The Secrets of Wycliffe Manor: Gravesyde Priory Mysteries Book One

Book 1: Gravesyde Priory Mysteries

by Patricia Rice

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

In the footsteps of Victoria Holt and Jane Aiken Hodge comes a new historical gothic series from Patricia Rice. Like the grand dames of gothic mysteries and romance you loved years ago, the Gravesyde Priory books give you that same "I couldn't put it down" feeling.

In Regency England:
The descendant of adventuring—dead—aristocrats, Clarissa Knightley supplements a modest inheritance by penning gothic novels that cost more than they earn. Upon learning that she has mysteriously inherited a share of an earl’s estate, she rashly packs up her household. In remote Gravesyde Priory, she hopes to find a safe haven and family who will welcome her and her young nephew.

Instead, she discovers a drunken American army captain, his African servant, and ancient, surly caretakers. Terrified, prepared to flee, Clare is lured to linger by the prospect of secret diaries, hidden jewels, and an increasingly intriguing man. Then a killer strikes.

The crumbling manor’s ominous and baffling history offers fascinating fodder for Clare’s horror novels—if only she can survive real-life madmen and a spectral murderer who may seek the jewels at any price.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I thoroughly enjoyed this wonderful, fun, gothic mystery, with a cast of quirky characters and a heartwarming romance as well. Pure entertainment."
Anne Gracie, author of The Scoundrel’s Daughter

 

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Release date: July 11, 2023

Publisher: Book View Cafe

Print pages: 334

Sample

Chapter 1

Cairo, 1809

---

“Two piasters, miss, only one English shilling!” The Egyptian merchant shoved an armful of beaded bracelets into nineteen-year-old Clarissa Knightley’s face, forcing her to halt in the narrow, crowded alley.

Colorful fabrics and birds in cages hung overhead. The heady scent of spices mixed with the stench of smoke and dung. Baubles and trinkets and shawls distracted the eye. . .

“Stop looking, birdwit,” Beatrice snapped, forcing past the merchant to yank Clare away and proceeding through the cacophonous bazaar like Napoleon through. . . well, Egypt.

A ship through the current? Not original enough. Her sister was a force of nature. A hurricane through an island?

“Two piasters, miss!” Another young man cried, waving a shawl in her face. “I have wife, children, only two piasters!”

“Look, we could take one to mama. They’re so pretty and cheap, Bea. . .” Clare tried to glimpse the offerings as her sister dragged her past aromatic spice barrels and tables of glittering jewelry.

“Like pretty faces, pretty trinkets are cheap, but once they drag you in, they won’t let go until they empty your pockets.”

Pretty faces empty pockets. . . Did that mean people with pretty faces were poor or made other people poor?

Pondering the grammar, Clare shook her hand free to defiantly examine a shawl. Bea sailed on without her.

The explosion shattered Clare’s complacence. In an instant, a screaming maelstrom of running soldiers, musket fire, and blood engulfed the colorful bazaar. She froze in shock at the splatters on her white gown. Their bodyguard abruptly flung her backward, into the arms of a stranger in smelly robes. “Run, missy, run!”

More soldiers firing weapons shoved past, propelling her backward into the escaping mob.

Surrounded by a barrage of noise, shoved heedlessly from one malodorous stranger to another, spectacles lost in the melee, Clare lost consciousness—and Bea.

***

 

London, February 1815

---

Adding marmalade to her toast, Clare thought of her late sister’s warning as she contemplated the fiasco of last night’s entertainment. Pretty faces empty pockets. Perhaps if she had a pretty face or a plumper pocket, she might learn what that meant.

After paying to have her first novel published, her pocket was considerably leaner.

She handed the toast under the tablecloth for small fingers to grab.

“How did you fare at the soirée last night?” Meera Abrams, companion, best friend, and trusted apothecary, sorted through the morning’s post.

“Not well.” Clare sighed at the embarrassing memory. “A gentleman asked if I liked Wellingtons, and I told him the general was a brilliant man, but I was glad the war was over. When everyone giggled and the conversation returned to discussing boots, I realized they were talking fashion, not politics. I fear I had been watching a maid tuck a crumpet into her apron and imagining a scene of a girl starving in the attic who must serve in this opulence.”

