A Mourning Wedding (Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries #13)

PROLOGUE

Lady Eva Devenish capped her gold fountain pen and leant back with a sigh, flexing her beringed fingers.

These days her hand was always stiff after writing.

Sometimes she even felt the beginning of a cramp, but she wasn’t going to let it stop her.

Her writing was still tiny and neat, and her eyesight nearly as good as ever.

She pulled the heavy ledger-book towards her, blotted the ink, and reread the last paragraph she had written. The evidence seemed incontrovertible. She just hoped no one else would put the two snippets of gossip together.

It was really very naughty of her great-niece to spend the night with Lord Gerald.

If Lucy had not been going to marry the man in just a couple of months, Lady Eva would have dealt with her severely.

As the wedding date was set, least said soonest mended.

Morals had started going downhill when the dear Queen died, and that dreadful German war seemed to have finished them off.

Besides, Lucy had always gone her own way. Look at that photography business! It would have been unthinkable in Lady Eva’s youth. Yet, though she wouldn’t dream of telling her so, she admired a certain independence in a girl, as long as the proprieties were observed.

She opened the right-hand bottom drawer of her desk and not

without difficulty slid the heavy book into its place.

Family—hers and her late husband’s—she kept in the right drawer, others in the left.

Others meant those less closely related than second cousin, for between them the Devenishes and the Fotheringays were connected to three-quarters of the aristocracy, by marriage if not by blood.

And Lady Eva knew more about them all than anyone else did. For decades she had collected rumours, checked them insofar as was practicable, and written them down. People would be amazed if they realized how much information she had stored away.

Some of them would be not merely amazed but shocked and horrified.

She locked the bottom right drawer and tucked the key away in the secret place at the back of the central drawer. In the wrong hands such information could be dangerous. It was rather like dynamite, though, quite harmless when properly handled, and of course Lady Eva knew just what she was doing.