Cover

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

HEIRS AND GRACES

QUEEN OF HEARTS

MALICE AT THE PALACE

CROWNED AND DANGEROUS

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

Anthologies

A ROYAL THREESOME

Specials

MASKED BALL AT BROXLEY MANOR

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my dear friend Barbara Peters,
owner of the Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale and champion of all things mystery. Thank you, Barbara, for your help, encouragement, friendship and lunches at the wine bar!

Thanks also to my wonderful team of agents, Meg Ruley and Christina Hogrebe, and to Jackie Cantor and Danielle Dill and all at Berkley and Penguin.
You are the best.

As always, thank you to John for his brutal editing!

Chapter 1

DARKEST NIGHT, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1934

In an Armstrong Siddeley motorcar with the Honorable Darcy O’Mara, heading northward.

No idea where we are going, but Darcy is beside me so that’s all right.

I was in a motorcar, sitting beside Darcy, and we were driving northward, out of London. He had whisked me away earlier that day, after we had both attended Princess Marina’s wedding to the Duke of Kent. I first thought I was being taken for a romantic dinner. Then, as we left the streets of London behind, I began to suspect it may not be a dinner we were going to but a hotel in a naughty place like Brighton. But we were heading north, not south, and I couldn’t think of any naughty places to the north of London. Surely nobody goes to the industrial grime of the Midlands to be naughty? I suppose in a way I was relieved. Much as I wanted to spend the night with Darcy, and heaven knows we had waited long enough, there was also that element of worry about the consequences.

Darcy was being enigmatic, driving with a rather smug grin on his face and not answering my questions. Eventually I told myself that we were probably going to a house party somewhere in the country, given by one of his numerous friends, which would be quite an acceptable thing to do, if not as exciting as a night at a hotel in Brighton, signed in as Mr. and Mrs. Smith. But as the lights of London vanished and we were driving into complete darkness I couldn’t stand it a minute longer.

“Darcy, where on earth are we going?” I demanded.

He was still staring straight ahead of him into the night. “Gretna Green,” he replied.

“Gretna Green? Are you serious?” The words came out as squeaks. “But that’s in Scotland. And it’s where people go when—”

“When they elope to get married. Quite right.”

I glanced at his profile. He still had that satisfied smile on his face. “I know you too well, Georgie,” he replied. “You’re altogether too respectable. You’ve inherited too much from your great-grandmother.” (Who, in case you don’t know, was Queen Victoria.) “You don’t want to take that next step with me until there is a ring on your finger and I respect that. So I aim to remedy the situation. If we drive all night then by tomorrow you will be Mrs. Darcy O’Mara and I can take you to bed with a clear conscience.”

“Golly,” I replied. Not exactly the most sophisticated of answers, I know, but I was taken by surprise. I found myself grinning too. Mrs. Darcy O’Mara. Not quite as lofty as Lady Georgiana Rannoch, but infinitely more satisfying. I couldn’t wait to see my sister-in-law Fig’s face when I returned to London and waved my ringed finger at her. The thought of Fig led me to a more practical consideration. Darcy was a young man of no fixed abode. He had an impeccable pedigree. He had grown up, like me, in a castle. He would inherit a title one day. But, also like me, he was penniless. He lived by his wits and accepted clandestine assignments he wouldn’t talk about. He slept on friends’ couches or looked after their London houses while they were away on their yachts or on the Riviera. That sort of life was fine for a single man, but I could hardly share a couch at a bachelor friend’s establishment, could I?

Tentatively I broached this matter. “So, Darcy, if I’m not being too inquisitive, where had you planned for us to live?”

“I hadn’t,” he said. “You’ll go back to your brother and I’ll go wherever I am offered an assignment. I’m saving any money I earn and when I have enough to establish us in a suitably proper form of residence, then we’ll announce our marriage. Gretna Green is just to make sure that if anything untoward happened and you found yourself”—he paused and coughed—“in the family way, we could then wave our marriage certificate at them and all would be well and your honor would be intact.”

I had to laugh at this. Actually I think I giggled, nervously, but these were such heady topics to be talking about with a man.

“So how long do you think it might take, until we can afford a place of our own?” I asked.

