Amazon
Deadly Affair: A Georgian Historical Mystery is a hit!! After waiting very patiently for Lucinda Brant's latest book, I was not disappointed. Alec Halsey is a dream!! It is fun to watch all his antics while he is trying to solve all the mysteries in this book. Just like my favorite TV show "Criminal Minds" I think I solved the mystery at least 10 times.........only to turn another page to find out my prediction was wrong!! Alec, Selina, Plantagenet, Melinda, Tam and all the other characters are all so fun to follow. They are so vivid that I could see this book as a movie!!  With the mix of historical fiction and mystery.....this book is definitely one that I will happily recommend!! I look forward to a sequel!! .
 © Heather

  Amazon
Brant doesn't disappoint with this second in the Alec Halsey novels. Her settings are gloriously rich and well-researched, the life of the Georgian nobility silkily realised on the page. The story flows at pace with Alec, Tam and Plant alternately holding centre stage. Brant has a particular skill in creating faceted secondary characters and its my hope she writes a book one day about Tam the valet/apothecary's apprentice. Halsey himself has a neat darkness that could be developed further in the future as well. I enjoy Brant's work, a worthy successor to Heyer and a recommended read and five stars.
 © Prudence J. Batten

    Plantagenet Halsey MP considered himself fighting fit for a man entering his sixtieth year, and what he most wanted to do was fight the latest bill put before the Commons. A bill that, if passed, would see an increase in the number of ships leaving Bristol harbor in search of African slave labor for the sugar plantations of the West Indies and the cotton plantations of the American colonies. A bill proposed by the government, and championed by the Duke of Cleveley, as the only means of ensuring the kingdom’s supremacy over its European counterparts. Plantagenet Halsey loathed the Duke with a passion; almost as much as he hated the very idea of human enslavement.
    Thoughts of the Duke put a bitter taste in his mouth and intruded on what his nephew was saying. The last time he’d confronted the Duke he’d made a fool of himself. He should’ve heeded the advice of colleagues and left the debate on the floor of the House. Two hours of listening to Sir Charles Weir drone on and on about the urgent need to increase, not only the number of ships but the permissible number of slaves taken on board such vessels, to ensure England’s mercantile advantage was not compromised, was all the old man needed to send his blood to the boil.
    Everyone knew Sir Charles was the Duke’s puppet in the Commons. The man had been Cleveley’s secretary for ten years before being rewarded for his loyalty with a rotten borough seat in the Duke’s keeping. And for the past five years he had repaid the Duke by being his eyes and ears in the Commons. He never missed a vote, never opposed a government endorsed bill, and at every opportunity championed the integrity of the Duke’s character and political motives on the numerous occasions a member of parliament took it upon himself to question such matters. In Plantagenet Halsey’s opinion the worst kind of sycophant: unthinkingly loyal and doggedly determined.
    How insane of him then to confront the man and his idol in the pavilion at Ranelagh Gardens. It was the first appearance of the Duke at a public gathering since the death of his good Duchess. The orchestra had just finished playing a selection of Handel’s favored water music in honor of the Duke’s presence. The audience not only applauded the musicians but one of their number took it upon themselves to offer three cheers in support of the Duke. The man himself had appeared nobly self-effacing. His puppet, Sir Charles, was not so humble and grinned from ear to ear at such public enthusiasm for his benefactor.
    It was a rare occurrence for a member of the English aristocracy to receive such praise. Plantagenet Halsey considered such affected displays best left to the French who worshipped their nobles with unthinking zeal. That the Duke should be given such an honor, all because his stirring speeches about the expanding British empire appealed to the swelling money bags of the merchant class at the expense of those poor African natives herded up like cattle and loaded into British frigates for slave labour in distant lands, was enough to turn the old man’s stomach. His response was immediate and instinctive.
    He had marched straight up to the Duke, poked him in the chest with the Malacca head of his walking stick, and called him a murderer of nations or some such provocative thing that he could not now recall. He had then spat on the sparkling diamond encrusted buckles of his Grace’s well-polished shoes. The outraged Sir Charles quickly stepped in front of the Duke, and the rest of their party closed protectively about the great man, leaving the crowd that swelled forward to wonder at all the fuss.
