Bluestocking Belles

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Tea with Miranda

Miranda de Courtenay stepped over the threshold into the tea room that was one of the great attractions of her favourite London Bookshop.Her sister Grace was browsing for something to take to read at the beach, and when Grace was choosing books, she could not be hurried. Miranda had fidgeted until Grace’s need for peace overwhelmed her wish to keep Miranda firmly under her eye.

As if Miranda was going to cause a scandal in a bookshop! Or anywhere else, to be sure. She had only provisionally been forgiven for the last one. Which was most unfair, because it had all turned out very well.

She scanned the rather full tearoom, looking for acquaintances or at least an empty chair.

“Miss de Courtenay?” The voice came from the left, and when she turned, she saw the Duchess of Haverford. Miranda curtseyed, blushing. She had coloured every time she saw Her Grace ever since the outrageous way the duchess’s sons had behaved at the house party two years ago. Which Miranda had been blamed for, of course, though she had only been flirting. Everyone flirted. It did not excuse what they suggested!

So embarrassing!

“It is rather crowded today, my dear. Come and sit with me. I have been wishing to speak with you.”

One did not refuse a duchess. Miranda pasted on a smile and took the chair to which she had been bidden.

For a few minutes, the duchess was busy ordering more tea and cakes, but far too quickly, the servant brought the order, and they were alone.

Her Grace spoke of trivialities until Miranda had her cup and had raised it to her lips. “How goes your search for a suitable lord, Miss de Courtenay?”

Miranda fought not to spray the tea everywhere, and choked on it instead. By the time she had stopped coughing, she at least had an excuse for her bright red face.

Yes, she wanted a husband who would bring her the title ‘lady’. It was so unfair that the rest of her family had titles and she didn’t. Adrian had unexpectedly inherited an earldom, and Grace was a countess by her first marriage and the wife of a duke’s son in her second, a lady twice over.

But how did Her Grace know that was what Miranda wanted?

“If I may exercise an old lady’s privilege, my dear, I would like to give you a thought to consider.”

Miranda nodded, of course, though she was sure she did not wish to hear what the duchess had to say.

“A title is for public places, Miss de Courtenay. A husband, on the other hand, has a right to be with you day and night, in public and in private. Be very sure that the person you choose is one you wish to spend the rest of your life with. Character is more important than social status or  surface attraction. Your brother and your sister both married for love, and that choice has much to recommend it.”

Miranda could not resist an answer. “Surely one can fall in love with a titled man as easily as with a commoner?” she asked.

The duchess smiled as she sipped her tea. “Love is not easy to command, my dear,” she replied, “but you shall see.”

Miranda will find out the truth of the duchess’s observation, when she meets a man who cannot give her what she thinks she wants, but whom she cannot forget.

Before I Found You: A de Courtenay Novella By Sherry Ewing

A quest for a title. An encounter with a stranger. Will she choose love?

Miss Miranda de Courtenay has only one goal in life: to find a rich husband who can change her status from Miss to My Lady.

Captain Jasper Rousseau has no plans to become infatuated during a chance encounter at a ball.

Their connection is hard to dismiss, despite Miranda’s quest for a title at all cost. What if the cost includes love?

Storm & Shelter: A Bluestocking Belles Collection With Friends

When a storm blows off the North Sea and slams into the village of Fenwick on Sea, the villagers prepare for the inevitable: shipwreck, flood, land slips, and stranded travelers. The Queen’s Barque Inn quickly fills with the injured, the devious, and the lonely—lords, ladies, and simple folk; spies, pirates, and smugglers all trapped together. Intrigue crackles through the village, and passion lights up the hotel.

One storm, eight authors, eight heartwarming novellas.

Find out more on the Bluestocking Belles’ project page. 

Only 99c while on preorder. Published April 13th.

 

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Tea with Major Heyworth

“Major Lord James Heyworth, Your Grace,” said Eleanor’s butler.

The major, a great bear of a man, stopped in the doorway for a moment, sending his charming scapegrace smile across the room as an ambassador. He had no idea why she had invited him, Eleanor guessed, but had a guilty conscience and hoped to flirt his way out of consequences.

