Lady Petra Inquires #3
Revenge, Served Royal is the delightful third entry in Celeste Connally’s series Lady Petra Investigates, featuring aristocratic sleuth Lady Petra Forsyth, the daughter of an earl, in Regency England. Petra is an unconventional woman of her time. She is fiercely independent and has sworn never to marry, after the death, in suspicious circumstances, of her fiancé. That doesn’t keep her from having a sexual relationship with handsome intelligence officer Duncan Shawcross, and making no effort to hide the nature of their relationship. She is also an excellent horsewoman and wears a special riding habit for riding astride. Although she often defies the conventions, Petra is very much at home in high society, and has connections to the royal family.
It is September 1815, and the war against Napoleon is finally over. The Prince Regent and his mother, Queen Charlotte, hold a series of celebrations at Windsor Castle, and Petra is glad to accept their invitation, especially when she learns she will be one of the judges in the Queen’s baking competition (a Regency version of The Great British Bake Off). Among her fellow judges are her best friend Caroline, cousin of the Prince Regent, and Sir Rufus Pomeroy, the former royal chef, who was once the chef to Petra’s family when she was a child. Petra is also delighted that one of the contestants will be her own cook, Mrs. Bing. It’s a blind competition, where the judges don’t know which cook made which baked goods, so there is no problem with Petra being a judge while her cook is a contestant, even though, of course, Petra would like Mrs. Bing to win. The contest starts with ten cooks, then two are eliminated in each round. The recipes become more and more difficult and elaborate with every round, until only two cooks are left.
The current royal chef, the Frenchman Antonin Carême, will make the final decision. By the way, I encountered Carême for the first time in Katherine Neville’s The Fire, the sequel to The Eight, which is one of my favorite books of all time. There, he is chef to the French foreign minister Talleyrand. In this book, Petra promises the Prince Regent she will try to talk Carême into staying in England for another two years. With the war over, he is eager to return to France. Here he is not so admirable, though. He propositions Petra as soon as he meets her. There is no doubt, though, about his culinary genius.
Petra is glad to see her old friend, Sir Rufus, again. He is a bestselling author of cookbooks and wants to present his recipes to the Queen, and invites Petra to meet him in the library at an unusually early hour, to look over the recipes, before he does so. But when she arrives, she finds Sir Rufus strangled to death, apparently by his own valet, with a young housemaid as the only witness. The girl is certain the valet, Oliver Beecham, is the killer, but he insists he is innocent, and he was only trying to save Sir Rufus. The head of the Prince Regent’s guard, Colonel Wolston, doesn’t believe him, and imprisons him in the dungeon. It turns out Oliver is the brother of Petra’s own maid, Annie, who believes in his innocence. Petra is determined to do what she can to help Oliver.
The valet saw Sir Rufus arguing with several people shortly before the murder, but, unfortunately, the only ones he can identify with any certainty are Petra’s beloved Aunt Ophelia and the Prince Regent himself. Petra knows Ophelia has a temper, but she cannot imagine her aunt as a murderer. The Prince Regent as a murderer, of course, would have implications that Petra doesn’t want to think about. Petra must figure out who the other suspects are, and which one is the culprit. Oliver heard Sir Rufus say he had hidden something away in the castle. Sir Rufus’ publisher, who is also a judge in the baking competition, thinks it’s a new cookbook. But Petra and Duncan discover pages from a memoir by Sir Rufus, revealing scandalous behavior by many of the guests at the celebrations, and Petra realizes that the rest of the memoir must be hidden away somewhere, and that anyone who was mentioned in it has a motive to kill Sir Rufus.
Unfortunately, one of the people Sir Rufus wrote about was Petra’s Aunt Ophelia, and she also discovers that the ribbon used to strangle him belonged to Ophelia. The deeper Petra’s search goes, the more the evidence points to her aunt. Petra hates to think what will happen if her aunt proves to be the killer, but she still thinks, or rather, wants to think, someone else is the culprit. The case takes a turn when another of Petra’s fellow judges falls ill after swallowing poison meant for Petra. Luckily, Petra’s friend Frances, an apothecary, is on the scene and saves his life. But Petra realizes she has come too close to the truth. Who is the killer, and will Petra catch the person before he or she strikes again?
This is a wonderful book, and I loved the twists and turns the plot takes, even though I admit I guessed the killer relatively early on. That didn’t matter, though, because I wanted to see how Petra figures it out before anyone else is harmed. I also enjoyed the setting at Windsor Castle and the appearances by Queen Charlotte, the Prince Regent, and, of course, Carême. Petra’s friends are also delightful characters: Caroline, the expert archer, Frances, the apothecary, and dog trainer Lottie. This book introduces a love interest for Lottie, and it will be interesting to see where that goes. Unfortunately, we don’t see much progress in the relationship between Petra and Duncan, because they are separated through much of the book, as Duncan goes to search Sir Rufus’ house for evidence. So we only see him toward the beginning and the end of the book. I am sure we will see more of Petra and Duncan as a couple in future books, though. In this one, Petra seems as determined as ever not to marry, but it will be interesting to see if that changes.
One of the things I loved most about this book is the food. Each round of the baking competition produces a different mouthwatering Regency cookie or cake. It made me hungry to read about all the delicious-sounding baked goods. The competition is suspenseful in itself, and I kept hoping along with Petra that Mrs. Bing would win. I will not say, of course, whether she does or not. This book easily stands alone, but I highly recommend the whole series. It is a wonderful addition to the world of Regency mysteries, and will appeal to fans of Andrea Penrose and Darcie Wilde. I am looking forward to seeing what the future has in store for Petra. — Vicki Kondelik