A Raging Madness

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Spotlight on The Golden Redepennings: Books 1 to 4

Published on 24 March: The box set of the first four Golden Redepenning novels. It’s only $4.99 until the end of the month. In February, it will revert to $9.99, which is still a great price for four long novels.

Order your copy today: https://books2read.com/GRbox-set

Here’s more about the series: The Golden Redepennings

And here are the covers of the four books included in the set:

And, finally, one of the early reviews.

I had read books 1 and 2 several years ago. It’s especially good to binge read such a series. I had forgotten how obnoxious and cynical Alex was at times in book 1 – Farewell to Kindness. In book 2 – A Raging Madness – he takes on the role of knight errant and is less bitter than in book 1. (Well, of course. He has admired Ella for years.)

In all 4 stories there are secrets to be revealed (including surprises for the reader) and many obstacles to overcome, including the reluctance of the main characters to voice their feelings for the other. I felt transported in time and place by these well-paced and carefully crafted stories.

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Backlist spotlight on A Raging Madness

Their marriage is a fiction. Their enemies want them destroyed before they can make it real.

“Envy is a raging madness that cannot bear the wealth or fortune of others.”
François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld

Ella survived an abusive and philandering husband, in-laws who hate her, and public scorn. But she’s not sure she will survive love. It is too late to guard her heart from the man forced to pretend he has married such a disreputable widow, but at least she will not burden him with feelings he can never return.

Alex understands his supposed wife never wishes to remarry. And if she had chosen to wed, it would not have been to him. He should have wooed her when he was whole, when he could have had her love, not her pity. But it is too late now. She looks at him and sees a broken man. Perhaps she will learn to bear him.

In their masquerade of a marriage, Ella and Alex soon discover they are more well-matched than they expected. But then the couple’s blossoming trust is ripped apart by a malicious enemy. Two lost souls must together face the demons of their past to save their lives and give their love a future.

See more and buylinks.

Extract

They had history together, not all of it good

He had embarrassed Ella, which was not well done of him. Particularly since she would need to share his bed this night. Just as well Farnham could not possibly know that. The lousy carbuncle would undoubtedly share the news that Alex Redepenning had been seen with a woman in Stoke-on-Trent but would not be able to identify Ella; would not know that Alex and Ella had been living together since she turned up in his room at the inn.

Living together in the chastest of senses, but Society would say he had compromised her beyond all saving, except by marriage. He was surprised at how tempting that sounded! He’d vowed never to marry except for love, and had sworn off love by his early twenties: a bad experience with an older woman, and then with Ella.

The arrogant cub he’d been resented her choosing Melville instead of him, though he’d never let his interest in her show, certain she would find him as unworthy as Lady Carrington had.

Yes, marrying Ella would be a blessing, not a burden. For Alex. But it would not be fair to Ella.

She was moving around the small cabin, brewing his willow bark tea and pouring him a cup, retrieving the canister of tea leaves she had purchased at the market and brewing another pot, bringing him a cup of that, its fragrant delicacy taking away the bitterness of the willow bark.

If he drank it all, he would need to ask for her help to relieve himself. Just to pass him the pot and perhaps hold a blanket for his privacy. Not the prurient fantasies that flashed across his mind and stirred his recalcitrant member. Simmer down, he told it. Not for you.

She poured another mug of tea and took it to Big Dan at the tiller, receiving the man’s soft thanks.

Alex let his eyelids fall and watched Ella through his lashes as she moved around the cabin finding places to stow their possessions, every movement graceful and economic. She had blown out the candles she’d lit to illuminate her work on his leg, but plenty of light entered the cabin from the doorway and the small windows on either side of the boat. She slipped glances at him from time to time, the colour coming and going in her face. What was she thinking?

Was she as attracted to him as he was to her? Or was she just embarrassed at the situation in which they found themselves? He had never been able to read her. Sometimes, he was sure she saw him merely as a friend. Sometimes, not even that, though those occasions were mostly his own fault.

How often had he looked up across a campfire, or a room in a scurvy little billet in some benighted village on the fringes of a war, or a bedside where someone in his command lay depending on Ella’s care and met her eyes? And seen in them an echo of the wanting in his own?

Was it his imagination; his own longing misinterpreting an innocent glance? Even if it were not, she had never once, since her ill-judged marriage, by word or deed given him reason to think she would act on that attraction.

Only a reprobate would take advantage of a woman under his protection, especially a woman persecuted as Ella had been. Alex could not be such a scoundrel, but perhaps Jasper had unwittingly done him a favour. Because even with the increase in pain, his physical response to Ella’s presence had proven beyond doubt that the injury had not made a eunuch of him as he had feared. The pain would be a timely and much needed reminder to keep his hands and other bodily parts to himself.