    The Duke did not give him the satisfaction of responding to this violation of his immaculate person. He merely turned heel and walked away, leaving Plantagenet Halsey to the mercy of his followers, who dragged him outside by the collar of his plain woollen frockcoat and tossed him into the cold water of the nearest pond. His walking stick, a gift from his nephew, was snapped in two and thrown in after him.
    The old man sneezed; a reminder that he was not fully recovered from this watery ordeal. It served to bring him back to the present. Alec was looking at him as if he required an answer.
    “Vomited you say?” questioned Plantagenet Halsey, recalling the thread of their conversation. “I’m no expert in such matters but that don’t seem consistent with a heart attack. Or is it?”
    “I’ve no idea,” said Alec. “All I know is the man was perfectly healthy throughout dinner. He was not in any discomfort. No shortness of breath, or flush to his face. And he certainly wasn’t in pain. No sign at all of what was to come.” He laid aside his gold-rimmed spectacles atop a stack of unopened correspondence. “Blackwell’s death came as a complete shock.”
    “I’ll miss the old badger, but I’m not sorry he up and died at one of Weir’s dinners.”
    Alec smiled thinly. He knew very well what had happened at Ranelagh Gardens. His valet, Tam, had inadvertently told him in explaining why he was late in drawing his bath; that he’d been busy preparing an elixir for the old man’s sore throat, a consequence of ending up in a fishpond. The whole story had come out and his valet had begged him not to reveal his breech of confidence. It was not Alec’s intention to remind his uncle of his embarrassing impetuousness. He may agree with his uncle’s sentiments but he certainly did not approve of his methods.
    “When I accepted Charles’s invitation to dine,” Alec said patiently, “I did so as an old school friend, and because I owed him a favor. If it makes you feel any better I found the evening rather dull.”
    “A diplomatic understatement,” grumbled the old man, “given the end to the evenin’.”
    “As I said, the vicar’s death was a complete shock.”
    “Obviously not to everyone, my boy.”
    “Meaning?”
    Plantagenet Halsey’s grey bushy brows lifted in surprise. “Come now. Don’t tell me you think the vicar suffered a natural death?”
    Alec frowned. “I’ve no evidence to suggest otherwise, which means I should dismiss any suspicions as absurd.”
    “Aha! So you do have suspicions. Got to wonderin’ who would want to be rid of a harmless old vicar?” Plantagenet Halsey asked shrewdly.
    “Yes. Particularly when just as the port was being put on the table I overheard Lord George Stanton telling Weir he suspected Blackwell of blackmailing Cleveley.”
    “Blackmail? That don’t sound like the Blackwell I knew.”
    “No. But it’s Stanton’s belief that only blackmail could induce the Duke to let Blackwell live under his roof.”
    “What? Blackwell was livin’ in that nobleman’s house?”
    “Furthermore, Charles was of the opinion that perhaps it was the Duchess of Cleveley’s dying wish that Blackwell be given a home because it was he who had performed the last rites on the Duchess.”
    The old man was so agog at this that he leaned forward on the ribbon back chair. “Are you sure we’re talkin’ about the same vicar?”
    “The Reverend Blackwell we knew, the penniless helper of the poor and forgotten of our society, I can’t imagine having an enemy in the world. Yet, if he was on friendly terms with the Duchess, whose son accuses him of blackmail, and he’d recently taken to living at the Duke of Cleveley’s social and economic expense, then the vicar may well have had enemies, and under the very roof he was staying.” Alec looked pensive. “He showed me a gold snuffbox, a gift. The poor parish vicar we knew would’ve shunned such luxuries, or at the very least have sold it for medicinals, food, anything to help his ragged flock.”
    “The man must’ve been drunk. Or drugged.”
    Alec grinned. “Perhaps you think I was by the look on your face. When was the last time you saw Blackwell?”
    “It’s only been about a month since he sent for Tam to—About a month.”