For a moment, she was tempted to investigate further. But there was probably nothing to find. Young Jamie had been at a loose end since arriving back from Waterloo, and was filling the void with alcohol and wild women. That and the untidy situation with his horrid father. But Jamie would not appreciate her interference, and would work out whatever was bothering him in his own time.

“Take a seat, Major Heyworth,” she instructed. “Tea?”
He looked at the chairs on offer and chose to sit on the robust sofa opposite her. Eleanor’s companion remained long enough to carry the teacup and a small plate of savoury tarts to the major, then left them alone as Eleanor prepared her own cup.
All the time, Eleanor kept up a light conversation: the weather, who was in Town, a coming auction for the benefit of out-of-work ex-soldiers.
Jamie continued to look uneasy as he sipped tea, the delicate porcelain dwarfed in his hand. Eleanor decided to take pity on him.
“Major, I have invited you here for your opinion on an application to a fund I sponsor. The Fund for Women Scholars, Scientists, and Artisans.”
Jamie’s eyebrows shot up towards his hairline as he widened his eyes in surprise.
“Me? Are you sure you don’t want my friend Mallet?”
Eleanor smiled. “I am seeking a character reference, Major. I believe you and Major Mallet both know the couple in question, but you are in London and Major Mallet, I understand, is in Cambridge.”
“Well. Whatever I can do to help, Your Grace. Of course.” He still looked perplexed, but the underlay of guilt disappeared. Whatever had the boy been up to?
“I have two difficulties with the application. One is character, which is the reason I wished to speak with you. The couple, and particularly the proprietor of the school, have been the subject of rumours regarding their morality and their ability as educators.”
The perplexity was clearing. Jamie was clever enough to have thought about his acquaintances and guessed who she was talking about. She left him in no doubt with her next comment.
“The other, I can resolve. They have applied to a woman’s fund for a boys school. But if they are as worthy as their cause, I shall fund them myself.”
“Sergeant and Mrs Newell?” Jamie asked.

Eleanor nodded, and the major grinned. “I can certainly tell you what I know about them, Your Grace. I am happy to do so.”

Jamie knows Sergeant Newell well, as he served under Jamie’s command during the wars. Jamie has also met the former Miss Abney, proprietor of The Academy for the Formation of Young Gentlemen. All three of them, plus Andrew Mallet, plus several of the young gentlemen, plus an appealing dog and her puppies, face the terror of the storm in Caroline Warfield’s novella in Storm & Shelter.

The Tender Flood: Caroline Warfield

Zach Newell knows Patience Abney is far above his touch. But he has been enchanted by her since she raced out of the storm and into the Queen’s Barque with a wagon full of small boys, puppies, and a bag of books. When the two of them make their way across the flooded marsh to her badly damaged school in search of a missing boy, attraction deepens. She risks scandal; he risks his heart.

Storm & Shelter: A Bluestocking Belles Collection With Friends

When a storm blows off the North Sea and slams into the village of Fenwick on Sea, the villagers prepare for the inevitable: shipwreck, flood, land slips, and stranded travelers. The Queen’s Barque Inn quickly fills with the injured, the devious, and the lonely—lords, ladies, and simple folk; spies, pirates, and smugglers all trapped together. Intrigue crackles through the village, and passion lights up the hotel.

One storm, eight authors, eight heartwarming novellas.

Find out more on the Bluestocking Belles’ project page. 

Only 99c while on preorder. Published April 13th.

 

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A Lonely Vicar for Valentine’s Day

Welcome to my stop on the Valentine’s Day Flash Fiction blog hop for 2021

Thank you, Tanya Wilde, for sharing your book, A Promise of Scandal, and for your Valentine’s gift of a story.

Here’s mine. [UPDATE: GIVEAWAY OVER but the story is still here.]

A gift on Valentine’s Day

When the knock came, Barney Somerville was writing a sermon for St Valentine’s Day. On Holy Love, not on the romantic love his younger parishioners giggled about and hoped for. He was not qualified to speak about romantic love, and was not likely to become so.

As curate for his father in this isolated parish, his only income was a stipend barely sufficient to clothe and feed him, supplemented by the generosity of those parishioners who could spare a couple of cabbages or a cod or two from a good catch of fish.

