Blackmail at Beckwith Place (PIPPA DARLING MYSTERIES #4) by Jenna Bennett EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
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- Authors: Jenna Bennett
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical Fiction
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- Size: 2 MB
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MY COUSIN FRANCIS proposed to Miss Constance Peckham on the 5
th
of July, 1926, two months to the day after they first met. That might have
seemed rash, as if they had something to hide—I’m sure I don’t have to
spell out what, as we’re all familiar with babies being born ‘early’—
although in justice to them, I don’t think that was the case. Constance had
been living at Beckwith Place with Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert, Francis’s
parents, for most of those two months, so opportunities to misbehave had
been few and far between. I didn’t think Francis was the type, anyway.
Certainly not with Constance. It had been, as the saying goes, love at first
sight, and we had all seen this coming for the past month and a half.
For me personally, the 5
th was memorable for another reason. It was the
day I finally saw the girl with the baby.
The words ought perhaps to be capitalized. The Girl with the Baby, like
an impressionist painting or the title of a lurid crime novel. That was more
or less how I thought of her, or of them.
I had first heard of the pair at the end of April, during that fatal weekend
at Sutherland Hall during which Duke Henry, his valet, and Lady Charlotte,
the Duke’s daughter-in-law, had all met their ends by various means. At that
point, she was just a story that Grimsby the valet told, one of many he had
dug up about everyone in the family. The girl had made her appearance at
Sutherland House, the Town seat of the Astleys, a month or two earlier, with
a baby she claimed belonged to someone in the family. Upon being
presented to the then-Honorable Crispin Astley—now the Viscount St
George since his grandfather’s death, and no more Honorable now, in spite
of the title—he had declaimed any knowledge of her.
Naturally, no one believed him. Crispin was a card-carrying member of
the Society for Bright Young Persons, with a reputation for fast living and a
penchant for seducing anything in a skirt. Sutherland House had been
pressed into service as his bachelor pad and love nest during his weekends
in Town. There was no reason to think he wasn’t as guilty as sin. Ergo, he
must be lying, or he had been too drunk to remember, or he had bedded so
many women that this one had simply slipped his mind… the excuses were
plentiful, and all quite reasonable.
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