Lady Liesl's Seaside Surprise, page 1
Lady Liesl’s Seaside Surprise
Tansy Rayner Roberts
Copyright © 2021 by Tansy Rayner Roberts
Cover design @2021 by MerryBookRound
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN: 978-0-6488983-8-2 (paperback)
Created with Vellum
For Emma, with her attitudes
And Lizzie, who did not drown
Contents
Foreword
Dramatis Personae
1. Of Brightside and Curricles
2. An Improper Countess
3. The Family Jewels
4. Breakfast in Bohemia
5. A Most Surprising Promenade
6. Shell-Shocked with Sea Shells on the Seashore
7. Drawing Conclusions
8. Ambuscade
9. Liesl Makes Several Startling Announcements; Emma Brings The House Down
10. Surely There Are Absolutely No Further Surprises At This Point
11. Six Months Later
Glossary of the Teacup Isles
About the Author
Also by Tansy Rayner Roberts
Gate Sinister
Foreword
Lady Liesl’s Seaside Surprise belongs to the Teacup Magic series, and also stands alone.
* * *
We first met Liesl as a supporting character in the first two cozy mystery adventures of Miss Mnemosyne Seabourne: Tea and Sympathetic Magic and The Frost Fair Affair. This story happens during the same summer as Spellcracker’s Honeymoon.
Dramatis Personae
THE FAMILY
Lady Liesl of Sandwich, a plucky young lady, unmarried after two Seasons
* * *
George Battenburg-Seville, Earl of Sandwich, patron of the arts (recent), father to Liesl
* * *
Emma Lamb Battenburg-Seville, Countess of Sandwich, actress-turned-aristocrat, stepmother to Liesl
* * *
Lady Annabetha (Anna) Battenburg-Seville Chisholm, wife of a country Baronet, elder sister to Liesl
* * *
Lady Margaretta (Retta) Batternburg-Seville Sotheby, wife of a Lord, elder sister to Liesl
* * *
Lady Gerdrut (Gerda) Battenburg-Seville Melusine, wife of a wealthy banker, elder sister to Liesl
* * *
Gustav Battenburg-Seville, Viscount Ganymede, bachelor heir to the Earl of Sandwich, elder brother to Liesl
* * *
Lady Clytie Battenburg-Seville, schoolgirl and correspondent, younger sister to Liesl
THE BOHEMIANS
Basil Robucks, famous art critic, infamous clothes horse
* * *
Perdita Cholmondley, up and coming artist with a taste for marble and a talent for paint
* * *
Indigo Larkin, artist’s model who seems to model herself on others; pond-survivor
* * *
Meredith (Merry) Merryweather, self-styled poet king; on the verge of his greatest work
STAFF, and others
Amie, a lady’s maid
* * *
Mr Torquay, a butler
* * *
Tavistock, a maid of all work
* * *
Mrs Pennance, a cook with a theatrical past
* * *
Evans, valet to Basil Robucks
* * *
Bets, a tweeny
* * *
Bert, a stable lad
* * *
A helpful post-mistress
* * *
An unhelpful if accurate secretary
* * *
Assorted townies
THE CORRESPONDENTS, LIVING AND DECEASED
Ana-Margareta Danville Battenburg-Seville, former Countess of Sandwich, (deceased) mother of Liesl and her siblings
* * *
Gerdrutte Talboy Battenburg-Seville, former Dowager Countess of Sandwich, (deceased) mother of George, grandmother of Liesl and her siblings
* * *
Mrs Mnemosyne "Mneme" Seabourne, a dear friend and correspondent, occasional solver of mysteries
* * *
Lady Margery Foulkkes-Hobb, Viscountess Dudley, an old school friend and correspondent, prolific mystery novelist
* * *
Juno, Duchess of Storm, a dear friend and correspondent, confirmed meddler in mysteries
* * *
Henry, Duke of Storm, the one who got away
1
Of Brightside and Curricles
From: Lady Liesl Battenburg-Seville of Sandwich, Aphrodite Villa, Brightside, the Isle of Bath
To: Mrs Mnemosyne Seabourne, Comfrey Cottage, Mudgely, the Isle of Aster
My dear Mneme,
Now you are married to the love of your life and blissfully happy, I expect you to provide those of us who remain on the shelf with your experience and knowledge.
Which is to say, I have attached a list of highly pertinent (or merely pert) questions that only a matron could possibly answer. I await your return letter with bated breath. Please devote especial attention to the third and sixth questions, for educational purposes.
Naturally, you have nothing more important to do on your honeymoon than share your intimate secrets with your maidenly friends! You may blush now, but within a twelve-month you shall surely be scrawling tell-all novels about married life to be shared with a discreet group, as all my old school chums seem to have done.