Love outside of marriage was against his calling and his morals. And marriage was beyond his means.

Just as well he had never met a woman he would care to spend the rest of his life with.

The knock disrupted his mournful musings, and was followed by another before he could reach the door. He opened to a woman he didn’t recognise. Unusual, but not improbable. He had only been in the parish for six months, and perhaps she lived in an outlying hamlet and had been unable to attend church. Or perhaps she was a traveller, passing through.

Certainly, she was dressed for travel, as were the infant perched on her hip and the boy behind her on the path, head down, kicking at pebbles. The two children were dressed in clothes that had been inexpertly dyed a deep mourning black.

He had time to make that assessment and open his mouth to ask how he could help when she demanded, “Are you Mr Somerville?”

“I am. How—?”

She interrupted. “Mr Barney Somerville?”

“Yes. May—?”

The woman thrusted the infant at him. “Then these are yours. Boy! Carry the bags for your uncle!”

The boy looked up, disclosing the countenance that had been hidden by the cap. Barney didn’t have time to take in more than the dark skin and angry eyes before he had his arm full of little girl; a blond moppet who stared solemnly into his face then gave a deep sigh and tucked her head into the crook of his neck.

His sister’s children. He clutched the little one close. Annabel. Her sunny little darling, his sister had called her in her letters. He had still not replied to the last one, dated only two weeks ago and delivered yesterday.

“I am feeling somewhat better this past week, Barney. Perhaps my little brother has been praying for me. Perhaps I will not need, after all, to burden you with my treasures, though it feels wrong to call them burdens when they have been my greatest blessings. My clever lad, with the heart and soul of a hero, and my sunny little darling, his sister.

When you wrote to say you would offer us all a home — you cannot know how it eased my mind, dear brother. I hope I will be able to come, but Barney, I am so grateful to know you are willing to have the children should anything happen.”

Tears in his eyes, his mind a whirling blankness, he could barely muster words of thanks to the woman, who was announcing that she had delivered the children, as promised, and must hurry to rejoin her husband, who would have procured a change of horses by now. “We want to be in Yarmouth by nightfall. You! Boy! Be good for your uncle, hear?”

She was through the lych gate and on her way down the lane before Barney had wrestled his grief into submission enough to speak again.

“You are very welcome, Daniel,” he said to his nephew. “Are you hungry? Come inside and I will see what there is to eat.”

Something to eat. A place to sleep. He had five spare rooms with bedframes and mattresses, left by the previous incumbent, although he had no idea of their condition. He had been using only the one bedchamber. Would there be sufficient linen and blankets to make up beds for a boy and a little girl? Surely.

He should send for Mrs Withers. She was paid five shillings a month to come daily to cook and clean, but turned up four or five times a week and usually limited her culinary contributions to heating a pie or a stew gifted by another parishioner.

He managed to occupy his mind with such practical necessities, while underneath the grief raged howling. His sister was dead. Dead to him, by his father’s decree, more than a decade ago, when she married against their father’s will. But he had known that she was still living in the world, and just these past three months they had found one another again.

Now she was gone. She who had been a little mother to him when he was not much bigger than Annabelle, his friend and confidante when he was Daniel’s age and she a girl on the threshold of adulthood. She had given him a card each Valentine’s Day until her father exiled her, made with her own hands, and he had drawn her pictures of hearts and written inexpert poems praising her chocolate cake and her roast lamb.

They would never meet again in this life, and all that was left of her sat at his kitchen table, eating day old bread and cheese, toasted over the kitchen fire. Her last Valentine’s Day gift to her little brother.

He left Daniel to supervise Annabel and went upstairs with some sheets he had found to make their beds. Silently, he addressed his Maker. “I don’t know how to do this, God. Raising two grieving children on my own? Father won’t increase my stipend. He is likely to demand I hand them over to an orphanage, and that I will not do. I cannot believe You expect it of me.”

The turmoil within stilled. Barney took the warmth that spread in its place as an answer. “They will stay with me, and I will trust you to look after us,” he said.

He hoped, though, that God planned to send them some help.

