M.A. Lee: The Key with Hearts

In the midst of February’s frigid temperatures, I longed for the warmth of Spring. In August I shall be longing for the return of February.

Writing echoes these contradictory thoughts. We see the next new things as better, then a happy happenstance reminds us that the earlier is still great.

This year began with celebrations of a new venture, into the subgenre gothic suspense. Now we’ve reached the novel for April, and I’m reminded that The Key with Hearts, written in 2019, might be considered the actual starting point for that new venture.

The Key with Hearts has several classic gothic tropes: 1] the brooding hero, 2] the heroine that no one believes, 3] hidden mania, 4] unknown motives, and 5] a marriage based on convenience rather than love. It lacks the classic ghost and dangerous ruins.

The novel has the sensibility of the vintage romantic suspense that spanned 1955-1975. Before I started writing KwH, I had just re-read a favorite from my teenaged years: Victoria Holt’s The Shivering Sands. The old paperback tinged KwH’s atmosphere.

You can read the first chapter below the book description and links!

Married for money, not for love.

A convenient marriage inconveniently causes murder.

Six months ago, Beth Corbett married Greville Myers. Her money saved his estate. His nobility raised her station. The couple have achieved an uneasy relationship, tepid and uncomfortable.

Then Beth is nearly killed in a failed attempt at murder. Who wants her dead?

§ The woman who had expected to marry Greville?

§ The mother-in-law who hates her?

§ Someone unknown?

§ Or her husband? Does he want to keep her money and marry the woman he loves?

Who can Beth trust?

When the murderer strikes again and injures someone by mistake, how can Beth discover the truth? Or will she be the next victim?

The novel is available in paperback and ebook at these worldwide retailers:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PBYZ9XZ

https://books2read.com/u/mvZrA2

View the Trailer here = https://youtu.be/JyDlvYQf8ow

Chapter 1

Friday, 3 September

Myers Montford manor and estate in Wiltshire, England

The little dog nosed along the edge of the bricked planters. His white tail wagged, excitement quivering through his whole body. He sniffed at every speck, dirt and leaf and twig. Brightly colored ribbons, tied tightly together to create a long leash, trailed over his back and the terrace’s paving stones.

His sniffing increased. He growled. His short nose swept across the slate-colored pavers. He retreated several steps as he tracked the scent, then followed it back to the grass. The clipped grass tickled his nose. He strained against the ribbon leash as he dug at the stones, as if the pavers were the edge of a cairn hiding a vicious rodent. Then his head popped up. Ears pricked forward. Dark eyes stared at the high hedge with its thick branches of boxwoods.

He glanced behind him at the woman holding one end of his tether. They had ended their walk by traversing the maze. Throughout their tour of the garden, she seemed distracted, barely attending to his tugs on the leash. Now her gaze focused on the drive that swept from the parkland. The gravel turned into a gentle curve as it approached the manor’s forecourt. The little terrier sniffed the air. Then he lunged forward.

The leash held him back. He strained against it then lunged again, but his paws didn’t find grass beneath him. His claws scrabbled on the pavers. He barked.

“No,” the woman said and hauled back on the leash. “No, Sparky. We don’t want another Incident with the Gardener.”

Sparky whined. Incidents with the Gardener meant running and digging, shouts and a game of chase that left him lying on cool grass, panting to cool off, and being carried back to the house by his mistress.

Liza chuckled. “Come, Sparky.”

He pranced back, his white patches gleaming against the brown and tan. She drew in the ribbon leash. When he pawed at her day gown, she picked him up and snuggled him close.

Sparky wiggled. He wanted down. He tolerated her snuggles, but he wanted to explore and dig and sniff out new adventures.

Liza felt the same way. Like Sparky, she often found herself restricted to the great manor, her activity confined to a Sparky-less stroll through the garden and maze, her curiosity limited to learning the people of Myers Montford and the village of Wellesbourne Montford. She had assumed none of the duties expected of the new wife of the lord of the manor. Her mother-in-law refused to cede even the pouring tea when the local families came to visit. After the business of her former life, Liza felt redundant.

Even the dinner parties hosted by the Myers offered her no enjoyment, for she barely knew their guests. And they watched her with avid eyes, eager to find mistakes by a commoner whose only grace was the wealth she brought into the marriage. Her adventures were staid rounds of visits to the sick and needy of the estate, monitored by her husband’s sisters who reported to their mother, that great lady who refused to call herself the dowager.

Liza sighed into Sparky’s coat. “I am bored,” she whispered to the little terrier. He wiggled about, trying to give kisses then settled for licking her hand.

Liza stared again at the long drive with its neat edging.

When she’d come out with Sparky, a gardener had raked the gravel disturbed when her husband rode to the village. The gardener ignored her and continued his work until he removed the last trace of her husband Greville Myers’ passage.

The whole estate was like that. Liza understood the need for everything in its place. Her own home, equal in size to the Myers Montford manor, had followed a strict routine and returned anything displaced immediately to its proper position. On her rounds carrying food and medicines to anyone sick or enfeebled, she saw well-tended fences, neat pastures and fields, all of which pleased her. The garden itself, allowed to decay at the fringes, had spent the summer months being restored.

