BLURB:

THE SHADOW PRINCESS, by Mary Hart Perry

To catch one of history’s most notorious killers, a princess risks losing her family, her life—and her heart…

London, 1888: A year after Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee terror mounts in the city’s slums.  A killer has butchered two prostitutes, the crimes brutal even by London’s hardened standards.  Rumors of the murders reach Princess Vicky, daughter of Queen Victoria and grieving widow of the German Emperor Frederick III.  When her niece Princess Maud visits, she brings with her even worse news–the Metropolitan Police have a suspect. It’s Vicky’s nephew, Crown Prince Eddy. Desperate to clear her family’s name, Vicky rushes back to England.

Detective Inspector Thomas Edmondson believes there is a royal cover-up behind the killings. He will stop at nothing to expose the truth and bring a murderer to justice before he can kill again.  But when Vicky joins him in searching for the man who will become known as Jack the Ripper, neither of them foresee the overpowering attraction that will draw together the royal and the commoner—or the danger their love puts them in.

Excerpt from Chapter 2

It took a moment for Vicky to grasp that last word. “Murders?” She shook her head, confused. Then immediately terrified. “Who has been murdered?”

Someone in the Royal Family? Certainly, if the Queen had been assassinated, she’d have been informed by her son’s ministers immediately. Lord knew there had been more attempts on Victoria’s life than most of her subjects were aware. Thankfully, none had succeeded. The little Queen seemed invincible.

Vicky reached out, took her niece by the hands and pulled her closer so that she could look her directly in the eyes. “Maud, is this one of your silly pranks?”

“No, oh no, not at all, Aunt Vicky! I’m so sorry. I thought you would have heard.”

“Come then.” She guided the girl over to the wine-colored velvet chaise by the window and sat her down. Standing over her, Vicky gazed down at her sternly. “I think you had better explain.”

Sophie stepped up beside her mother, taffeta underskirts swishing as whisper soft as her voice. “Mama, I’ve read about them in the newspapers. They’re called the Whitechapel murders, and they’re truly horrible. She’s not making it up.”

In truth, Vicky hadn’t read a newspaper in months. What was the point when there was nothing she could do about either local or world events? She was as powerless as her seamstress, cook, or even … loyal Agathe.

Maud slipped a gray parchment envelope from the satin reticule looped around her thin wrist then seemed unsure what to do with it, and so left it in her lap. “I guess I’d better just start at the beginning.”

“Excellent,” Vicky said.

Maud took a deep breath. “There have been two most shocking murders recently in London. Sophie’s right, both in Whitechapel.”

Violence in any large city was not uncommon. Vicky knew, as well as anyone who had lived in London, how dangerous the East End was. The district was little more than a mass of crude tenements built over cesspools. Overcrowded. Filthy and disease-ridden. Occupied by the poorest of the city’s poor. Even the Metropolitan Police, whose jurisdiction it was, ventured into neighborhoods like Huxton, Whitechapel, and Spittlefields only in numbers and, it was said, fully armed. She’d never even set foot in those horrid streets. She was sure her parents’ coachmen took care to avoid the area entirely.

“Go on,” Vicky said when Maud hesitated then sat down beside her.

“Women have been threatened or attacked with a blade before. But most recently, on separate occasions, two were brutally stabbed to death in the street.” Maud’s sweet face paled and she stared down at the paper rectangle beneath her nervously twitching fingertips. “Actually, not so much stabbed, so they say, as mutilated.”

“I read the bodies were disemboweled,” Sophie added helpfully. “Turned inside out, their organs taken from—”

Vicky silenced her daughter with a wintry glare. “I shall have a word with your tutors regarding your reading materials, missy.”

“Mama,” Sophie groaned, “everyone has heard about these ghastly murders.” She turned to her cousin. “But I really don’t see what the fuss is about. The victims, they’re just dirty old whores.”

“Sophie!”

“Sorry, I should have said ‘prostitutes.’”

“That wasn’t why I objected to what you said,” Vicky snapped.

Ever since her sister Louise, now the Duchess of Argyll, had protested against the cruel laws that kept women dependent upon the good will of men for shelter and support—as females were unable to own property or businesses, or to even take on decently paying jobs like men—Vicky herself had become more protective of women’s rights on the Continent. It was said that thousands of females wandered London’s streets—destitute and unable to support themselves. Once there, they had only one way to delay starvation or put a roof over their heads.

Vicky shuddered to think of their desperation. She couldn’t imagine being forced to let a strange man access her body, to do with her as he willed! She turned to her daughter.

“Sophie, these women can’t be blamed for what they’ve been reduced to. It’s not their choice to be poor or to have to sell their—” She pressed her lips together, unable to say more in front of the two princesses. Sophie was a tender seventeen years old, Maud just eighteen. Both were so impressionable, sheltered, vulnerable.

“You mean, they have sex with men for money?” Maud’s eyes suddenly sparkled with mischief.

Sophie clapped a hand over her mouth and giggled.