***

Six weeks on, a sullen and angry Daniel has annoyed half the parish and Barney is more frazzled than ever. Then a storm comes, and with it the miracle he didn’t quite like to pray for.

Read Barney’s unexpected romance in When Dreams Come True, a novella in Storm & Shelter, currently on preorder at the special discount price of 99c.

Storm & Shelter

When a storm blows off the North Sea and slams into the village of Fenwick on Sea, the villagers prepare for the inevitable: shipwreck, flood, land slips, and stranded travelers. The Queen’s Barque Inn quickly fills with the injured, the devious, and the lonely—lords, ladies, and simple folk; spies, pirates, and smugglers all trapped together. Intrigue crackles through the village, and passion lights up the hotel.

A collection of eight all-new novellas. See blurbs here. One storm, eight authors, eight heartwarming stories.

Books2Read link

 

Download Chasing the Tale

GIVEAWAY OVER–It’s still available here.

Escape into another place and time just long enough for a lunch or coffee break in eleven short stories from the imagination of award-winning author Jude Knight. Nine Regency plus one colonial New Zealand and one Medieval Scotland.

Go in the draw to win a gift card

The contest was open for long Valentine’s day—from sunrise on 14th February in New Zealand (noon on February 13 U.S. EST) until midnight on 14th February in Hawaii (or 5 AM February 15 U.S. EST). When the contest ended, we collected all comments on all 15 blogs in the hop.

The winner of the gift card to the value of US$75 was Traci Bell. Her comment on Alina K. Field’s blog was the one drawn at random from the 300 comments across the 15 blogs.

Next up, Riana Everly

Thank you for joining me today. Your next stop is the lovely Riana Everly, author of romance and historical romance with a Canadian twist. Enjoy!

 

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Tea with a mother-in-law

The Duchess of Haverford cast a practiced glance around the large room. As hostess, it was her task to ensure that all of her guests enjoyed themselves during the hour they allowed for social engagement after the monthly meeting of the Ladies Foundation for the Support and Encouragement of Gentlewoman Scholars, Artists and Artisans.

She narrowed her eyes at one group of ladies. Seated in a far corner, they had their heads together. Something about the way three of them leaned forward, eyes fixed on the fourth, set Eleanor’s hackles up.

The speaker was Lady Stanton—the Dowager Lady Stanton for a second time, since her widower son had recently remarried. Undoubtedly, she was sharing gossip and, knowing Lady Stanton, Eleanor was sure it would be unkind, and probably scandalous.

With a sigh, Eleanor set off around the room to see what damage was being done to someone’s reputation, and to try to set it right.

“So you see,” Lady Stanton was saying, “He is already regretting the match. I can only hope it is not too late to have the marriage annulled, for I could not countenance a divorce, even to remove That Woman from the family.”

Ah. The lady was attacking her new daughter-in-law again. “I find the new Lady Stanton to be charming,” Eleanor said, “and my son has nothing but praise for the way she conducts her father’s business.”

Lady Stanton was not so lost to propriety as to glare at the duchess, but Eleanor was sure she wanted to. Or perhaps not, for there was a gleam of triumph in her eyes. “She is in trade, like her father,” the nasty scold pointed out. “Not what a Stanton looks for in a wife.”

“Your son is old enough to make his own choices,” Eleanor reminded her.

“One would have thought so,” Lady Stanton said, the gleam appearing again. “But since his wife left him on their wedding night, I can only suppose that he is regretting that he did not listen to his mother.”

“Left him?” Eleanor asked. Her son Aldridge had met up with Lord Stanton the night before last, when both had been changing horses at a posting inn during that dreadful storm. “Went ahead of him to their country estate, rather, when Lord Stanton was called out on government business.”

“Is that what you heard, Your Grace?” Lady Stanton was now smiling with perverse satisfaction. “I think not.”

“We shall see,” Eleanor told her, coldly. “In the meanwhile, Lady Stanton, I am certain your son would not wish to hear that you have laundering the family linen in public.”

She retired with honours in the bout, but took a moment to say a prayer for the newly-weds. Where on earth could they have gone in such dreadful weather?

Lady Stanton is wrong. Her successor has not left her husband, but is on a mission to find her missing ship, or at least her undercover agent, who has escaped France and should have been aboard.

