Peccadillo at the Palace

by Kari Bovee

  Praise for Girl with a Gun: An Annie Oakley Mystery

  “Bovée’s debut novel brings readers solidly into the heyday of the Wild West shows, providing wonderful details about the elaborate costumes and the characters’ remarkable marksmanship . . . There are enough entertaining elements to keep readers guessing, including romance, rivalries, jealousy, and at least one evil character from Annie’s past. The prose has a charming simplicity, which keeps the attention focused on the action and the well-developed protagonist. A quick, fun read with engaging rodeo scenes.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A fast-paced plot keeps the pages turning. Readers interested in strong American women will welcome this new series. . .”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Absorbing, heartfelt, and thrilling, Girl with a Gun shows off young Annie Oakley’s skills as a sharpshooter and as a loyal detective. From the period details to the Wild West setting, I was completely immersed in the story and in the larger-than-life characters. It’s a fun as a rodeo, and nearly as dangerous. Like Annie herself, Bovée’s prose sparkles with precision and skill.”

  —Martha Conway, author of Underground River, New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice

  “Kari Bovée paints a captivating portrait of the young sharpshooter, Annie Oakley, in Girl with a Gun. A diverting plot filled with unexpected twists and turns enthralls and satisfies the reader as Annie is transformed from a naïve Quaker girl to an independent young woman. This lively mix of historical fiction, romance, and mystery hits the target!”

  —Susan McDuffie, author of the award-winning Muirteach McPhee Mysteries

  PECCADILLO AT THE PALACE

  Copyright © 2019 Kari Bovée

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  Published by SparkPress, a BookSparks imprint,

  A division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC

  Phoenix, Arizona, USA, 85281

  www.gosparkpress.com

  Published 2019

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-943006-90-8 (pbk)

  ISBN: 978-1-943006-91-5 (e-bk)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018965478

  All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  For Kevin,

  who never lets me give up on my dreams.

  For Jessica and Michael,

  who inspire me every day.

  A Note From the Author about the Annie Oakley Series

  Like most of us, I’d heard the name Annie Oakley before, but she didn’t interest me until several years ago when my father encouraged me to watch a PBS American Experience biographical special featuring Annie Oakley and her rise to fame. I watched the show and became enchanted with this pint-sized wonder woman who was incredibly empowered at a time in history when most women weren’t allowed to be empowered. She had talent, spunk, determination, modesty, and the courage to be herself—an expert markswoman and sharpshooter. She bested most men in the sport, including her husband, Frank Butler, and her boss, Buffalo Bill Cody—two of her most ardent supporters.

  As a fan of historical fiction and historical mysteries, I thought it would be entertaining to put this feisty young woman in the role of an amateur detective. Based on everything I’d read about her, she certainly had the smarts, the compassion, and the desire to see justice served and order reign in the world. I’ve tried to maintain historical accuracy for the most part, but in this series I’ve played with some of the facts: I’ve altered time-lines, added fictional characters, embellished historical characters, and put Annie into situations she never faced in real life— and I’ve had so much fun doing it.

  The prequel novella, Shoot like a Girl, is the story of Annie before she joins the Wild West Show. Although she doesn’t play the role of amateur detective in this book, we learn what drives her to seek order and justice for herself and others though her relationship with Buck, a horse who becomes her lifeline during a difficult period in her life. From this experience, Annie becomes impassioned to seek justice for those who cannot seek it for themselves, and we see her spring into action in the first book of the series Girl with a Gun. This sets her on a course to make order out of chaos, and try to set things right in a world that can go oh so wrong.

  I have delighted in imagining what was in the heart, mind, and soul, of this young woman who faced many obstacles in her life, only to become one of the most famous women of all time. It’s been gratifying to put her in difficult situations and see her come out of a shroud of mystery, shooting her way to the truth. I hope you, too, enjoy these and future adventures I’ve created for this amazing woman of history— Little Miss Sure Shot, Annie Oakley.

  August 1857

  They must pay for their sins. I’ve made it my life’s mission to make sure they pay. All of them: the imperialists who have caused the oppression of women and children, the poor, and the meek; and the rebels who use the innocent like me (whose only guilt is my birthright) to retaliate against the Crown. I will no longer be a pawn in their war. I will fight for those who have no voice.

  They came in droves to our village in Cawnpore, in the middle of the night, with their tattered clothes, bare feet, and rotting teeth, like the dead arisen again for their revenge; ghosts stalking the living. They came shouting into the Bibighar where we had been told we would have safe haven. They came in swinging their axes, butchering the women and children like cattle.

  Mother clung to me, holding three-year-old Alistair in her arms, her fingers sinking into my flesh. In the chaos, she pulled us to the ground and then told me to help her pull the maimed bodies over us to hide us from the soldiers. In my frantic effort to help, I grasped an arm and yanked too hard. The limb separated from the butchered body and I froze in terror holding it above my head. One of the sepoy rebels saw me and stalked toward us, blood smearing his ragged shirt.

  “You’ll not have my children.” Mother’s voice echoed loud and determined.

