Teaser Tuesday/First Chapter First Paragraph - A Curious Beginning

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Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by Ambrosia at The Purple Booker. To play along, just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page
• Be careful not to include spoilers!
• Share the title and author, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers! 

I've read this before and loved it, as I love all of Deanna Raybourn's novels. I'm re-reading right now in eager anticipation of the second book in the series. In fact, Amazon tells me my pre-ordered copy of A Perilous Undertaking (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery) should be arriving today!

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It had further occurred to me that in losing the baron, I had lost the one remaining connection to my mother. In finding the answers to his end, I might well find the answers to my beginning, although it would be the rankest of bad manners to admit so selfish a motive to Mr. Stoker in his time of bereavement.

~A Curious Beginning (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery) by Deanna Raybourn, page 63

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First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is a weekly link-up hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or two) of a book you're reading, or thinking about reading.

June 1887     

     I stared down into the open grave and wished that I could summon a tear. Violent weeping would have been in exceedingly poor taste, but Miss Nell Harbottle had been my guardian for the whole of my life, and a tear or two would have been a nice gesture of respect. The vicar murmured the appropriate prayers, his voice pleasantly mellow, his tongue catching softly on each s. It was the first time I had noticed the lips, and I only hoped Aunt Nell would not mind. She had been quite exacting about some things, and elocution was one of them. I slipped my dry handkerchief into my pocket with a sigh. Aunt Nell's death had been neither sudden nor unexpected, and the warmth of our affection had been tepid at best. That her death removed my last attachment to childhood did not unduly alarm me as I stood in the quiet churchyard of Little Byfield. In fact, I was aware of a somewhat disconcerting feeling of euphoria rising within me.

     As if to match my mood, the breeze rose a little, and on it fluttered a pair of pale wings edged and spotted with black. "Pieris brassicae," I murmured to myself. A Large Garden White butterfly, common as grass, but pretty nonetheless. She darted off in search of an early cabbage or perhaps a tasty nasturtium, free as the wind itself. I knew precisely how she felt. Aunt Nell had been the final knotted obligation tying me to England, and I was unfettered once and for all, able to make my way in the world as I chose.

Here's the blurb:

In her thrilling new series, the New York Times bestselling author of the Lady Julia Grey mysteries returns once more to Victorian England... and introduces intrepid adventuress Veronica Speedwell.

London, 1887.  As the city prepares to celebrate Queen Victoria's golden jubilee, Veronica Speedwell is marking a milestone of her own. After burying her spinster aunt, the orphaned Veronica is free to resume her world travels in pursuit of scientific inquiry-- and the occasional romantic dalliance. As familiar with hunting butterflies as she is fending off admirers, Veronica wields her butterfly net and a sharpened hatpin with equal aplomb, and with her last connection to England now gone, she intends to embark upon the journey of a lifetime.

But fate has other plans, as Veronica discovers when she thwarts her own abduction with the help of an enigmatic German baron with ties to her mysterious past. Promising to reveal in time what he knows of the plot against her, the baron offers her temporary sanctuary in the care of his friend Stoker--a reclusive natural historian as intriguing as he is bad-tempered. But before the baron can deliver on his tantalizing vow to reveal the secrets he has concealed for decades, he is found murdered. Suddenly Veronica and Stoker are forced to go on the run from an elusive assailant, wary partners in search of the villainous truth.

What do you think? Would you continue reading?

Here's my full review from the first time I read it: Recent Reads - A Curious Beginning

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