    Alec ignored the slip for the moment. “If we take the approach that this other Blackwell had enemies—Stanton for one was not pleased he’d moved into the Cleveley mansion—and ask if there was an opportunity for murder then yes, I think he could’ve been poisoned; something slipped into his food, or his drink. The servants were coming and going all the time with dishes and bottles. And more than once Blackwell had to get up from the table to relieve himself behind the screen. And I spent more time talking to Charles on my right than I did the good vicar on my left.” Alec shrugged. “And that is assuming he was poisoned at dinner. He may have been poisoned before he arrived at Weir’s dinner party.”
    The old man stood up with the aid of his old splintered Malacca cane. “Perhaps… Perhaps he did have a heart attack. Perhaps the vomitin’ was just a consequence of too much rich food, and a mere coincidence that both happened at the same time? The fact you were sittin’ beside him is neither here nor there.”
    “Is that what you’ll be saying to the doubters, Uncle?”
    “What y’mean?”
    Alec sighed. “If you and I think there was an opportunity for foul play, who’s to say others don’t think the same? In fact, that’s what’s being whispered about already, isn’t it?” When the old man pretended ignorance by lifting his thin shoulders, Alec said impatiently, “I may have spent the past seven months rusticating in Kent but that hasn’t made me blind, deaf or a simpleton. I know what’s being said behind my back. I need only walk into my club, ride in the Park, take up a foil at Anton’s, for there to be an awkward exchange of whispered asides between men who wouldn’t normally know me from Adam. I was sitting next to Blackwell. I was the one on whom he vomited. And I was the only one at that dinner party ever accused and acquitted of a man’s murder—my brother’s murder. There’s no need to look into a witch’s cauldron to know who everyone suspects!”
    Plantagenet Halsey leaned heavily on his cane and met his nephew’s gaze unblinkingly. “Your brother’s greed and contempt for his fellows got him shot. But you blame yourself for his death; for not being able to prevent what was to come. You’re still blamin’ yourself. The very fact you hate your newly elevated station is proof enough of that. Let me finish! I’ve been wantin’ to say this for some time and it’s time I did, before you sink further into that vat of self pity—”
    “Uncle, I—”
    “No. You’ll hear me out. While you continue to let your shiny new coronet sit awkwardly; continue to wince when addressed as my lord; continue to put off takin’ your seat in the Lords; continue to dress like a man of trade, with your natural hair unpowdered—”
    “Ha! And this from a man who taught me that to live by the dictates of fashion was to be a slave to vanit—”
    “—there will always be doubters. You are the Marquess Halsey, whether you wish it to damnation or not. There ain’t a thing you can do about it. So you may as well wear the title comfortably.”
    “Can I?” Alec asked with a sceptical lift of his black brows. “How comfortable can I be when we both know—when it is openly discussed behind fluttering fans and quizzing glasses—that I did not inherit my brother’s earldom, but was elevated to a Marquessate in my own right to put to rest the persistent talk that I was not entitled to the family earldom because nine months prior to my birth my mother was having an affair with her footman. A circumstance you have persistently refused to confirm or deny.”
    The old man did not blink. “The sooner you are comfortable,” he said quietly, “the sooner those malicious scandal-mongering whoresons will turn their attention elsewhere. I’m tired,” he added abruptly and blew his nose. “By the by, how did the lad take the news about Blackwell?”
    “Tam? Better than expected,” Alec replied evenly, pleased to change the topic. He wished he hadn’t flung his mother’s affair in his uncle’s face. The old man’s love for the Countess had been unrequited. Her affair with her footman, a social inferior and a mulatto, considered abhorrent barbarism by her peers. It remained unspoken between them, but uncle and nephew knew that even if Alec did redeem himself in the eyes of Society, doubt over his paternity would forever remain. “That is to say, Tam didn’t let on to me how much Blackwell’s death affected him.”
