominous sentiments, which continued to tie her stomach into impossible knots.

Phoebe braved a glance at Eva, hoping Grams didn’t notice. The lady’s maid who had served the Renshaw sisters these past eight years had eschewed her dependable black today in favor of a deep blue, neatly tailored suit that accented her trim figure and whose pleated skirt swayed smartly just below her calves.

Eva’s gaze collided with Phoebe’s for the barest instant, but that instant told all. Eva’s expression loomed as overcast as the sky outside, as steely as the choppy waters of the Solent, that wide waterway between the Isle of Wight and the mainland, spread out before the Royal Yacht Squadron clubhouse. They had borrowed a room on the upper floor, in which to ready themselves for the coming ordeal. . . .

The irony that the original tower of this building had been commissioned by Henry VIII was not lost on Phoebe. Cowes Castle hadn’t been a home to kings, but rather a fortress commanding the Solent and the entrance to the river Medina to keep out invaders from France and the Holy Roman Empire. This had been intended as a place of war, and its connection to that particular monarch seemed terribly ill omened. Six wives, two of whom met horrible ends . . .

Phoebe tried to shake the morbid thoughts away. What right had she to judge Julia’s actions, much less whether those actions would bring her beautiful eldest sister happiness?

“Phoebe, come here and help with this.” Grams flicked a slender, long-fingered hand impatiently. Unlike Eva, Grams had adhered to basic black, her wardrobe having varied little since Papa died, though today her mourning was softened by the sheen of silk trimmed with deep lavender velvet.

Grams was determined that the next few hours would take place with smooth precision, and for a moment resentment rose up in Phoebe. Julia wouldn’t be doing this if not for Grams. An ember burned against Phoebe’s heart, and the words she’d tamped down last night and all morning threated to leap, flaming, from her tongue.

It felt awful to be so angry with someone you loved so much.

Grams beckoned again with a jerky motion of her hand. Yes, even she was feeling her nerves today, though for entirely different reasons than the rest of them. And Julia?

Phoebe didn’t know what she was feeling. They had enjoyed a brief few months last year of getting along as sisters should. Then everything had changed, and Julia’s manner had returned to the cool disregard of previously. And her admitting—finally—the reason for her derision hadn’t helped. If anything, it had made matters worse, for Julia seemed to go out of her way to avoid Phoebe, or at least avoid being alone with her.

She crossed the room to the small circle gathered around her sister and gingerly grasped the edges of the lace veil while Eva and Hetta, Julia’s new maid, secured it to the platinum and diamond circlet that embraced her golden, upswept hair. While the circlet had been in the Renshaw family for many generations, the veil had been Grams’s mother’s, the Honiton lace made in Devon and designed by the same William Dyce who designed the lace for Queen Victoria’s wedding gown. But that was the only harkening back to a bygone age. Julia’s dress, a sleek garment of ivory satin with an overlay of beaded lace, a drop waist, and whisper-sheer sleeves, represented the very latest in bridal fashion. Phoebe’s and Amelia’s frocks had been designed to complement, but not overshadow, Julia’s.

Julia didn’t speak as they fussed around her, but gazed placidly out the wide window overlooking the Solent. In the middle of the harbor, a steamer yacht weathered the tossing waters with barely a wobble. Even from here, it appeared a small ocean liner, with its stacks and masts and tiered decks. And yet how grim a scene it made, Phoebe thought. Though newly refurbished after its service during the war, the vessel took on the dismal pallor of the sky and the waterway surrounding it and made no promise of happy sailing. Another omen? Phoebe wondered how Julia felt about spending her honeymoon on the twelve-hundred-ton, three-masted steamer named Georgiana, after her soon-to-be husband’s first wife.

“There now.” Grams smoothed her fingertips down Julia’s sleeves and stepped back with a satisfied, if slightly cunning, smile. “Let’s have a look at you. Oh, Julia, you’re stunning.”

“You are, Julia, truly,” Amelia agreed. Phoebe heard her frail attempt to infuse the comment with enthusiasm. “Just beautiful.”

Eva nodded her concurrence. “Indeed, my lady. There can never have been a lovelier bride.”

“Oh, ja.” Hetta Brauer had been Julia’s personal maid for several months now, but her English remained barely existent. Julia preferred it that way after discovering her last lady’s maid eavesdropping and selling secrets to the scandal sheets. A sturdy, good-natured girl with a hearty flush to her cheeks and thick blond braids she wore looped about her ears, she looked as though she might have been plucked only that morning from a flower-carpeted mountainside in her native Switzerland. “Lieblich.”

