I have already carried this entire tale across the finish line, kept the facts in order, and stopped the characters from licking anything obviously poisonous, and now they have decided I must sell it too. Very well, hover at the threshold, and try to look innocent.

Here is what waits on the other side of page one: Miss Tabitha Grey of Greycot Cottage, botanist, notebook tyrant, and the sort of nosy neighbour who owns a spyglass "for excursions" and then points it at Merrow Abbey because, frankly, there were grooms and trunks and a returning duke to be assessed. Gabriel Merrow comes home scarred, controlled, and inconveniently next door, and before the village has time to practise being polite about it, the Abbey produces a dead stranger on its cold stones, no blood, no struggle, just a pocketful of numbers that happen to belong to the duke.

I, regrettably, must then watch Tabitha do what she always does: take inventory. Constable Cobb tries to keep order, Doctor Willoughby tries to look impressive, Aunt Honoria tries to decide whether London or laurel is more to blame for humanity, and the Abbey itself sits there like a draughty conscience with too many rooms and not enough honesty. The scent near the dead man's mouth is bitter and familiar, the accounts are not, and when ledgers and land plots start speaking in columns instead of words, Tabitha and the duke begin the least decorous sort of partnership: the kind built on sharp questions, sharper restraint, and the mutual discovery that competence is, unfortunately, attractive.

One nosy neighbour, two corpses, zero decorum. Yes, that is the shape of it, and no, the Abbey does not improve its manners.

If Tabitha cannot trace where the missing laurel went and who has been balancing Merrow's books with a crooked thumb, the Abbey will add another name to her notebook before the parish finishes gossiping about the first.

Reader, if dry Regency wit, a prickly botanist heroine, a battle-scarred duke who speaks like a contract, clue-forward poison-and-ledger sleuthing in a gossipy village, and a slow-burn, closed-door courtship sound like proper entertainment, I recommend stepping inside.

Expect a cozy Regency whodunit with non-graphic deaths, a clue-forward investigation and satisfying reveal, and a closed-door romance that resolves with a complete HEA, all in a standalone story you can start right here. Do try to keep your fingers off unfamiliar spoons. Begin at page one.

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• Mystery, Thriller & SuspenseMysteryWomen Sleuths

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• Print Length: 186 Pages
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