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Tea with Kitty

The Duchess of Haverford sat straight in her chair and examined Lady Kitty over her tea cup. Long gone was the little girl who once visited Haverford Castle in Margate, trailing behind her eldest sister, and being solicitous of the next in age, dear little Meg, whose mind had stalled forever in childhood. Now in her twenties, Kitty had also left behind the debutante, thrilled with the gowns and glitter, loving the dancing, engaging with every sign of enthusiasm in the endless round of entertainments.

She had never shown much interest in the marriage-mart reasons behind the Season, and — for her — the gloss faded from the social whirl quite quickly. She’d had suitors aplenty. Her Grace had witnessed it for herself, and Kitty’s sister had confirmed that they’d received a number of formal offers. But Kitty refused them all. Was it because of the close friendship she’d formed with Euronyme Redepenning? Mia, as she was called? Kitty and the wife of Lord Henry Redepenning’s youngest son were the same age, had many of the same interests, and had been inseparable these past five years.

But Mia had left London this very week, sailing to South Africa to be with her husband. And with her husband’s mistress, which seemed very peculiar to the duchess.

How to begin? “Kitty, my dear, what are your thoughts on marriage?”

“It is a venerable institution with much to recommend it,” the younger woman replied, a smile dancing in her eyes.

The duchess tipped her head in acknowledgement of the quip, but raised one eyebrow.

Kitty seemed to come to some kind of a decision, for she gave one sharp nod. “Aunt Eleanor, I would like to marry, but I think it unlikely. I will not marry where I do not trust, and I trust few people, I regret to say. My family. My friends. How does one become friends with a man in our world, where every interaction is governed by rules and monitored by prying eyes?”

Unconventional, but perceptive. A man who could not be trusted was the source of much unhappiness, as the duchess knew all too well. “You are young to be so suspicious,” she commented.

Kitty put her cup down on the table beside her chair and leant forward. ” Has anyone ever told you about what happened between me and the Earl of Selby?”

The incident between Selby and Kitty happened in Farewell to Kindness, where the heroine is Kitty’s sister, Anne. Alex, who appears in the excerpt below, is the hero of A Raging Madness, next in the series. Both books are discounted for the rest of May, to celebrate the publication of the third novel in the series, The Realm of Silence, which is already available on my bookshop and comes out everywhere else tomorrow.

Clink on the links for blurbs and buy buttons.

Farewell to Kindness is currently discounted to 99c wherever it is sold as an ebook.

A Raging Madness is available with a discount of $2.75 off the list price of $3.99 on my bookshop only (the Buy from Jude Knight button). Use the discount code KWMS6GNW at checkout.

Excerpt from Farewell to Kindness

“And is Miss Kitty with Miss Meg?” John asked.

“No, indeed. She went off to bed a good ten minutes ago. You go too, Price.”

With a sense of alarm out of all proportion to the circumstances, John left. He had no reason, beyond Jonno’s concerns and a stirring uneasiness, to run down the eastern stairs instead of up the servant stairs to his own room in the attic. But run he did.

On the floor below, he stopped. The ladies’ bedchambers, including Miss Kitty’s, were mostly to the left. Acting on instinct, he turned right, to pass the room where Miss Ruth had slept.

He stopped as he came level with the closed door. Something moved inside. A struggle? Thumping and muffled cries. He tried the handle. Locked. Shouting himself in his alarm, he hurled himself against the door. Once, twice. The third time it burst open, and he fell through the doorway, catching himself with his hands before he crashed to the floor.

As he picked himself up, the Earl of Selby cast him a fierce look.

“Get out,” Selby ordered. The dirty swine held Miss Kitty pinned to the bed with his upper body, one hand muffling her cries while the other fumbled at the buttons of his breeches. “Get the hell out, man. This is none of your business.”

John grabbed the bastard by the shoulder, swung him around and planted a fist straight into his superior nose, sending him lurching backwards.

Miss Kitty slithered quickly off the bed, and ran to the door, where Miss Mia—who must have been woken by the shouting—wrapped an arm around her.

John put himself between Lord Selby and the doorway.

“You hit me!” Lord Selby said, incredulous. “You broke my nose!”

John figured he probably had. Certainly if the pain in his hand was anything to go by, he must have caused considerable damage to the bastard’s face.

“I’ll see you swing for this,” Selby hissed. “Striking a peer is a capital offence. You’ll swing for this.”

“Rubbish,” Miss Mia said, from the doorway. “You were drunk and you bumped into the bedpost. We all saw it.”