While the others gushed their approval, Phoebe struggled for words but found none she could, in good conscience, speak. Yes, Julia looked beautiful, but then with her golden hair, deep blue eyes, and classic features, she always did. That wasn’t the point.

Phoebe merely smiled and hoped the gesture appeared sincere.

“Thank you,” Julia said simply.

Grams made another adjustment to the veil. “A shame he’s only a viscount. I had hoped for an earl at the least, perhaps a marquess. But, of course, Gil is a very wealthy viscount. You’ll have a good life, my dear.”

While the fortunes of many of the landed families had dwindled in recent years, Gil’s had burgeoned, thanks to early investments in motorcar engines. During the war his factories had produced munitions and airplane engines, and he continued with the latter in peacetime. No one could accuse Gil Townsend of not taking advantage of opportunities when he saw them.

“Yes.” A little tick contracted the skin around Julia’s right eye. “And, after all, I had my chance at a marquess, Grams, and look how that turned out.”

Grams pursed her lips tightly and said nothing. True, Julia had very nearly become engaged to Henry Leighton, Marquess of Allerton, the Christmas before last. That is, everyone had believed they were about to become engaged—all except Julia, who’d had other ideas. It turned out Julia had been right, but it was all a moot point now, anyway. Henry was no longer the Marquess of Allerton. Henry was simply . . . no longer.

“What time is it?” Julia averted her face when Grams tried to adjust a pin curl framing her cheek. “Is it time to go yet?”

Eva consulted a porcelain clock ticking pleasantly on a nearby table. “Not just yet, my lady.”

Julia frowned. “Then I’m ready too early. I can’t very well sit and make myself comfortable until we leave.”

“Don’t you dare sit.” Grams darted a scandalized glance at each sister. “None of you may sit, not even for a moment. I won’t have you looking like wilted washerwomen. Eva, would you please watch for the cars and let us know when they arrive?”

Eva nodded and slipped out of the room.

“Oh, dear, how are you all going to ride in your grandfather’s motorcar without wrinkling? I hadn’t thought about that.” Grams’s expression registered something approaching horror. “What shall we do? Good heavens . . . Oh, I know. We could all walk up to the church.”

“Arrive at my wedding on foot? Are we peasants now?” Julia aped Grams’s scandalized look of a moment ago. “Shall I take off my shoes and stockings and go barefoot?”

“Oh, Julia, don’t be ridiculous. I simply don’t want you to wrinkle.”

Julia tossed her head, but only slightly so as not to dislodge her headpiece and veil. “What would people think? No, I’m going in the Rolls-Royce, and there’s an end to it.”

A storm gathered between Grams’s brows, and she looked about to retort. She wasn’t used to being spoken to in such adamant terms by her granddaughters. By anyone, for that matter. But in this instance, she obviously agreed with Julia. An earl’s granddaughter surely could not arrive at her wedding on foot. “Yes, yes, well, I suppose your grandfather mustn’t walk even a short distance these days. You girls will go in his motor, and he and I, along with Fox, will ride in Gil’s sedan.”

This reminder of Grampapa’s health sent a cold fear through Phoebe. He had suffered chest pains last summer, a symptom of his ongoing heart condition. He seemed thinner of late, paler, his zest for life on the wane. . . .

“You must try not to sit too . . .” Grams was saying. She paused, searching for words. “Rigidly.”

“Perhaps you should lay us out on the seat and stack us one on the other,” Julia muttered under her breath. Luckily, Grams appeared not to have heard.

Amelia went to her and sweetly said, “We’ll try our best, Grams.”

Grams nodded and looked about her, as if searching for something. “I’m going down to telephone the church and make sure everything there is ready. And then I’m going to make sure Fox hasn’t gotten up to any of his usual nonsense.” Grams left Phoebe and Amelia alone with their sister, except for Hetta, of course, but she apparently understood little of what they said.

Julia strolled to the window, her short train swishing across the area rug. A sigh came from deep within her. “Well. It won’t be long now.”

Phoebe had promised herself she wouldn’t do this, but at the eleventh hour, she simply couldn’t help herself. She practically launched herself at her sister, knowing she might have only moments before Grams returned. “Julia, are you certain—quite certain about this?”

Julia didn’t bother looking around. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s not too late to change your mind.”

Julia chuckled. “Tell that to the church full of people and the caterer who is even now setting up the buffet on Gil’s steamer.”

“Never mind that. Gil is almost forty years older than you. Julia, think. What you do today will affect the rest of your life.”

“The rest of Gil’s life, perhaps.”

“And what about Theo? You know you—”

Julia turned to Phoebe, her dark blue eyes sparking. “Forget about Theo. I have. A marriage between us would never work. Grams would never . . .” She let the thought go unfinished.

