Introduction

After eight idyllic months in the Mediterranean, Lady Julia Grey and her detective husband are ready to put their investigative talents to work once more. At the urging of Julia's eccentric family, they hurry to India to aid an old friend, the newly widowed Jane Cavendish. Living on the Cavendish tea plantation with the remnants of her husband's family, Jane is consumed with the impending birth of her child—and with discovering the truth about her husband's death. Was he murdered for his estate? And if he was, could Jane and her unborn child be next?

Amid the lush foothills of the Himalayas, dark deeds are buried and malicious thoughts flourish. The Brisbanes uncover secrets and scandal, illicit affairs and twisted legacies. In this remote and exotic place, exploration is perilous and discovery, deadly. The danger is palpable and, if they are not careful, Julia and Nicholas will not live to celebrate their first anniversary.

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Excerpt

The First Chapter

Mother, let us imagine we are travelling,

and passing through a strange and dangerous country.

—The Hero

Rabindranath Tagore

Somewhere in the foothills of the Himalayas, 1889

“I thought there would be camels,” I protested. “I thought there

would be pink marble palaces and dusty deserts and strings of

camels to ride. Instead there is this.” I waved a hand toward the

motley collection of bullocks, donkeys, and one rather boredlooking

elephant that had carried us from Darjeeling town. I did

not look at the river. We were meant to cross it, but one glance

had decided me firmly against it.

“I told you it was the Himalayas. It is not my fault the nearest

desert is almost a thousand miles away. Do not blame me for your

feeble grasp of geography,” my elder sister, Portia, said by way

of reproof. She gave a theatrical sigh. “For heaven’s sake, Julia,

don’t be difficult. Climb onto the f loating buffalo and let’s be

off. We are meant to cross this river before nightfall.” Portia

folded her arms across her chest and stared at me repressively.

I stood my ground. “Portia, a f loating buffalo is hardly a

proper mode of transport. Now, I grant you, I did not expect

Indian transportation to run to plush carriages and steam trains,

but you must own this is a bit primitive by any standards,” I said,

pointing with the tip of my parasol to the water’s edge where

several rather nasty-looking rafts had been fashioned by means

of lashing inf lated buffalo hides to odd bits of lumber. The hides

looked hideously lifelike, as if the buffalo had merely rolled

onto their backs for a bit of slumber, but bloated, and as the wind

changed I noticed they gave off a very distinctive and unpleasant

smell.

Portia blanched a little at the odour, but stiffened her resolve.

“Julia, we are Englishwomen. We are not cowed by a little authentic

local f lavour.”

I felt my temper rising, the result of too much travel and too

much time spent in proximity to my family. “I have just spent

the better part of a year exploring the most remote corners of

the Mediterranean during my honeymoon. It is not the ‘local

f lavour’ that concerns me. It is the possibility of death by

drowning,” I added, nodding toward the ominous little ripples

in the grey-green surface of the broad river.

Our brother Plum, who had been watching the exchange

with interest, spoke up with uncharacteristic f irmness. “We are

crossing the river and we shall do it now, even if I have to put

the pair of you on my shoulders and walk across it.” His temper

had risen faster than my own, but I could not entirely blame him.

He had been ordered by our father, the Earl March, to accompany

his sisters to India, and the experience had proven less than

pleasant thus far.

Portia’s mouth curved into a smile. “Have you added walking

on water to your talents, dearest?” she asked nastily. “I would have

thought that beyond the scope of even your prodigious abilities.”

Plum rose to the bait and they began to scrap like a pair of

feral cats, much to the amusement of our porters who began to

wager quietly upon the outcome.

“Enough!” I cried, stopping my ears with my hands. I had

listened to their quarrels since they had run me to ground in

Egypt, and I was heartily sick of them both. I summoned my

courage and strode to the nearest raft, determined to set an

example of English rectitude for my siblings. “Come on then,”

I ordered, a touch smugly. “It’s the merest child’s play.”

I turned to look, pleased to see they had left off their silly

bickering.