  The man laughed, his face in shadow.

  “Very well, then, you shall not be separated from your children, but suffer the same fate as they.”

  He hauled Mother to her feet, Alistair still in her arms. She grabbed me to her side. The rebel wrapped a rope around Mother and me, tying it tight. Alistair shrieked in terror, and Mother clenched her jaw, her face stricken with rage. I stayed quiet, for I have been mute since Father left us. I told him I would not speak until he returned to us in the hopes that he would come back from the war sooner. But I fear he is dead, so my voice died with him.

  The man dragged us, our feet tangled in one another’s, our arms aching with the pressure of the rope squeezing the breath from our lungs. He pulled us out of the doorway of the Bibighar and down the steps. Mother leaned back against the pull, fighting every step of the way, holding tight onto little Alistair, tears of anger streaming down her cheeks, her jaw set against the urge to cry out.

  The man led us toward the fort’s well, long dried up in the summer drought. The screams of other women and children, dragged by their feet, their arms, their hair, skittered across my skin like fire and rang in my ears with the razor-sharp keening of a specter’s wail. In the torchlight, we could not see the men’s faces, only their white and rotten teeth, like fireflies in the night.

  One by one, the men forced the women and children down the well. Some had to be thrown, othe
rs shoved, still others hacked with axes as they clung to the walls of the well like beetles fighting against the force of a waterfall. The men beat their fingers, their arms, shoulders, and heads, stuffing them down, one after the other, their screams boiling out the top of the well like burning lava.

  When it was our turn, the man motioned to one of his comrades. “This lot are fighters; make sure they don’t escape.” He then yowled as my mother sank her teeth into the flesh of his arm. He struck her on the forehead with the butt of his stick. Her eyes crossed and rolled back in her head. Her knees buckled, and she sank to the ground, pulling us down with her. Alistair fell free from the ropes. I wanted to shout to him to run, but the man swooped him up and threw him into the well. I heard his screams as he fell to the bottom, on top of the others, thirty feet down.

  The man picked me up but I struggled against him, and like Mother, I bit his arm. He pulled my mouth off him and slapped me hard. Weighing more than Alistair, I was not as easily thrown in. I stuck my feet out, locking my knees against the wall and refused to bend them. The man took his fist and rammed it into my stomach, knocking all the air out of my lungs, and then I fell. Down, down, down I went, the moaning and screaming of the others below me rising like a cloud of doom as I fell into the pit.

  I don’t remember how long I remained in the well among the suffering. I don’t know how I got out. When I woke in the hospital bed, the nurse told me I must be a miracle from heaven, or damned to hell, because I had been the only survivor. She nursed me, she fed me, she clothed me, and then she turned me out into the world to make my own way. Turned me out into a world that is unkind, unfair, and inhumane.

  They will pay. All of them.

  Chapter One

  April 12, 1887, New York Harbor, Evening

  Annie held onto Buck’s lead line as the 180 horses, fifteen buffalo, and seven mules boarded the State of Nebraska steamship. The elk and deer had already been secured below decks. They loaded the animals two by two, as if Noah himself had come back to life, preparing for the flood. But no destruction of the world had been planned here, just a monumental excursion across the pond to pay a visit to the queen.

  The Honorable Colonel Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Show had been invited by the longest-ruling monarch to date, Her Royal Majesty, Queen Victoria, to celebrate her Golden Jubilee, and to attend the American Exhibition in London. The new manager of the show, Nate Salisbury, had arranged to charter the ship from the British for the journey.

  Annie had received the news as she and her then fiancé, Frank Butler, were planning their wedding almost two years earlier. Both of them had left the show, Annie, to take care of her emotionally distraught mother, and Frank because of issues with his eyesight. Annie couldn’t contain her excitement when the colonel told her the queen expressly wanted to meet her, and would she come back with Frank as her manager.

  Her excitement, however, turned to nervous anticipation when she saw the big steamer. It didn’t help that Buck was dancing with anxiety at the end of his lead line as she led him down the dock alongside the colonel and his two mounts.

  “How’s old Buck holding up?” the colonel asked Annie, his voice raised over the sound of his cowboy band playing “Tenting on the Old Camp Ground,” a popular Civil War song. Ever dapper in his ornately decorated tan suede duster and embroidered thigh-high leather boots, he approached Annie through a throng of awestruck spectators, leading his white Arabian stallion, Isham, and another of his favorites, the dark war horse, Charlie.

  “He’s nervous.” Annie reached up and stroked her horse’s neck. “You know how he hates confined spaces.” He hadn’t settled from getting off the train from Ohio yesterday. Annie knew he hadn’t slept, and his fatigue only increased his anxiety.

  The swell of the crowd and the noise of people shouting their names fueled the horse’s agitation. He pawed at the wooden planks of the dock. Annie swallowed the urge to throw up. She’d felt queasy the past few days, and the idea of sailing across the ocean for the next two weeks didn’t help.

