A Twist Upon a Regency Tale

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Covers for A Twist Upon a Regency Tale, season 2 (plus a Lyon’s Den book set in the Twist universe)

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Ruined heroine on WIP Wednesday

AI generated by hotspot.ai

And when I say ruined, I mean ruined. Poor Tammie. She was Tamsyn Roskilly long ago, and in the first scene of the book her boyhood love is thinking about going to London to find her. I’ve just started her book, Hold Me Fast, which is inspired by the folk tales Tam Lin, Thomas the Rhymer, and a host of stories about the Fairy Queen stealing away a musician to play at her feasts.

Every so often, Tammie Lind was struck by a sudden moment of clarity—a step into reality, as it were. Moments when she saw the company she was with, and her own behaviour, through the eyes of Tamsyn Roskilly. It was a sort of haunting, for Tamsyn had been killed long ago, smothered under Guy’s manipulations and Tammie’s own weaknesses.

Today, Tamsyn gazed with scorn at the fellow denizens of the laughing gas party. Ether was the drug of choice today. Tammie herself was as high as a kite, floating high above such mundane concerns as tomorrow’s rehearsal and the foolish fellow pawing at her. He was a peer of some sort. A boy with pretensions to being a songwriter. Guy would own him within a few weeks, and Tammie was part of his bait.

The boy was far too drunk on ether to do more than squeeze and prod. Tamsyn was indignant on her behalf. Silly Tamsyn. Tammie had not owned her own body in more years than she could, at the moment, count. She tried it anyway, numbering the years on her fingers, but she became lost in the mystery of whether a thumb counted as a finger and forgot the question.

She was vaguely aware that Guy was free from Tamsyn’s scorn. Tamsyn avoided looking at him. Wise Tamsyn. As usual, Guy sat a little apart, the untouchable Lord of Coombe, amused at the havoc he had caused. He seldom indulged in more than a taste of the various substances he supplied to his sycophants and the people, like Tammie, that he owned.

Tamsyn despised them all, and she hated Guy. Reality was overrated. Tammie no longer bothered with such emotions. She lined up for another turn at the gas, to nail Tamsyn’s soul back in the coffin of her imagination, but Guy stopped her with a word to the attendant.

“No more for Miss Lind. She has a rehearsal tomorrow. Tammie, time for bed.”

Tammie wanted to whine and howl. Instead, she turned obediently towards the stairs, but the sudden movement set her off balance, and as she steadied herself, she saw Guy nod towards the boy, who followed her to her room.

Tamsyn had made a mistake seven years ago, and since then, Tammie had paid and paid and paid. The boy was making a mistake now. Tammie felt a distant pity for him, but in the end, she would do as Guy ordered.

She took his hand. At least tonight was only the seeming of the thing. He would sleep off the ether and by the time he woke, she would be at rehearsal. Everyone would believe he had been favoured by the Devon Songbird. Perhaps he would believe it himself.

Sooner or later it would be true. Guy had used her that way before and she knew how it went. Blackmail material or bribery or simply yet another way to soften the boy’s resistance and break his spirit until he was putty in Guy’s hands.

Tammie was desperately trying to claw her way back to the floating sensation, but the harder she tried, the further it receded. Perhaps a shot of the gin she had hidden in her room. Guy had taken the last of her secret laudunum.

The boy threw himself at her as soon as she closed her bedchamber door. He clawed at her gown, increasingly frantic as the buttons refused to open for him. “Patience, my lord,” she soothed. “Lie down on the bed, and I shall prepare myself for you.”

He blinked at her, swaying on his feet, his surge of energy draining away.

“Lie down on the bed, my lord,” she repeated. She would sleep in the dressing room tonight. It would not be the first time.

She found the gin where she had hidden it, in a bag concealed within the folds of the new gown Guy had chosen for her to wear for a command performance at one of Society’s balls. Thank whatever diety looked after harlots and drunkards for this season’s fuller gowns.