Her husband had needed the marriage settlements she brought with her. He plowed the money back into the manor and estate. She had expected evidence of years of mismanagement, but only roofs and a few buildings needed obvious repairs. On the day she reached the estate, a month after their marriage, he hadn’t appeared, leaving the greeting to his mother and sisters. He had no excuse, for Liza had announced her arrival with a note sent on the previous day. Instead, he chose to oversee repairs to a mucked-up irrigation weir. Liza understood the demands of an estate.

Yet his absence still hurt.

Without him there as the bridge, greeting his mother and sisters had quelled her spirit. Their stiff welcome was no more than any visitor would have received.

Six months married, and she still barely knew her husband. Five months in residence at the manor, and she still felt like a visitor. “How long will everyone stare at me, Sparky?” Were they waiting for the wealthy but decidedly middle-class bride to prove they should continue to look down their noses at her?

“When age or death or—or something else removes me from the estate, what then, Sparky? Will they rake out my passage just like that gardener? Will anyone ever know I lived here?”

The terrier wiggled and squirmed.

Liza set him down. He bit the leash, but the hastily tied ribbons withstood his sharp teeth.

“You would miss me, wouldn’t you, Sparky?”

Busily biting a red ribbon, he ignored her, and Liza laughed at her silliness. She’d woken with a maudlin displacement. Something was wrong at Myers Montford. Is that something me?

To prevent another Incident with Mr. Potts the gardener, she had created the leash so she and Sparky could escape outside and thus avoid her in-laws. For two hours this afternoon she listened to Mrs. Myers describe in detail her plans for the upcoming fête to the sycophantic Victoria Pethbridge. The next hour she helped Cassandra select silks for a petit-point chair cover while Clarissa mulled over her watercolors. Liza desperately wanted this fresh air and sunshine.

Their walk successfully avoided another Incident with the Gardener, yet she couldn’t bring herself to leave the terrace. Sparky tugged at the ribbons . “You need a proper leash. Tomorrow, I promise, we’ll explore the gardens and the maze again.”

His tail wagged at the promised treat.

Liza crossed her arms. Lifting her face to the warm sun, she closed her eyes and tried to drift like a tuft of dandelion. Her thoughts spun, though, like a maple seed, whirling round and round.

The distant crunch of horse hooves on gravel opened her eyes.

The rider lifted a hand. A wide-brimmed hat hid his features, but she recognized the horse, her husband’s sorrel hunter, raw-boned but with a speed she envied.

Liza waved then wished she hadn’t displayed so much enthusiasm. She felt his gaze until he disappeared, following the drive around the house to the stables.

Did Greville question their marriage as she did? Did he have regrets? She couldn’t ask that. Except for his once-a-week visits to her chamber, they never met alone. They were husband and wife yet still strangers to each other.

Not for the first time she remembered the last Christmas party at her home in Sheffield. Gilbert Meaney had teased her with the suggestion that they elope. She had laughed and shaken her head. His apparent relief proved he wasn’t serious. With her mother ensconced upstairs and her grandfather in London, he’d dared to kiss her, but he hadn’t proposed again.

Then her grandfather returned, stuffed with pleasure because he’d found a husband for her, a gentleman who would elevate his own status. With a half-dozen mills churning out cloths and taxes for Britain, he wanted more to show for his efforts than coin. “No title but a blue-blood,” he boasted. “As noble as they come.”

She’d stared in horror as her fanciful dreams crashed around her.

Sparky whined then began barking. He strained at the leash. Nose to sky, he tugged at the leash then began hauling back, straining away from her.

“Sparky, what’s wrong, boy? Whatever has disturbed you?”

Liza knelt, trying to soothe him, but he bounded to the length of his leash. He continued to strain, planting his feet and scrabbling at the pavers. The barking stopped, replaced by a low growl she’d never heard before.

“Sparky! No!”

He lunged. The leash caught him. Like a rampant lion on a shield, he pawed at the air.

Movement caught her eye. Liza stepped toward the little dog and towed on the leash, but she glanced at the glass doors that gave access to the side rooms.

A dark shape moved behind the glass panes. The sun’s glare kept her from seeing more than shape.

The terrier gave a mighty lunge. The ribbon leash broke, and he plunged into the grass.

Liza sprang after him. She had to catch him before he dug up more of Mr. Potts’ plants.

A crash shook the ground. Stone fragments peppered her.

She whirled around.

Rubble and dirt with bright red geraniums and their green petals lay scattered over the pavers. The remains of a urn had shattered on the terrace. The mass of dirt covered the stone slab where she’d stood.

Exactly where she’d stood.

Where it would have crushed her. She recognized the urn, one of the large decorative planters that adorned the low parapet surrounding the manor’s roof. Mr. Potts and his boys had planted and nurtured the red cranesbill throughout the summer. “Six urns front and back, and six more each side,” she could hear Mrs. Myers say. “Mr. Potts plants them to my specifications each year. This year we have the species geranium.”

The world edged black.

Something whined and pressed against her leg.

Liza blinked.

Sparky whined and pawed at her skirt. She scooped him up and hugged him close. He had barked and fought the leash, trying to get her to move. Had he known the urn would fall? Had he seen it teetering?

“Smart dog! Oh, smart little dog. I love you!”

He wriggled and wanted to escape her arms.

Eyes still on the urn that would have killed her, Liza set him down but grabbed the much-shortened leash. The fall had destroyed the bright flowers and the urn’s graceful shape. She looked up, but the bright sun blinded her.

How had the urn fallen?