“Not too long, I hope.” He sighed. “If only my father hadn’t lost all his money and had to sell the castle and the racing stable, we could have moved into my ancestral home. You would have liked Kilhenny Castle. It’s less wild and remote than Castle Rannoch. Quite civilized, in fact.”

“Your father still lives in the lodge, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, and he’s paid to run the racing stable by the American who bought the whole shebang. He’s now the hired help on an estate our family has owned for centuries. I can’t go near the place. Too painful.” He paused again. “Not that my father would want to see me anyway. He doesn’t like me very much.”

“He doesn’t approve of your lifestyle?”

Darcy snorted. “He’s hardly in a position not to approve, is he? I wasn’t the one who sold the family heritage. No, it’s simpler than that. He has never forgiven me for staying alive.”

“What?” I looked up at him sharply. His mouth was set in a hard line.

“When the Spanish flu reached us in 1920 I was away at prep school in England. My mother and my two little brothers caught it and died. My school was so freezing cold and miserable that not even the flu could survive there, so I survived. My father once said, when he was in his cups, that whenever he looks at me he is reminded that my mother died and I lived.”

“Hardly your fault,” I said angrily.

“My father never was the most rational of men. Always had a terrible temper and always carried grudges. But let’s not talk about him. We’re about to embark upon an adventure and to hell with our families.”

“That’s right,” I said, covering his hand on the steering wheel with my own. “Since they don’t support us, then it’s none of their business whether we get married or not.”

Lights sped by us from the other direction, illuminating the interior of our car for an instant before plunging us into darkness again. I was picturing telling my family that Darcy and I had married. My brother, Binky, would be happy for me. Fig would not approve because Darcy was penniless and also a Roman Catholic and . . .

“Golly!” I said again, sitting bolt upright in my seat. Darcy turned to look at me. “I can’t marry you, Darcy,” I said. “I’d completely forgotten, but I’m not allowed to. I’m still in the line of succession to the throne and we’re not allowed to marry a Catholic.”

“I thought we agreed you could just renounce your claim to the throne and then all would be well,” he said. He looked at me with a half smile on his face. “Unless, of course, you’d rather give up the chance to marry me just in case you become queen someday.”

I chuckled. “Since I’m currently thirty-fifth in line it would have to be another visit of the Black Death to wipe out those between me and the throne,” I said. “And who would ever want to be queen? Of course I want to marry you, but I think it has to be done officially. I have to petition the king and I believe it has to go through Parliament. So we’d better turn around and go back before we go too far.”

Darcy shook his head. “I’m not turning around. We’re going to Scotland and we’re going to get married. We won’t tell anybody, and in due course you can approach your royal kin and ask permission to marry me. Then we can have a proper wedding at a suitable church with veil and bridesmaids and nobody but us need ever know that we were married already.”

“Can one do that?” I asked.

“Who is to know?”

“What if the king and queen refuse my request?”

“Why would they? And if they did, then I’d renounce my religion if it was the only way to marry you.”

A lump came into my throat. “Darcy, I’d never ask you to do that. Your religion means a lot to you.”

“I agree that my family did fight for it for many hundreds of years, but as I say, if it’s the only way to marry you, then so be it. Becoming an Anglican wouldn’t be so bad . . . just a watered-down form of being a Catholic.”

I laughed now, with relief. Darcy loved me so much that he was willing to give up anything for me. I can’t tell you how wonderful that felt.

We drove on. It was becoming really cold. I found a rug on the backseat and tucked it around my knees. Then it started to rain, a hard-driving sleety sort of rain that peppered the windscreen. Darcy swore under his breath as he peered closer, trying to see where we were going.

“We could find somewhere to spend the night if this is going to continue,” I said. “It’s no fun for you driving in these conditions.”

“No, we’ll keep going,” he said. “It will pass.”

But it didn’t. One by one, signposts to the Midland cities came and went. We stopped for a meat pie and beer at a pub in the middle of nowhere. A big fire roared in the grate and I looked at it longingly as we rushed through the rain back to our motorcar.

By the time we reached Yorkshire the rain had turned to snow—a heavy wet snow that stuck to the windscreen wipers and started to pile up as it was pushed from side to side. No other traffic seemed to be crazy enough to be on the road.

“We should stop,” I said. “This is becoming dangerous.”