“Julia—” Portia began.

I held up a hand. “No more. Not another word from either

of you.”

“But—” Plum started.

I stared him down. “I am quite serious, Plum. You have been

behaving like children, the pair of you, and I have had my f ill

of it. We are all of us above thirty years of age, and there is no

call for us to quarrel like spoiled schoolmates. Now, let us get

on with this journey like adults, shall we?”

And with that little speech, the raft sank beneath me and I

slipped beneath the chilly waters of the river.

Within minutes the porters had fished me out and restored

me to dry land where I was both piqued and relieved to find

that my little peccadillo had caused my siblings so much mirth

they were clasped in each other’s arms, still wiping their eyes.

“I hope you still find it amusing when I die of some dread

disease,” I hissed at them, tipping the water from my hat. “Holy

Mother Ganges might be a sacred river, but she is also a f ilthy

one and I have seen enough dead bodies f loating past to know

it is no place for the living.”

“True,” Portia acknowledged, wiping at her eyes. “But this

isn’t the Ganges, dearest. It’s the Hooghly.”

Plum let out a snort. “The Hooghly is in Calcutta. This is the

Rangeet,” he corrected. “Apparently Julia is not the only one

with a tenuous hold on geography.”

Before they could f ly at one another again, I gave a decided

sneeze and a rather chaotic interlude followed during which the

porters hastily built up a f ire to ward off a chill and unpacked

my trunks to provide me with dry clothing. I gave another

hearty sneeze and said a fervent prayer that I had not contracted

some virulent plague from my dousing in the river, whichever

it might be.

But even as I feared for my health, I lamented the loss of my

hat. It was a delicious confection of violet tulle spotted with silk

butterf lies—entirely impractical even in the early spring sunshine

of the foothills of the Himalayas, but wholly beautiful. “It was

a present from Brisbane,” I said mournfully as I turned the

sodden bits over in my hands.

“I thought we were forbidden from speaking his name,” Portia

said, handing me a cup of tea. The porters brewed up quantities

of rank, black tea in tremendous cans every time we stopped.

After three days of the stuff, I had almost grown to like it.

I took a sip, pulling a face at my sister. “Of course not. It is

the merest disagreement. As soon as he joins us from Calcutta,

the entire matter will be resolved,” I said, with a great deal more

conviction than I felt.

The truth was my honeymoon had ended rather abruptly

when my brother and sister arrived upon the doorstep of Shepheard’s

Hotel the first week of February. The end of the archaeological

season was drawing near, and Brisbane and I had

thoroughly enjoyed several dinners with the various expeditions

as they passed through Cairo to and from the excavations at

Luxor. Brisbane had been to Egypt before, and our most recent

foray into detection had left me with a fascination for the place.

It had been the last stop on our extended tour of the Mediterranean

and therefore had been touched with a sort of melancholy

sweetness. We would be returning to England shortly, and

I knew we would never again share the sort of intimacy our

wedding trip had provided. Brisbane’s practice as a private

enquiry agent and my extensive and demanding family would

see to that.

But even as we were passing those last bittersweet days in

Egypt, I was aware of a new restlessness in my husband, and—

if I were honest—in myself. Eight months of travel with only

each other, my maid, Morag, and occasional appearances from

his valet, Monk, had left us craving diversion. We were neither

of us willing to speak of it, but it hovered in the air between us.

I saw his hands tighten upon the newspaper throughout the

autumn as the killer known as Jack the Ripper terrorised the East

End, coming perilously close to my beloved Aunt Hermia’s

refuge for reformed prostitutes. I suspected Brisbane would have

liked to have turned his hand to the case, but he never said, and

I did not ask. Instead we moved on to Turkey to explore the ruins

of Troy, and eventually the Whitechapel murders ceased.

Brisbane seemed content to make a study of the local fauna whilst

I made feeble attempts at watercolours, but more than once I

found him deftly unpicking a lock with the slender rods he still

carried upon his person at all times. I knew he was keeping his

hand in, and I knew also from the occasionalmurmurs in his sleep

that he was not entirely happy with married life.

