☆ ᴡᴀᴛᴛʏꜱ 2024 SHORTLISTER!! ☆
A tragic misunderstanding. A murder. A secret. An unlikely partnership. A spirited countess and an enterprising racketeer.
~~~
Manchester, England. May 1925.
The Roarin' 20s. An era of glamor, decadent parties, jazz mus...
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Daphne burst through the glass doors of the terrace. The night sky was partially overcast, but a pocket full of stars shone through a break in the clouds and reflected off the surface of the river.
A view to rival all others in Manchester. This, however, was not the reason for her presence.
With a swift look around, Daphne spotted Rose and the two provocatively dressed women that she'd so theatrically greeted in the center of the dance floor. Daphne knew that ploy well. She and her cousins had enacted it plenty of times at events and gatherings in the past. Such a bombastic display could only mean one thing: someone was trying to save face.
The trio of women were speaking together in hushed tones near the marble barrier of the terrace. As there were no other guests in sight, Daphne approached.
“Rose!” she called. “Is everything alright?”
“Daphne! Yes! Everything is fine,” Rose replied. “Please, meet our ‘old family friends,’ Bianca and Desdemona Cazacu. Ladies, this is my cousin Daphne. We can speak plainly in front of her.”
“It's a pleasure,” Daphne said with a knowing smile. “How do you do, ladies?”
“Angry and shamed,” Desdemona answered. Her full red lips turned down in a scowl. “Thought I would be permitted to spend the evening with Ransom. But it seems we were summoned tonight to cause an embarrassment.”
Daphne noticed that she spoke with a thick accent. Perhaps eastern European. “Ransom Mercer?” she clarified.
“Yes. We received these invitations,” Bianca said. She handed Daphne two handsome squares of card stock. “We thought Jackson and Ransom had invited us here to be their...what is the word?...escortas for the evening.”
“Oh, I see,” Daphne mused. Turning over the invites, she saw that each one had a handwritten message on the back, expressing the writer's need to see the respective addressee in very detailed and explicit verbiage. “These notes are...oh, my...specific.”
Bianca bobbed her head in a vigorous nod. “So, you see why we thought they were real. But Rose told us that Jackson and Ransom had no knowledge of the invitations. We received them so that we would come here and cause trouble with their wives.”
“And hurt their reputation at this...?” Desdemona trailed off, looking to Rose for help.
“Fundraising benefit,” Rose supplied.
Desdemona flicked her wrist. “Yes. That.”
“How untoward!” Daphne exclaimed. “And the invitations, how did you receive them?”
“A young man came into the Broken Crown while I was working,” Bianca recalled. “He said he was a courier, and he gave them to me, instructing me to pass on the one addressed to Desdemona. I'd never seen him before.”
