Death in the Floating City: A Lady Emily Mystery (Lady Emily Mysteries, 7) - Softcover

Alexander, Tasha

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1250029767 ISBN 13: 9781250029768

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2013

Synopsis

The Huffington Post calls Tears of Pearl author Tasha Alexander "one to watch―and read" and Death in the Floating City, her new Lady Emily mystery set in Venice, proves it!

Years ago, Emily's childhood nemesis, Emma Callum, scandalized polite society when she eloped to Venice with an Italian count. But now her father-in-law lies murdered, and her husband has vanished. There's no one Emma can turn to for help but Emily, who leaves at once with her husband, the dashing Colin Hargreaves, for Venice. There, her investigations take her from opulent palazzi to slums, libraries, and bordellos. Emily soon realizes that to solve the present day crime, she must first unravel a centuries old puzzle. But the past does not give up its secrets easily, especially when these revelations might threaten the interests of some very powerful people.

About this title

About the Author:

The daughter of two philosophy professors, I grew up surrounded by books. I was convinced from an early age that I was born in the wrong century and spent much of my childhood under the dining room table pretending it was a covered wagon. Even there, I was never without a book in hand and loved reading and history more than anything. I studied English Literature and Medieval History at the University of Notre Dame. Writing is a natural offshoot of reading, and my first novel, And Only to Deceive, was published in 2005. I'm the New York Times Bestselling author of the long-running Lady Emily Series as well as the novel Elizabeth: The Golden Age. One of the best parts of being an author is seeing your books translated, and I'm currently in love with the Japanese editions of the Emily books. 


I played nomad for a long time, living in Indiana, Amsterdam, London, Wyoming, Vermont, Connecticut, and Tennessee before settling down. My husband, the brilliant British novelist Andrew Grant (I may be biased but that doesn't mean I'm wrong) and I now divide our time between Chicago and Wyoming. He makes sure I get my English characters right, and I make sure his American ones sound American.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

