To Murder a Marquis by Arabella Sheraton

 Book Excerpt

Furious barking woke me from a very nice dream in which my ex-fiancé Allan Hunter was on his knees, begging me to stay, and I had just flung his ring back in his face in a most satisfying manner. The fact he’d dumped me for a full-breasted bistro waitress called Tawnee—that’s right, with a double “e”—who clearly said all the right adoring things, had the intelligence of a single-celled organism, and was a tigress in the bedroom was something I chose to ignore.

The dog wouldn’t stop barking. I opened my eyes, and there he was, a beautiful russet-coloured retriever, barking like mad, but with his tail wagging. Still slightly dazed, I shook my head. What the hell was I doing lying under a tree? I was supposed to be in the library at Chelston Hall, helping Dad, who was in hospital in London with bronchitis, collate the archives of the Hadley family. I could almost hear him say, “Jane Carstairs, what on earth are you doing there when you should be working?”

The dog was still barking. I’m not afraid of dogs so I raised myself on one elbow. “Here, boy. What’s the matter?”

I held out one hand for him to come over and have a sniff as an introduction. The dog took a few steps forward, then ran back to his original spot, and barked once. Clearly, a clever canine. He was telling me something. But what? I struggled to sit up. For some reason, my clothes were constricting; something like a straitjacket encircled my chest. Instead of my casual T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, I wore an ankle-length flowing dress, and short lace-up boots, along with a tight, short, long-sleeved jacket. I was in period costume straight out of Pride and Prejudice. Not funny! Someone had obviously pranked me but managing to undress and get me into this suffocating costume was beyond a joke. Plus, how did I get from sitting in a chair in the library to lying under a tree? 

Back to the dog again, which now seemed very agitated. He ran back and forth a bit and whined. By pulling my dress and copious amounts of petticoat up to my knees, tearing something at the jacket shoulder in the process, I managed to stand. The dog ran off through the trees as if on a mission. Maybe someone was hurt, and the mutt was looking for help? Dogs can be so clever that way. Running in the narrow skirt was impossible so I hitched the skirt as high as I could and chased after the dog. Ten minutes later I arrived, panting, at the scene of a bloody accident. Bloody is no exaggeration. A man, also dressed in period costume—riding gear—lay on his back, his arms flung out. He was either asleep, or unconscious, or … I didn’t even want to consider the last option. The dog stood next to him, its tail wagging. It looked at me, whining as if to say, “Help him.” I knelt and took a closer look. Robert William Edward Hadley, the Marquis of Coleston, lay before me. An arrow protruded from the top of his left shoulder, a massive amount of blood soaked the front of his fawn-coloured coat, and he looked very dead.

– Excerpted from To Murder a Marquis by Arabella Sheraton, Bublish, Inc., 2024. Reprinted with permission.