Meera laughed. “It is all fodder for your novel, so good came of it. And there will always be another chance.”

Clare shrugged. “Unlikely. I cannot go without a companion, and my aunt is only here for the week. Since you will not accompany me, and I cannot afford a new gown for every event, my matchmaking opportunities are limited to bookstores.”

“Where you have your head in a book, when you are not keeping track of Oliver and how many pennies you have left. You don’t even notice men.”

“I think I am meant to be an old maid. Being a wallflower is amusing.” Inured to her lack of social skills, Clare poured a second cup of tea. “Last night I heard that all society believes Oliver is heir to a fortune but lacking in the upper story.”

That was a lie, but she saw no reason to correct idiocy. Another wit had whispered that Bea had been a termagant who had followed her soldier husband to Egypt, where they’d got themselves killed, which apparently made the entire family odd.

That on dit was painful, but closer to the truth, although malaria and dysentery

 had killed her brother-in-law, not the bomb. But admittedly, her family, although descended from a respectable line of noble, if eccentric, earls, had never been normal. Clare and Oliver were perfect examples.

“Your father’s sister means well,” Meera said sympathetically. “She is trying to see you receive the attention your mother’s illness and death denied.”

“She is trying to steer me to a better set of acquaintances,” Clare said dryly, donning her spectacles to study the morning newssheet. “She does not approve of you or our bluestocking friends.”

Aunt Martha had terrified her into attending the soiree by warning that her father’s family was considering removing Oliver from her care. They thought he needed a man in his life. Horribly, Clare feared they might be right.

She and her nephew had already lost all they loved. She couldn’t let relative strangers take him away. Only, marriage simply didn’t seem to be in her cards.

So, she’d settled on finding a male tutor to be the man Oliver needed, if she could find one she could afford. She feared she’d been foolish in risking the household budget to have a book published in hopes of earning a little bit more.

Should her family learn about her scandalous occupation. . . Her male pseudonym prevented that. She simply must wait to see if her risk provided a future.

It had been a year since her mother’s death. Her family was right that she needed to enter society again. Well, not exactly again. Between her father’s death, her sister’s marriage, and her mother’s illness, she never really had been presented. These days, she’d rather not be. After Egypt, she preferred to keep her distance from men and crowds. Even the masculine scent of sandalwood induced a need to flee.

Clare didn’t explain to her bold friend that she had been relieved that no one had asked her to dance. Men inhabited her worst nightmares. She had spent a week in perspiring anxiety, fearing that the soiree would be a crush. She’d rather become a hermit then spend another evening attempting small talk with large, noisy males.

A smashing, splintering bang disrupted her reflections. Clare shrieked and dropped her

 teacup. Clasping the table so as not to drop under it, she waited for blood-curdling screams.

Meera sensibly checked the street behind the draperies.

“A carriage collided with the night cart. Messy, but no one’s hurt.” She returned to her seat. As an apothecary, she would have run outside to assist if anyone had been injured.

No blood. No foul-smelling strangers.

Clare gritted her teeth and mentally repeated her mantra. She could do this. Her house was safe. No one bombed the streets of London. Thugs would not enter her gracious parlor.

Meera mopped up Clare’s spilled tea. Oliver darted from beneath the table to watch the commotion outside. Clare closed her eyes until the din settled and her heart stopped racing. She was fine. She was more than fine.

Hand shaking, she raised a piece of toast to her lips and focused on the newssheet.

Napoleon had escaped his prison!

No, no, she would not borrow trouble. Napoleon would not be sailing the channel with his army. . . No muskets and uniforms in the streets of London.

Her imagination might be the death of her one day. Conflict was easier to control in fiction.

“Does the post bring any replies to your search for a tutor?” Meera asked, attempting to distract her.

As a distraction, it worked well. Her nephew had a brilliant mind, but like the rest of the family. . . he was not normal. Finding not only a suitable teacher, but a male one who would work for a female with little money. . . Complicated.

Hoping for a reply to her application to the employment agency, Clare flipped through the rest of the post until she reached an official-looking missive from Wycliffe Manor. What on earth? Had that not been sold eons ago?

