The Westerby Inheritance

M. C. Beaton
is the author of the hugely successful Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth series, as well as a quartet of Edwardian murder mysteries featuring heroine Lady Rose Summer, several Regency romance series and a stand-alone murder mystery,
The Skeleton in the Closet
– all published by Constable & Robinson. She left a full-time career in journalism to turn to writing, and now divides her time between the Cotswolds and Paris. Visit
www.mcbeatonbooks.co.uk
for more, or follow M. C. Beaton on Twitter:
@mc_beaton
.

Titles by M. C. Beaton

The Poor Relation

Lady Fortescue Steps Out • Miss Tonks Turns to Crime • Mrs Budley Falls from Grace Sir Philip’s Folly • Colonel Sandhurst to the Rescue • Back in Society

A House for the Season

The Miser of Mayfair
•
Plain Jane
•
The Wicked Godmother Rake’s Progress
•
The Adventuress
•
Rainbird’s Revenge

The Six Sisters

Minerva
•
The Taming of Annabelle
•
Deirdre and Desire Daphne
•
Diana the Huntress
•
Frederica in Fashion

Edwardian Murder Mysteries

Snobbery with Violence
•
Hasty Death
•
Sick of Shadows Our Lady of Pain

The Travelling Matchmaker

Emily Goes to Exeter
•
Belinda Goes to Bath
•
Penelope Goes to Portsmouth Beatrice Goes to Brighton
•
Deborah Goes to Dover
•
Yvonne Goes to York

Edwardian Candlelight

Polly • Molly • Ginny • Tilly • Susie • Kitty • Daisy • Sally • Maggie • Poppy • Pretty Polly • Lucy • My Lords, Ladies and Marjorie

Regency Candlelight

Annabelle • Henrietta • Penelope

Regency Royal

The Westerby Inheritance • The Marquis Takes a Bride • Lady Anne’s Deception • Lady Margery’s Intrigue • The Savage Marquess • My Dear Duchess • The Highland Countess • Lady Lucy’s Lover • The Ghost and Lady Alice • Love and Lady Lovelace • Duke’s Diamonds • The Viscount’s Revenge • The Paper Princess • The Desirable Duchess • The Sins of Lady Dacey • The Dreadful Debutante • The Chocolate Debutante • The Loves of Lord Granton • Milady in Love • The Scandalous Marriage

Regency Scandal

His Lordship’s Pleasure • Her Grace’s Passion • The Scandalous Lady Wright

Regency Flame

Those Endearing Young Charms
? The Flirt • Lessons in Love • Regency Gold • Miss Fiona’s Fancy • The French Affair • To Dream of Love • A Marriage of Inconvenience • A Governess of Distinction • The Glitter of Gold

Regency Season

The Original Miss Honeyford • The Education of Miss Paterson • At the Sign of the Golden Pineapple • Sweet Masquerade ?The Constant Companion • Quadrille • The Perfect Gentleman • Dancing on the Wind • Ms. Davenport’s Christmas

The Waverly Women

The First Rebellion • Silken Bonds • The Love Match

Agatha Raisin

Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death
•
Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet

Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener
•
Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley

Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage
•
Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist

Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death
•
Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham

Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden

Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam
•
Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell

Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came

Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate
•
Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House

Agatha Raisin and the Deadly Dance
•
Agatha Raisin and the Perfect Paragon

Agatha Raisin and Love, Lies and Liquor

Agatha Raisin and Kissing Christmas Goodbye

Agatha Raisin and a Spoonful of Poison
•
Agatha Raisin: There Goes the Bride

Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body
•
Agatha Raisin: As the Pig Turns

Agatha Raisin: Hiss and Hers • Agatha Raisin and the Christmas Crumble

Hamish Macbeth

Death of a Gossip
•
Death of a Cad
•
Death of an Outsider

Death of a Perfect Wife
•
Death of a Hussy
•
Death of a Snob

Death of a Prankster
•
Death of a Glutton
•
Death of a Travelling Man

Death of a Charming Man
•
Death of a Nag
•
Death of a Macho Man

Death of a Dentist
•
Death of a Scriptwriter
•
Death of an Addict

A Highland Christmas
•
Death of a Dustman
•
Death of a Celebrity

Death of a Village
•
Death of a Poison Pen
•
Death of a Bore

Death of a Dreamer
•
Death of a Maid
•
Death of a Gentle Lady

Death of a Witch
•
Death of a Valentine
•
Death of a Sweep

Death of a Kingfisher • Death of Yesterday

The Skeleton in the Closet

Also available

The Agatha Raisin Companion

The Westerby Inheritance

M. C. Beaton

Constable & Robinson Ltd.

