Masked Ball at Broxley Manor by Rhys Bowen

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    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
    MASKED BALL AT BROXLEY MANOR
    A Berkley Prime Crime Special / published by arrangement with the author
    PUBLISHING HISTORY
    Berkley Prime Crime Special edition / October 2012
    Copyright © 2012 by Janet Quin-Harkin.
    Excerpt from
The Twelve Clues of Christmas
by Rhys Bowen copyright © 2012 by Janet Quin-Harkin.
    Cover photos:
Ballroom ©
JinYoung Lee;
Figure Illustration
by Lawrence Whitley.
    Cover design by Rita Frangie.
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    a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
    375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
    ISBN: 978-1-101-57860-5
    BERKLEY ® PRIME CRIME
    Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
    a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
    375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
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    A story featuring Lady Georgiana before she became Her Royal Spyness . . .

Rannoch House
    Belgrave Square, London W.1
    October 1929
    “Two letters have just come in the post for Georgiana!” My sister-in-law Fig sounded amazed, and a trifle annoyed too, as she took the envelopes from the silver salver the butler was holding. “And they look as if they might be invitations.”
    We had been drinking coffee in the morning room of our London house—the easiest room to keep warm on a bleak October day. My brother—Hamish Albert Henry, Duke of Rannoch, usually known as Binky, had been reading the newspaper. I was curled on the window seat, looking out at the gardens in Belgrave Square, watching nannies pushing impressive prams and elderly colonels walking dogs and wondering what on earth I was going to do with myself all day. My brother, Binky, looked up from the
Times
with a mild display of interest.
    I tried not to cross the room too eagerly to take the letters from her outstretched hand. Invitations had been few and far between recently. It was the end of my season. I had been presented at court (and nearly catapulted onto Their Majesties by mistake when I’d caught my heel in the train of my gown). I had been to balls, to Ascot, and done all the things a deb with severely limited funds could do. But I hadn’t found the man