She slit the seal, then raised her cup for a sip while skimming the stilted composition. . . and spluttered hot tea across the linen. Coughing, unable to speak, she waved the missive until Meera took the letter and put toast in her hand.

Short, round, and dark compared to Clare’s tall, thin, and pale, Meera possessed the logical mind that Clare did not. “Bad news?” she asked worriedly, because Meera’s life, like Clare’s, had been a string of bad news. They had that much in common. Her friend read the letter at Clare’s wave of permission. “Wycliffe Manor? In Gravesyde Priory? How gothic. What is this about?”

Methodically chewing cold toast to cool her burned tongue and gather her thoughts, Clare shook her head, not immediately answering. Surprises were

generally bad news. When she’d recovered sufficiently, she took the letter back and read it more carefully.

“My great-grandfather was the Earl of Wycliffe.” She frowned at the elegant writing. “The original estate dated back to a priory destroyed in the 1500s. The village still bears the name. The first earl rebuilt and renamed the property Wycliffe Manor. I’ve never seen it. The last earl sold everything when it became clear the line of succession had died out.”

“Is that allowed?” Meera asked in suspicion. The daughter of a Jewish apothecary and an India-born Hindu, she had only incidental knowledge of British nobility.

Clare struggled to find any hint of fraud, but the letter was quite plain, once her boiling brain accepted the impossible. She wasn’t quite there yet. “I’m not a solicitor. I don’t know the laws. I just know what I was told—the earl sold everything and divided it up between his sisters and daughters. My grandmother invested her share in this house and a trust fund to maintain it.” So, the money belonged equally to Clare and Oliver, despite the gossip.

“But the letter says you also own a share of Wycliffe Manor. How is that possible?” Meera attacked her boiled egg as if it had personally offended her. Meera had a few anger problems, for excellent reasons.

A niggling possibility blossomed in Clare’s wild imagination . . .

“It’s not conceivable, if the manor had been sold, as I assumed. The earl owned vast estates and wealth. There were coffers of jewels inherited over the centuries. My grandmother’s sapphire was a gift from that collection. I suppose Wycliffe Manor may have been entailed and couldn’t be sold? But then, I wouldn’t inherit a share of it. Women normally don’t, which is why the earl sold everything. His only relations were female.”

Meera waved her fork. “None of that makes sense. Take it to your solicitor. He will find out.”

After years of death and disaster, Clare was afraid to allow even a glimmer of anticipation. But just this once, could she hope something good had fallen on their doorstep? “If this is really true, if I have a second home. . .”

Meera looked at her questioningly. “A second home?”

“It says I own a share

 of a manor. What if we could rent out this townhouse for the Season? The extra income. . .”

A gleam of understanding reached Meera’s eyes. “We could go elsewhere these next months? We could escape Jacob?”

After her father’s death, Meera had mistakenly believed his assistant’s attention meant he would marry her. She’d dreamed of sharing the apothecary shop with a husband who respected her knowledge.

Unfortunately, he had shown his true character when Meera had told him of their impending parenthood. Instead of doing what was right, he had made a deal with her father’s landlord and locked her out of the shop.

Clare clutched the paper as if it were diamonds and gold. “If this is true, I can not only earn the money I need for a tutor, but you can lose Jacob and his threats until your child is born.”

As her seven-year-old nephew settled at the table to finish his breakfast, she added, “Do you think a tutor might be more agreeable to working for a woman and teaching Oliver if we are living on an estate with servants?”

“Even a derelict castle with a dozen unknown cousins is healthier than a summer in London with Jacob at the door, but let’s be cautious,” Meera advised.

“For a change?” Clare added, because caution had never been a family trait as far as she was aware.

Chapter 2

Wycliffe Manor, Gravesyde Priory, March 1815

---

Captain Alastair Huntley, late of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, lifted his eye patch and attempted to focus on the hieroglyphics the family solicitor had sent. Just the light of the oil lamp sent a shard of pain straight through his wounded eye socket and into his skull.

He lowered the patch, finished his brandy, and ripped another page out of an ancient ledger to wad up and feed to the coal fire. His damned arm still couldn’t toss it far enough to hit the hearth.

