Masked Ball at Broxley Manor

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
    Published by the Penguin Group
    Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
    375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
    Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) * Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England * Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) * Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) * Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India * Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) * Penguin Books Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, South Africa * Penguin China, B7 Jaiming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China
    Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
    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.
    No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
    For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
    a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
    375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
    ISBN: 978-1-101-57860-5
    BERKLEY ® PRIME CRIME
    Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
    a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
    375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
    BERKLEY ® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

     

 
     
 
     
 
     
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