Mind you, scandalous novels about marital (and extra-marital) affairs was the fashion last Season. These days they all seem to have turned their hands to mysteries: tales of heiresses and governesses stranded in unfamiliar houses, doing their best to solve overly-complicated crimes while trying not to fall in love with seductive rakes. I assume all this novel-writing means that the second year of marriage is otherwise dull and uneventful. Rest assured, I shall have a further list of questions for you by the time you reach that sorry state.
I may be about to embark on a short adventure of my own, though it is nothing warranting a honeymoon. Do not be surprised if your reply to my letter is forwarded to a mysterious location.
And of course, my dear Mneme, do not allow this detour to deter you from answering Question 7 in intimate detail. Illustrations are positively encouraged.
Your friend,
Liesl
Lady Liesl Battenburg-Seville was on the wrong side of the island, to begin with.
It was all very well that ladies were allowed to use portals now — already she thought of her life as divided between Portals and No Portals, with the latter a haze of swan-shaped boats and ungainly lumps of luggage being touted back and forth — but it was another thing to use them with any degree of expertise.
She thought she had done the right thing, consulting with her father’s secretary, who she assumed would know the most convenient way to access the family villa on the coast of Bath. However, when Liesl stepped out of the portal, accompanied by one highly-strung maid holding a carpet bag, she discovered that she was still at least two hours travel away from her intended destination.
Dismay was the only possible reaction.
“This is the north side of the island, my dear,” explained a kindly post-mistress. “You need to be on the east, oh quite far down the coast to reach Brightside. Surely there must be an inn or a respectable establishment closer to the town with a portal available to ladies… hmm, let me look.”
And yet, after the post-mistress consulted all of the information to hand, it transpired that Lady Liesl’s father’s secretary had not been incorrect. This was the nearest public portal.
Amie, Liesl’s maid, was on the verge of tears.
The predicted two hours of travel was closer to three by the time they had hired a two-wheeled curricle to the station, caught a little train that wound in and out of various coastal villages, and finally hired a second curricle to take them up high over the curve of the cliffs towards the town of Brightside where, Liesl was assured, the villa was to be found.
This was not a Bath she recognised from regular childhood visits to the other side of the island: all the spa resorts and theatres and delightful amusements around every corner. No, this was all moors and cliff and chilly isolation.
What had her father been thinking?
There was little brightness to be had by the time they approached Aphrodite Villa, named for the goddess of love. Liesl’s fair hair and favourite bonnet were so blown about by the curricle that they had formed some kind of unholy tangle that might require divine intervention to unravel. Amie clung to the side of the small carriage, pale and miserably travel-sick.
Given that the sun rose in the east, the brightness of Brightside must be a pleasure to be enjoyed in the mornings. Certainly not an hour or so after the last civilised hour for tea.
Summer it might be, but there was little warmth in the air. All colour had bleached out of the sea and the sky in preparation for evening. Liesl should have packed a more robust shawl in her — she was now starting to realise — entirely unsatisfactory carpet bag. Spoiled by a few months of easy portal travel, she had forgotten how to properly pack.
At least, surely, her visit to Aphrodite Villa would be brief. She had a single message to deliver on behalf of her father, after which she could return home
Ugh. Next Season. The least thought about that, the better.
“I’m not here to solve a mystery,” she said aloud, causing Amie to give her a startled look.
She must start as she meant to go on.
And that, Liesl decided as she passed the care of her hired horse over to a helpful passing stable lad, included not wondering at all why exactly it was that this particular villa, purchased by her father upon his second marriage, was so very difficult to reach.
She had read enough mystery novels to know exactly where that sort of question led.
Even in the unflattering light of early evening, Aphrodite Villa was somewhat impressive. Liesl had never visited the property before, as it was the private sanctum of her father and stepmother from the moment their months-long honeymoon began. None of the children of his first marriage had been invited here in the six years since that second wedding; not even Gustav, the son and heir.
Dear Mamma,
You won’t believe what Father did the moment you were dead.
“Big, isn’t it?” gasped Amie at her side, clutching the carpet bag with a dedicated fervour.
That was one word for it.
Liesl could see she could see why the whole business had put Gustav in a grim mood when the purchase was first announced. Far from being a modest holiday house fit for an Earl and his much younger wife, this was a magnificently grand establishment, almost as large as their own family manor, Battenburg Abbey. Unlike the Abbey with its forbidding thick buttresses and solid two-centuries-ago design, this flighty Aphrodite Villa was built of white granite, with wide sweeping steps and thick columns holding up a majestic portico with a colonnade that swept the entire perimeter of the house, it looked almost palatial.