Just a couple of fingers. She would be watched more closely now that he had her booked for so many performances. This would have to last until she could bribe or blackmail someone into supplying her with another bottle.

Without it, she would be dependent on Guy for each dose. He knew she needed a small drink of laudanum before a performance—on stage or in a drawing room. Just enough to quiet the jitters. Then, afterwards, if he was pleased with her performance, there would be something more powerful as a reward.

Tamsyn had tried to give up the substances that Guy insisted Tammie needed. More times than Tammie could count. Twice, she refused until he forced it down her throat. Once, she managed to evade her minders and hide until the craving turned to cramps and nausea, then vomiting as pain seized her whole body, then bad dreams so bizarre that they exceeded anything that she’d experienced while under the influence.

In one of those, the monsters that invaded the refuge she’d found proved to be men sent by Guy. Or perhaps the monsters were unreal and the invaders retrieved her while she was unconscious.

Whichever it was, Tammie woke up in the house Guy was renting at the time, in the half-floating half-dreaming state that said he had already given her something.

Tammie never allowed Tamsyn to run away again. Giving up opium and alcohol was hard enough, but worse was being brought back when she thought she was free.

It hurt too much to think about it. Tammie poured another two fingers. “You have had more than enough today,” Tamsyn scolded. “You will pass out if you drink that, too.”

“Fair point,” Tammie conceded.

She slid open the door. The boy was sound asleep on the bed, flat on his back, snoring. Tammie moved him so that he lay on his side, with a pillow behind his back to keep him from rolling. There. If he vomited, it would go on the sheets instead of drowning him. She patted his cheek. “Run as fast as you can, my lord,” she whispered. “The Earl of Coombe is not your friend. He is not anyone’s friend.”

Even if he had heard, he would not listen. She returned to the dressing room, tossed down the gin, stretched out on the maid’s pallet, and waited for oblivion.

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Tea with Arial and a story

The Duchess of Winshire had been one of the early supporters of Arial, Countess of Stancroft, as she attempted to establish herself in Society. The courageous lady had faced down gossip and scandal, fomented by her wicked cousin and her husband’s nasty step-mother. Her dignity and grace under fire had won Eleanor’s admiration and her heart, and her door was always open to Arial.

Today, Arial was seeking her help. “It is for my sister Rosalind, Your Grace,” she explained. “She has been abducted. My husband had ridden after her, and so has her betrothed, Lord Merrick. One of the neighbours saw her being taken. The silly old biddy did not raise the alarm until we after we had discovered that Rose was missing. We think we know where she has been taken, and I trust Peter and Merrick to get her back, but I need to manage the gossip! It is too late to put a gag on the neighbour, so we must instead, I think, make Rose out to be the heroine that she actually is. I will tell you the whole story, and then I hope I can count on your help.”

Eleanor did not hesitate. “You have my help, Arial, but please, tell me what actually happened.”

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This kidnapping takes place in Inviting the Wild, which is about going to the publisher in the next dayRose attempts to prevent the abduction of the elderly gentleman next door and is carried off as well. More about that closer to July, when the book is due for publication.

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Definitely not falling in love on WIP Wednesday

Ruadh had asked Lady Stancroft about their plans for the evening. He told himself that a social connection with the earl and his wife would be advantageous, but it was with the alluring sister that he imagined dancing. Indeed, with dancing in mind, he had asked his friend Nate, who had changed his bandages today, to add extra padding and bind the arm tightly so that bumping during vigorous exercise wasn’t likely to set it bleeding again.

And there she was, standing with the couple and a girl who might be a friend, or perhaps another sister. That girl doesn’t look like my Rose. He caught the mental slip. Not his Rose. He didn’t mean it in the sense of a deep connection. After all, he scarcely knew the lady. Lady Rosalind, he should have said.

His internal argument left him off-balance as he reached the family group, greeting Lady Stancroft first, then her lord, and lastly Lady Rosalind.

“Vivienne, may I present Major Douglas, the Master of Glencowan?” said Stancroft. “Douglas, another of my sisters, Lady Vivienne Ransome. My sister Pauline Turner is not here this evening.”

