Lady Rosamund and the Poison Pen, A Rosie and McBrae Mystery
"An intriguing and clever work that will appeal to fans of Regency-era fiction." - Kirkus Reviews
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Lady Rosamund Phipps, daughter of an earl, has a secret. Well, more than one. Such as the fact that she purposely married a man who promised to leave her alone and stick to his mistress. And a secret only her family knows—the mortifying compulsion to check things over and over. Society condemns people like her to asylums. But when she discovers the dead body of a footman on the stairs, everything she’s tried to hide for years may be spilled out in broad daylight. First the anonymous caricaturist, Corvus, implicates Lady Rosamund in a series of scandalous prints. Worse, though, are the poison pen letters that indicate someone knows the shameful secret of her compulsions. She cannot do detective work on her own without seeming odder than she already is, but she has no choice if she is to unmask both Corvus and the poison pen. Will Corvus prove to be an ally or an enemy? With the anonymous poison pen still out there, her sanity—and her life—are at stake. Buy Now! Amazon US Amazon UK Amazon Canada Amazon Australia Barnes and Noble Kobo Apple |
Here's an excerpt from Lady Rosamund and the Poison Pen
CHAPTER ONE
She is too lovely, too flawless to be real.
—From the diary of Corvus
My husband, Albert Phipps, spends most nights with his mistress and slinks home just before dawn. The whole world knows about his liaison with Cynthia Benson, so why this peculiar behavior? An open secret is no secret at all.
I certainly have no objection to his continued relations with Cynthia. She is a dear friend of mine, and their liaison is one of the conditions of our marriage, along with his promise to spare me the physical intimacy which is usually required. This arrangement—a private matter to which the world is not privy—works well for both of us. He is enamored of Cynthia, but I am the daughter of an earl, the granddaughter of a marquis, and the cousin of a duke, and therefore my connections are to his advantage. He is a politician, you see.
Perhaps that explains it, for a polite fiction such as our marital bliss is an accepted method of appearing respectable—and in politics, appearance is all.
But that doesn’t explain why I would agree to such an arrangement. If you must know, it’s because I am far more peculiar than Albert. For one thing, I have no interest in carnal pleasures. But that’s not the only reason. I don’t intend to explain myself now—perhaps I never shall—but suffice it to say that by marrying me, Albert Phipps saved me from a fate worse than death. Yes, I daresay that sounds overly dramatic, but it is nevertheless true.
On the night I found the dead footman on the stairs, Albert came home unusually early, a little after two a.m. Thank heaven for that, as he found me on the landing, trying to decide what to do about the unfortunate man’s corpse.
I was alone, tired but wakeful in the wee hours of the morning, and had started to creep down to the kitchen for a cup of warm milk. In the flickering light of my candle, I almost failed to see him lying there, blocking my path.
Although nausea stirred in the pit of my stomach, I knelt beside the footman, who was sprawled on the stairs with his neck at a ghastly angle, and checked his pulse—or rather, lack of it—not only once, but twice.
I am ashamed to admit it now, but my first thought was, how inconvenient. For me, I mean, which was horrid of me, for it was far more inconvenient for him. He was a young man, and last night he’d been hale and hearty, with most of his life ahead of him. The thing is, we aristocrats are taught to consider servants of no account, and although I strive to be compassionate to one and all, my upbringing comes to the surface at times, like a nasty slop of mud from the bottom of a pond.
Poor man, his body was still warm, but he must have been dead a little while. I’m a light sleeper, I think by choice—I adore solitude and darkness—and would have noticed if the sound of his tragic tumble had wakened me.
“Rosie, is that you? Good Lord, what the deuce is going on?”
I gave an undignified squeak and spied the pale face of my husband, with its prow of a nose, peering over the bannister above.
“Heavens, Albert, you startled me! I thought you were still with Cynthia.”
“Not tonight,” he said. “I’ve an early morning meeting. Who is that on the stairs?”
