AT THE TENDER AGE of twenty-three, Miss Dulcie Middleworth, the youngest daughter of Viscount Middleworth, had just been declared a social failure. Dulcie stared at the nearly blank sheet of laid paper affixed to the board in front of her and tried to concentrate on her preliminary pencil drawing of a fragment of ancient pottery. […]

ARE THERE ANY QUESTIONS?” Guinevere Blodgett beamed at her dearest friends in the world. Friends who had set aside everything in their own lives to come to Danby Manor at her request. But then wasn’t that what friends were for? Mrs. Ophelia Higginbotham and Mrs. Persephone Fitzhew-Wellmore—Effie and Poppy to those who knew them best—traded […]

IT HAD ONCE occurred to Lady Wilhelmina Bascombe that she would no doubt die with a laugh on her lips and a glass of champagne in her hand. Now Willie suspected she would meet her maker with little more than watered wine and an equally weak smile. It was a sad state of affairs for […]

RICHARD BRANHAM, THE EARL OF ELLSWORTH, stood at the window in his library gazing at the back gardens, his hands clasped behind his back. One could tell by the set of his shoulders this was to be one of those discussions. Said discussions usually centered around his nephew’s—his heir’s—poor behavior, lack of responsibility and questionable […]

WESLEY GRANT STUDIED the wall of brass plaques engraved with the names of illustrious members of the Explorers Club who had perished through the years. The memorial wall greeted all who entered through the main door of the venerable club. It was an impressive display that was obviously designed to give new arrivals to the […]

London, January 1892 “WOULD ANYONE CARE to explain this to me?” Sidney Althea Gordon Honeywell looked up from the newspaper clippings spread before her on the table in her small dining room. “Well?” Across the table, three of the dearest ladies Sidney had ever known stared back at her, the very picture of elderly innocence. […]

Robert Evans Curtis stood in the open carriage parked on a slight rise and surveyed the property in front of him to his left. From here, he could see past the woods to the house and the lake in the distance. He focused his field glasses on the grand stone house on a hill. With […]