Lady Vivienne was a pretty girl in an ordinary sort of a way. The sort of girl he’d seen at every fashionable event in London to which he’d been enveigled by friends. Fair curls, pale skin, figure like a stick with only the smallest of bumps to indicate that she was female. He bowed politely. “I am delighted to meet you, Lady Vivienne. Lord Stancroft must be the envy of the gentlemen here to be the escort of three such lovely ladies.

Lady Stancroft wore yet another mask, this one ornamented with jewels that complemented those she wore at her wrist, her ears, and on her neck. Did she always wear the mask? He wondered what her story was.

But even as he answered Stancroft’s question about his reception at his grandfather’s house, his eyes kept sliding back to Lady Rosalind who was, in his opinion, the finest jewel in Stancroft’s collection. “I shall return tomorrow, and we shall see what happens,” he finished explaining.

Should he ask Lady Rosalind for a dance? He was certain she must have already given all of them away, and indeed, a man had just asked Lady Vivienne and been turned away with a charming disclaimer that she had no dances left.

When the man walked away without speaking to Lady Rosalind, his assumption was confirmed. Then the orchestra began to play, a man whisked Lady Vivienne off to the dance floor, and Lady Rosalind remained, chatting quietly with her sister-in-law.

“Lady Rosalind,” Ruadh said, hurriedly, before he could talk himself out of it, “would you honour me with this dance?” Now she would tell him that she did not dance tonight or some such claptrap.

But she didn’t. She smiled and said, “I would like that, Major Douglas.”

It was a quadrille, a dance performed by four couples, and they quickly found a group of three pairs lacking a fourth. She danced with grace and enthusiasm, her bountiful breasts performing an interesting jig of their own that made him grateful to be in a kilt, so his body’s response was concealed.

He mostly managed to keep his eyes on hers, rather than letting them slip below her neck, and was rewarded by her lovely eyes, which in the light of the candles danced with golden flames as she smiled at him.

The dance was vigorous, so they were unable to talk. The arm protested some of the movements, but not enough to inhibit him. As he walked the lady back to her brother’s side, he had just enough time to beg her for the supper dance. He was surprised when it was available. What was wrong with the gentlemen of London? He couldn’t understand why her every dance was not taken, as her sister said hers was.

Some remnant of his mother’s teaching remained with him enough that he did his duty by other young ladies while waiting for his next dance with Lady Rosalind. To come to the ball and dance with only one lady was to call attention to her, and to raise expectations with her, her family and the onlookers.

The idea didn’t panic him. He poked at it as if it was a tooth that had once been sore, waiting for the wince and the recoil. Was he seriously considering Lady Rosalind as a possible wife? He was too old and too broken. He didn’t know her well enough. She was too young for him—not young enough to be his daughter, but still much younger. She was English, and close to her family, but his wife would have to live in Galloway.

He was only here for a dance or two. That was all there could be.

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Spotlight on Weave Me a Rope

He is imprisoned. She is cast out. But neither will give up on their love.

When the Earl of Spenhurst declares his love for a merchant’s niece, he is locked away in a tower. Spen won’t get out, the marquess his father says, until he agrees to an arranged marriage.

After the marquess unceremoniously ejects Cordelia Milton from his country mansion, she is determined to rescue her beloved, but it all goes horribly wrong.

She needs time to recover from her injuries, and Spen has been moved across the country under heavy guard. It seems impossible for two young lovers to overcome the selfish plans of two powerful peers, but they won’t give up.

Published 26 January 2023

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CP72WDH8

Book 5 in A Twist Upon a Regency Tale

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Tea with Cordelia

The Duchess of Haverford had formed the habit of holding an afternoon tea early in the Season for the current year’s debutantes. It gave the girls an opportunity to meet one another away from the endless manoeuvring of the marriage mart and out from under the thumbs of their mothers and chaperones, who were having tea in another room down the hall.