“One of the footmen,” I said, wishing I could identify him by name, but we call all our footmen James. “The tall, handsome one who’s always flirting with the maids. He’s dead!”
“Dead, you say?” Albert came down, attired only in his nightshirt. Since I do not have intimate relations with my husband, I rarely see him in dishabille—a most distressing sight, believe me. Fortunately, the light cast by his candle didn’t reveal much uncovered flesh.
“He must have fallen down the stairs and broken his neck,” I said.
“How bloody inconvenient.” Do you see what I mean about upbringing? Albert is not an aristocrat, but the gentry are often just as bad.
He crouched to examine the poor man. I averted my eyes to avoid the sight of Albert’s bare, rather scrawny legs as he bent. I am not precisely a prude, but I believe in respecting another’s dignity.
“He had no business being upstairs at this time of night,” Albert said.
This was true. The footmen sleep next to the kitchen. The maids’ rooms are in the attics.
“He must have been trysting with one of the maids,” Albert said severely. “Serves him right.”
Coming from Albert, this seemed a trifle unfair. However, what is tolerated in a rich man is forbidden to a poor one. That is, quite simply, the way of the world.
Death seems an excessive punishment for disobeying the rules by which an orderly household runs, but the footman should have known better, and as for the maid, she would doubtless prove to be with child, which would cause no end of inconvenience. No better than they should be, these foolish girls, and--
Oh, drat! I sound like my mother again. Worse, it means I am thinking like her. If there is one thing I have sworn to avoid, it is becoming in any way a copy of her. Apart from physically, that is. I can’t help but share her features, but I promise you the resemblance is superficial.
I’m not an unsympathetic person. Unlike Mother, I wouldn’t dismiss a pregnant maid, but instead would do my best to find her a husband. I understand—in a detached, intellectual sort of way—that most human beings, particularly males, cannot resist carnal pleasures. I admit this to be necessary, for how else could the human race survive and prosper?
Albert straightened, eyeing me solicitously. “Are you all right, my dear? But I need not ask. You’re not one to have the vapors.”
It’s true that I have very little sensibility, and a relief that Albert doesn’t treat me like a delicate flower. My mother’s idea of a lady is a weak creature in constant need of cossetting, and Mrs. Cropp, our housekeeper, agrees. This attitude causes me no end of annoyance.
“What were you doing out here in the first place—competing with the maids for that unfortunate fellow?” He laughed.
“Ha, ha,” I said. He knows how unlikely that is. Nevertheless, he jests about my frigid nature from time to time. I get the impression that he believes, deep down, that I wish I were stirred by the baser passions. Nothing could be further from the truth! Still, in most respects Albert is an admirable husband.
“I was going to the kitchen to warm myself some milk,” I confessed. I loathe being caught out. It’s absurd—a grown woman should be able to do as she chooses—but it’s not that simple for one of aristocratic birth.
“Tsk,” he said. “Why didn’t you ring for a maid?”
Because I revel in solitude. Because I enjoy warming my own milk. Now, Mrs. Cropp would find out what I’d been up to and scold me. She disapproves of ladies who descend by way of the service stairs and heat their own milk in the wee hours. Like my mother, she is a model of propriety. Everyone in his or her proper place, she says, doing his or her proper job.
“I must say, this body is a dashed nuisance,” Albert said. “Parliament frowns upon such things.”
Surely everyone frowns on mishaps such as the one suffered by the footman, but Albert invariably thinks in terms of political advantage. Through my influence, combined with his clever machinations, Albert became a Member of Parliament, but that’s not enough. He intends to be Prime Minister one day.
Politics is such a bore, but to each his own.
“I shall have to call in the authorities,” he grumbled. “Word will get out. What if the broadsheets get ahold of it?” He was whining now. He has a horror of the caricaturists and their relentless mockery of those in power.
My mind was a few sentences back. “The authorities? Why? He’s only a servant who took a tumble.”
Albert stomped past me up the stairs. “Come now, Rosie. Surely you know that all suspicious deaths must be reported to the coroner.”
