2023/133: Mortal Follies — Alexis Hall

2023/133: Mortal Follies — Alexis Hall

“Can you please behave like ordinary parents for just a short while?”
Lady Jane raised an eyebrow. “If you insist.” She cleared her throat. “Oh la! But Maelys, if you are devoured by an angry goddess, however will you find a husband?”
“That is not what I meant.” [p. 176]

Miss Maelys Mitchelmore finds her entry into the society of Regency Bath somewhat impeded by an irritating curse, which initially manifests as the slow unravelling of her dress at a ball. Later, the curse becomes more threatening, and Miss Mitchelmore -- aided and abetted by her friends Lizzie (Lysistrata) Bickle and John Caesar, and by the brooding and Byronic Duke of Annadale -- must take desperate measures to preserve her life and her reputation, and discover who has cursed her.

I should note that the so-called 'Duke' of Annadale is a woman (Lady Georgiana), who's widely believed to have murdered her father and brothers, probably via witchcraft, in order to inherit the duchy; that John Caesar's father is a freedman from Senegal; that the curse has been written on a lead tablet and deposited in the spring below the pump room, where Sulis Minerva can be invoked; and that the narrator of the tale is 'that knavish sprite that frights the maidens of the villagery': Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, formerly of Oberon's court and now inexplicably exiled to a damp flat in twenty-first century Putney.

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