“That is quite enough of that language, Maud dear.” Vicky looked down at the envelope still resting in her niece’s lap. “Is that a letter for me? Something to do with these disgusting events?”

“No, it’s—” Instead of completing her thought, Maud turned the envelope over and uncoiled the thin red string securing its flap. She pulled out a sheaf of newspaper clippings. “I thought you might want to see these reports of the murders, in case you didn’t believe what I came here to tell you.”

Vicky looked down at the ink-smudged newspaper clippings. Some were from The Star, others from the more respectable Observer or The Times. But all included chilling sketches and photographs. When Sophie reached for them, Vicky cast her daughter a warning look. “These aren’t for a young girl’s eyes.”

“But Maud has seen them. I don’t see why I c—”

“Hush.” Vicky flipped through the half-dozen articles, catching a word here, a phrase there. There was even a coroner’s photograph of the first victim. Undoubtedly the only photograph ever taken of the poor soul. The black-and-white image was no less horrifying for showing only the woman’s face and shoulders. Whatever the police surgeon had done to clean her up, it was still obvious she’d been cruelly beaten and slashed.

“Maud, I’ll have a word with your mother about this … this collection of yours. These are totally inappropriate for a young lady.” She scooped the horrid images into her lap, intending to toss them into the flames in the fireplace.

“But I had to show you, so you’d understand.”

“Understand what?” Vicky’s fingertips flew to her temples. She was fast on her way to a raging headache. Violence, in word or deed, was one thing she had never tolerated in her home. Suddenly, she felt as if evil was seeping from between the very stones in the castle walls around them, poisoning the air, stripping away what remained of her family’s dignity. Why wouldn’t the world leave her alone with her grief? Why bring more tragedy to her doorstep?

“You need to understand what the awful reporters are saying. That’s why I’ve come to you.” Maud reached out and snatched back one of the clippings before Vicky could stop her. She waved the obscene image of the whore’s corpse in front of her. “They have theories. All sorts of mean, ugly theories about the killer. They say he likes to do this to women. They say he’ll kill again and again if not stopped.”

Vicky sighed. So? What did her family have to do with murder investigations? “I assume Scotland Yard or the local police are after him, whoever he is.”

“That’s just it. If we don’t do something soon, people, including the police, will believe those awful newspaper articles, and we’ll be blamed.”

Vicky scowled at the girl. “Oh Maud, please. That’s outrageous. What do you mean by we?”

“Us, the Royal Family.”

“Such nonsense!” Vicky shot to her feet, snatched the photograph back from her niece and tossed all of the clippings straight into the fire. She watched the papers crackle, glow orange, curl into black ash. Then she turned a chastising glare on both young women to let them know they weren’t to expose themselves to such filth again. “Maud, there is no possible reason why any person with sense would seriously suspect a member of our family of having anything to do with—”

“But there is,” Maud whispered as tears bloomed in her pretty eyes. “That’s why I had to come and ask for your help. Please—” she sank down onto her knees, her skirt billowing around her on the floor, desperation making her voice break at odd moments. “Please, Aunt Vicky. You must come back with me to London and help us. My brother is in so much trouble.”

Bio: Mary Hart Perry (aka Kathryn Johnson)

Mary Hart Perry grew up in New England and now lives in the Washington DC area with her husband and two feline writing partners, Tempest and Miranda. She’s the author of over 40 novels published by major U.S. and foreign publishers. She writes historical fiction as Mary Hart Perry and contemporary romantic thrillers under her own name, Kathryn Johnson. She also teaches fiction-writing workshops for The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Her popular 8-week course, The Extreme Novelist, supports and encourages class members through a full first draft of their novels. In 2008, she founded Write by You, a writer’s mentoring service, to aid individual authors in reaching their publication goals. She has been nominated for the prestigious Agatha Christy Award, and won the Heart of Excellence and Bookseller’s Best Awards (sponsored by the Romance Writers of America). Her works in progress include Victorian thrillers inspired by the lives of Queen Victoria’s daughters, and a new contemporary romantic-suspense series scheduled for release in 2014-15. Kathryn is a member of the Author’s Guild, Romance Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Novelists Inc, and the Historical Novel Society.

ONLINE LINKS:

Website:  www.MaryHartPerry.com

Contact: Mary@MaryHart Perry.com,  or  Kathryn@WriteByYou.com

Facebook: http://facebook.com/Kathryn.K.Johnson.3   or  for MHP:  on.fb.me/Kj7hzU

Twitter: @Mary_Hart_Perry   or   @KathrynKJohnson

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kathryn-johnson/21/8b3/350

Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/Mary_Hart_Perry  or www.goodreads.com/KathrynJohnson

BUY NOW LINK:

• Amazon  http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Princess-Mary-Hart-Perry-ebook/dp/B00I36D8UW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391999082&sr=8-1&keywords=Mary+Hart+Perry

Giveaway:   Digital copy of Shadow Princess

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Read my 5-star review here.

Spread the love

Tweet