I followed him. “Suspicious? In what way?”
“Why would a perfectly able footman fall down the stairs? It seems highly unlikely. What if someone pushed him?”
“Why would anyone…? Oh.” I saw what he was getting at. “You think he was visiting one of the maids, they had a falling out, and she pushed him?” I found that hard to believe—none of our housemaids show signs of a violent temper—and yet other possibilities popped into my mind. “Or that two of them were competing for him”—I knew this to be true—“and the one he wasn’t trysting with found out and took her revenge? Or the other footman, lusting after the same girl, decided to get rid of him?”
How horrid—both my gruesome thoughts and the fact that I seem to possess a vulgar streak. Luckily, my mother doesn’t know.
“Precisely.” Albert strode into his bedchamber to pull the bell rope. “In any event, as a sudden, unexpected death, it must be reported.”
Hovering in the doorway of his chamber (a room I would shudder to enter), I gave Albert a dubious frown. I couldn’t help dreaming up lurid possibilities, but I didn’t take any of them seriously.
“I can’t afford to let it pass, but it must be hushed up,” he said.
That sounded like a contradiction to me. However, out of the mouth of a politician…need I say more?
“But I have an early appointment, an important one, and—” He tugged the bell again several times. Its clang echoed up from below.
“I have it! You can take care of it.”
“I?”
“Of course, darling.” He only darlings me 1) when we are in public, or 2) when he needs me to help him. The first is part of our façade of mutual affection and thus entirely acceptable to me. The second is mildly annoying. Since we married for our mutual benefit, he needn’t butter me up when he asks my help.
“I’ll run off to my meeting, and you’ll get in touch with Sir Edwin.” At my blank look, he added, “The magistrate. Tell him you interviewed the maids so as to assure yourself—and him—that none of them are guilty. He won’t want to contradict you, because of your connections.”
True, but he also wouldn’t approve of a woman assuming such a function.
“He’ll have the coroner and a jury in immediately, they’ll dismiss it as an accident, and it will be swept under the carpet before it has a chance to get out,” Albert said.
It seemed to me that no sweeping of anything was required. No one was guilty of anything but carnal folly, and in any event, an accidental death in our household wasn’t fodder for the caricaturists. But Albert was looking mulish, and judging by the heavy footsteps from below, Stevenson, our butler, was on his way up.
“Very well.” Come to think of it, I rather liked being given a responsible role, and if I plied Sir Edwin Walters with brandy-laced tea, macaroons, and society gossip, he might not mind.
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She is too lovely, too flawless to be real.
—From the diary of Corvus
My husband, Albert Phipps, spends most nights with his mistress and slinks home just before dawn. The whole world knows about his liaison with Cynthia Benson, so why this peculiar behavior? An open secret is no secret at all.
I certainly have no objection to his continued relations with Cynthia. She is a dear friend of mine, and their liaison is one of the conditions of our marriage, along with his promise to spare me the physical intimacy which is usually required. This arrangement—a private matter to which the world is not privy—works well for both of us. He is enamored of Cynthia, but I am the daughter of an earl, the granddaughter of a marquis, and the cousin of a duke, and therefore my connections are to his advantage. He is a politician, you see.
Perhaps that explains it, for a polite fiction such as our marital bliss is an accepted method of appearing respectable—and in politics, appearance is all.
But that doesn’t explain why I would agree to such an arrangement. If you must know, it’s because I am far more peculiar than Albert. For one thing, I have no interest in carnal pleasures. But that’s not the only reason. I don’t intend to explain myself now—perhaps I never shall—but suffice it to say that by marrying me, Albert Phipps saved me from a fate worse than death. Yes, I daresay that sounds overly dramatic, but it is nevertheless true.
On the night I found the dead footman on the stairs, Albert came home unusually early, a little after two a.m. Thank heaven for that, as he found me on the landing, trying to decide what to do about the unfortunate man’s corpse.
