Nobody's Sweetheart Now, page 1
part #1 of Lady Adelaide Mysteries Series
NOBODY’S SWEETHEART NOW
The First Lady Adelaide Mystery
“A lively debut filled with local color, red herrings, both sprightly and spritely characters, a smidgen of social commentary, and a climactic surprise.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Set in England in 1924, this promising series launch...is...frothy fun.”
—Publishers Weekly
“This was one of the most delightful mysteries I've read in quite some time. The mystery plot was well written and kept me guessing until the end. The story was witty and had just the right amount of romance sifted in to keep it interesting without being a romance novel. The characters were well developed and fit the story and setting perfectly. I hope to see more in this series in the future.”
—NetGalley Reviews
LADY ANNE’S LOVER
“Robinson never fails to provide plenty of brio, banter, and interpersonal heat...Fans of humorous historicals will enjoy this delightful romp.”
—Publishers Weekly
MISTRESS BY MARRIAGE
“A very talented debut author.”
—Romance Junkies
IN THE ARMS OF THE HEIRESS
“This reviewer was in thrall from page one. Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
Nobody’s
Sweetheart
Now
A Lady Adelaide Mystery
Maggie Robinson
Poisoned Pen Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Maggie Robinson
First Edition 2018
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018940948
ISBN: 9781464211119 Hardcover
ISBN: 9781464210723 Trade Paperback
ISBN: 9781464210730 Ebook
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
Poisoned Pen Press
4014 N. Goldwater Blvd., #201
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
www.poisonedpenpress.com
info@poisonedpenpress.com
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Nobody’s Sweetheart Now
Copyright
Cast of Characters
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Epilogue
More from this Author
Contact Us
Cast of Characters
Residents of Compton Chase,
Compton Under-Wood, Gloucestershire
Lady Adelaide Compton (Addie), widow of Major Rupert
Compton, older daughter of the late Marquess of
Broughton
Major Rupert Compton, ghost
Beckett, Addie’s maid
Forbes, the butler
Mrs. Drum, the housekeeper
Mr. McGrath, head gardener
Cook, Mrs. Oxley
Jane, parlor maid
Jack Robertson, Mr. McGrath’s grandson
The Weekend Guests
Constance, Dowager Marchioness of Broughton,
Addie’s mother
Lady Cecilia Merrill (Cee), Addie’s younger sister
Lord Lucas Waring, viscount, Addie’s childhood friend
and Cotswold neighbor
Eloise Waring, Lucas’ orphaned cousin raised at Waring Hall
Pandora Halliday (Pansy), Addie’s classmate
at Cheltenham Ladies College
George Halliday, Pansy’s husband
Sir David Grant, divorced father of three young sons
Kathleen Grant, his ex-wife
Barbara Pryce, Addie’s oldest friend and department
store heiress
Gerald Dumont, Barbara’s (fifth) fiancé
Angela Shipman, Addie’s London neighbor on Mount Street
Ernest Shipman, financier, Angela’s husband
Colonel Paul Mellard, Rupert’s commanding officer and
village neighbor
Village Residents
The Reverend Edward Rivers
Constable Frank Yardley
Felix Bergman, retired village doctor
Scotland Yard
Inspector Devenand Hunter
Sergeant Bob Wells
Harry Hunter, Dev’s father
Chandani Hunter, Dev’s mother
Chapter One
Compton Chase, Compton-Under-Wood,
Gloucestershire, a Saturday in late August 1924
Once upon a time, Lady Adelaide Mary Merrill, daughter of the Marquess of Broughton, was married to Major Rupert Charles Cressleigh Compton, hero of the Somme. It was not a happy union, and there was no one in Britain more relieved than Addie when Rupert smashed up his Hispano-Suiza on a quiet Cotswold country road with Mademoiselle Claudette Labelle in the passenger seat. If one could scream with a French accent, it was Claudette, and it was said her terrified shrieks as they hit the stone wall were still heard on occasion by superstitious farmers and their livestock near midnight when the moon was full.
Addie was just getting used to her widowhood when Rupert inconveniently turned up six months after she had him sealed in the Compton family vault in the village churchyard. The unentailed house was hers to do as she pleased, and she had decided to open it up to her family and a few convivial friends for the weekend now that she’d made some much-needed improvements. Rupert had always been stingy with her money, and with him gone on to his doubtful reward, she had employed most of the district’s laborers in an attempt to bring Compton Chase into the twentieth century.