Grinding his molars, he set the letter aside and picked up a dart from the abandoned billiard room. He chose a name outlined in blue on the bizarre embroidered tapestry on the wall, took aim, and hurled. The dart at least reached the wall, but it hit a pink block in a different century and family than his target. Arm and aim not improving.

“Good thing you’re an engineer and not an artillery man,” Walker said discouragingly. “I don’t recommend wagering on any dart games in the near future.”

Daniel Walker was far more than his right-hand man, but Hunt hadn’t found a title that encompassed trusted sergeant, steward, secretary, physician. . . The list was endless.

Nuisance would do for now. Hunt ripped out another page, wadded it, and flung it at his nagging friend. The paper fell far short. Walker knew to stay out of range. “Want to try surveying with your dominant eye closed?” Hunt snarled.

He swung and tossed another dart at the enormous tapestry containing his family tree, a tree that rightfully didn’t contain him. He aimed at his so-called grandfather’s name, the man who hadn’t lived long enough to claim his title and thus lost a kingdom. Family trait, it seemed.

The dart hit another damned female.

“Symbolic,” he declared, rewarding himself by pouring another fine snifter of brandy. If nothing else came of this insane trip through his grandmother’s home, he had the pleasure of emptying an excellent wine cellar—the part which hadn’t turned to vinegar, at least. When he was drunk enough, he slept through the pain.

“Don’ have no fancy eddycation,” his assistant mocked.

Which was a lie. Walker had been raised in Philadelphia, the grandson of emancipated slaves who had educated themselves. His parents had taught a school for non-white children. When his parents died of influenza, a white professor and a schoolteacher adopted him. He was probably better educated than Hunt, even if he wasn’t allowed in the university.

“What symbolism?” Walker returned to poring over ancient account books.

Everything in this meandering walled village ridiculously called a manor house was ancient. The building itself, as far as Hunt could discern, had started with an abandoned monastery in the sixteenth century and been added onto by every earl since. Gauging from the worm-eaten furniture, the earls moved in and moved on. Like termites.

“Everywhere I look on this ostentatious ode to bad choices,” he gestured at the family tapestry, “it comes up female. Females are useless. They cannot possibly set this cesspool to rights again.”

“Which is why the estate solicitors hunted you down. The women had the sense to 

marry well and flee.” Having heard all this in one version or another over this past month since their arrival, Walker continued his research.

“My mother didn’t marry wealth. Everyone on here descended from women. The solicitors could have looked for other male descendants closer to home.” Except there didn’t seem to be any.

It had been his damned mother who’d insisted he seize this opportunity while he convalesced. Her quest seemed fictitious, but damaged as he was, he’d had no other purpose at the time. Still didn’t.

He flung another dart. Hit another pink square.

“Your aim isn’t improving,” Walker noted, inciting another paper wad. “We’ve done the research. The males in your family lead short lives.”

Hunt snorted. Only good surgeons had prevented him from being another family casualty. “We’re obviously ferocious warriors,” he agreed dryly.

As an engineer, he’d only been a casualty of war for being in the wrong place when the Brits had arrogantly sailed into New Orleans, a month after the peace treaty had been signed. Irony everywhere. He’d simply been building a defensive blockade.

From all he could determine, his mother’s deceased male relations had been of similar ilk, drowning while navigating flooded rivers or inventing contraptions that exploded or being shot by poachers, in Africa. He did not come from a line of bankers.

He didn’t come from a line of earls either. His father had been a surveyor and—despite the tapestry’s claim otherwise—his maternal grandfather was not the earl’s son. The mystery was why he was poking around, trying to translate tomes that, when read with one eye, looked like chicken scratches.

“Your family lacks a sense of self-preservation.” Walker intruded on Hunt’s cogitations.

“Fine one to talk.” Spotting the damned bat flittering near the ceiling that he’d not been able to catch, Hunt picked up his pistol and blew another hole in the crumbling plaster. The bat fled. Walker snorted disapproval.

Walker had been with him at the time the Brits fired—a distinct lack of self preservation for a free black man in a slave state. Stupidity was a generic trait, it seemed, not inherited.

Anyway, the tapestry lacked accuracy. Huntley knew his mother’s story. The earl’s son had not fathered her. So, he was a Reid in name only.