I did not personally displease him, he made that perfectly

apparent through regular and enthusiastic demonstrations of his

affections. Rather too enthusiastic, as the proprietor of a hotel

in Cyprus had commented huffily. But Brisbane was a man of

action, forced to live upon his wits from a tender age, and domesticity

was a difficult coat for him to wear.

Truth be told, the f it of it chafed me a bit as well. I was not

the sort of wife to darn shirts or bake pies, and, indeed, he had

made it quite clear that was not the sort of wife he wanted. But

we had been partners in detection in three cases, and without

the f illip of danger I found myself growing fretful. As delightful

as it had been to have my husband to myself for the better

part of a year, and as glorious as it had been to travel extensively,

I longed for adventure, for challenge, for the sort of exploits we

had enjoyed so thoroughly together in the past.

And just when I had made up my mind to address the issue,

my sister and brother had arrived, throwing Shepheard’s into

upheaval and demanding we accompany them to India.

To his credit, Brisbane did not even seem surprised to see them

when they appeared in the dining room and settled themselves at

our table without ceremony. I sighed and turned away from the

view. A full moon hung over old Cairo, silvering the minarets that

pierced the skyline and casting a gentle glow over the city. It was

impossibly romantic—or it had been until Portia and Plum arrived.

“I see you are working on the f ish course. No chance of soup

then?” Portia asked, helping herself to a bread roll.

I resisted the urge to stab her hand with my fork. I looked to

Brisbane, imperturbable and impeccable in his evening clothes

of starkest black, and quickly looked away. Even after almost a

year of marriage, a feeling of shyness sometimes took me by

surprise when I looked at him unawares—a feyness, the Scots

would call it, a sense that we had both of us tempted the fates

with too much happiness together.

Brisbane summoned the waiter and ordered the full set menu

for Portia and for Plum, who had thrown himself into a chair

and adopted a scowl. I glanced about the dining room, not at all

surprised to find our party had become the subject not just of

surreptitious glances but of outright curiosity. We Marches

tended to have that effect when we appeared en masse. No doubt

some of the guests recognized us—Marches have never been shy

of publicity and our eccentricities were well catalogued by both

the press and society-watchers—but I suspected the rest were

merely intrigued by my siblings’ sartorial elegance. Portia, a

beautiful woman with excellent carriage, always dressed cap-apie

in a single hue, and had elected to arrive wearing a striking

shade of orange, while Plum, whose ensemble is never complete

without some touch of purest whimsy, was sporting a waistcoat

embroidered with poppies and a cap of violet velvet. My own

scarlet evening gown, which had seemed so daring and elegant

a moment before, now felt positively demure.

“Why are you here?” I asked the pair of them bluntly.

Brisbane had settled back in his chair with the same expression

of studied amusement he often wore when confronted with my

family. He and Portia enjoyed an excellent relationship built

upon genuine, if cautious, affection, but none of my brothers

had especially warmed to my husband. Plum in particular could

be quite nasty when provoked.

Portia put aside the menu she had been studying and fixed

me with a serious look. “We are bound for India, and I want

you to come with us, both of you,” she added, hastily collecting

Brisbane with her glance.

“India! What on earth—” I broke off. “It’s Jane, isn’t it?”

Portia’s former lover had abandoned her the previous spring

after several years of comfortably settled domesticity. It had been

a blow to Portia, not least because Jane had chosen to marry, explaining

that she longed for children of her own and a more conventional

life than the one they had led together in London. She

had gone to India with her new husband, and we had heard

nothing from her since. I had worried for Portia for months

afterward. She had grown thinner, her lustrous complexion

dimmed. Now she seemed almost brittle, her mannerisms

darting and quick as a hummingbird’s.

“It is Jane,” she acknowledged. “I’ve had a letter. She is a widow.”

I took a sip of wine, surprised to find it tasted sour upon my

tongue. “Poor Jane! She must be grieved to have lost her husband

so quickly after their marriage.”

