Today I’m thinking about how to provide information without doing an information dump. How much do people need to know? Can I get it out in action or conversation? Show don’t tell, but then, if it is important but would be boring at length, tell it and get on. How do you set the scene? Do you have an excerpt you can share? Here’s a rather raw piece from To Tame a Wild Rake.
Why on earth had he agreed to escort Jessica to a musicale?
In the vicious hunt most debutantes and their mothers made of the marriage mart, a title, wealth, acceptable looks and amiable disposition marked a gentleman as a prime quarry. The Marquis of Aldridge, heir to a duke since birth, regarded the scene before him in near despair.
He would retire to the country to become a hermit, if he could. The business of the duchy required him to be social and in London, but the risk of being saddled with a wife he hadn’t chosen required constant vigilance.
He defended himself with his abysmal reputation, constant watchfulness, and the willingness to be ruthless when required. Even so, the inevitable gossip about his father’s swift decline and approaching demise sent the hunt into a frenzy.
He went nowhere without first considering how to avoid any traps that might have been laid. If forced to attend a ball, he eschewed the dance floor for the card and billiards rooms. He ventured outside of these rooms, and to other entertainments, only in the company of his mother or one of his sisters. He’d not been to a house party in over a year, and the last one was under his mother’s own roof, and had required him to administer a sharp lesson to a particularly rapacious debutante.
Do you want some more? Here’s the rest of the scene.
“Do not leave my side,” he whispered to Jessica, sternly.
She grinned up at him. “You already threatened the loss of half my dress allowance if I do.”
“Make it the whole dress allowance,” he growled, but she treated the threat with the contempt it deserved, and giggled. He’d never been able to resist any of his half-sisters, and had been putty in Jessica’s hands since she arrived in the nursery, a little infant, too thin for her age and too weak to do more than grizzle. He had put his finger into her little fist, and she had gripped it firmly, smiled at him, and made him her besotted slave from that moment.
“I mean it, Jessie. For your own reputation, even if you don’t care about feeding me to the harpies.”
Her smile slipped and became brittle. “My reputation was ruined before I was born. We cannot all be as fortunate as Matilda, Aldridge.”
He couldn’t help his wince, though the guilt was not his. Though no one risked the wrath of the Duchess of Haverford by shunning the sisters or gossiping in public, everyone knew her three wards were the base-born and unacknowledged daughters of the Duke of Haverford. As soon as Aldridge was duke, he intended to repair what he could, and acknowledge them. It wouldn’t satisfy the high sticklers, but it should help Jessica, and later Frances, to find a match.
At least his eldest sister, Matilda, was now happily married, her husband willing to ignore the scandal for love’s sake.
Jessica ignored his reaction, her mind on her own thoughts. “I will protect you, though, if only because I don’t want to live with a harpy.”
I should choose a wife and be done with it. Without his volition, his eyes scanned the room until he saw her. He had known she must be here; the new Lady Ashbury was, after all, her cousin. She sat with her sister, the pair of them somehow an island of serenity in the sea of ferment that was Society at its endless posturing.
“Lady Charlotte won’t have you,” Jessica observed. He glanced down into hazel eyes very similar to his own. She touched his hand. “She swears she will never marry, Aldridge. She has refused every offer, and resisted even when her father and grandfather tried to bully her.” A fact Aldridge well knew, since he had made one of the earliest of those offers, and reluctantly withdrawn it when he discovered the pressure she was under to accept.
He pulled back over himself the cover of the insouciant ducal heir. “There are others who may suit. But I am in no rush to put on shackles, Jessie. “ Not that he could fool Jessica with the part any more than he had deceived Lady Charlotte Winderfield. She had been able to see through his mask since they first met. She had still been a child in the schoolroom, only fifteen. He had been twenty-seven and sozzled to the gills, nearing the end of three months of drinking and wenching that had failed to dull the edges of a loss he still shied away from considering.
He had known from the first time she scolded him for allowing his pain to make him stupid that he wanted her for his duchess. But by the time she was old enough to court, she’d grown past the friendship they’d forged that long-ago summer, and learned enough about him to reject him out of hand.
He needed to accept his dismissal like a gentleman. But that didn’t stop his yearning.
“They are about to start,” he pointed out to his sister. “Shall we find a seat?”
Swoon! Aldridge!!! Boy, when he falls he is going to fall hard.
Very hard. And she is going to reject him, repeatedly, poor lad.
Omg, u r killing me! When, when am I going to have Aldridge all to myself, late at night, where I can immerse into his personae? If u were close, I swear I’d hold ur mind and fingers to ur computer! Luv u, wonderful awful person! Janet Wallis
It’s coming, Janet, I promise.
I love this excerpt. Knowing Aldridge as I do, this makes so much sense. Dodge those marriage-minded mamas and cloak one’s self in infamy for self preservation. Awesome!
Mind you, it was well deserved infamy. Never mind that he’s grown out of his worst behaviour. He was actually once as bad as he pretends.
Omg! U remembered i fell into love with aldridge and u are going to share his story. I love u! The oart u have shared is so good. When
when when may i purchase it?
Janet, it will be the third novel in the Mountain King series. Aldridge appears in the first two, as well. To Wed a Proper Lady is on preorder, and out on 15 April. To Mend the Broken-Hearted is planned for June. I hope to get Aldridge’s story and the story of his beloved’s twin (they both happen at the same time) out within a month of each other in August and September, but watch this space! I’ll write faster if I can.