This week’s excerpt is the start of Love in Its Season, my novella for this year’s Bluestocking Belles with Friends collection.

The farrier plied his business from a barn on the outskirts of the lower town. It was not a particularly defensable position, Jack noted as he led the two horses through the open gate. Too open, with access not only from the road, but from the lane that ran beside the neat cottage where the farrier presumably lived, and across the fields behind the barn.

But Jack was in peaceful England, not Spain or France or Mauritius or the Indies or any of the other far flung lands to which King George has sent his soldiers. Of which Jack was no longer one, and if he wasn’t Captain Jack Wrath of His Majesties 12th Lancers, who was he?

One of the horses took advantage of Jack’s inattention to pull sharply away to the right, towards a tub planted with peppermint and chamomile. Jack jerked on the lead rein, and received a hurt look from the other beast, Paul Gibson’s patient mount. However, his own recalcitrant gelding fell back into line.

Jack led them past the dusty curricle that stood outside the barn, its shaft empty, then slowed his steps as raised voices in the barn hinted at an altercation. He sped up again when he caught the words.

“I’ll have the constable on him. The man is mad. Locked up, that’s what he should be.” A man’s voice in the crisp accent of the aristocracy, the nasal tones shrill with anger.

“I’ll be giving you locked up!” That voice was deeper and rougher, with hints of a Welsh lilt overlaying the Cheshire vowels.

Jack hesitated. What was he getting himself into?

“Father, no!” A woman’s voice, sharp with fear.

“Keep him back,” the aristocrat sneered, “or I’ll shoot him like the mad dog he is.”

“He was only coming to my aid, my lord,” the woman protested. “You cannot blame a father for defending his daughter.”

Jack reached the open doors as the aristocrat hissed, “You need to learn your place, woman.”

“What is going on here?” Jack demanded, crisping his own pronunciation into a counterfeit of his so called betters.

What he saw had him dropping the reins and moving forward. This part of the barn had been divided off as a farrier’s workshop. The space was occupied by three people and two horses, the latter a pair of bays that Jack immediately characterised as more showy than sound.

The aristocrat was much as expected: tall, but with too much flesh for his height. Overdressed for the occasion, with lace at his neck and cuffs, and a coat the colour of squashed strawberries over a maroon waistcoat heavily embroidered in gold. Gold tassels on his boots, too, and gems glinting from his cravat, his fobs, and his rings.

It was the gun that had Jack moving. It was wavering between the two other people in the barn, and the hand that held it was shaking. The pompous lord was scared out of his mind.

The woman stood at bay, her hands held out palms backward as if to hold back the man behind her. She was nearly as tall as the lordling—nearly as tall as Jack himself. Muscular, too, with powerful shoulders. Her dark hair, curled like a crown on her head, proudly proclaimed she was a woman. He would have known anyway. Even in an old shapeless coat, men’s trousers, and a leather apron was so exquisitely female that Jack’s mouth dried. Her gaze met Jack’s, her dark eyes full of defiance, fear and anger.