Lucy

M. C. Beaton
is the author of the hugely successful Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth series, as well as a quartet of Edwardian murder mysteries featuring heroine Lady Rose Summer, the Travelling Matchmaker, Six Sisters, House for the Season, School for Manners and Poor Relation Regency romance series, and a stand-alone murder mystery,
The Skeleton in the Closet
– all published by Constable & Robinson. She left a full-time career in journalism to turn to writing, and now divides her time between the Cotswolds and Paris. Visit
www.agatharaisin.com
for more, or follow M. C. Beaton on Twitter:
@mc_beaton
.

Titles by M. C. Beaton

The Poor Relation

Lady Fortescue Steps Out • Miss Tonks Turns to Crime • Mrs Budley Falls from Grace

Sir Philip‘s Folly • Colonel Sandhurst to the Rescue • Back in Society

A House for the Season

The Miser of Mayfair • Plain Jane • The Wicked Godmother

Rake‘s Progress • The Adventuress • Rainbird‘s Revenge

The Six Sisters

Minerva • The Taming of Annabelle • Deirdre and Desire

Daphne • Diana the Huntress • Frederica in Fashion

Edwardian Murder Mysteries

Snobbery with Violence • Hasty Death • Sick of Shadows

Our Lady of Pain

The Travelling Matchmaker

Emily Goes to Exeter • Belinda Goes to Bath • Penelope Goes to Portsmouth

Beatrice Goes to Brighton • Deborah Goes to Dover • Yvonne Goes to York

Agatha Raisin

Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death • Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet

Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener • Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley

Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage • Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist

Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death • Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham

Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden

Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam • Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell

Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came

Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate • Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House

Agatha Raisin and the Deadly Dance • Agatha Raisin and the Perfect Paragon

Agatha Raisin and Love, Lies and Liquor

Agatha Raisin and Kissing Christmas Goodbye

Agatha Raisin and a Spoonful of Poison • Agatha Raisin: There Goes the Bride

Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body • Agatha Raisin: As the Pig Turns

Agatha Raisin: Hiss and Hers • Agatha Raisin and the Christmas Crumble

Hamish Macbeth

Death of a Gossip • Death of a Cad • Death of an Outsider

Death of a Perfect Wife • Death of a Hussy • Death of a Snob

Death of a Prankster • Death of a Glutton • Death of a Travelling Man

Death of a Charming Man • Death of a Nag • Death of a Macho Man

Death of a Dentist • Death of a Scriptwriter • Death of an Addict

A Highland Christmas • Death of a Dustman • Death of a Celebrity

Death of a Village • Death of a Poison Pen • Death of a Bore

Death of a Dreamer • Death of a Maid • Death of a Gentle Lady

Death of a Witch • Death of a Valentine • Death of a Sweep

Death of a Kingfisher • Death of Yesterday

The Skeleton in the Closet

Also available

The Agatha Raisin Companion

Constable & Robinson Ltd.

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London WC1B 4HP

www.constablerobinson.com

First electronic edition published 2011

by RosettaBooks LLC, New York

First published in the UK by Canvas,

an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2013

Copyright © M. C. Beaton, 1980

The right of M. C. Beaton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in

Publication Data is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-47210-130-3 (ebook)

Cover copyright © Constable & Robinson

Lucy Balfour set down her heavy pails of brambles and straightened her slim back. Surely she had gathered enough to make jam for the whole winter.

The hillside fell away beneath her feet to the blue waters of the loch and the gray town of Marysburgh. Rising through the still, golden autumn air, she could hear the faint strains of the German band playing in the park. A steamer moved out from the pier, trailing its long column of smoke behind it as its paddles churned up the still waters and sent the reflections of town and mountains scattering and sparkling.

The air was heavy with the smell of damp leaves, pine, and woodsmoke. Larks trilled high above and wasps droned in the bushes, and all the while the rumpty-tiddly, jolly sound of the band far away made Lucy long to be with her friends, showing off their best dresses and casting sidelong glances at the boys as they paraded up and down over the smooth grass between the rhododendron bushes.

No matter what her friends planned to do with their Saturdays, Lucy’s mother—almost perversely it appeared to Lucy—seemed to arrange something else. The whole of the precious Saturday morning had been taken up with housework and she had been looking forward to a free afternoon now that her French lessons with Miss Johnstone were finished. But Mrs. Balfour had folded her work-worn red hands, wrinkled from the washing-up soda, and told Lucy that the brambles had to be picked for jam. “It would be better,” she had remarked, “if you saw as little of those common girls as possible from now on.”