True, it was early in her mourning period to entertain, but she made the concession to wear black, even if there wasn’t much of it in yardage, thank God, because it was so bloody hot. And her mother was there to chaperone.
When Rupert appeared, Addie was dressing for her house party, and dropped the diamond spray for her hair on the Aubusson.
“That dress is ridiculous, Addie,” Rupert intoned from a dim corner. He was wearing the dark suit with the maroon foulard tie she’d had him laid out in, and apart from being rather pale, was still a handsome devil, emphasis on the devil. If he’d been in his uniform, she might even contemplate marrying him again.
Oh, she was going mad. Too much stressing over the seating arrangements in the dining room. Who was billeted next to who. Or was it whom? She’d tried to make it easy for those who wished to be naughty tonight to be successful. Then there was the bother over her sister turning vegetarian and ruining the menus at the last minute. Cook was cross and was apt to get crosser.
Addie was already sitting at her vanity table so she didn’t collapse alongside the diamonds. She shut her eyes.
“I’ll be here when you open them. And believe me, it’s no picnic for me, either.”
Addie did open them, and her mouth, but found herself incapable of uttering anything sensible.
“Yes, I’m back. But, one hopes, not to stay. Apparently, I have to perform a few good deeds before the Fellow Upstairs will let me into heaven. It will be a frightful bore for you, I’m sure.”
She told the truth as she knew it, feeling absurd to even speak to someone who couldn’t possibly be there. “You’re dead.”
“As a doornail. What does that mean, anyway? The expression dates from the fourteenth century. Langland, Shakespeare, and Dickens all used it. Dickens was of the opinion that a coffin nail is deader, but there you are.”
Addie reached for her cup of cold tea and downed it in one gulp, wishing it was gin, brandy, anything to make Rupert go away. But if she were drunk, more Ruperts, like those fabled pink elephants, might actually appear. It was a conundrum.
“I’ll try to stay out of your hair as much as possible. Speaking of which, thank God you haven’t cut it into one of those awful shingles. I always did like your hair.”
Addie’s hand went up involuntarily to the golden roll she’d so recently pinned up without her maid’s assistance. Beckett was seein
“What’s wrong with my dress?” Addie asked, peeved. Though she knew he wasn’t truly there—that he was dead—he still had the ability to irritate her, even in her imagination.
“It’s far too flimsy and sheer and short. I can practically see your nipples if I squint hard enough. I admit you do have lovely legs, but everyone and his brother doesn’t have to see them. Your father would not be pleased.”
“My father is dead.” Panicked, she looked around her bedroom. “My God, he’s not going to turn up too, is he?”
“Only one ghost at a time, I believe. I’m still not entirely conversant with the rules. It’s been a confusing few months.”
“It’s the very latest style,” Addie said to herself—and only to herself—tugging down the beaded skirt. It really could have been much shorter. She’d had it sent over from Paris after a flurry of letters and telegrams back and forth from Charles Frederick Worth’s grandson Jacques, who had recently taken over the famous fashion house. Addie had sketched the initial design herself, not that she had any pretensions to become a couturier. A marquess’ daughter was supposed to be decorative, and possibly witty and wise, but never work.
“I don’t like it, but then so little appeals to me nowadays. Ennui is my middle name, but I hope this little visit changes things up. Who have you put in my room? That bounder Waring?”
“I understand it takes one to know one. Lucas is not a bounder, as you must know. Why am I talking? You are not here.”
Lucas was, in fact, assigned a bedroom across the hall. Addie didn’t trust a mere connecting door to stay shut all night long, and in her well-run household, servants were apt to be scurrying down the corridor at any moment at a guest’s whim, discouraging all attempts of Addie’s to be naughty herself. She was not ready to be a merry widow anyway, despite Lucas’ tentative blandishments. Rupert wasn’t cold in his grave.
Apparently, Rupert wasn’t in his grave.
Rupert smiled ruefully. Could an apparition be rueful? Or was Addie really unconscious, perhaps on her deathbed, suffering from heat stroke or a regular stroke or some kind of tea-induced hallucination? Cook could easily have put poisonous leaves in the pot in retaliation for the menu adjustments. She was set in her ways, and had been at Compton Chase since the dawn of time.
Addie had only just turned thirty-one, much too young to die in the usual course of things. However, the past few months had been more than difficult for her too, even apart from Rupert’s death.
