Featured Excerpt: All’s Fair in Love and Treachery by Celeste Connally

One

Wednesday, 21 June 1815

3 Bruton Place

Mayfair, London, England

The four o’clock hour of the morning

The damning words folded in on themselves as the paper crumpled in Lady Petra’s fist. Flames danced merrily in the fireplace until one log split under the crushing heat, sparks flying like the spitting of an angry cat.

From beyond the window shrouded in heavy curtains came the rumble of thunder. Numbly, Petra pulled the tartan blanket tighter about her body, her mind crowded with too many thoughts. Her gaze fell to the handle of the fireplace poker, the brass glowing in the firelight as if beckoning her.

You could be an avenging angel, it seemed to say.

The implement was long and well crafted, ending in a point almost as sharp as a dagger. She crushed the paper tighter in one hand and reached out with the other to close cold fingers around the warm brass handle, casting her eyes to the ceiling and the bedroom above.

Would he deny the veracity of the words she had just read?

A crack of lightning made Petra start, her hand reflexively loosening, then tightening on the poker. Outside the small, warm library in which she stood, the resulting bright bolt speared the transom window above the heavy oak front door and lit up the foyer of the town house.

In that moment, she could see the foot of the staircase clearly, and her memories flared just as brightly to that horrible early morning three years earlier when she came down a very similar set of stairs. Ones located west of Hanover Square, on a street called Chaffinch Lane, when she made the terrible discovery of her betrothed—her darling Emerson—his neck at an unnatural angle, all life gone from his body.

Petra had been assured it was an accident. That the young, handsome viscount must have missed a step as he rushed downstairs. Or slipped in his stockinged feet, perhaps, as he went to answer a knocking at the door that Petra had not heard. She had been cocooned in their bed, slumbering as only one who was blissfully exhausted from lovemaking can.

The explanations for Emerson’s fall had been believable—all too easily so, in fact. For the theories had come from a man she trusted with her life. The man who had helped her slip away into the darkness of London before anyone could bear witness to Lady Petra Forsyth, the unmarried daughter of the Earl of Holbrook, emerging from a bachelor’s lodgings, half-dressed and with her reddish-blond curls hanging loose down her back.

Petra lifted her eyes to the ceiling and the bedchamber above, imagining that man as she’d left him a mere half hour earlier. Green eyes, so startling, hidden behind lids closed with deep sleep. His thick, wavy hair, mussed from her hands, would look black as night against the white linen pillow. Duncan Shawcross was the man who had helped Petra that fateful morning. The man whom Petra had more recently realized she had always loved; whom she had known and trusted since they were both children. Even some months earlier, when she feared their friendship lost, Petra’s faith in him had never truly wavered.

Now it seemed to be crashing down around her.

She whispered an agonized oath, stumbling backward until her shoulder blades rested against the bookshelf. The fireplace poker was somehow still in her hand, its pointed edge having dragged through the thick blue carpet with swirls of rust, cream, and goldenrod.

Petra unfurled her fingers that held fast the small piece of paper. Being of fine quality, it retained some of its integrity despite being compressed. Slowly, it began to open like the petals of a night-blooming jasmine flower. Not fully, but enough so that she could read the words once more.

It was but one page in a ledger full of information gathered for the purposes of blackmail. The handwriting was of a man named Drysdale, a sham physician who was as cruel as he was clever.

At the top of the page was written Duncan Shawcross (Honorable). Beneath were a few sentences regarding his background and minor vices. Then followed a mention of Duncan lending his lodgings to Emerson, Viscount Ingersoll, and Lady Petra Forsyth for their scandalous premarital liaisons. And how, three weeks before the nuptials, Emerson had died of a broken neck after falling down the stairs of Duncan’s town house. Then came two short, final sentences.

Am told no accident. Contrived by Shawcross himself.

A hot tear Petra had not realized had formed dropped down to the page, landing atop one word. She watched as the letters blurred, the ink retreating and swirling, bleeding out Duncan’s name.

Thunder came again, so loud and close that Petra felt it deep within her, saw how it made her fingers tremble. Or were they already trembling?

Clenching the page once more, Petra lifted the fireplace poker. Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the handle, the spear blackened from stoking fire after fire. Despite the intense heat it faced, the sharp point had never bent. And neither would she.