55–56 Russell Square

London WC1B 4HP

www.constablerobinson.com

First electronic edition published 2011

by RosettaBooks LLC, New York

This edition published in the UK by Canvas,

an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2013

Copyright © M. C. Beaton, 1982

The right of M. C. Beaton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in

Publication Data is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-47210-131-0 (ebook)

Cover copyright © Constable & Robinson

For my sister, Tilda Grenier

and her husband , Laurent.

All my love.

It was not, reflected Lady Jane Lovelace moodily, that her stepmother was a particularly cruel or unjust woman. It was her very character,
her coarseness
, that grated like a knife across the bottom of a pot.

She could remember her own mother, a tall and elegant lady not much given to demonstrations of affection, but a mother to be proud of for all that. That Lady Jane’s father had loved his first wife deeply had never been in question. Else why did he venture into a dissolute course of ruin after her death, drinking and gambling until both pastimes grew to obsessions and he had gambled away his estates and home to his cunning cousin, James Bentley?

At the thought of Mr. James Bentley, Lady Jane’s face darkened like the March sky above. She was allowed to visit her former home once a year so that Mr. Bentley, his wife, and his two daughters should have the pleasure of patronizing Jane’s father, the Marquess of Westerby, and Jane herself. Their haughty airs and manners did not faze the new Marchioness, who usually became very drunk and rowdy and had to be assisted home.

This was the third year of the Marquess of Westerby’s new marriage. He had married the daughter of a local innkeeper, a wild gypsy-looking girl called Hetty, and had moved his new wife and Jane, and Hetty’s two little daughters by her previous marriage to a blacksmith, into a crumbling house some few miles from the marches of his former estates.

Lady Jane was sitting in the low branches of an oak tree some distance from her home. She stared across at it. It seemed to crouch in a little fold in the rolling, grassy hills. It was very old, believed to have been built around the time of Henry the Eighth. It was of yellow brick with a mossy slate roof and a multitude of weird and fantastic chimneys.

Inside, it was cold and dark. All the floors sloped abominably, and the chimneys smoked terribly, and one would have been asphyxiated had it not been for a whole army of scuttling and bustling drafts which kept the place well ventilated.

They had no servants, a strange state for a Marquess. The cooking was done by the Marchioness, and all the rest of the housework by Lady Jane. Jane tried not to feel sorry for herself, because the vicar said that self-pity was a mortal sin, but it was indeed hard to become resigned to one’s lot when there was that perpetual once-a-year comparison with what life
could
have been had not Papa indulged both his fatal tendencies to the hilt. That very evening was to see the annual visit to the Bentleys—one evening in which she, Lady Jane, could see again the pleasant, spacious rooms of her old home.

Her stepsisters were considered old enough to attend this year, Sally being thirteen and Betty, eleven.

An icy wind from the northwest blew across the fields and sighed in the branches of the tree above her, but Jane was reluctant to return home. She hated James Bentley with every fiber of her small being. Hated him for having won her old home in a card game, knowing that her father was too fuddled with wine even to see his cards. Bentley had not, however, been able to get the title. That did not go with the estate, although it was small comfort. What was the point in being a titled lady, thought Jane, when one’s hands were cracked with chilblains and most of one’s dresses in rags?

She had no hope of meeting any young man who might marry her and take her away—any young man of her station. Mr. Josiah Plumb, the widowed farmer who was their nearest neighbor, had come courting and, to Jane’s horror, her stepmother showed all signs of encouraging the match, although Mr. Plumb was nearly fifty.

“Jane!” A faint scream was borne on the wind. A flock of pigeons wheeled up to the darkening sky. Jane sighed and stretched. Her stepmother was looking for her. She decided to ignore the call and stay a little longer, and shifted her body slightly so that she was screened from the house by a thick branch of the tree. The only comfort she had was in these rare moments of solitude when she could dream that somehow she, Jane, would be instrumental in winning back those lost estates.

“
Jane!
” The voice was louder now. Jane turned her eyes away from the house, as if looking in that direction would bring her to her stepmother’s notice, and looked instead to the Surrey woods, bare and skeletal against the sullen sky.

It would have never happened had Mother lived, thought Jane. Her father owed his marquessate to his wife’s adroit politicking in the Court of St. James’s. He had been a mere earl when he married her, and she had been the most beautiful woman in London.