Lord Stanton’s Shocking Seaside Honeymoon: Cerise DeLand

She is so wrong for him.

Miss Josephine Meadows is so young. In love with life. His accountant in his work for Whitehall. Her father’s heir to his trading company—and his espionage network.

Lord Stanton cannot resist marrying her. But to ensure Wellington defeats Napoleon, they must save one of Josephine’s agents.

Far from home, amid a horrific storm, Stanton discovers that his new bride loves him dearly.

Can he truly be so right for her?

And she for him?

Storm & Shelter: A Bluestocking Belles Collection With Friends

When a storm blows off the North Sea and slams into the village of Fenwick on Sea, the villagers prepare for the inevitable: shipwreck, flood, land slips, and stranded travelers. The Queen’s Barque Inn quickly fills with the injured, the devious, and the lonely—lords, ladies, and simple folk; spies, pirates, and smugglers all trapped together. Intrigue crackles through the village, and passion lights up the hotel.

One storm, eight authors, eight heartwarming novellas.

Find out more on the Bluestocking Belles’ project page. 

Only 99c while on preorder. Published April 13th.

 

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Tea with fears for Letty

“But you will let us know if my niece contacts you, Your Grace.” The impertinent man was not asking, but demanding.

Eleanor allowed a haughty eyebrow to express her opinion of his attempt at command, but did not flatter him with a response. “My butler shall show you and your son out, Kent.”

“I am her betrothed,” the younger fool insisted. “I have a right to know where she is.”

Eleanor ignored him, exchanging a glance with her butler that had him summoning the footman from the hall to insist that the two men leave.

“I doubt it,” her friend Grace observed, as the door closed behind them. “I have seen Miss Lovell in the company of the younger Mr Kent, and I very much doubt she is amenable to his suit.”

“I would hope not,” Eleanor said. “I do not know Miss Lovell well, but I have formed a good opinion of her sense, and no woman of sense would take on an overgrown schoolboy like that one. He and that father of his would strip her fortune in no time.”

Grace frowned as her friend poured tea. They had been about to partake when the Kents had been announced, their message begging help to find a missing niece and ward guaranteeing them a few minutes of the duchess’s time. Their unpleasant personalities and the holes in the story they told meant she ignored the waiting refreshments and had them removed as quickly as possible, though not before she had told them, truthfully, that she had not heard from the missing heiress, and had no idea where she was.

“Did she come to you, Grace, or to Georgie or Sophia?” The Winshire women ran a village refuge for women who needed to escape intolerable situations, but Grace was shaking her head. “Not that I have heard. I imagine she is trying to reach her uncle Robert Lovell, who is in Brussels, I believe.”

“I hope she has reached him, or found refuge elsewhere,” Eleanor told her. “The storm in the North Sea is terrible, or so my son says.”

Letty Lovell is caught up in the storm, and her ship goes down in the sea near the village of Fenwick on Sea. She is rescued by an improbable hero in the first story of the new collection, Storm & Shelter, on preorder now.

An Improbable Hero

By Mary Lancaster

A runaway heiress, a mysterious stranger.

When Letty’s ship founders in a violent storm, she forges a rare bond with her rescuer.

Simon is a troubled man on a final, deadly mission—until the spirited yet soothing Letty makes him question everything. Hiding in plain sight among the refugees at The Queen’s Barque, Simon is more than capable of protecting them both. But when the floods recede, can either of them say goodbye?

Storm & Shelter: A Bluestocking Belles Collection With Friends

When a storm blows off the North Sea and slams into the village of Fenwick on Sea, the villagers prepare for the inevitable: shipwreck, flood, land slips, and stranded travelers. The Queen’s Barque Inn quickly fills with the injured, the devious, and the lonely—lords, ladies, and simple folk; spies, pirates, and smugglers all trapped together. Intrigue crackles through the village, and passion lights up the hotel.

One storm, eight authors, eight heartwarming novellas.

Find out more on the Bluestocking Belles’ project page. 

Only 99c while on preorder. Published April 13th.