From below came a stentorian bellowing. “What’s going on up there? Jonno, get up those stairs and report, man.”

“Mrs Redepenning, this man attacked me.”

Miss Mia thrust out her chin. “Lord Selby, the Earl of Chirbury’s trusted friend protected a guest in his Lord’s house.”

Selby tried to dodge past John, who blocked him. Jonno came running along the hall and skidded to a stop behind Miss Kitty and Miss Mia. “Major wants to know what’s happening.”

“This man attacked me!” Selby roared. “I want him arrested!”

“This so-called gentleman attacked Miss Haverstock,” Miss Mia interrupted, “and Price came to her rescue.”

“Stop saying that,” Selby commanded. “I intend to marry the girl. There’s no need for all this fuss.”

The two women looked at him, shocked. “Marry?” Miss Kitty said.

Selby smiled, looking smug even with the blood dripping from his nose. “I’ll wager you didn’t think to catch a peer, did you?”

Her eyes flashing, Miss Kitty took a step away from Miss Mia’s protective arms. “Marry? Me? Marry you?”

Selby looked even more smug. “Of course you’re surprised, a village girl becoming a Countess, especially one with such a questionable past. But yes, I’ll marry you. What do you think of that? That changes things, doesn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man in England,” Kitty hissed. “You slimy, disgusting slug, you.”

“Here now!” The smug look gone, Selby frowned. “You have to marry me. I’ve compromised you.”

“I don’t see any compromise,” Miss Mia argued. “Kitty has been with me the whole time.”

“But I have witnesses,” Selby looked at John, and at Jonno.

“I didn’t see nowt,” John said. “Did you Jonno?”

Jonno, a grin burgeoning, shook his head.

“Jonno, a hand here!” The peremptory command came from the stair landing. Jonno glanced in that direction, then ran toward it.

Miss Mia, looking after him, said, “Alex, how did you get up the stairs?”

“On my behind,” the Major replying, hobbling into view, leaning heavily on Jonno. “What’s all the noise?”

“Thank God you’re here,” Selby said, importantly. “You can sort this out.”

Major Alex let Jonno help him to a chair. Miss Mia led Miss Kitty into the room, her arm still protectively around her, keeping as far away from Selby as they could.

“All right,” Major Alex said, “what’s going on?”

Several voices started at once, and he roared, “Quiet! Selby. You first.”

“I want this man arrested. He hit me,” Selby commanded.

“A good one, too,” Major Alex observed. “I take it he deserved it, John?”

“He was trying to rape Miss Haverstock, sir,” John replied quietly.

“I’ve already said I’ll marry the girl,” Selby interrupted, impatiently. “He hit me, do you hear? He hit a peer. That’s a hanging offence.”

“Do you have witnesses to that, Selby?”

“Well, yes, Mrs Redepenning, and Miss Haverstock. They both saw him.”

The two ladies shook their heads. “I wasn’t even here,” Miss Kitty said, smiling at Miss Mia. “Mia and I were in her room, playing chess.” Miss Mia nodded. “Price wasn’t here, either, Alex. Lord Selby imagined the whole thing after he walked into the bedpost.”

Major Alex nodded. “Fair enough.”

Selby spluttered. “What do you mean, fair enough? It’s all lies. I’ve compromised the girl and I have to marry her! She has to marry me.”

“She doesn’t want to, Selby.”

“But… I’m an Earl. She would be a Countess.”

“You’re a slug,” Mia commented. “A slimy, disgusting slug, just as Kitty said.”

Major Alex’s eyes lit with appreciation. “That would seem to be a clear no, Selby,” he told the fuming Earl. “Jonno, John, the Earl appears to be shaky after his accident. Take him to his room and lock him in. Bexley’s valet has been doing for him, hasn’t he? Tell the man to pack the Earl’s effects. He will be leaving first thing in the morning.”

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Tea with Ella

 

Susan had allowed Ella to refuse most of the invitations that poured in after the shocking incident at Lady Sutton’s soiree. Everyone wanted to meet the new Lady Renshaw, who had been drugged and assaulted in the midst of a party attended by half the ton. Ella had no desire to meet their avid eyes and turn away their eager intrusive questions, and Alex and Susan agreed. However, “You must appear at some of these,” Susan had said, “so that people know you have nothing of which to be ashamed.”

But Ella was ashamed. She had lied, and intended to keep on lying. Every time someone addressed her as ‘Lady Renshaw’ she had to subdue a flinch. But Alex and his father had come up with the fiction of their marriage to protect her, and she could not, would not shame them by exposing the untruth.