Portia said nothing for a moment, but bit at her lip. “She is

in some sort of trouble,” Brisbane said quietly.

Portia threw him a startled glance. “Not really, unless you

consider impending motherhood to be trouble. She is expecting

a child, and rather soon, as it happens. She has not had an

easy time of it. She is lonely and she has asked me to come.”

Brisbane’s black eyes sharpened. “Is that all?”

The waiter interrupted, bringing soup for Portia and Plum

and refilling wineglasses. We waited until he had bustled off to

resume our discussion.

“There might be a bit of difficulty with his family,” Portia

replied, her jaw set. I knew that look well. It was the one she

always wore when she tilted at windmills. Portia had a very old fashioned

and determined sense of justice. If she were a man,

one would have called it chivalry.

“If the estate is entailed in the conventional manner, her expectations

would upset the inheritance,” Brisbane guessed. “If

she produces a girl, the estate would go to her husband’s nearest

male relation, but if she bears a son, the child would inherit and

until he is old enough to take control, Jane is queen of the castle.”

“That is it precisely,” Portia averred. Her face took on a mulish

cast. “Bloody nonsense. A girl could manage that tea plantation as

well as any boy. One only has to look at how well Julia and I have

managed the estates we inherited from our husbands to see it.”

I bristled. I did not like to be reminded of my first husband.

His death had left me with quite a generous financial settlement

and had been the cause of my meeting Brisbane, but the

marriage had not been altogether happy. His was a ghost I preferred

not to raise.

“How is it that she does not already know the disposition of

the estate?” Brisbane asked. “Oughtn’t there to have been a

reading of the will when her husband died?”

Portia shrugged. “The estate is relatively new, only established

by her husband’s grandfather. As the estate passed directly from

the grandfather to Jane’s husband, no one thought to look into

the particulars. Now that her husband has died, matters are a little

murky at present, at least in Jane’s mind. The relevant paperwork

is somewhere in Darjeeling or Calcutta and Jane doesn’t like to

ask directly. She thinks it might seem grasping, and she seems to

think the matter will sort itself out when she has the child.”

I turned to Portia. “I thought her husband was some sort of

wastrel who went to India to make his fortune, but you say he

has inherited it. Is the family a good one?”

Angry colour touched Portia’s cheeks. “It seems she wanted

to spare me any further hurt when she wrote to tell me of her

marriage. She neglected to mention that the fellow was Freddie

Cavendish.”

I gasped and Brisbane arched a thick black brow interrogatively

in my direction. “Freddie Cavendish?”

“A distant—very distant—cousin on our mother’s side. The

Cavendishes settled in India ages ago. I believe Mother corresponded

with them for some time, and when Freddie came to

England to school, he made a point of calling upon Father.”

Plum glanced up from his wine. “Father smelled him for a

bounder the moment he crossed the threshold. Once Freddie

realized he would get nothing from him, he did not come again.

It was something of a scandal when he finished school and

refused to return to his family in India. Made a name for himself

at the gaming tables,” he added with a touch of malice. Brisbane

had been known to take a turn at the tables when his funds were

low, usually to the misfortune of his fellow gamblers. My

husband was uncommonly lucky at cards.

I hurried to divert any brewing quarrel. “How ever did Jane

meet him? He would have left school at least a decade ago.”

“Fifteen years,” Portia corrected. “I used to invite him to

dinner from time to time. He could be quite diverting if he was

in the proper mood. But I lost touch with him some years back.

I presumed he had returned to India until I met him in the street

one day. I remember I was giving a supper that evening and I

needed to make the numbers, so I invited him. I thought a nice,

cozy chat would be just the thing, but a thousand details went

wrong that evening, and I had to ask Jane to entertain him for

me. They met again a few months later when she went to stay

in Portsmouth with her sister. Freddie was a friend to her

brother-in-law and they were often together. Within a fortnight

they were married and bound for India.”