A small frown creased Lucy’s brow. She naturally could not question her mother’s authority. But, common! Such snobbery had been unheard of before. Mrs. Balfour worked as a housemaid at Castle Inver and her father was an odd man. They were not even upper servants!

Lucy remembered that the change in her mother had begun when she, Lucy, was fourteen and fully prepared to leave school. Her mother’s face had taken on a closed, secretive look as she stated that Lucy must complete a further two years and take French lessons from Miss Johnstone, a retired schoolteacher.

Most of her friends were already working or engaged to be married. Quite a number went to Castle Inver to be trained as servants, for the Earl and Countess of Marysburgh kept a large staff. Her parents, she knew, could hardly afford such luxuries as French lessons and it was not like either of them to spend an ill-advised penny.

With a sigh, she noticed a huge bush of glossy black brambles farther down the slope, and picked up her pails. She had been thoroughly schooled never to question her elders and betters.
But at least I can wonder about it
, thought Lucy rebelliously as she pulled on a pair of washleather gloves and made her way nimbly down the slope.

She had to wear gloves for even the slightest task. After washing up she had to rub her hands with lemon, then cover them in cold cream, and sit for half an hour with them encased in white cotton gloves. But would her parents tell her
why
she must never, ever get her hands work-roughened? “Keep a civil tongue in your head. We know what’s best for you, lassie,” was all the reply she could expect.

The day was exceptionally hot for a Scottish autumn. After a horrendous summer of storms and squalls and pouring rain, the clouds had suddenly lifted, rushing up and beyond the high mountains like so many bad fairies trailing their wispy black robes as they fled the christening party. A perfect Indian summer had been left behind with long, idyllic sunny days and blue, smoky evenings where the lights from the houses in the town twinkled in the dusk and sent their reflections to fall, sparkling, in the loch, to rival the blazing stars above.

Lucy had always imagined that she would go into service as a housemaid like her mother and had tried to get her mother to talk about life in the castle. But Mrs. Balfour would only fold her lips repressively and say, “I do my work well and I do my Christian duty and that’s all a body can expect.” Mrs. Balfour was full of such repressive phrases, some of them verging on idiocy. One evening while Lucy had been poring over her French readers, she had raised her head and exclaimed, “Oh, I would love to visit Paris,” to which Mrs. Balfour had sniffed and remarked, “I havenae been to Paris and my airms are aye the same length.”

Lucy had turned this phrase over and over in her mind. What had going to Paris got to do with the length of one’s arms? But Mrs. Balfour had obviously believed this to be a masterly piece of rhetoric so she had declined to question her about it.

In the novels that Lucy loved to read, the heroines were always sinking to the floor and laying their heads on their mothers’ laps—their blond curls spilling over in the lamplight in artistic disarray—and pouring out their girlish confidences. Lucy grinned as she thought of the effect this would have on her mother if she did the same. Mrs. Balfour would probably administer a strong dose of syrup of figs to purge the nonsense out of her.

A sudden breeze whipped up the loch from the far away Atlantic, ruffling the blue water and carrying the dancing music of the band to Lucy’s ears. “Tell me, pretty maiden, are there any more at home like you?” Lucy straightened up, her eyes dreamy as she imagined the Gaiety Girls strutting across the stage to the music, and she raised her clear voice in the penultimate line, “If I must love someone, then why not you?”

“Why not, indeed?” said a lazy voice behind her, and she spun around.

A man stood at the top of the slope looking down at her. He was very tall, over six feet, with a lean, muscular build. His thin, high-nosed face was topped with a thick thatch of straw-blond hair and his eyes under their heavy lids were very blue and mocking. He was wearing jodhpurs and a hacking jacket, both well worn. But even unsophisticated Lucy realized from the unstudied arrogance of his manner that she was seeing one of the mysterious aristocracy for the first time.

Although Castle Inver was just outside the town, Lucy had never seen either the earl or the countess. They spent a great part of the year in London or abroad and the entrance to the castle was many miles away from the town, leading as it did from the main Glasgow road. Although the town of Marysburgh was protestant to a man, the earl and countess were Roman Catholic and had their own chapel in the castle grounds, so there was no possibility of them visiting the town church.

Lucy watched the man walking with languid athletic ease down the slope toward her and was relieved to see that he was quite old. Young men made her feel shy. She judged him to be at least thirty-five, and to seventeen-year-old Lucy, that was positively middle-aged.

“What are you doing?” he asked in a light, pleasant voice.