Certainly, it must contain enough rooms for Liesl and all five of her siblings to be housed comfortably, should they ever be invited to stay.
Beyond the deep white portico, the front door stood wide open. A sound of flute music could be heard from within, along with the chatter of a crowd. A party, perhaps? Liesl stepped inside, looking around for someone she could talk to about sleeping arrangements. It was generally best to manage rooms and such with the servants before giving her host a chance to notice she had arrived.
There were no servants in sight. Only tiles: a glorious mosaic floor that swept across a hallway wide enough to double as a ballroom. Blue and white and blue and white, in an intricate pattern that formed waves and seashell patterns, using turned sea glass as well as fine china in various brilliant shades. Beautiful. Expensive.
Also, the ultimate sign of casual wealth: there was not a grain of dust or dirt anywhere, and yet no scent of cleaning charms hung in the air. That meant it was cleaned entirely by hand.
A door flew open, and the most beautiful woman Liesl had ever seen in her life stormed out of it, arguing over one bare shoulder. She had eyes like a cat, large and perfectly-shaped. Her long dark hair was caught up in a careless knot, and she wore a draping white gown that was almost entirely indecent in the way it fell around her curves and long limbs. “I’m telling you, Basil, it’s entirely the wrong shade of carmine,” she hollered like a fishwife, as the door swung shut behind her. There was no Basil in sight.
The woman in the indecent dress saw Liesl and tilted her head with a slow smile. “Well, hello,” she said, prowling in Liesl’s general direction. “Are you the entertainment?”
Liesl froze in place, the social awkwardness of her early teen years swamping back over her, as if it had never been away. This was not a situation on which she had been drilled by her army of governesses, or her brutally effective finishing school. “I’m looking for the Countess of Sandwich,” she managed, her discomfort affecting her tone as it always did: making her appear icy, aloof.
The sensuous woman held her gaze for a touch longer than was polite, then stepped back and opened the door again. “Emma!” she yelled into the flute music and conversational hum. “Someone’s sent you an angel! Bags I paint her first.”
2
An Improper Countess
Someone’s sent you an angel. Liesl had never been introduced to a room with such a sentiment before. She hovered on the threshold, flushed with embarrassment.
“Are you going in, or running away?” purred the indecently-draped woman.
That was useful; Liesl was annoyed now. She straightened her spine. “I don’t run from anything.”
“Oh, good. That would be no fun at all.”
Braced for the most extravagant display of scandalous decadence, given everything she had heard about her stepmother’s friends, Liesl stepped into the sitting room.
It was hardly a surprise that the room was beautiful, decorated grandly in the current fashion. Unlike the blazing whites and blues of the hallway, this room was warmer in tone, with creams and reds and a striped pattern of roses on the walls.
A mighty, gold-framed portrait of the Earl and his new Countess hung above the fireplace. She, accomplished actress that she was, looked every inch the aristocratic wife: fashionably gowned and dripping with ancestral diamonds. He stood, as awkward in oils as he was in real life, with one hand set upon her shoulder, and many layers of tweed between himself and his wife.
It was almost a relief to see that he still came off badly in portraits; Liesl never quite knew what to expect of her father these days. The Old Earl had been distant, aloof, cold. Weighed down by generations of tradition and social expectation. The New Earl threw wild parties, made friends with artists and poets. He disappeared for months at a time without informing his family where he might be found, and when he returned, it was with a new wife at his side.
Gone to Bohemia, as Liesl’s late grandmamma might have said, sniffing her disapproval. No forwarding address.
Gallivanting, as Liesl’s late mother might have said, rolling her eyes. Honestly, Bats, isn’t there enough to do around here?
Dear Mamma
Look at me, playing the dutiful daughter just because the Earl deigned to ask me for a favour.
(He didn’t ask, actually. He assumed.)
Unlike her stately formal portrait, the current Countess of Sandwich was dressed in a pale blue day-dress stained with paint. She wore no jewellery except her wedding ring and a rustic-looking charm bracelet. Her feet were scandalously bare — bad enough to appear this way in private where only the servants might see her, but she had a man sitting on either side of her, and a young woman (equally barefoot!) sitting on the floor nearby, like an urchin begging for bread off the table.
Liesl was quite certain that no man — not even her father or brother — had seen her own bare feet since she was six or seven years old.
“An angel indeed,” leered one of the men, who had a dark pointed beard and a gleam in his eye. He wore a baggy brown shirt tied with a cord, like he had wandered in from the market selling eels, and decided to stay for the rest of his life. “I’ll fight you for her, Perdita.”