 

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Inspiration for lovers

Back in the Regency, before printed cards became affordable and readily available, people still sent cards on Valentine’s Day–home made cards, as fancy as the person’s imagination and purse could manage, usually enhanced with a hand-written saying or poem.

And if you couldn’t write a poem to save your soul?

Then you were in luck, for a number of enterprising people put out pamphlets and even whole books with poems for your valentine.

This one is sweet:

Was there ever an urchin like Cupid so sly?
Well armed and mounted aloft in the sky;
He wounds, and we love, and then off he does fly.

That I am wounded, alas, is too true,
And that I can only be healed by you;
Is likewise a fact. Ah! What shall I do?

I’ll rely on thy pity, dear charmer of mine.
Sure you’ll not break the heart of thy poor Valentine!

You could find a poem addressed to the trade of your beloved:

So nice you dress your Lamb and Veal,
My passion I cannot conceal;
But plainly must declare to you,
I wish that you would dress me too.

When at your shop you take your stand,
Your knife and steel within each hand;
I listen to your pleasing cry,
Which sounds so shrill, d’ye buy, d’ye buy.

Now February shows his face;
And genial Spring comes on apace;
Like birds, ah! prithee let us join,
Upon the day of Valentine.

The books also provided suitable answers, also in rhyme–either a yeah or, as in the valentine to the nursery maid, below, a resounding nay.

So fond of children you are grown,
I wish you had some of your own,
I think my dear, if you’ll consent,
That I in that could give content;

How charming it would be to see,
A little baby, just like thee;
Say if you like this plan of mine,
As you’re today my Valentine.”

The Nursery Maid’s Answer:

“Pray Mr. Smack drive on, gee-ho,
With me our courtship will not do,
Your face is ugly, but your mind
Is ten times uglier, I find;

I am a girl that’s very nice,
And won’t be bought at your price;
Your Valentine I will not be,
So prithee think no more of me.

Buy Valentines From Bath for 99c, until Valentine’s Day only

To help you celebrate this lover’s day, we’re keeping the Bluestocking Belles’ 2019 collection of Regency novellas, https://bluestockingbelles.net/belles-joint-projects/valentines-from-bath/, at 99c until after Valentine’s Day. Follow the link for more details and buy links.

 

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Tea with Mrs Fishingham’s daughters

The Duchess of Haverford usually enjoyed welcoming this year’s crop of maidens on the Marriage Mart to afternoon tea. She had begun the practice for the sake of her legion of god-daughters, offering a relaxed environment in which the young ladies could form friendships with others they would meet at fashionable entertainments. Just the girls, away from their mothers’ fussing and with no need to compete for the attentions of prospective husbands. In London, she tended to devote an afternoon a month to the practice. Here in Bath, one event sufficed.

Today’s crop of young ladies seemed unusually frivolous and silly. Or perhaps Eleanor was growing old. As they took their turns to sit with her for a few minutes, she smiled and nodded at their stories of balls they had been to, bonnets they desired, and bouquets they had garnered from suitors. Here came another Fishingham child. She had already endured Miss Eugenia’s quotations from a book of etiquette and Miss Matilda’s boasts of more callers than either of her sisters.

Ah! She remembered this one from last year. The eldest, but the quietest. Miss Fishingham had been a wallflower at last night’s assembly, until the Master of Ceremonies presented Will Chadbourn as a dance partner. A nice boy, Chadbourn, newly come to his title. She had shown plenty of animation talking to him, and had been popular for the rest of the evening. “Did you enjoy yourself yesterday evening, Miss Fishingham?” Eleanor asked.

The girl looked up from the hands she had been studying. “Yes, thank you, Your Grace.”

Nothing more. Miss Fishingham had used up her stock of conversation last night, it seemed. “What did you and Chadbourn talk about with such enthusiasm?” Eleanor asked.

“Crop rotation, Ma’am. His lordship was good enough to explain a new succession planting method that ensures better crops.”

The unexpected answer made Eleanor smile. “And are you interested in crop rotation, Miss Fishingham?”

“Lord Chadbourn certainly made it more interesting than some of my later partners made tying a cravat or collecting snuff boxes,” the girl retorted.

Eleanor laughed out loud. “You have discovered the secret of Social success, Miss Fishingham. Listen attentively.”

