Royal Blood
Authors: Rhys Bowen
Table of Contents
Berkley Prime Crime titles by Rhys Bowen
Royal Spyness Mysteries
HER ROYAL SPYNESS
A ROYAL PAIN
ROYAL FLUSH
ROYAL BLOOD
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
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This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
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.
Copyright © 2010 by Janet Quin-Harkin.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
eISBN : 978-1-101-46090-0
1. Vampires—Fiction. 2. Aristocracy (Social class)—Fiction. 3. Transylvania (Romania)—Fiction.
4. Weddings—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6052.0848R679 2010
823’.914—dc22 2010008216
This book is dedicated to my sister-in-law Mary Vyvan,
who always makes us so welcome in her lovely Cornish manor house
where Lady Georgiana would feel completely at home.
Acknowledgments
Thanks as always to my brilliant team at Berkley: my editor, Jackie Cantor, and publicist, Megan Swartz; to my agents Meg Ruley and Christina Hogrebe and to my at-home advisors and editors Clare, Jane and John.
Chapter 1
Rannoch House
Belgrave Square
London W.1.
Tuesday, November 8, 1932
Fog for days. Trapped alone in London house. Shall go mad
soon.
November in London is utterly bloody. Yes, I know a lady is not supposed to use such language but I can think of no other way to describe the damp, bone-chilling pea-souper fog that had descended upon Belgrave Square for the past week. Our London home, Rannoch House, is not exactly warm and jolly at the best of times, but at least it’s bearable when the family is in residence, servants abound, and fires are burning merrily in all the fireplaces. But with just me in the house and not a servant in sight, there was simply no way of keeping warm. I don’t want you to think that I am a weak and delicate sort of person who usually feels the cold. In fact at home at Castle Rannoch in Scotland I’m as hearty as the best of them. I go out for long rides on frosty mornings; I am used to sleeping with the windows open at all times. But this London cold was different from anything I had experienced. It cut one to the very bone. I was tempted to stay in bed all day.
Not that there was much reason for me to get out of bed at the moment, and it was only Nanny’s strict upbringing that did not allow bed rest for anything less than double pneumonia that made me get up in the mornings, put on three layers of jumpers and rush down to the comparative warmth of the kitchen.
This particular morning I was huddled in the kitchen, sipping a cup of tea, when I heard the sound of the morning post dropping onto the doormat in the upstairs hall. Since hardly anyone knew I was in London, this was a big event. I raced upstairs and retrieved not one but two letters from the front doormat. Two letters, how exciting, I thought, and then I recognized my sister-in-law’s spidery handwriting on one of them. Oh, crikey, what on earth did she want? Fig wasn’t the sort of person who wrote letters when not necessary. She begrudged wasting the postage stamp.
The second letter made my heart lurch even more. It bore the royal coat of arms and came from Buckingham Palace. I didn’t even wait to reach the warmth of the kitchen. I tore it open instantly. It was from Her Majesty the queen’s personal secretary.
Dear Lady Georgiana,
Her Majesty Queen Mary asks me to convey her warmest wishes and hopes you might be free to join her at the palace for luncheon on Thursday, November 8th. She requests that perhaps you could come a little early, say around eleven forty-five, as she has a matter of some importance she wishes to discuss with you.
“Oh, golly,” I muttered. I’d have to get out of the habit of such girlish expletives. I might even have to acquire some four-letter words for strictly personal use. You’d think that an invitation to Buckingham Palace for luncheon with the queen would be an honor. Actually it happened all too frequently for my liking. You see, King George is my second cousin and since I’d been living in London Queen Mary had come up with a succession of little tasks for me. Well, not-so-little tasks, actually. Things like spying on the Prince of Wales’s new American lady friend. And a few months ago she foisted a visiting German princess and her retinue on me—rather awkward when I had no servants and no money for food. But of course one does not say no to the queen.
You might also wonder why someone related to the royals came to be living alone with no servants and no money for food. The sad truth is that our branch of the family is quite penniless. My father gambled away most of his fortune and lost the rest in the great crash of ’29. My brother, Binky, the current duke, lives on the family estate in Scotland. I suppose I could live with him, but his dear wife, Fig, had made it clear that I wasn’t really wanted there.
I looked at Fig’s letter and sighed. What on earth could she want? It was too cold to stand in the front hall any longer. I carried it down to the kitchen and took up my position near the stove before opening it.
Dear Georgiana,
I hope you are well and that the London weather is more clement than the current gales we are experiencing. This is to advise you of our plans. We have decided to come down to the London house for the winter this year. Binky is still weak after being confined to bed for so long after his accident, and Podge has had one nasty cold after another, so I think a little warmth and culture are in order. We plan to arrive at Rannoch House within the next week or so. Binky has told me of your housekeeping prowess, so I see no need to pay for the additional expense of sending servants on ahead when I know you’ll do a splendid job of getting the house ready for us. I can count on you, Georgiana, can’t I? And when we arrive, Binky thinks we should hold a couple of parties for you, even though I did remind him that considerable amounts were already spent on your season. He is anxious to see you properly settled and I agree it would be one less worry for the whole family at this trying time. I hope you will do your part, Georgiana, and not snub the young men we produce for you as you did poor Prince Siegfried, who really seemed a most well-mannered young man and may even inherit a kingdom someday. May I remind you that you are not getting any younger. By the time a woman reaches twenty-four, which you are approaching, she is considered to be on the shelf, remember. Her bloom has faded.