“I admit I bounded in my time. Poor Addie. I wasn’t much of a husband, was I?”
“Please go away. I haven’t time for this.” In ten minutes, there would be a dozen houseguests downstairs in the Great Hall admiring its two-story, multi-paned window and having cocktails without her, and Lord knows, she needed one. Or three. She bent over, picked up the pin and stuck it behind an ear.
“Tut. Let me help you with that.” Before she could say a word, she felt his hands in her hair. Cold hands. Really quite icy. He moved the diamonds over a few inches, and she began to see spots dance the tarantella before her eyes.
Good. She was going to faint and stop all this. Addie knew how to faint like a champion—her mother, the Dowager Marchioness of Broughton, a short but formidable woman, had indoctrinated both her daughters in all the ladylike accomplishments. She slid with ease off her slipper chair to the thick carpet and waited to black out, knowing her limbs to be in perfect order, and the hem of her dress where it should be, not riding up to show Rupert her French silk knickers.
Not that he’d care.
“Dash it, Addie! You have more spine than this! I recognize the situation is hardly ideal, but you’re stuck with me for the foreseeable future, so buck up, my girl. I’ll leave you alone for now, but look for me before bedtime for a little chat. No finky-diddling with that Waring chap, no matter how much he bats those baby-blues in your direction. I know what he’s up to—you’re a rich and attractive widow, ripe for the fuc—um, plucking. Don’t fall for his innocent act.”
“I’ve known Lucas since I was six years old. He is innocent,” Addie said from the floor. You couldn’t find a nicer man than Lucas, not that she’d tried. No, she’d allowed herself to be lured away by Major Rupert Charles Cressleigh Compton of Compton Chase, an ancient Jacobean pile in dire need of restoration. The house, not Rupert. Rupert had been unbearably handsome and fit and had shone with good health and bonhomie. If he could live through the horrors of the Great War, he should have lived forever, were it not for too many French 75 cocktails, unnecessary speed, and that Cotswold stone wall.
“That’s what he wants you to believe. All men are the same, perfect hounds.”
“You’re giving dogs a bad name.” Idly, she wondered where her terrier Fitz was. Would he be able to see Rupert, or would he be barking at the shadows? Fitz had never met Rupert; he was Cee’s crackpot idea of a mourning present and arrived with a big black bow around his scrawny neck a week after the funeral. The fleas in her bed had been an unforeseen complication.
Fitz’s neck was thicker now, the fleas a distant memory. Addie supposed that since she had no children, the dog was the next best thing to distract her from her lonely state.
She wasn’t lonely now. There were far too many people in her house for comfort, starting with the man who was disappearing right in front of her. Going, going…
Absolutely gone.
She swallowed back a little cry and struggled to sit up, the room still spinning a bit. That afternoon nap hadn’t helped. It had been a long day, perhaps way too hot to play tennis. Far too much sun had roasted her cheeks and brought out her freckles. She was rubbish at tennis anyhow, being too vain to wear the glasses Dr. Bergman had prescribed before he retired two years ago. Maybe if she put those glasses on—
Addie leaped up and rummaged through the dressing table drawer. Wrapped in an embroidered lace handkerchief, the dratted tortoise shell spectacles were still as ugly as ever. But they would help her see clearly, wouldn’t they? To not see things or dead husbands that really weren’t there. The mirror came into focus and she noticed at once that the diamond pin was dangling from a strand of loosened hair. She’d have to start again, this time with no assistance from the man who’d made their five-year marriage a living hell.
Ha. So he thought he’d eventually wind up in heaven? It would take more than “a few good deeds” to send him to the front of the queue. If he hadn’t died six months ago, Addie might have been tempted to shoot him herself. Her father had done his bit and taught her and Cecilia all the unladylike accomplishments, and when she wore her glasses, she was a very fair shot.
Addie had been vastly tired of the faux sympathy she received from her so-called friends as she tried to hold her head up and pretend Rupert was a faithful husband. Despite the potential scandal, the exhortations of her mother, and reservations of her sister, she’d been close to demanding a divorce from Rupert when he’d skidded off the slippery road with that French wh—hussy.
She pulled out all the pins with a certain amount of viciousness, her hair tumbling down her bare shoulders and catching on the jet and sequins and cobwebby lace. Picking up the silver-backed brush, she tried to smooth the curls and her life back into some semblance of control.
By God, she was going to need something more than a hairbrush.