“At the risk of terminal boredom,” said Miss Fishingham, then clapped a shocked hand over her mouth. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace. I quite forgot myself.”

“No apology required, my dear. If I have to hear a description of one more bonnet, I am at risk of dying of boredom myself. So tell me, Charis–it is Charis, is it not? What would you rather be doing than dancing at a assembly?”

 

***

Charis is the heroine in The Beast Next Door, my contribution to the box set Valentines from Bath.

If you haven’t read this one, now is a good time to grab a copy because the price is going up. (It is from two years ago)
Anything can happen in the magic of music and candlelight as couples dance, flirt, and open themselves to romantic possibilities. Problems and conflict may just fade away at a Valentine’s Day Ball.
Dukes, earls, tradesmen, and the occasional charlatan —alert to the possibilities as the event draws nigh—all appear in this collection of five terrific Valentine’s Day stories.
Reverts to $3.99 after Valentine’s Day. Buy it now for under a dollar. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MP7WV4T/ #99cents
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Spotlight on Dangerous Nativity

A Dangerous Nativity is high up the list of my all time favourite novellas. Meet the wonderful Will Chadbourn, Catherine Wheatley–the intriguing neighbour with the same surname as his ducal nephew, who lives on a small holding next door to his nephew’s estate, and three of Caroline Warfield’s signature children. You’ll chuckle at the nativity that Catherine’s brothers, aided by Will’s nephew, plan to stage with their farm animals. You’ll be as keen as Will to discover what lies behind the animosity between the two Wheatley families. You’ll love Will’s patience and his kindness. A Dangerous Nativity is a Do Not Miss This book. If you read no other Christmas stories this year, read this one.

It’s the fourth novella in Holiday Escapes, a collection of stories republished from the Bluestocking Belles 2015 box set, which has long been out of publication, and is now available again.

Read more about the box set and get it from one of the buy links here.

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Under the Mistletoe on Spotlight on Sunday

 

Margaret’s father means to ensure her safety by finding her a widower with two small children who needs a wife. Not that he’s forcing the match, but he agrees to Margaret acting as the man’s hostess so she has a chance to know him better. But Captain Morledge’s possessiveness gives her pause, and there’s something about him she just can’t like. It’s another guest, a friend from her childhood, that makes her heart pound. But, of course, Freddy is now Lord Beacham and she a lowly vicar’s daughter. A match between them would be impossible.

The more Freddy finds out about Captain Morledge, the more he worries for Margaret’s future. And it isn’t just that he wants her for his own.

Under the Mistletoe is the second novel in Holiday Escapes, a collection of stories republished from the Bluestocking Belles 2015 box set, which has long been out of publication.

Read more about the box set and preorder from one of the buy links here.

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Tea with Theo

Her Grace of Haverford paused in her journey at a property just outside of Oxford. Rambling and comfortable, and small by the standards of the houses where she was lady and chatelaine, it was a place she stopped at as often as possible. Dr and Mrs Wren always made her welcome. Dr Wren had been Jonathan’s tutor during that boy’s naughty career at Oxford, and Eleanor had taken to him and his wife from the moment she met them.

As always, Theodora Wren made her welcome, ushering her into the informal drawing room and sending a little maid for tea, refreshments, and her husband. “Theo, I must apologise for arriving unannounced,” Eleanor said. “I must be back on the road in half an hour, but I could not pass by your door without calling in.”

“I should think not indeed!” Theo replied. “You are looking well, Eleanor, if a little tired. How are your sons? And the dear little girls?”

They exchanged family news, and Eleanor was mightily entertained to hear of the romance of Theo’s niece Mary, who had come to escape one suitor, and finished marrying another. “Rick Redepenning,” Eleanor exclaimed. “I had not heard, Theo, and he is the son of my dear friend Lord Henry Redepenning, and cousin to my sister’s son, the Earl of Chirbury!”

Both women chuckled as Theo elaborated on the romance, including a rescue from a bird loft and the interesting incident involving a bride shape cut from gingerbread and a hungry horse.

***

You can meet Dr and Mrs Wren in Gingerbread Bride, a story in the collection Holiday Escapes, coming soon and currently on pre-order.