“No, perhaps Grams wouldn’t, but isn’t it time you stopped worrying about what Grams wants and do what you want?” The words stung of betrayal to her grandmother, for all they were justified. “This is your life, Julia. Your life.”

“I’m marrying Gil, and there’s an end to it.” The same words she’d spoken to Grams about riding to church in the Rolls-Royce.

Unlike Grams, Phoebe wouldn’t be put off so easily, not about this.

Light footsteps brought Amelia to Julia’s other side. “Theo loves you, Julia, and you love him,” she said. “Isn’t that what marriage is? Gilbert Townsend is a good enough man, I suppose, but can you truly say you love him, enough to tie yourself to him for the rest of your life?”

The door opened, and Phoebe spun around, expecting to see her grandmother. But it was only a waitress, come to deliver more refreshments. Didn’t she know Grams would have an apoplexy if she caught them eating in these clothes before the wedding?

“The rest of Gil’s life,” Julia said yet again in reply to Amelia’s question. “He’s much older than I, as you’ve both already pointed out countless times. He’ll be gone soon enough, and then I may do as I please.”

Phoebe whispered a caution. “Julia.” With a flick of her gaze, she indicated the waitress setting down her tray on the low table near the sofa.

Julia remained oblivious to their audience. “If I can present him with a son before he goes, so much the better for me. Our child will inherit, and my place as Viscountess Annondale will be firmly established, and my fortune fixed for life.”

“Julia!” Amelia whisked a hand to her mouth, her eyes round and filled with the same dismay that raised the gorge in Phoebe’s throat.

“You don’t mean this,” Phoebe said, almost pleading. “You don’t have to do this. You—”

The door opened again, this time marking Eva’s return. She stopped short and stared across the room at them, no doubt sensing the strangling tension. Julia seemed not to notice her arrival as she spun fully around to face both Phoebe and Amelia. She reached out and seized Phoebe’s wrist.

“You listen to me and listen well. Grams didn’t want me to tell you this. She said you’d each learn in your own good time. But it’s high time you both knew the truth. Our family is no longer what it was. The money is dwindling. If each of us doesn’t marry well, Fox won’t be able to support us. He won’t be able to maintain the estate. We’ll lose everything.”

Julia spoke of their youngest sibling, fifteen-year-old Fletcher, whom everyone referred to as Fox or Foxwood—the estate he would one day inherit from their grandfather. Reminding Fox of his future inheritance and responsibilities had been a way to help him cope with losing his father in the war and having to grow up too quickly, and to prompt him to a better understanding of the role he’d one day assume—not that it had done much good. Fox remained an impertinent child who reveled in tormenting his sisters behind their grandparents’ backs.

But the thought of Fox inheriting an empty title, a bankrupt estate . . . Surely Julia couldn’t mean things were that bad. Phoebe understood that no family had emerged from the war quite as wealthy as they had been, and she knew Grams worried about that, but . . . She shook her head, unable to absorb Julia’s claim. “I know the war and the death duties—”

“It’s not just the war. It’s everything. Most especially how far agricultural prices have fallen in the past couple of decades. Foxwood Hall doesn’t support itself any longer and hasn’t for some time now. We’re slowly losing it. We certainly will if we girls don’t do our duty.”

“I know why you’re doing this,” Amelia whispered. Her eyes misted, and her shoulders shook beneath her ruched cap sleeves. “It’s because you love Theo, isn’t it? You think Gil will die soon, and then you can marry Theo and be happy. But, Julia, what if it doesn’t work out that way?”

Julia pressed her face close to Amelia’s and said in a voice she never used with her youngest sister, “Don’t you dare ever say that again, to anyone. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The door opened again, and this time Grams called out to them. “What are you lot doing huddled by the window? Come along. The motorcars are here. It’s time to go. Amelia, are you crying? My dear, sweet child, I know you’re overjoyed for your sister, but you don’t wish to arrive at the church all blotchy faced.”

Phoebe and her sisters grabbed their wraps and filed from the room. Eva leveled a look of sympathetic support on Phoebe and touched her arm as she passed by. The waitress, still standing by the sofa table, also watched them go. Good heavens, Phoebe had forgotten about her, while the woman had simply stood there eavesdropping and enjoying a good bit of family drama. Well, no matter. She could gossip with her fellow servants all she liked. The Renshaws would never see her again.

Outside, she, Julia, and Amelia accepted a footman’s help and slid carefully into the backseat of Grampapa’s Rolls-Royce. Her grandparents were driven to the church in Gil’s Mercedes-Knight tourer. The short ride along the Esplanade and up the hill to Holy Trinity Church seemed to take forever, but was over all too soon.A Murderous Marriage