  Annie’s gaze traveled west where gray clouds were gathering on the horizon line below the setting sun. Buck sniffed at the breeze. Annie noted the metallic smell of the air, the heavy oppression of a coming storm. Would they truly set sail? Perhaps the storm would veer away from them, she thought, trying to calm herself. Buck snorted, reminding her that she had more pressing things to worry about at the moment.

  “I’ve let the crew know that Buck is to be stalled next to Isham and old Charlie here for the voyage.” The colonel raised his voice to be heard over another of Buck’s frantic whinnies. “They’ll have the largest stalls, covered, amidships, where the motion of the sea is minimized. Mr. Post will also wrap his legs once we’ve got him settled.”

  “Excellent.” Annie tugged at the waist of the rose-colored moiré taffeta-and-lace dress that Hulda, her sister, had made for her. Hulda had pulled the corset strings too tight that afternoon as they dressed at the hotel for the bon voyage celebration that would take place as they left the harbor.

  “Hulda, you are squeezing me too tight,” Annie had said. “Let up a little. I can barely breathe!”

  “You must be growing fat,” said Hulda. “How long has it been since you’ve worn a corset, Annie?”

  “Not long enough. I hate the things.”

  “Stop complaining. People will want to see you in all your splendor as we leave the docks.”

  Hulda had grown so like their mother in the last year—bossy, temperamental, yet sweet in her own way. Though not a national shooting sensation like Annie, Hulda, at nearly fourteen years old, was the beauty of the family, with soft, blond, wavy hair and bright blue eyes. She also had a gift for garment design and sewing. It hadn’t taken the colonel and his new manager, Nate Salisbury, long to decide to hire Hulda as a costume seamstress after Annie presented the colonel with a beautiful buckskin duster with elaborate embroidery and beadwork, made by her baby sister.

  Their mother had worried about Hulda traveling abroad. Annie, now eighteen years old, had been forced to grow up fast as a youngster, due to the family’s impoverishment after her father’s death. Soon afterwards, her mother’s generosity to a suitor named Joshua had nearly bankrupted them, and it had fallen on Annie to keep the family fed and a roof over their heads. But Hulda still retained the innocence of a girl who’d never had such demands made on her, nor had she encountered the variety of people and experiences Annie had since her time in the Wild West Show.

  Buck’s shrill whinny pierced the air, and Annie covered her ears. She couldn’t wait until she could get Buck on board, settled and comfortable, and herself back into her cotton and linen day dress.

  The ship’s loud steam horn rose sharply above the din of the crowd. Buck danced, nearly knocking Annie over.

  “Best we get him settled on board before this crowd becomes a crush,” said the colonel. “You know Buck’s popularity. People can’t seem to keep their hands off him, and he doesn’t look in a state to be petted and fawned over.”

  “He’s not.” Annie let the line slip in her hand so Buck could move his feet more freely. He pranced and pawed, on the verge of a tantrum.

  “You want Mr. Post or Bobby to lead him aboard?” the colonel asked. “I’d hate for you to ruin that pretty dress.”

  “I’ll do it.” Annie wished people would stop fussing about the dress.

  “We’ll do it together, then.” The colonel gave her a warm smile. “In these stressful situations I like to handle my mounts myself, too.”

  The colonel, Isham, and Charlie took the lead as they walked down the dock to the livestock gangway at the rear of the ship. The crowd grew, and as far as Annie could see, a rainbow of colorfully dressed women with large-brimmed, floral-trimmed hats, and gentlemen with beaver-skin top hats and smart wool suits lined the docks. Their children, dressed with equal panache, stood quietly next to their parents, but their faces beamed as the colonel and Annie passed by.

  A woman stan
ding on the passengers’ gangway pointed at Annie and mouthed something Annie couldn’t hear. Her oversized red wool coat—tattered at the cuffs and bearing holes that needed mending— dwarfed her slight stature, but the intensity of her gaze worried Annie.

  It wasn’t often people didn’t like her, but some didn’t, just on principle, jealous of her success. The last time she’d been singled out in such a negative way, she found out she’d been accused of something horrific, and it had made the papers. Almost three years earlier, with Annie’s rise to fame, a story had circulated that she’d tried to kill Vernon McCrimmon, Buck’s previous owner and her own abuser, while under his employ. She had defended herself against the story, but the repercussions had taken a toll. Her reputation meant everything to her, and the idea that someone would slander her publicly left her feeling beaten and powerless.

  What the general public didn’t know was that Annie had killed Vernon McCrimmon—but later, in self-defense. He’d come after her with a knife, and after a hair-raising squabble, she was able to turn the knife on him. While she didn’t regret her actions, she still had to live with the memory that she had taken the life of another, something that went against her own moral code as well as that of her Quaker religion.

  The woman staring at her now brought up those uneasy feelings, and Annie tried hard to shove them to the back of her mind. She had to remain calm for Buck. The woman’s sharp blue gaze shifted to Buck and settled on his prancing frame, a hint of a smile crossing her lips.

  Buck gave a loud whinny, his head raised, neck taut, and eyes bulging, completely unaware of the woman. Annie turned to Buck to stroke his neck and when she turned around again, the woman had vanished into the line of people making their way up the boarding ramp of the ship.