1
 
 
“I’d expected jewel encrusted, not encased in a layer of dried blood.” Almost cringing, I fingered the slim medieval dagger that felt heavier in my hands than its size suggested.
Tourists come to Venice, the city Petrarch called mundus alter, “another world,” to take in the opulent beauty of the floating city’s palaces, the soft colors and vibrant gold of St. Mark’s Basilica, and the rich elegance of Titian’s paintings. My trip, however, came without the prospect of such pleasant things. I was standing in a dark, musty palazzo with my childhood nemesis glowering over my shoulder as I inspected the knife an intruder had used to kill her father-in-law. An unpleasant sensation prickled up my neck as I stared down. Instruments of murder are not something with which a lady contends on a daily basis. Particularly not one still bearing evidence of its evil use.
“The police returned it to me in just that condition,” Emma Callum said, wrinkling her nose. “I wasn’t about to touch it. And the servants point-blank refused to clean it. I’d fire the lot of them if my Italian were better.”
I liked to believe the majority of my fellow countrymen were excellent travelers abroad. Credits to the empire. An Englishman ought to conduct himself in a manner more likely to draw admiration than scorn, and should use his explorations of the world as an opportunity to expand his mind and improve his character. Emma showed no sign of such aspirations, a condition unusual in someone who has chosen to go beyond simple tourist and embrace the life of an expat. Then again, Emma had lived in Italy for three years without bothering even to learn the language.
My husband took the knife from my hand and studied it before laying it on a table. We’d been married just over two years, and Colin Hargreaves still took my breath away every time I looked at his preternaturally handsome face. Early on in our acquaintance (even before I’d abandoned my erroneous suspicion that he’d murdered my first husband—but that’s another story altogether), I’d decided his perfectly chiseled features looked as if Praxiteles, my favorite ancient Greek artist, had sculpted them. His dark eyes and darker wavy hair lent him a romantic air that would set Mr. Darcy to permanent brooding and send Heathcliff stalking across the moors, never to return. No man, fictional or real, could compare.
Our hostess, however, was an entirely different matter. One might, perhaps, compare Emma to Miss Bingley or Mrs. Dashwood, but she did not quite reach the level of a great villain of literature. Still, nothing short of murder could have induced me to renew my acquaintance with Emma. We had never been close, and it was unlikely this would ever change. Put simply, she despised me, and I’m ashamed to admit I returned the feeling. When we were six years old, she destroyed my favorite doll, smashing its porcelain face with her boot. She scooped up the pitiful remains of the toy my father had specially brought for me from Paris and ran downstairs from the nursery to the conservatory where our mothers were having tea.
I will never forget the way the conservatory looked that day, the way the sunlight filtered through the leaves of my mother’s precious lemon trees, and the scent of bright lilies, which forever after would seem to me heavy and cloying. Emma held out her bounty, her eyes wide with horror, and spoke, her voice trembling.
“Look at the terrible thing Emily has done,” she said. From where she conjured her tears, I know not, but her voice grew even more pathetic as she continued. “I told her the dolly was pretty, but she insisted she wanted one with better curls. So she stepped on her. Crushed her head in with her foot and said now she knew she’d get a new one.”
“Did she?” My mother’s face was inscrutable, but I knew the trouble I was in for.
“It doesn’t seem right,” Emma said. “To destroy something only to be rewarded.”
“I can assure you, Emma, that will not happen.”
When I woke up the next morning, all my remaining dolls had disappeared from the nursery, and there was never another one seen in the house.
I knew better than to tattle and didn’t even try to defend myself. Any attempt to do so would have been met with even more trouble. Emma and I continued to be thrown together throughout childhood due to our mothers’ friendship, but I refused to engage in any but the most basic interaction with her. She did not improve with age. As a debutante, she barraged with attention any gentleman who showed even the slightest interest in me, culminating with a clumsy attempt to wrangle Philip, the Viscount Ashton and at the time my soon-to-be-fiancé, away from me.
It was unlikely our acquaintance would ever grow into a real friendship.
Now Emma needed me, and I was not about to walk away from her, despite our past. Her father-in-law had been murdered, and her husband had disappeared shortly thereafter, an act that, so far as the authorities were concerned, proved his guilt. She sent for me, begging for help. This, in itself, was proof of how desperate she was feeling.
Seeking our assistance was no rash act on Emma’s part. My husband, an agent of the Crown, had a reputation for his ability to crack any investigation with his trademark discretion. And I, if I may be so bold as to give myself such a compliment, had proven my own mettle after successfully apprehending six notorious murderers. As a result, the day after reading her panicked wire, my husband and I traveled to Venice and, almost immediately upon our arrival, climbed into a boat and glided out of the slim canal that skimmed the side of the Hotel Danieli. The gondolier rowed us under a single bridge and into the lagoon before turning into the Grand Canal. Sunlight poured around us, its reflection dancing over the ornate facades of the buildings that rose, majestic, straight from the water. We passed the domed church of Santa Maria della Salute, built in the seventeenth century to give thanks for the end of the plague that had killed upwards of a hundred thousand people in the city, and we crossed under the Ponte della Carita, to my mind the ugliest bridge in the city. It was made from iron, did not have a graceful arching form like the famous stone bridges prevalent throughout Venice, and had been placed too low over the water, making it difficult for gondoliers during high tide. Around us, the canal was crowded with boats, the only method of transport in a place with no streets. I’d already decided I didn’t miss them. I much preferred the sleek gondolas, with their singing boatmen, to the clatter of horse and carriage.
On both sides of us, glorious palazzi lined the water. Although built with precision, they had succumbed to centuries of shifting waters that left their facades with a pervasive asymmetry. This did not detract from their beauty. It only enhanced the feeling that one was gliding through something out of a dream.
As the elegant stone arches of the Rialto Bridge came into view, the gondolier steered us to the side of the canal and slowed to a stop in front of an imposing fourteenth-century palazzo, seat of the Barozzi family and Emma’s marital home. I nearly lost my balance as I stepped out of the gondola onto the slippery marble pavement at the water entrance. My shaky legs told me I was nervous to meet my old rival.
A sinewy man opened a low wooden door and ushered us inside. “Signor Hargreaves?”
Colin nodded.
“Buongiorno. Signora Barozzi is expecting you.”
Although Emma’s husband bore the title conte even before his father’s death (it was given as a courtesy to all of a count’s sons), no one in Italy used the term in direct address. Emma, who had made much out of becoming a contessa—always using her title when signing letters and insisting that her parents’ servants address her as such when she visited England—must be disappointed to be referred to as signora.
We walked along a dark corridor and up a flight of marble stairs into a dim room, the portego, which ran the entire length of the house. At one end was the Barozzi family restelliera, a display of swords, scimitars, spears, shields, and banners hanging on the wall, below which stood two suits of fifteenth-century armor. At the other, large trefoil windows looked onto the canal, the light pouring through them providing the only illumination in the room. Neither of the large lanterns hanging above us was lit. Portraits of the Barozzi ancestors, in dire need of restoration and cleaning, lined the remaining walls, staring down as if to assert the family’s noble roots. The fresco covering the tall ceiling was showing signs of decay—the paint had started to peel—and the bits of terrazzo floor that peeked beyond the edges of a threadbare Oriental carpet had lost their shine. Eloping might not have served Emma quite so well as she had hoped.
Some years back, at the insistence of her parents, Emma had accepted the proposal of the younger son of a minor English nobleman. It had appeared, after several unsuccessful seasons, to be her only hope for marriage. She had resisted the gentleman’s affection for months, and we’d all believed she’d done so because she harbored higher aspirations. Who could have guessed that all along the dashing Conte Barozzi had been wooing her from afar and that they had plotted their elopement almost from the time they’d met in a London ballroom?
After their secret marriage, Emma and her new husband fled to the conte’s home in Venice, scandalizing the ton, everyone fashionable in society. Her family stood by her, and I’d heard rumors that her father, ever devoted to his difficult daughter, continued to offer her financial support. This gossip led in turn to...

About this edition

• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1250029767
• ISBN 13: 9781250029768
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336