“It’s a good solid motor,” Darcy replied. “It should handle the conditions all right.”

“I don’t want to skid and find myself upside down in a ditch,” I said.

We passed by roads leading to the cities of Leeds, then York, although no sign of them could be seen. We seemed to be driving through bleak hills with little sign of human habitation. We might have been in the middle of nowhere. Suddenly Darcy jammed on the brakes and I felt the rear of the motor sliding sideways. I think I screamed. Darcy fought to right us. We spun around. Headlights flashed crazily onto trees and snow. Then, miraculously, we stopped sliding. I opened my eyes to find us facing the wrong way.

Chapter 2

NOVEMBER 29
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT SOMEWHERE IN YORKSHIRE.

“What was that?” I asked, my voice horribly shaky.

“A bit of a wild ride for a moment there.” Darcy sounded almost as if he’d enjoyed it.

I glared at him, fear giving way to anger. “You didn’t do that on purpose, did you?”

“Of course I didn’t. Do you take me for an idiot?”

“Then why did you brake suddenly like that?”

“Because there is a damned-fool lorry blocking the road ahead.” Even he sounded tense now. He opened the door, letting in a freezing draft and swirling snow, then stepped out into the blizzard. I wrapped the rug more firmly around me, trying to peer out through the snow to see what was happening. Darcy had vanished into the swirling whiteness. I held my breath until he returned, looking grim.

“Well, that’s that for tonight,” he said. “The road ahead is blocked by snow. I asked if there was another route we could take but the chap said that if the Great North Road was blocked then the smaller roads would be hopeless. His very words were, ‘If it’s snowing like this down here, then a right bugger of a blizzard would be howling up on the moors.’” He sighed impatiently. “We’ll have to wait until someone comes to clear it tomorrow. Or the day after. . . . The chaps there didn’t seem to know much, just that we can’t go any farther. So I’m afraid we’ll have to take your suggestion and find a place to spend the night.”

“We passed a pub a mile or so back,” I said.

“Then we’ll try that.” Darcy scraped the coating of snow away from the windscreen, then dusted himself down before he climbed back in and carefully turned the motor around. “I hope they’ll have some kind of accommodation. I don’t want to have to go back too far.” He slapped his palms against the steering wheel. “Oh, this is too frustrating, isn’t it? Just when I thought I had planned everything perfectly. When I’d persuaded that hopeless maid of yours to pack a case for you. When I’d managed to borrow a suitable motorcar. And now this.”

I laid my hand on his sleeve. “It’s only a delay, Darcy. They’ll have to clear this road pretty quickly, won’t they? It’s the main artery to Scotland and the north of England. What is a day or so more?”

He nodded. “You’re right. Just a delay. We’ve waited three years. What’s one more night?”

“I remember when you first met me you made a bet with my friend Belinda that you’d get me into bed within the week, or was it a month?” I gave him a quizzical stare.

He grinned. “I can’t remember, but clearly I lost the bet and should pay up. I hadn’t banked on your stern willpower and royal sense of propriety.”

“And circumstances conspiring against us, as they are now,” I said. “My mother could never believe we were taking so long about it.”

Darcy gave a half laugh, half snort. “Well, your mother is hardly a good role model for chaste living, is she? How many times has she been married? Or not married, as the case may be?”

My mother had in fact bolted from my father, the Duke of Rannoch, when I was two, and since then had been a great many things to a great many men on six of the seven continents. Antarctica had only escaped as it was too bloody cold! At this moment I could appreciate her reasoning, as my feet had turned to blocks of ice.

We started retracing our route southward. The pub I had remembered seeing was called the Pig and Whistle. It looked inviting in a quaint countrified sort of way, but the front door was, alas, locked and no lights shone. Darcy got out, shook and rattled the front door, then came back to the motorcar in disgust, brushing the snow from his jacket.

“Stupid licensing hours,” Darcy muttered as he put the motor into gear again. “Why can’t we be like France and Italy and let everyone drink all night if they want to?”

“Because we don’t want half the population blind drunk and unable to work, I suppose.”

He snorted at this. “Do you see them all blind drunk on the Continent?”