I cudgeled up whatever details I could recall. “I seem to

remember him as quite a handsome boy, with a forelock of dark

red hair that always spilled over his brow and loads of charm.”

“As a man grown he was just the same. He could have

charmed the garters off the queen’s knees,” Portia added bitterly.

“He ended up terribly in debt and when his grandfather fell ill

in India, he thought he would go back and take up residence at

the tea plantation and make a go of things.”

We fell silent then, and I glanced at Plum. “And how did you

come to attach yourself to this expedition?” I asked lightly.

“Attach myself ?” His handsome face settled into sulkiness.

“Surely you do not imagine I did this willingly? It was Father,

of course. He could not let Portia travel out to India alone, so

he recalled me from Ireland and ordered me to pack up my sola

topee and here I am,” he inished bitterly. He waved the waiter

over to refill his wineglass and I made a mental note to keep a

keen eye upon his drinking. As I had often observed, a bored

Plum was a dangerous Plum, but a drunken one would be even

worse.

I returned my attention to my sister. “If Father wanted you

to have an escort so badly, why didn’t he come himself ? He is

always rabbiting on about wanting to travel to exotic places.”

Portia pulled a face. “He would have but he was too busy

quarrelling with his hermit.”

I blinked at her and Brisbane snorted, covering it quickly with

a cough. “His what?”

“His hermit. He has engaged a hermit. He thought it might

be an interesting addition to the garden.”

“Has he gone stark staring mad? Who ever heard of a hermit

in Sussex?” I demanded, although I was not entirely surprised.

Father loved nothing better than tinkering with his country

estate, although his devotion to the place was such that he refused

to modernise the Abbey with anything approaching suitable

plumbing or electricity.

Portia sipped placidly at her soup. “Oh, no. The hermit isn’t

in Sussex. Father has put him in the garden of March House.”

“In London? In the back garden of a townhouse?” I pounced

on Plum. “Did no one try to talk him out of it? He’ll be a

laughingstock!”

Plum waved an airy hand. “As if that were something new

for this family,” he said lightly.

I ignored my husband who was having a difficult time controlling

his mirth and turned again to my sister. “Where does

the hermit live?”

“Father built him a pretty little hermitage. He could not be

expected to live wild,” she added reasonably.

“It isn’t very well wild if it is in the middle of Mayfair, now

is it?” I countered, my voice rising. I took a sip of my wine and

counted to twenty. “So Father has built this hermitage in the

back garden of March House. And installed a hermit. With

whom he doesn’t get on.”

“Correct,” Plum said. He reached for my plate and when I

offered no resistance, helped himself to the remains of my f ish.

“How does one even f ind a hermit these days? I thought they

all became extinct after Capability Brown.”

“He advertised,” Plum said through a mouthful of trout grenobloise.

“In the newspaper. Received quite a few responses,

actually. Seems many men fancy the life of a hermit—and a few

women. But Father settled on this fellow from the Hebrides,

Auld Lachy. He thought having a Hebridean hermit would add

a bit of glamour to the place.”

“There are no words,” Brisbane murmured.

“They started to quarrel about the hermitage,” Portia elaborated.

“Auld Lachy thinks there should be a proper water closet

instead of a chamber pot. And he doesn’t fancy a peat f ire or a

straw bed. He wants good coal and a featherbed.”

“He is a hermit. He is supposed to live on weeds and things

he finds in the ground,” I pointed out.

“Well, that is a matter for debate. In fact, he and Father have

entered into negotiations, but things were at such a delicate

stage, he simply could not leave. And the rest of our brothers

are otherwise engaged. Only dearest Plum was sitting idly by,”

Portia said with a crocodile’s smile at our brother.

“Sitting idly by?” He shoved the fish aside. “I was painting,

as you well know. Masterpieces,” he insisted. “The best work of

my career.”

“Then why did you agree to come?” I asked.

“Why did I ever agree to do anything?” he asked bitterly.