    “He’s become a regular close-faced servant since you took him on as valet. And from what I hear about your antics abroad, he’d have to pretend to deafness as well. I don’t know why you bothered taking him with you to Paris when you spent the entire week cavorting between the sheets. His time would’ve been better served here.” He broke off, embarrassed at saying more than he intended, and mumbled under his nephew’s steady gaze, “The boy has a gift for healin’. The poor deserve access to the same medicinal treatments that are provided to the rich and if—”
    “Save me the customary lecture on rich and poor. I know it well enough,” Alec answered flatly. “And don’t think, just because I’ve been caught up in estate business in Kent, or, as you so plainly put it, romping in a Parisian bed, I don’t know what you’ve been up to. Sending Tam to help Blackwell in St. Judes, the most perilous parish in the city, is trying my patience that bit too far. I don’t disapprove of the boy using his apothecary’s skills to dispense medicines to the poor at my garden gate. I’m even prepared to defend him should questions be raised by the beadles. But exposing a youth who has barely made his mark on the world, and worse, yourself, an infirm old man, to the treacherous underworld of cutthroats, murderers and disease-ridden hags, was reckless, irresponsible and utterly foolish!”
    Plantagenet Halsey looked sheepish. “The vicar asked for m’help. As I said, the boy has a gift for healin’. It shouldn’t be wasted.”
    “I don’t disagree with what you’re trying to do but—Damn it, Uncle! There are other ways of offering help. As it so happens, I was about to put a stop to such nocturnal visits when Blackwell’s death saved me the necessity.”
    “It was that snaky-eyed butler who fibbed on us,” the old man muttered rhetorically. “Interfering old buzzard.”
    “Then it’s settled. You’ll take my advice and have a holiday.”
    Plantagenet Halsey eyed his nephew with loving resentment. “At Bath?” He shrugged, the fight gone out of him. “I’ll go at the end of session. Not before. I want my day in the Commons. Then you can send your old uncle to any watering-hole you damn-well please!”
   
    Tam sat hunched at his workbench, head in his hands, a finger absently wrapping itself around a carrot-colored curl. Concentration was impossible. He’d spent an hour flicking through the pages of the English pharmacopoeia, trying to decide the main ingredients for a poultice to apply to weeping ulcers of the legs. He should’ve known the answer without the need to consult his texts. After all, he had less than a week until his examination before the company of Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. But the voices across the hall disturbed his concentration.
    There went the old man’s voice again, rising above that of his nephew’s measured tone, as if by shouting him down he could win his point. Tam smiled. It wasn’t that easy. That tactic might work for the old man in the House of Commons but Lord Halsey had a way of getting what he wanted without the need to raise his voice.
    If I can’t study, then it’s best to keep occupied.
    He decided to tidy his workroom. There was plenty to do to ensure his thoughts did not wander to the death of the Reverend Blackwell. Then he would start crying again. Imagine! Turned nineteen and blubbering like a girl. What would the servants make of his red eyes?
    From the lattice-fronted cabinet he took out the specialist apparatus needed in the preparation of his growing collection of prescribed medicines. He hoped to have at least a third of the labelled bottles restocked later that evening, when his valeting services were no longer required. And there were the new clippings to sort through: gathered earlier from the herb garden at the back of the kitchen. Several piles of sorted roots, tubers, stems and stalks from various plants were drying on racks by the window; some had been purchased at the Chelsea physique garden.
    Who would want to harm an old vicar? And why?
    The attending physician had diagnosed heart failure, but his lordship’s questions hinted at the possibility of foul play. An apothecary worth his fee knew any number of substances could kill man or beast and look for all the world as if death was by natural causes. But the Reverend Blackwell? A harmless old man from the poorest parish in London. It was inconceivable to Tam. Blackwell was a gentle man, a sweet and loving man who cared for the unwanted, nameless children cast on the parish by desperate mothers and faceless fathers.
    Common Plantain: Plantago major. A weed found by the roadside and in meadowland. As a poultice, fresh whole leaves were applied directly to the ulcerated leg.
    Tam smiled. Perhaps the examination wouldn’t be so bad after all?
    If time allowed he would unpack the new ceramic jars that had arrived only that morning; another generous gift from his lordship, as was the dispensary and all its contents.