The tartan blanket began to fall away, but she stopped it at the last moment. Lifting her chamberstick, its candle lighting her way, Petra made her way up the stairs, lethal poker at the ready.

Silently, gently, she pushed the door open, eyes darting across the bedchamber to the mahogany four-post bed.

Her lips twisted with vexation. The fireplace had long gone dark and cold, but a finger lamp burned atop the round carved-marble table at the far corner of the room, next to the bed. She had not lit it before going downstairs, but now it gave her all the light she needed.

Hangings of moss-colored velvet that had created Petra and Duncan’s nightly cocoon, and from which Petra had earlier slipped for some reading in the library, were now open and tied back at two of the four corners. She saw rumpled linens, but the bed was empty. As was the bedchamber itself, with its dark oak-paneled walls on which hung evidence of Duncan’s penchant for landscape paintings, including Runciman’s A View near Perth.

She took two quick steps to the right and peered into Duncan’s dressing room. The wooden valet stand holding his breeches, shirt, and coat had been freed from every bit of clothing. His haversack no longer sat on the wooden stool in the corner.

Duncan was gone. Only the scent of him lingered, a mixture of saddle leather, green grass, fresh air, and lemon drops.

No doubt he would have escaped her by using the hidden staircase at the corner of his dressing room that wended down to the servants’ entrance at the back of the house. It was the same way she would exit in an hour when the prearranged hackney arrived, the driver having been paid handsomely to keep his eyes averted and his mouth closed.

Still, even with her face concealed by a poke bonnet and her attire by a full cloak, the drivers of London’s hackneys were canny men. The driver would know he was collecting Lady Petra Forsyth from the town house of Mr. Duncan Shawcross, the son of the late Marquess of Langford and the grandson of the Duke and Duchess of Hillmorton.

If word of where she spent her nights began to infiltrate society, it would not matter that Lady Petra had declared herself as never wishing to marry, or that she had a fortune of her own. Most of society would simply ignore the fact that Duncan and Petra had known each other—even loved each other—for the bulk of their lives. Society’s view would be harshest on her. They would say that Lady Petra Forsyth was still an unmarried woman risking an illicit liaison with a handsome, rakish gentleman. She was staking her reputation, and that of her family’s name as well.

But was she now risking her life, too? Was she having a scandalous affair with a man who was not only a liar, but also a killer?

Though she had indeed known Duncan her whole life, for the past three years, as she mourned Emerson’s death and slowly healed her heart, Duncan had been traveling around the Continent at the behest of his grandfather, the duke. In truth, however, he had all but fled Petra’s presence and England the very day after Emerson’s funeral.

Realizing she’d had her back to the staircase when she made her discovery only minutes earlier, she had to wonder: Had Duncan witnessed her accidental uncovering of the accusations against him? It was easily possible. Duncan had more than once slipped down the stairs before without her knowing, always in search of her touch, her kisses, her body.

If so, did he at first watch with languid amusement as she opened her book and the long-forgotten page from Drysdale’s ledger fell out?

She could imagine his eyes widening with apprehension when she read the page, watching her go still and pale, whispering in anguished tones, “No, no. No! This cannot be!”

And had it been then that he had fled like a coward?

She felt a vexing swoop of emotions. Duncan Shawcross had never been a coward, ever. Yet only someone guilty would act as he had.

With a sigh, Petra set her chamberstick atop Duncan’s chest of drawers. Then a movement made her start; in the pool of candlelight, a shadow began to grow from the far side of the chest.

Instinctively, she shrugged off the tartan blanket and raised the fireplace poker with both hands, aiming it like Diana about to spear the stag that was Actaeon.

“Make yourself known, whoever you are,” she said, her heart thudding in her chest.

Someone was rising from the chair set against the wall. Petra squinted as the form—a small man or a boy—moved better into the light.

It was indeed a boy. A street urchin, by the frayed trousers, bare feet, and dirt-stained shirt. Yet his face remained in darkness, as if he had no face.

She blinked twice. Were his hands shielding his eyes? They were, presumably from her state of wearing nothing but one of Duncan’s own shirts.

The fingers of one of the boy’s hands splayed to reveal a sliver of an eye.

“’Allo, and good morning, my lady.”

The end of her fireplace poker tipped and fell to the marquetry floor.

“Teddy? Is that you?”