Happy new year, and welcome to my first WIP Wednesday for 2020. It seemed appropriate to post about beginnings. As always, I’d love you to share a start with me from your current WIP – the first paragraphs of a book, or of a chapter. Mine is the first scene from To Mend the Broken Hearted, the second book in The Children of the Mountain King. My goal is to finish this book by the end of the month, and publish it in May or June.
The crows rose in a flock over the tower on the borders of Ashbury land, a cacophony on wings. Val straightened and peered in that direction, shading his eyes to see if he could tell what had spooked them. It was unlikely to be a traveller on the lane that branched towards the manor from the road that passed the tower. After three years of repulsing visitors, the only people he ever saw were his tenant farmers and the few servants he had retained to keep the crumbling monstrosity he lived in marginally fit for human habitation.
He set the team moving again, the plough and seed drill combination creating a row of furrows behind him, but called a halt again when a bird shot up from almost under the horses’ hooves. Sure enough, a lapwing nest lay right in the path of the plough. Val carefully steered around it. He knew his concern for the pretty things set his tenants laughing behind his back, but they didn’t take up much room, and they’d hatch their chicks and be off to better cover.
One more evidence of his madness, the tenants thought, and in his worst moments he thought they were right, when thunder set him shaking or nightmares woke him screaming defiance or approaching anywhere close to that cursed tower froze him in his tracks.
The clouds that had threatened to disgorge all day finally sent a few stray drops his way, portents of more to come, but he had a bare two passes more to make to finish, and Barrow and his son were behind him with hoes, covering in the seed.
Another half hour would see the spring corn planted.
The gig from the inn went by beyond the hedge that bordered the lane. What was so important that it couldn’t wait until the housekeeper made her weekly trip to the nearest village? No matter. If he was needed, his manservant knew where to find him. He guided the team into the tight turn that would begin the second-to-last pass.
The rain thickened by the time he turned into the last row, and by half way down the field it’d soaked into the ground enough to make heavy going.
“Just a bit more,” he coaxed the horses, “just a bit more.”
He was half aware of the inn’s gig passing back along the lane in the direction of the village. Had it been making a delivery? His housekeeper had not mentioned any lack. His mind on the ploughing, he’d almost forgotten the gig by the time they at last reached the end.
“That’s it done, then, milord, “Barrow said, wiping his face which was as wet again a moment later.
Val agreed, habituation allowing him to hide his wince at being addressed with his brother’s title. Three years had not been enough to stop his reaction, but at least no one needed to know. “Get these boys home and give them a good feed,” he said, giving the lead horse a firm pat. “They’ve done well, and just in time.”
“That I will, milord. And you get yourself indoors, sir. Thankee,” Barrow said.
Did the man think Val too stupid or too far gone to go inside out of the rain? Well. No point in staying wet just to prove he was his own master. Val left Barrow to his son and horses, and set off to trudge back through the fields to the house, running the last few hundred yards through blinding hail.
Crick, his manservant, fussed over his towel and his bath and his dry clothes, and Val allowed it. This kind of weather was too much like Albuera for Crick’s demons, immersing him back into the confusion and the pain. Val told himself that he kept the old soldier out of compassion. During his worst moments, he feared his motivation was more of a sick desire to have someone around who was worse than him.
By the time Val was warm and dry again, the thunder had started. He sent Crick off to bed. There’d be no more sense out of the poor man tonight, nor much from Val, either. He refused the offer of dinner and shut himself up in his room so no one would see him whimpering like a child.
It was not until the following day, after the thunderstorm had passed, that he remembered the gig. Mrs Minnich, the housekeeper, remembered that it had delivered mail, and thought Crick had taken it, but what happened after that no one knew, least of all Crick. He had got roaring drunk and surfaced late in the day with a bad headache, a worse conscience, and no memory of the previous day at all.
The inn might know who it was from; even what it was about, since they’d sent someone out with it despite the weather. Val sent a note with Mrs Minnich on Friday, her regular day for shopping. She came back with the message that the gig had brought several letters, one of them marked urgent. It was from the school to which his sister-in-law had sent the girls before she absconded with the contents of the jewel safe shortly after she was made a widow, weeks before Val got word that he was now earl, and months before he got home.
The girls. He thought of them that way to avoid calling one of them his daughter, though the elder possibly was. The younger had been claimed by his brother, but not, in the end, by his brother’s wife. If the countess were to be believed, Val’s own lying wife was mother to the second child as well as the first. Perhaps even she had not known whether his brother had been father of both.
Whoever engendered them, the situation wasn’t the girls’ fault, but he still didn’t want to see either of them. He put the girls and the identity of their parents out of his head with the ease of long practice, along with any curiosity about the message. There were fields to plough, repairs to be made, and animal breeding to plan. If what the school wanted was important, no doubt they would write again.