It also allowed Eleanor, the duchess, to discover likely protégés and possible problems. Every year-group of debutantes had them. The girls who had the potential to join the ranks of the ladies whose work for diverse charities contributed so much to the wellbeing of the country their husbands governed. The girls whose sole focus was themselves, and who would tear others down in order to promote their own interests.

Eleanor circled the room, attempted to speak to each girl in turn. “Let me see,” she said to the latest, a very pretty young little lady with light brown curls. “You are Miss Cordelia Milton, are you not.”

The lady lifted her chin proudly and somewhat defensively. “I am, Your Grace. I am the daughter of Josiah Milton.”

Eleanor nodded. No shrinking violet this one. “I am acquainted with Mr Milton. We serve on some of the same committees.” Mr Milton was a self-made man, rising from humble beginning to become one of the richest men in the United Kingdom. Miss Milton was his only child.

Miss Milton’s face lit up with a lovely smile. “My father has mentioned you, Your Grace. He has nothing but praise for your influence as a trustee of the orphanages he also supports. Also the asylum for women.”

A safe haven for wayward women, facing the consequences of the lifestyle many had not adopted out of choice. The world they lived in was not kind to women who had children out of wedlock, no matter how they arrived at that unhappy state.

“Do you also have an interest in such causes, Miss Milton?” Eleanor asked.

The girl nodded with another of her delightful smiles. “My father says that we have been blessed with more than our share of riches, and that we ought to share what we can in a way that will do the most good.”

An excellent attitude, and one that was rare among the aristocracy. Mr Milton clearly intended his daughter educated to marry into the upper sort. She certainly had had the education, and was ladylike in appearance and manners. No one would sniff, either, at her dowry or her beauty.

But whether the young men currently on the market could get over the young lady’s working class connections was another matter. Perhaps someone from the gentry would be less likely to look down on Miss Miller for her antecedents.

Eleanor resolved to do what she could to smooth the girl’s path.

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Cordelia is falls in love with the son and heir of a marquess, and their road to happiness is marred by the snobbishness that Eleanor derides.

 

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Inauspicious first meeting on WIP Wednesday

They came from the shadows, half a dozen men in layers of dirty rags, with knives or broken planks in their hands and hunger in their eyes.

Reuben, their footman, moved in front of Rose, who was a step ahead of Pauline. Harris, the groom, passed the sisters to join Reuben. He muttered, for their ears only, “Get back, my ladies, and if you see an opportunity, run.”

Rose would have stepped up beside him, ready to fight, but Pauline grabbed her arm and pulled her back. “We have to help them,” she objected.

Pauline did not agree. “The biggest help we can be is to stay out of their way, and escape when we have the chance. They can make his own escape if they do not have to worry about us.”

She did not say, but Rose knew, that it was Rose’s fault they were on London’s streets in this unsavoury area after dark. But how could she have left the hospital earlier? Private Brown had asked for her. He was not expected to survive the night. Rose could do little but hold his hand, but that helped, or so Mr. Parslow, the superintendent, believed.

So Rose sent home the carriage her brother had sent for her, and her maid. She could not see any reason why they should sit up all night. Which had brought them here, in the early hours of the morning, facing murder or worse for the sake of the clothes they stood up in and whatever price she and Pauline might fetch in the brothels, for neither of them was foolish enough to carry valuables with them on an errand into this part of town.

Harris had a two-barrel pistol, which was making the footpads think twice.

“Is it worth being shot?” Reuben was arguing, persuasively. “Harris is a good shot, so at least two of you will not survive. Just let us go our way and no one needs to be hurt.”

“I am sorry, Pauline. I never meant for this.”

Pauline squeezed Rose’s hand. “You did not ask me to bring the carriage back to get you, and you did not arrange for the carriage axle to collapse.” Which it had done five streets from the hospital and only three from the broader streets patrolled by the watch.

The footpads’ leader had a counter offer. “How ’bout you gie us all the morts’ glimmers and you can go your way?”