So please have the place ready for us when we arrive. We shall only be bringing the minimum number of servants with us as travel is so expensive these days. Your brother asks me to convey his warmest sentiments.
Your devoted sister-in-law, Hilda Rannoch
I was surprised she hadn’t also put “(Duchess of ).” Yes, Hilda was her given name, although everyone else called her Fig. Frankly if I’d been called Hilda I’d have thought that even Fig was preferable. The image of Fig arriving in the near future galvanized me into action. I had to find something to do with myself so that I would not be stuck in the house being lectured about what a burden I was to the family.
A job would be a terrific idea, but I had pretty much given up all hope of that. Some of those unemployed men standing on street corners held all kinds of degrees and qualifications. My education at a frightfully posh finishing school in Switzerland had only equipped me to walk around with a book on my head, speak good French and know where to seat a bishop at a dinner party. I had been trained for marriage, nothing else. Besides, most forms of employment would be frowned upon for someone in my position. It would be letting down the family firm to be seen behind the counter in Woolworths or pulling a pint at a local pub.
An invitation to somewhere far away—that’s what I needed. Preferably an invitation to Timbuktu or at least a villa on the Mediterranean. That would also get me out of any of the queen’s little suggestions for me. “I’m so sorry, ma’am. I’d love to spy on Mrs. Simpson for you, but I’m expected in Monte Carlo at the end of the week.”
There was only one person in London I could run to in such dire circumstances—my old school chum Belinda Warburton-Stoke. Belinda is one of those people who always manage to fall on their feet—or rather flat on her back, in her case. She was always being invited to house parties and to cruises on yachts—because she’s awfully naughty and sexy, you see, unlike me, who hasn’t had a chance to be either naughty or sexy.
I’d paid a visit to Belinda’s little mews cottage in Knightsbridge when I returned to London from Castle Rannoch in Scotland a couple of weeks ago, only to find the place shut up and no sign of Belinda. I supposed that she had gone to Italy with her latest beau, a gorgeous Italian count, who was unfortunately engaged to someone else. There was a possibility that she had returned, and the situation was urgent enough to warrant my venturing out into the worst sort of fog. If anyone knew how to rescue me from an impending Fig, it would be Belinda. So I wrapped myself in layers of scarves and stepped out into the pea-souper. Goodness but it was unearthly out there. All sounds were muffled and the air was permeated with the smoke of thousands of coal fires, leaving a disgusting metallic taste in my mouth. The houses around Belgrave Square had been swallowed up into the murk and I could just make out the railings around the gardens in the middle. Nobody else seemed to be out as I made my way carefully around the square.
I almost gave up several times, telling myself that bright young things like Belinda wouldn’t possibly be in London in weather like this and I was wasting my time. But I kept going doggedly onward. We Rannochs are known for not giving up, whatever the odds. So I thought of Robert Bruce Rannoch, continuing to scale the Heights of Abraham in Quebec after being shot several times and arriving at the top with more holes in him than a colander, managing to kill five of the enemy before he died. Not a cheerful story, I suppose. Most stories of my gallant ancestors end with the ancestor in question expiring.
It took me a while to realize I was hopelessly lost. Belinda’s mews was only a few streets away from me and I had been walking for ages. I knew I’d had to move cautiously, one small step at a time, with my hand touching the railings in front of houses for security, but I must have gone wrong somewhere.
Don’t panic, I said to myself. Eventually I would come to a place I recognized and I’d be all right. The problem was that there was nobody else about and it was impossible to read the street signs. They too had vanished into the murk above my head. I had no choice but to keep going. Surely I’d eventually come to Knightsbridge and Harrods. I’d see lights in shop windows. Harrods wouldn’t close for a little thing like fog. There would be enough people in London who had to have their foie gras and their truffles no matter what the weather. But Harrods never appeared. At last I came to what seemed to be some gardens. I couldn’t decide what they would be. Surely I couldn’t have crossed Knightsbridge and found myself beside Hyde Park?
I began to feel horribly uneasy. That’s when I noticed the footsteps behind me—slow, steady footsteps, keeping exact pace with mine. I turned but couldn’t see anyone. Don’t be so silly, I said to myself. The footsteps could only be a strange echo produced by the fog. I started walking again, stopped suddenly and heard the footsteps continue another couple of beats before they too stopped. I started walking faster and faster, my mind conjuring the sort of things that happened in the fog in Sherlock Holmes stories. I stumbled down some kind of curb, kept going and suddenly felt a great yawning openness ahead of me before I bumped into some kind of hard barrier.
Where the devil was I? I felt the barrier again, trying to picture it. It was rough, cold stone. Was there a wall around the Serpentine in Hyde Park? I felt a cold dampness rising to meet me and smelled an unpleasant rotting vegetation sort of smell. And a lapping sound. I leaned forward trying to identify the sound I could hear below me, wondering if I should climb over the wall to escape from whomever was following me. Then suddenly I nearly jumped out of my skin as a hand grabbed my shoulder from behind.