Mortal Arts by Anna Lee Huber

When Lord Sebastian Gage left Lady Kiera Darby at the end of their first investigation together, Kiera thought she would never see him again. A few short months later, she meets him again at the estate of an old friend, Michael Dalmay.  While there, they are sucked into investigating the disappearance of a local girl.  The chief suspect is Lord William Dalmay, Michael's older brother, who suffers from PTSD.  Michael had been one of Kiera's early art mentors, but now he draws disturbing images on the walls about his time at war, and subsequent confinement in a mental hospital. The investigation drives a wedge between Gage and Kiera, but is it stronger than the attraction they both keep denying exists between them? 

When I finished the first "Lady Darby Mystery" I put the next one on hold.  It became available pretty quickly, while I was already listening to the Influencers book below.  I must admit, I stopped listening to that book and listened to this one all the way through before going back and finishing Influencers.  Mortal Arts is another fun gothic mystery very reminiscent of the first.  I like Lady Darby's quirky social awkwardness and Gage's evasiveness about his own past.  They seem less like dimensionless cut-out characters than many in this genre.  The mystery is maybe not as clever as in the first novel--I was pretty sure who the culprit was about 1/3 of the way through the story--but Huber still does a good job of dropping clues that you don't seem like clues until the story progresses. I just looked it up and there are 12 Lady Darby mysteries!  I wonder if I will read through them all. (2013, 384 p)