Glimmers, Rose guessed, must be jewelry. “I am not wearing any jewelry,” she told Pauline. “Are you?”

“No, and I do not have money with me, either.”

I would rather die rather than be sold into a brothel, Rose decided. She put her hand into the pocket she wore under her gown, a slit in the side seam giving discrete access. At least Private Brown would not be disappointed when she did not return tomorrow. He had breathed his last some fifteen minutes before Pauline arrived with the carriage.

She unfolded the object she retrieved from the pocket, extracting the blade from the bone handle to give her a small but perfectly serviceable dagger. “I have this,” she announced. “If I kill my sister and myself, will the clothing you can retrieve from our bodies be enough to compensate for this area being overrun with Red Breasts for the next few weeks, until they find every last one of you? For we will be missed, and my brother knows where we went.”

The footpads went into a huddle, most of them still keeping an eye on their annoyingly uncooperative prey.

“I’m not sure you should have done that,” said Pauline, and Harris, the groom, groaned. “Not a good idea, Lady Rose.”

In the next moment, Rose found out why, as the footpads’ leader shouted, “Take the skirts alive, especially the mouthy one!” Four of them hurled themselves towards poor Reuben and Harris, and two began skirting around the fight that ensued to grab Rose and Pauline.

Rose had no time to spare a glance for the servants, though she heard a shot. She was determined not to be taken. The man who attacked her jerked back, screaming imprecations, his hand spraying blood. The second man took advantage of Rose’s distraction to seize Pauline, who hit him with her umbrella. He grasped the umbrella and ripped it from her hands, then stumbled backwards.

Rose took a moment to realise that a large someone in dark clothes and a cape had dragged the man away from Pauline and swung him head first into a wall. A meaty hand landing on her shoulder was her only warning that the assailant she had cut had gone back on the attack. Before she even had time to struggle, the caped man had punched him hard enough to hurl him backwards.

One of the other footpads shouted, “It’s the Wolf!” In moments, three of them were running. The two that had attacked Rose and Pauline lay where the caped man had put them. One of the servants’ attackers was also down, presumably shot, but so was Harris. Reuben was picking himself up from the ground. As far as Rose could see in the poor light, he was unharmed.

She hurried to Harris, kneeling to feel for his pulse. As she did, he groaned. Thank goodness! He was alive. “Harris, can you hear me?” she asked.

“Lady Rosalind.” He caught back a yelp as he rolled to get his legs under him. “Reuben, lad, a hand,” he begged.

As she got up from her knees, Rose caught back her objection to him moving. She could not examine him in the dark, and they needed to get off these streets as quickly as possible.

Harris said out loud what she had been thinking. “We need to get the ladies out of here before they come back to get their men.”

The footpads! She had forgotten them. She took two steps towards the one who had been punched, and who was now groaning. The man they called the Wolf stopped her. “Stay back! If he can he will use you as a shield, and your servants suffering will be for nothing.”

Oh dear. “But they have been hurt,” she pointed out. “I do not like to just leave them.”

“We will leave them to their own kind,” Pauline decided. “We cannot risk Harris and Reuben for the sake of men who would have killed us or sold us without a second thought. Come along, Rose.”

“You are right,” Rose agreed, falling obediently into step with her sister. Reuben came behind, one arm around Harris to support him. The Wolf ranged around them, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, and sometimes walking beside them for a few paces.

In the moonlight, filtered as it was through London’s fog, she could not see more of him than she had from the beginning. A large man, broad and tall. Dark clothes covered by a thigh-length cape. Try as she might, she could not see his face, even when he turned his face towards her to deliver a disparaging remark. He had an arsenal of them.

“This is no place for ladies of your kind.”

“What would your family do if you were killed or worse?”

“You put your servants at risk. Did you think of that before you planned your little jaunt?”

All said in the accents of a gentleman and in a pleasant voice that sounded as if he might sing tenor.

