Diamonds & Deceit Read Online Free PDF

manslaughter. Murder’s hanging. Here’s yer toast, Annie.” She banged a plate onto the table.
    Annie turned away from the window and sat down to eat, still thinking about the handsome stable boy. It would be fun to go to the fair with him.
    “I’ve never seen a hanging,” Martha went on.
    “You wouldn’t go and watch!” Annie was half shocked, half fascinated.
    “I’d feel I had to, just to get the sense that justice had been done,” Martha said virtuously. “Did I say as how I hear his bloodcurdling scream and hear his skull cracking against the stone floor every night like that jam pot James dropped last Sunday—”
    “Yes,” chorused everyone, “you did.”
    “And we wish you’d give over when we’re trying to eat!” Annie said through a mouthful of toast. “Poor Oliver. He was a good valet to Mr. Templeton, for all I’ve heard, better than that Croker. Better looking too,” she added sadly.
    “But it’s such a scandal for the house,” Martha went on. “I can’t go near the conservatory without a shudder—”
    “And quite right too,” said a firm, quiet voice from the doorway.
    Annie jumped. Mrs. Cliffe was framed in the kitchen doorway, an elegant, sober figure in black. Annie dropped her eyes and an awkward silence fell. It was hard to be the same around Mrs. Cliffe these days, not now they knew all about her and Lord Westlake. And yet no one, she noticed, dared cheek her to her face.
    “You have no reason to go anywhere near the conservatory,” Mrs. Cliffe said, giving Martha her sternest glance. “A shudder is the least you ought to feel if you find yourself so far out of your place.”
    Annie glanced around at the others as Mrs. Cliffe went on down the corridor. Their expressions were resentful, except for Cook, who looked concerned.
    “ She’s a nice one to talk about getting out of her place,” Martha whispered with a rebellious snigger.
    “That’ll do, Martha.” Cook wasn’t laughing, and her voice was low.
    The bell rang out, the new electric sound shrilling through the kitchen.
    “Ugh!” Annie groaned and put her toast down. “Lady Georgiana? What does she want at this time?”
    “Off you go, Annie.” Martha grinned. “No rest for the wicked.”
    Annie ran for the stairs. The world might have turned upside down for Mrs. Cliffe and Rose, but for everyone else it was work, work, work as usual.

“Oh, Annie,” Georgiana Averley said, turning to the door of the music room as Annie entered. “Could you tell Cook it will be I who sees her at eleven, not Lady Edith? Lady Edith has a headache, I’m sorry to say.” Georgiana winced at the lie, but she could hardly tell her that her cousin William’s wife was drunk again. “And we are expecting Mr. Simmons, Papa’s agent, for dinner, so there will be one more, but she needn’t go to too much trouble—the fowl will stretch, I am sure, and perhaps there could be another vegetable dish—I leave it up to her.”
    “Yes, my lady.” Annie dipped a curtsy and went out. Georgiana sighed and went to the piano. Her heart was hardly in the practicing. She missed Ada so much. She wondered how much longer she could keep Edith’s drinking habits concealed. The servants would surely notice sooner or later.
    Think about it later, she told herself. She closed her eyes and lost herself in the music. Waves of waltzes swept her along, then she swung into the new ragtime. In London they would be dancing to this, the beat of the feet on the pavements, the roar of the engines, the glare of the new electric lights around Piccadilly. She could have gone to London with her sisters. She should have gone to London. Plenty of girls her age were out, it wasn’t fair. She was so much stronger now, her chest hardly ached at all when she ran—
    “Georgie! There you are.” The door banged open; her hands skidded into a discord. Michael Templeton strode in, the customary frown on his face. “What are you doing—oh, tinkling on that old