“Ah, the purse strings,” I said quietly. It was Father’s favourite

method of manipulation. The mathematics of the situation

were simple. A wealthy father plus a pack of children with expensive

tastes and little money of their own equalled a man who

more often than not got his way. It was a curious fact in our family

that the five daughters had all achieved some measure of financial

independence while the five sons relied almost entirely upon

Father for their livelihoods in some fashion or other. They were

dilettantes, most of them. Plum dabbled in art, fancying himself

a great painter, when in fact, he had only mediocre skill with a

brush. But his sketches were very often extraordinary, and he was

a gifted sculptor although he seldom finished a sculpture on the

grounds that he did not much care for clay as it soiled his clothes.

“If I might recall us to the matter at hand,” Brisbane put in

smoothly, “I should like to know more about Jane’s situation. If

it were simply a matter of bringing her back to England, you

could very well do that between the two of you. You require

something more.”

Portia toyed with her soup. “I thought it might be possible

for you to do a bit of detective work whilst we are there. I should

like to know the disposition of the estate. If Jane is going to

require assistance, legal or otherwise, I should like to know it

before the moment is at hand. Forewarned is forearmed,” she

finished, not quite meeting his eyes.

Brisbane signalled the waiter for more wine and we paused

while the game course was carried in with the usual ceremony.

Brisbane took a moment to make certain his duck was cooked

to his liking before he responded.

“A solicitor could be of better use to you than I,” he

pointed out.

“Than we,” I corrected.

Again he raised a brow in my direction, but before we could

rise to battle over the question of my involvement in his work,

Portia cut in sharply.

“Yes, of course. But I thought it would make such a lovely

end to your honeymoon. Jane’s letters are quite rapturous on the

beauties of the Peacocks.”

“The Peacocks?” My ears twitched at the sound of it. Already

I was being lured by the exoticism of the place, and I suspected

my husband was already halfway to India in his imagination.

“The Peacocks is the name of the estate, a tea garden on the

border of Sikkim, outside of Darjeeling, right up in the foothills

of the Himalayas.”

“The rooftop of the world,” I said quietly. Brisbane f licked

his fathomless black gaze to me and I knew we were both

thinking the same thing. “Of course we will go, Portia,” I assured

her.

Her shoulders sagged a little in relief, and I noticed the lines

of care and age beginning to etch themselves upon her face. “We

will make arrangements to leave as soon as possible,” I said

briskly. “We will go to India and settle the question of the estate,

and we will bring Jane home where she belongs.”

But of course, nothing that touches my family is ever so

simple. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the publisher:

1. The setting of this book is a tea plantation in the foothills
of the Himalayas, an exotic departure from the previous
settings for the Lady Julia Grey series. How does this setting
enhance the action of the story?
2. The opening of the book reveals that Nicholas and Julia are
having a little diff iculty settling into married life together.
What are the specif ic issues that they have yet to resolve?
3. How does the Earl March meddle in the lives of his
children? Is he justif ied?
4. In spite of their squabbles and eccentricities, the March
siblings are devoted to one another. How do they demonstrate
that devotion?
5. Did Jane make the right decision in marrying Freddie Cavendish?
Do the Cavendishes seem welcoming to outsiders?
6. The Valley of Eden has its share of eccentrics, most notably
the Pennyfeathers. Does their family dynamic work?
7. Miss Thorne and her sister, Lalita, are both servants, but
have chosen quite different paths. Discuss.
8. A new villain emerges in this book in the person of Black
Jack Brisbane. How has his abandonment of his son shaped
the man that Nicholas became?
9. Did Emma die with murder on her conscience? Or was she
a victim of circumstance?
10. How does the addition of Plum as an investigator change
his relationship with Brisbane? With Julia? With himself ?
11. Black Jack and Lucy Phipps, now Lady Eastley, elope
together. What are Black Jack’s motives? Lucy’s?
12. Was justice served by Reverend Pennyfeather’s actions?
13. How will motherhood change Portia?
14. Did Brisbane make the right decision to take Julia on as a
partner with strict conditions? What qualities does Julia
have that make her a good investigator?
15. What lies ahead for each of the characters?

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