    Lord Halsey had given Tam the use of the small room beside the butler’s pantry as a preparation room. It was the sort of room every student of pharmacy dreamed of having at the end of a seven-year apprenticeship. It was fitted out with shelves, cabinets, a worktable and a small stove for the brewing kettles, and it was next to the kitchen and the herb garden beyond. It was Tam’s alone. He had the only key to the door leading onto the passage; the back door he could bolt from the inside. Not even the butler was permitted to trespass.
    Tam fingered the key and its chain that was attached to a button inside his plain cloth waistcoat pocket and grinned. He considered himself the luckiest lad alive and daily thanked God for his good fortune. Valet to a wealthy nobleman, who was not only the best master a youth could hope for, but one who encouraged his servants to better themselves.
    Unlike his lordship’s butler, who was forever looking over his shoulder, trying to catch Tam out attending on the poor unfortunate wretches who often called at the garden gate in search of free medicinals and advice. And making house calls on Blackwell’s sick and miserable parishioners was, in the butler’s opinion, the height of wastefulness.
    The butler’s familiar short, sharp rap on the outer door interrupted Tam’s thoughts and he reluctantly went in answer to it, wiping his eyes on the back of a sleeve.
    Wantage stood in the doorway, scowling. He disapproved of Tam and he certainly did not approve of his hocus-pocus. He considered it beneath the dignity of a marquess’s valet to get his hands soiled with garden filth. He tried to take a look into the room but Tam stood firmly in the doorway.
    All that study of botanical mumbo jumbo had made the boy’s eyes red.
    Tam pulled the door on his back and made a point of taking his time to turn the key in the latch. The butler stood so close Tam could smell the cheroots on his breath.
    “You’re wanted,” Wantage sniffed, itching to snatch the key that dangled from its long chain in the boy’s hand. “No. Not upstairs. In there,” he said, a jerk of his thumb at the library door. “Tie your hair back, Thomas Fisher.”
    Tam abruptly stopped swinging the key and shot a hand up to his red curls. Where was that damn riband? He turned out his pockets, found the scrap of black silk, scraped back his curly hair from his forehead, and carelessly tied it up at the nape of his neck. All this under the reproachful gaze of the butler, who took it upon himself to inspect Tam’s handiwork before allowing him to pass.
    Tam gritted his teeth and let the butler have his moment. It didn’t do to upset Wantage. He had a way of making those he disliked pay, regardless of their closeness to the master.
    He slipped into the library and waited, only coming out of the shadows when Plantagenet Halsey slowly crossed the room on his nephew’s arm. He could tell the old man’s arthritis was bothering him, particularly this cold day, and offered to help him to his room. His offer was greeted with a grunt but was not rejected. When Tam returned he found Lord Halsey had put on his eyeglasses and was seated at his desk, writing. Tam smiled. There was a time when his master had refused to acknowledge his failing eyesight. Finally, necessity had conquered vanity.
    Alec looked over his gold rims. “Had you been by the door some time while Mr. Halsey was with me?”
    “Long enough, sir,” Tam answered honestly.
    “Then I won’t need to repeat myself about your nocturnal wanderings. Do I make myself understood?”
    Tam nodded.
    “Very well. I should like to know if you think Blackwell had any enemies.”
    “None, sir,” Tam answered without hesitation. “He was liked by all. No one had a bad word to say about him. Why should they? He was a very decent gentleman.”
    “The times you were with him, visiting his parishioners, did he ever mention anything you thought an odd circumstance or out of character?”
    Tam’s brow furrowed. “Mr. Blackwell’s conversation was always full of questions for me. What I was doing. What I thought of going abroad. He was always urging me to keep on with my studies. He wanted me to finish my apprenticeship. He didn’t like the idea of me being a servant. No offence to yourself, sir.”
    “None taken. Did you know Mr. Blackwell had quit Old St Jude’s lane?”
    “Yes, sir. He sent a note about a month back, just after Mr. Halsey and I went on our last visit to one of his parishioners; a wainwright with two gangrenous fingers. Mr. Blackwell wrote he was going to greener pastures. I don’t know what he meant by that.” Tam screwed up his freckled nose. “Come to think on it, sir, he didn’t give a forwarding direction.”