“I suppose they grow up used to it. And they drink wine rather than beer and whiskey. Wine is supposed to be good for you. And they don’t work as hard as we do. Drive past any café in France and you’ll see men sitting around with glasses of wine in the middle of the morning. They just don’t take life seriously.”

“How come you’re always so damned rational and composed?” he snapped. “Anyone would think you didn’t want to elope with me.” He stopped and turned sharply to look at me. “You do want to, don’t you? I never actually asked you.”

The question caught me by surprise. Did I want to? Wasn’t I worried about what my royal relatives would say? Hadn’t I looked forward to the long white dress and veil all my life? Then I looked at Darcy. Even in the darkness of the motorcar he was so handsome, and I loved him so much. “Of course I do,” I said.

“You hesitated before you answered me,” he replied.

“Only because I’m too cold to make my mouth move.”

“I could warm it up for you,” he said. He reached behind my head and drew me toward him, kissing me long and hard. “Right,” he said when we broke apart a little breathlessly. “Let’s find somewhere to spend the night before we both end up frozen to death.”

We drove on, hoping to see at least a village close to the road. I think we must have been almost back as far as York when we finally found any sign of human habitation, at least humans who might be still awake. This was also a pub, a little off the road and by a railway crossing. The sign, swinging in the blizzardlike wind, said The Drowning Man and showed a hand coming out of a pond.

“Hardly encouraging,” Darcy said dryly. “But at least a light is still burning and hopefully someone is still awake.”

He opened the driver’s side door, letting in a great flurry of snow, then wrestled the wind to close it hurriedly before running across to the pub. I peered through the snow-clad windscreen, watching him. He knocked, waited, and to my relief the door finally opened, letting out a band of light across the snow. Darcy seemed to be having a prolonged conversation during which the other person could be seen peering at me, then he marched back to the car. For a horrible moment I thought he was going to say that they had nothing available and that we’d have to drive on. But instead he came around to my door and opened it for me.

“They appear to have rooms. Hardly the most welcoming of places, from what I can see, but it’s really a case of any port in a storm.” He took my hand and led me through the snow to the building. I was going to say the warmth of the building, but in truth it wasn’t much warmer than the motorcar had been. One naked bulb hung in a hallway and an uncarpeted stair disappeared into darkness.

“Caught in the storm, were you?” the innkeeper asked. Now that we could see her, I noticed that she was a big-boned cart horse of a woman with little darting eyes in a pudgy, heavy-jowled face.

I shot a swift glance at Darcy, praying he wouldn’t make a facetious comment along the lines that we were actually heading for the Riviera and took a wrong turn.

“We were heading for Scotland but the road is closed,” I said before he could answer.

“Aye. We heard that on the wireless,” she said. “Reckon it will take days, don’t they? So you’ll be wanting a room, then?”

“We will,” Darcy said.

“I’ve just the one room,” she said. “The others are occupied. You are a married couple, I take it?” And she gave us a hard stare, trying to see a wedding ring through my gloves, I suspected.

“Of course,” Darcy said briskly. “Mr. and Mrs. Chomondley-Fanshaw. That’s spelled ‘Featherstonehaugh,’ by the way.”

I fought back a desire to giggle. She was still eyeing us suspiciously. “I don’t care how it’s spelled,” she said. “We don’t go for airs and graces in this part of the country. As long as good honest folk have the brass to pay, we don’t care how many hyphens they have in their names.”

“Right, then,” Darcy said. “If you’d be good enough to show us the room?”

She didn’t budge but pointed. “Turn right at the top of the stairs and it’s at the end of the hall. Number thirteen.”

Then she reached into a cubby and handed us a key. “Breakfast from seven to nine in the dining room. Breakfast is extra. Oh, and if you want a bath you’ll have to wait till morning. Hot water is turned off between ten and six. And the bath’s extra too.”

Darcy gave me a look but said nothing. “I’ll take you up first then go and get the bags,” he said. “Come on.”

I followed him up the narrow stair. An icy draft blew down at us.

“Are there fires in the rooms?” Darcy turned back to ask the landlady, who was still standing there watching us.

“No fireplace in that room,” she said.

“And I suppose a cup of hot chocolate is out of the question?” There wasn’t much hope in his voice.

“Kitchen closed at eight.” She turned her back and walked into the darkness of the hallway.

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