Watch out for Inviting the Wolf, due to Dragonblade Publishing at the end of this month. It is inspired by Little Red Riding Hood. (With a Jude Knight twist or two)

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1792 in England

The book I am about to send off to the publishers is set in 1792–a bit out of my usual era.

Most of my books are set in the Regency, broadly speaking. Technically, the Regency ran from February 1811, when the Prince of Wales was named Regent for his father the King, to January 1820, when the King died and Prince George inherited the Crown.

In common practice, the term is used to mean a longer period, from somewhere around 1795 until the start of the reign of Queen Victoria, in June 1837.

So The Sincerest Flattery isn’t covered by even the longest definition.

It was three years after the storming of the Bastille, but at the time of the story, the King of France, his wife, and his children were still alive, and not yet in prison. The French National Assembly, set up in 1789,were still debating the shape of government, with those who support some form of constitutional monarchy unable to find common ground with one another, let alone those who want a republic. This impasse ended in August 1792, after the events in my story, with the arrest of the king for treason. In January 1793, he was tried and executed.

After the king’s execution, declarations of war poured into France from various European powers and the United Kingdom (who at the time would not have thanked you for considering them European–the more things change, the more they remain the same). From then until the end of the Napoleonic era, France was at war for all but a couple of short respites.

In June 1793, the extremists took over. They ordered more aristocrats to the guillotine. The Reign of Terror had begun. It looms large in historical fiction and historical romance, but lasted around a year.

Political instability continued the Directorate was formed in 1795, their power supported by the army which was now led by a young general named Napoleon Bonaparte.

In 1792, the fashionable Englishwoman was not yet wearing what we think of as Regency fashion. Nor was she wearing the huge ornate gowns and towering wigs fashionable at time her mother made her debut. Instead, waists were still on the natural waistline–though by 1795 they had crept up to the Empire line (so-called because it was favoured by Josephine Bonaparte, and therefore by the women of the French court). They wouldn’t head back towards the waist again for another twenty-five years.

She wasn’t powdering her hair, though, or wearing a wig. Hair powder had already become unpopular with the most fashionable before the British government put a tax on it.

 

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Escaping the family on WIP Wednesday

Lia went upstairs, the name Percy had called her running through her mind. My golden girl. She knew, of course, that Aurelia meant the golden one, but nobody had ever before suggested that the name was appropriate for her. Her mother had made the name distasteful by the way she said it, as if her disappointment with her daughter began with her name. But she didn’t mind Lance saying it, and Percy’s interpretation almost reconciled her entirely.

As she passed the second floor, she stopped to find out where her mother was, adopting the simple but effective tactic of asking the maids. Mama was no longer with the duke, but she and Father had retreated into their rooms. Since they could not be depended on to stay there, Lia hurried up to the third floor to ask after Miss Walton, who was resting and comfortable, or so said Miss Hatfield when she came to the door in answer to Lia’s knock.

“Do you or Miss Walton need anything,” Lia asked? “My mother has put me in charge of seeing to your comfort, so please let me know what I can provide to help you.” Remembering Percy’s twist on her mother’s words made her smile again. To think she had been afraid that marriage would just be a move from one prison to another!

Before she returned to the main stairs, Pansy arrived. “His lordship suggested we left the house by the servants’ stairs, my lady. He’s a right one, is Lord Thornstead, isn’t he, my lady? He and Lord Lancelot will be waiting by the kitchen door.”

They were, too, armed with enough umbrellas and rain capes to go around. “Let’s check the sheep,” Percy suggested. “I have a familial interest in the lambs that were born while I was in charge.”

Lia didn’t mind where they walked. When her mother was in residence, the air inside the house was harder to breathe and the knowledge that her mother might send for her at any moment weighed her down. Stepping outside allowed the weight to roll off her back, and she was able to take a full breath for the first time since Mama and Father returned from Berwick yesterday evening.

“We will not stay out for too long,” she decreed, against her own wishes. She must remember that the gentlemen were not long out of their sickbeds. “I will not be responsible for you becoming sick again. What would His Grace say?”

