The Dead Betray None and an Excerpt from Lady Anne Ashburn

Excerpt:  
​Excerpt setting: Lady Anne Ashburn and her 17-year-old cousin are waiting to hear the doctor’s report on their ailing great-aunt.
 
“Will she be all right?” Georgina blurted. “I was all at sixes and sevens, never having taken care of a sick room before.”
“I know you were a great comfort. And now that the doctor is here, he will know just what to do.” Anne put an arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Come, sit down, and tell me what has transpired. When did she take ill?”
As they sat close together on the edge of the bed and discussed their aunt’s illness, Georgina relaxed, and they shared a quiet laugh over Aunt Meg’s determination to keep playing Whist late Friday night until she won.
“There you are,” Anne said. “Auntie has simply done too much. She refuses to accept it is that time in life when she should slow down just a trifle. I daresay this is one of those passing ailments.”
“I hope so.” But Georgina’s troubled expression returned, her gaze fixed on her lap. She sighed repeatedly, which Anne interpreted as her cousin wanted to tell her something but was holding back. She waited.
When Georgina decided to speak, her voice was unsteady, halting. “Um, I am afraid it was more than the card game. Or even the late hours. She has been, well, worried, and I guess it is my fault.”
“Why? What have you not told me?”
Georgina raised rounded eyes, studied Anne with a frown, and then dropped her gaze again without saying a word.
Anne stifled an impatient sigh. Despite the four-year difference in age and the width of two country shires that separated their homes, they wrote each month or two and visited when they could. Georgina often shared her troubles with Anne as she might with an older sister, and Anne was fully aware of the girl’s faults. As Georgina’s parents had no other children, they had indulged her to the point she was rather spoiled, impulsive, and often thoughtless.
By nature, Georgina had a very good heart, but it got her into scrapes more often than not, such as her rescue of an eight-year-old waif from the Leicester city streets and taking him home with her. The child’s prostitute mother reported a kidnapping, embarrassing Georgina’s family, and after the constables returned the boy to his mother, her father’s valet discovered an expensive pair of cuff links and a gold watch were missing.
Anne had held out hope that her cousin’s recent engagement to Lord John Bennington—an event highly approved by her family— would mature her, but by all accounts, it had not. The girl’s present demeanor was a guilty look Anne had seen before.
 “Georgina,” she repeated, softening her voice to conceal her rising apprehension. “What is amiss?”
“Everything.” Tears welled-over and trickled down her face. “I have ruined it all.”

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Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Betray-None-J-Buck-ebook/dp/B09VM9RSS9
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