I was alone, tired but wakeful in the wee hours of the morning, and had started to creep down to the kitchen for a cup of warm milk. In the flickering light of my candle, I almost failed to see him lying there, blocking my path.
Although nausea stirred in the pit of my stomach, I knelt beside the footman, who was sprawled on the stairs with his neck at a ghastly angle, and checked his pulse—or rather, lack of it—not only once, but twice.
I am ashamed to admit it now, but my first thought was, how inconvenient. For me, I mean, which was horrid of me, for it was far more inconvenient for him. He was a young man, and last night he’d been hale and hearty, with most of his life ahead of him. The thing is, we aristocrats are taught to consider servants of no account, and although I strive to be compassionate to one and all, my upbringing comes to the surface at times, like a nasty slop of mud from the bottom of a pond.
Poor man, his body was still warm, but he must have been dead a little while. I’m a light sleeper, I think by choice—I adore solitude and darkness—and would have noticed if the sound of his tragic tumble had wakened me.
“Rosie, is that you? Good Lord, what the deuce is going on?”
I gave an undignified squeak and spied the pale face of my husband, with its prow of a nose, peering over the bannister above.
“Heavens, Albert, you startled me! I thought you were still with Cynthia.”
“Not tonight,” he said. “I’ve an early morning meeting. Who is that on the stairs?”
“One of the footmen,” I said, wishing I could identify him by name, but we call all our footmen James. “The tall, handsome one who’s always flirting with the maids. He’s dead!”
“Dead, you say?” Albert came down, attired only in his nightshirt. Since I do not have intimate relations with my husband, I rarely see him in dishabille—a most distressing sight, believe me. Fortunately, the light cast by his candle didn’t reveal much uncovered flesh.
“He must have fallen down the stairs and broken his neck,” I said.
“How bloody inconvenient.” Do you see what I mean about upbringing? Albert is not an aristocrat, but the gentry are often just as bad.
He crouched to examine the poor man. I averted my eyes to avoid the sight of Albert’s bare, rather scrawny legs as he bent. I am not precisely a prude, but I believe in respecting another’s dignity.
“He had no business being upstairs at this time of night,” Albert said.
This was true. The footmen sleep next to the kitchen. The maids’ rooms are in the attics.
“He must have been trysting with one of the maids,” Albert said severely. “Serves him right.”
Coming from Albert, this seemed a trifle unfair. However, what is tolerated in a rich man is forbidden to a poor one. That is, quite simply, the way of the world.
Death seems an excessive punishment for disobeying the rules by which an orderly household runs, but the footman should have known better, and as for the maid, she would doubtless prove to be with child, which would cause no end of inconvenience. No better than they should be, these foolish girls, and--
Oh, drat! I sound like my mother again. Worse, it means I am thinking like her. If there is one thing I have sworn to avoid, it is becoming in any way a copy of her. Apart from physically, that is. I can’t help but share her features, but I promise you the resemblance is superficial.
I’m not an unsympathetic person. Unlike Mother, I wouldn’t dismiss a pregnant maid, but instead would do my best to find her a husband. I understand—in a detached, intellectual sort of way—that most human beings, particularly males, cannot resist carnal pleasures. I admit this to be necessary, for how else could the human race survive and prosper?
Albert straightened, eyeing me solicitously. “Are you all right, my dear? But I need not ask. You’re not one to have the vapors.”
It’s true that I have very little sensibility, and a relief that Albert doesn’t treat me like a delicate flower. My mother’s idea of a lady is a weak creature in constant need of cossetting, and Mrs. Cropp, our housekeeper, agrees. This attitude causes me no end of annoyance.
“What were you doing out here in the first place—competing with the maids for that unfortunate fellow?” He laughed.
“Ha, ha,” I said. He knows how unlikely that is. Nevertheless, he jests about my frigid nature from time to time. I get the impression that he believes, deep down, that I wish I were stirred by the baser passions. Nothing could be further from the truth! Still, in most respects Albert is an admirable husband.