He hadn’t tried to explain that to the solicitors desperate for a male heir. Having Walker read him the English laws of inheritance as it applied to the apparently abnormal Wycliffe estate had occupied months of convalescence from injury and infection. He was an engineer, not a lawyer. But unable to practice his profession with one eye and a bum knee, he had to occupy himself somehow. The fresh sea air of his journey from Philadelphia to England had given him time to heal and the opportunity to grasp the legalities involved.

His eye might never recover. If he kept exercising, his arm would eventually improve. He still had hopes for his knee but none for his career. Engineers needed to be able to read and walk. He’d see this damned place settled on some deserving relation, then vanish into his misery. Only curiosity had prevented him from jumping off the side of the ship on the way over. The return journey offered more opportunity if it became clear his eye was truly lost. He did not want to end up the impoverished uncle drinking himself to death in his sister’s small home.

He dreaded meeting his aristocratic relations in his current condition. Men who thought themselves better than others caused his non-noble blood to boil on a normal day. A sneer at his scarred visage would drive him to retaliation—not at all a good idea if he wanted to dump this hellhole on the idiots.

Worse yet, it seemed he had to face female heirs, who might simply faint at his appearance. That should give cause for amusement.

He’d spent the better part of his life in male company through school and career. As an officer, he was accustomed to shouting orders and men jumping to obey. He couldn’t be the simpering fop an earl’s family, especially if they were female, expected.

He prayed the women he’d written had sense enough to bring male family members with them.

“Lack of self-preservation is apparently a well-known family trait.” Hunt continued his brandy-addled train of thought. “Doubt that my privileged ancestor would have dropped the entail elsewise.”

“Sign of intelligence.” Walker shelved one ancient ledger in exchange for another. “If your tapestry is correct, the last earl inherited when he was only twelve, after his father died. His brothers died young, leaving him the only male progeny. So, the earl dutifully

married and produced an heir, who carelessly died before begetting more than girls. The women would suffer if the land reverted to the Crown with the title. What else could he do?”

“Sell this relic, as he did everything else,” Hunt replied in disgruntlement, exercising his torn muscle by ripping out another page and heaving it at the fire. It bounced off the hearth. Again.

“The old man had to live somewhere,” Walker reminded him.

A pounding echoed down the enormous corridor. Hunt couldn’t climb stairs, so he’d taken up residence on the public ground floor. Good thing, since the elderly caretakers seldom toddled out of the kitchen. Although answering the door to anyone insane enough to travel to this isolated crypt at this hour required armaments. Perhaps he’d set up cannon on the porch.

Walker stoically opened the armory hidden behind bookshelves, stuck a pistol under his coat, and headed for the door. Hunt re-loaded his weapon and placed it on top of the desk. He couldn’t hit the wall if he tried, but with his scars and eye patch, he could scare Hades out of the most hardened criminal.

Walker returned with a male fashion plate Hunt recalled having met once in the solicitor’s office. In his current state of drunkenness, he couldn’t immediately recall the visitor’s name, but he remembered his profession—banker. Hunt squinted at the fancy caped coat and top hat and waited for the fellow to doff them. The fop appeared to be looking around for someone to. . . help him take off his own coat?

Hunt hid his grin as Walker gestured at a straight chair, set his pistol back on a shelf, and returned to his comfortable wing chair by the fire. Hunt paid Walker for his brains, and brought him here as his invaluable friend, not to act as a fancified African servant. Walker sipped his brandy and perused another ledger. Even though he didn’t look up, Hunt knew they both waited for the banker’s reaction.

The visitor—Bosworth?—frowned, figured out how to pry off his fancy outerwear, revealing an expensively tailored jacket and barbered blond hair. He looked puzzled as to what to do with the garments he’d removed. Hunt was just drunk enough to enjoy the farce. “Have a seat, sir. We’re informal here. What disaster has brought you out on this gloomy night?”

Since he couldn’t properly remember the banker’s name, he didn’t attempt introductions.

“N-no disaster, n-not at all,” the banker stammered, finally laying his coat over the back of the only free chair. “On my way to Birmingham and thought to check in with you, ...