“Something sarcastic,” Lance suggested. “Seriously, though, if we choose to walk out in the cold and become ill again, His Grace will blame us. You are not responsible for what other people do, Lia.”

“I am apparently responsible for every misstep my brothers make,” Lia retorted.

Percy took her hand. “They cannot blame you when you are married to me and gone,” he pointed out.

Even through the gloves, his touch set off what she was beginning to think of as “the Percy effect.” Every time he touched her, she felt strange. Restless. Tingly. When he placed his bare hands around her bare hands in the library, and especially when he kissed them, she had had the mad urge to kiss his, or perhaps to kiss his cheek. Or more.

She had seen people around the estate kissing. By accident, such as when she came round a corner and a footman and maid leapt apart and tried to pretend they were working. Or when she entered the stable without warning and surprised a groom and a dairy maid in a passionate embrace.

At the party that celebrated the end of shearing, too. She was never allowed to stay past dark, but even before dark, drink dissolved inhibitions and propriety, and several couples were less hidden in the shadows than they thought.

Kissing had something to do with making babies. Mama became distressed and angry when she asked about it, and even Miss Walton refused to discuss the matter, saying any questions would be better addressed to her future husband.

Lia had been frustrated by the answer, but now she thought it was wise. She would ask Percy at the first opportunity, and she knew he would not laugh at her ignorance, but would give her a proper answer. She could trust Percy.

 

This one is from The Sincerest Flattery. The picture isn’t quite appropriate, but the period is correct.

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Tea with Lia and Percy

They met in the little park opposite the confectioners, The Pot and Pineapple. The Duchess of Haverford had brought her two sons, as promised. The Marquis of Aldridge, a boy of eleven, bowed in proper form and followed that with a brilliant smile.

He has his father’s–our father’s–charm in full measure, Lia thought. He looked like His Grace, too. Fair hair, hazel eyes, a figure that was still lean young boy but that bid fair to be as tall and well formed as his–as their father’s one day.

The duchess presented her younger son Lord Jonathan, a sturdy toddler who would look like his brother and father when he grew, and a youth of about her age with dark curls but the same hazel eyes. “And this is David, Lady Aurelia,” Her Grace said, when she introduced him. “Half-brother to my sons and to you.”

Lia had, she supposed, been fortunate to take after her mother, with her dark brown hair, but where the grey eyes came from, she did not know. Her father also had dark hair, and fair locks might have raised more than a few eyebrows.

The young marquess must have been thinking along the same lines. “I expected you to look like him,” he said. “We all do, except that David has black hair.”

“Lady Aurelia looks like her mother did at that age,” said the duchess, “or so I have been told.”

“Mama says that I cannot acknowledge you as my sister,” Aldridge announced. “Which is stupid, because everyone knows. But we can be friends, can we not?”

“Of course, we can,” Lia agreed.

“Good,” Aldridge agreed. “For your husband and I shall be dukes one day, and it is hard to have friends when you are going to be a duke, Lady Aurelia, Lord Thornstead.” He sighed, his eyes far too world-weary for an eleven year old. “Everyone wants something from a duke’s heir.”

“Friends then,” said Percy, holding out his hand. “I am Percy and my wife prefers family to call her Lia.”

The smile flashed again, even more brilliant. “Percy and Lia,” Aldridge repeated.

“Jonathan wants cake,” announced the toddler. Which, since The Pot and Pineapple was just across the road, Lord Jonathan was able to have. In fact, they all enjoyed some of the confections from the famous shop, and had a comfortable coze in the park.

Percy’s close relationship with his brothers and sisters had made Lia–not jealous, exactly, for they had welcomed her into their warm arms. Wistful was the right word. Her own family was broken–her mother and the man she had always thought to be her father at constant war, her brothers taught to regard her with suspicion and scorn. Now, perhaps, she had a family of her own. Brothers who wanted to be friends. It was a good day.

***

(Percy and Lia are hero and heroine of The Sincerest Flattery, coming in April 2024.)