“I was going to the kitchen to warm myself some milk,” I confessed. I loathe being caught out. It’s absurd—a grown woman should be able to do as she chooses—but it’s not that simple for one of aristocratic birth.
“Tsk,” he said. “Why didn’t you ring for a maid?”
Because I revel in solitude. Because I enjoy warming my own milk. Now, Mrs. Cropp would find out what I’d been up to and scold me. She disapproves of ladies who descend by way of the service stairs and heat their own milk in the wee hours. Like my mother, she is a model of propriety. Everyone in his or her proper place, she says, doing his or her proper job.
“I must say, this body is a dashed nuisance,” Albert said. “Parliament frowns upon such things.”
Surely everyone frowns on mishaps such as the one suffered by the footman, but Albert invariably thinks in terms of political advantage. Through my influence, combined with his clever machinations, Albert became a Member of Parliament, but that’s not enough. He intends to be Prime Minister one day.
Politics is such a bore, but to each his own.
“I shall have to call in the authorities,” he grumbled. “Word will get out. What if the broadsheets get ahold of it?” He was whining now. He has a horror of the caricaturists and their relentless mockery of those in power.
My mind was a few sentences back. “The authorities? Why? He’s only a servant who took a tumble.”
Albert stomped past me up the stairs. “Come now, Rosie. Surely you know that all suspicious deaths must be reported to the coroner.”
I followed him. “Suspicious? In what way?”
“Why would a perfectly able footman fall down the stairs? It seems highly unlikely. What if someone pushed him?”
“Why would anyone…? Oh.” I saw what he was getting at. “You think he was visiting one of the maids, they had a falling out, and she pushed him?” I found that hard to believe—none of our housemaids show signs of a violent temper—and yet other possibilities popped into my mind. “Or that two of them were competing for him”—I knew this to be true—“and the one he wasn’t trysting with found out and took her revenge? Or the other footman, lusting after the same girl, decided to get rid of him?”
How horrid—both my gruesome thoughts and the fact that I seem to possess a vulgar streak. Luckily, my mother doesn’t know.
“Precisely.” Albert strode into his bedchamber to pull the bell rope. “In any event, as a sudden, unexpected death, it must be reported.”
Hovering in the doorway of his chamber (a room I would shudder to enter), I gave Albert a dubious frown. I couldn’t help dreaming up lurid possibilities, but I didn’t take any of them seriously.
“I can’t afford to let it pass, but it must be hushed up,” he said.
That sounded like a contradiction to me. However, out of the mouth of a politician…need I say more?
“But I have an early appointment, an important one, and—” He tugged the bell again several times. Its clang echoed up from below.
“I have it! You can take care of it.”
“I?”
“Of course, darling.” He only darlings me 1) when we are in public, or 2) when he needs me to help him. The first is part of our façade of mutual affection and thus entirely acceptable to me. The second is mildly annoying. Since we married for our mutual benefit, he needn’t butter me up when he asks my help.
“I’ll run off to my meeting, and you’ll get in touch with Sir Edwin.” At my blank look, he added, “The magistrate. Tell him you interviewed the maids so as to assure yourself—and him—that none of them are guilty. He won’t want to contradict you, because of your connections.”
True, but he also wouldn’t approve of a woman assuming such a function.
“He’ll have the coroner and a jury in immediately, they’ll dismiss it as an accident, and it will be swept under the carpet before it has a chance to get out,” Albert said.
It seemed to me that no sweeping of anything was required. No one was guilty of anything but carnal folly, and in any event, an accidental death in our household wasn’t fodder for the caricaturists. But Albert was looking mulish, and judging by the heavy footsteps from below, Stevenson, our butler, was on his way up.
“Very well.” Come to think of it, I rather liked being given a responsible role, and if I plied Sir Edwin Walters with brandy-laced tea, macaroons, and society gossip, he might not mind.
Buy Now!
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Amazon Canada
Amazon Australia
Barnes and Noble
Kobo
Apple
Content copyright 2020, Barbara Monajem. All rights reserved.