    “Did you hear from him again?”
    “No, sir. Perhaps he wrote again while we were in Paris? But we weren’t in Paris long enough for letters to cross on account of—” Tam faulted under his master’s unblinking blue-eyes and lowered his gaze to the Oriental rug. On account of you having a falling-out with Mrs. Jamison-Lewis, was what Tam had been about to say. But it wasn’t his place to mention his master’s Titian-haired mistress. Just as it wasn’t his place to remember how every night for a week he’d been kept awake by their torrid lovemaking in the next room.
    “You may write your memoirs when I’m dead and buried. Not before,” Alec said sternly and was pleased the boy had sense enough to remain po-faced. “Tell me: Is it within the realms of possibility that Blackwell could’ve been poisoned?”
    “But who—?”
    “That is something to think about if and only if you think it possible.”
    “It wouldn’t be an easy thing, sir.”
    “To poison him or to make it look as if he’d had a heart attack?”
    “Let me explain, sir. It would be an easy thing to poison him. Something slipped into his wine, or sprinkled on his food, or his handkerchief could’ve been soaked in Oleander water. When Mr Blackwell came to use it during the evening the poison would be absorbed through the membranes in his nose and go straight to work on his brain. He would almost certainly have died within minutes. But…”
    Alec came round from behind the heavy mahogany desk and propped himself on a corner while Tam paced the rug thinking aloud. “But?” he prompted.
    “It’s got to be the right poison in the right form to produce the right effect. Mr Blackwell died of a heart attack, so says the physician. So we need to be looking for a poison whose effect imitates that of a heart attack. We need to know the form of that poison to know how it was administered.” Tam looked up at his master. “It wouldn’t be easy, sir.”
    “I realise that, Tam. But look into it for me, would you?”
    Tam swallowed something in his throat. “Yes, sir. It’s just that… It’s just that if it wasn’t Mr Blackwell I’d feel better about it. I’d probably even enjoy the challenge, but...”
    “Of course,” Alec said with an understanding smile. “It is not so easy when the victim is someone you know, someone you care about.”
    Although he nodded his agreement, Alec’s reassurances didn’t make Tam feel any better. “I still don’t understand why anyone would want to poison Mr. Blackwell.”
    “Nor do I. Yet, if Blackwell’s death wasn’t from natural causes, I mean to make it my business to find out why someone would want dead a seemingly good and harmless man of God.” And to Alec’s reckoning, if he hoped to learn more about the Reverend Blackwell he would have to know more about the Duke of Cleveley. But how to get close to a man whose very nature precluded closeness?
    “Sir,” said Tam, a glance at the mantle clock, “I’d best see to your clothes if you still intend visiting that picture exhibition.”
    “Ah, yes,” Alec sighed. “Must needs support new talent. Oh, Tam, before you scurry off… What would you say to taking a holiday at Bath after your examinations?”
    “To keep an eye on Mr. Halsey, sir?”
    “Let’s just say, to keep him company.”
    “What shall you do, sir?”
    “Without you?” Alec tried not to smile at the boy’s look of deep concern. “I’ll manage. I have thus far. Oh, don’t look worried. It’s more important you pass your examinations. Valets are easy to come-by, not so good apothecaries.”
    Tam wasn’t reassured. In fact he wondered if this was the first step in easing him out of his position. After all, he’d hardly done a full day’s work as a valet in months. He tried not to look hurt. “Mr. Halsey mightn’t want my company, sir.”
    “It’s you or a strong-armed nurse. Seriously, he’ll be only too grateful to have you, and I won’t leave the two of you alone for long. I’ll join you at the end of a fortnight.”
    With a sluggish step and a heavy heart, Tam went away to prepare his master’s change of clothes. He passed Wantage in the passageway and such was the look of secretive triumph on the butler’s long face that Tam was sure it was no mere coincidence he felt his position as a gentleman’s gentleman was under threat. He was sure of it when Wantage winked at him and continued on his way with a decided spring in his step.

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