My aunt Gillian was one of America’s first dollar princesses. She married a British viscount for his title and he led her to the altar for the very considerable dowry that would save his decaying family estates and guarantee a life of idle luxury. The marriage lasted barely twelve months, leaving her a widow with a palatial London town house and no pesky husband to have to share it with. That was twenty some years ago. She belongs to the Marlborough House Set and counts herself one of Bertie’s closest female friends. Meaning that at some point in her aristocratic career my aunt had a quiet and mutually enjoyable affair with the Prince of Wales. She is, of course, a doyenne of correct behavior.

Did I mention that the dowager Viscountess Rotherton decided I needed a chaperone? And that no one else could do the job as well as she?

Prudence MacKenzie is my name. I’m an orphan, not yet twenty-one years old, and I scandalized New York society by going into the private inquiry agent business with a handsome, unmarried Southerner named Geoffrey Hunter. I live alone, except for the devoted servants who have known and watched over me since I was a very little girl. Not good enough, according to my aunt. So here she is, organizing every moment of my life, lining up prospective husbands like rows of toy soldiers, and insisting that I accept every one of the flood of social invitations that come my way. Balls and teas and nights at the opera bore me to tears. I’d much rather solve a mystery, chase down a killer, pick locks, and shoot the derringer I carry in my reticule. She’s threatening that if I don’t find a wealthy, well connected American to marry, she’ll whisk me off to England to prop up a title. I’m an heiress, so I’m considered as valuable a property as one of the Vanderbilt mansions on Fifth Avenue!

I’m attending a very grand ball at Delmonico’s tonight, wearing a gorgeous ivory satin House of Worth gown and cascades of pearls. Aunt Gillian will be splendid in midnight blue silk, also House of Worth, diamonds, and sapphires. Years and years ago she dared to outshine Mrs. Astor during a memorable debutante season. Now she has a title to parade before America’s acknowledged queen of society, and she means to make the most of it. My goal is to escape her gimlet eye and dance the night away in Geoffrey’s arms. Something is growing between us that both frightens and intrigues me. Can a woman fall in love and still retain the independence she’s struggled so hard to attain? That’s the conundrum that’s bedeviled me since the first time I looked into his eyes and saw twin tiny images of myself reflected in their dark depths.

Aunt Gillian has been tutoring me in a skill she claims every woman of a certain class must master: the ability to assess quickly and accurately the worth and integrity of a precious stone. I suppose that’s in case a faithless husband or opportunistic lover tries to pass off paste gems for the real articles. Not an expertise I plan to need in my personal life, but certainly another tool in my professional arsenal. So far I haven’t proven to be very good at it, at least by her reckoning. Did you know that if you breathe on a real diamond it doesn’t fog up the way a fake does? Can you imagine one of the staid Four Hundred socialites huffing and puffing away on another woman’s necklace just to verify whether the stones are genuine? The very idea seems ludicrous but I wouldn’t put anything past the daunting Lady Rotherton.

On to Delmonico’s and whatever adventure awaits me there!

Death, Diamonds, And Deception is the fifth book in the “Gilded Age” historical series, released November 24, 2020.

The pursuit of stolen diamonds once belonging to Marie Antionette leads heiress Prudence MacKenzie and ex-Pinkerton Geoffrey Hunter down a twisted maze through Gilded Age New York City from Fifth Avenue to Five Points.

Fall 1889: Lady Rotherton has arrived from London intent on chaperoning her niece Prudence through a New York social season to find a suitable husband. It’s certainly not her niece’s devilishly handsome partner in Hunter and MacKenzie Investigative Law. Aunt Gillian’s eye for eligible suitors is surpassed only by her ability to discern genuine gems from nearly flawless fakes. At the Assembly Ball at Delmonico’s, she effortlessly determines that the stones in the spectacular diamond waterfall necklace adorning the neck of the wife of banker William De Vries are fake.

Insisting on absolute discretion to avoid scandal, the banker employs Prudence and Geoffrey to recover the stolen diamonds pried out of their settings—priceless stones acquired by Tiffany, originally purchased for Marie Antoinette. Their search for a possible fence rapidly leads to a dead end: a jeweler brutally killed in his shop during an apparent theft.

The jeweler’s murder is only the first in a string of mysterious deaths, as Prudence and Geoffrey pursue their elusive quarry. But the clues keep leading back to duplicity on the part of the De Vries family, who, it turns out, have a great deal to hide.

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Meet the author
Rosemary Simpson is the author of two previous historical novels, The Seven Hills of Paradise and Dreams and Shadows and four previous Gilded Age Mysteries: What the Dead Leave Behind, Lies That Comfort and Betray, Let the Dead Keep Their Secrets, and Death Brings a Shadow. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, and the Historical Novel Society. Educated in France and the United States, she now lives near Tucson, Arizona. For more about Rosemary Simpson, visit her at RosemarySimpsonBooks.com and on Facebook.

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