Still, the knowledge she was an imposter made her reluctant to face her hostess today. This was one invitation Susan insisted on her accepting, assuring her that the Duchess of Haverford was a kind woman, and one of the most influential of Society’s great ladies.

She stood as the great lady entered the room. “Lady Renshaw, how kind you are to come to see me,” the duchess said, taking Ella’s hand and directing a kiss in towards the general vicinity of Ella’s cheek. “Now. How can I help you and young Alex? He is, you know, one of my favourite godsons, and everyone will tell you I am godmother to half the ton. Take a seat, my dear, and tell me how you have your tea.”

Ella let the duchess’s warmth and evident affection for Alex washed over her and began to relax.

Excerpt from A Raging Madness

Ella, watching Alex treating a crowd of admiring females to his best imitation of a man pleased with his lot, was surprised when Mrs Fullerton spoke at her elbow. “Silly hens. He is being polite, of course, but I dare say our new Lord Renshaw is hating every minute.”

Ella controlled her surge of irritation. She had no place objecting to Mrs Fullerton’s possessive ‘our’, or her implicit claim to understand Alex. Diplomatically, she replied, “I was surprised at how quickly the news had travelled. He only heard this afternoon.”

“I owe you an apology, Lady Melville. I was very rude when we last met. I was jealous, you see. Alex never looked at me the way he looks at you.” Mrs Fullerton gave a deep sigh. “But one must accept reality. He has eyes only for you, and I was quite horrid. I am ashamed of myself, truly.”

She seemed sincere, her eyes meeting Ella’s, a tentative and apologetic smile just touching the corner of her lips. Ella suppressed the urge to ask how Alex looked at her and gave way to the impulse not to correct Mrs Fullerton’s misconception about Ella’s and Alex’s relationship.

“We all do things we later regret, Mrs Fullerton. Think nothing of it.”

“You are very gracious.” Mrs Fullerton lifted her glass to her lips. “Bother!” Somehow, she had managed to spill quite a large splash of the drink on one shoulder of her gown, a red spreading stain against the pastel green. “Lady Melville, I hate to impose, but could you…”

What could Ella say? She accompanied Mrs Fullerton to the ladies’ retiring room, helped her sponge out the liquid, and waited by the door to the large drawing room while Mrs Fullerton went out to the front hall to retrieve a shawl to cover her shoulders.

She returned with a footman in tow. “Have you tried the punch, Lady Melville? It is strongly spiced but hot and quite pleasant.”

She collected two glasses from the footman’s tray and pushed one into Ella’s hand.

“Drink up, Lady Melville, and then we shall go and rescue Lord Renshaw.”

It was over spiced, but Ella did not wish to be rude. She took a large sip and another.

An instant before the drug in the drink hit her, triumph flared in Mrs Fullerton’s eyes, and Ella knew she had made a mistake. She opened her mouth to shout for Alex, but suddenly the footman had a hand over her mouth and another under her elbow and was hustling, half carrying, her through the door Mrs Fullerton held open.

“I will give you a few minutes to make it look good,” she said and whipped out of the room, shutting the door behind her.

Ella was struggling against the footman and the fog trying to close in on her mind, the dizziness that wanted to consume her. She stamped at his foot, kicked back at his shin, but her soft indoor slippers made no impression. She squirmed, trying to jab her free arm as low as possible, and he twisted away with an oath, his footman’s wig falling from his head to disclose hair nearly as white.

He pushed her from him so that she fell face forward onto a sofa and in an instant was on her, tugging her head back by the hair, straddling her torso. “This will do well enough,” he commented, lifting himself enough to push up her skirt and petticoats.

Ella fought to retain consciousness, the pain of her pulled hair helping to keep her from sinking into the fog. “Scream,” she instructed herself, as her assailant’s free hand fumbled at her buttocks, and she shrieked as loud as she could.

Doors burst open: the one onto the hall and a double set into the drawing room next door, and the room filled with people.

It was her worst nightmare come again: the indrawn breaths of shock, the buzz of excited comments, the avid staring eyes. The last thing Ella heard before she sank into oblivion was the amused drawl of the man on her back. “Oh dear, Lady Melville. It seems we have been caught.”

A Raging Madness is book 2 of The Golden Redepennings. Book 3, The Realm of Silence, will be out this month.

 

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Tea with Lady Sutton

“I hope you mean to explain, Grace,” the Duchess of Haverford said, as she passed her guest a cup of tea. “All sorts of rumours are racing around town. Is it true that Melville’s widow was drugged at your soirée by an enemy of our newest peer? Or is she a madwomen and a laudanum addict, as her relatives claim?”

Grace, the Countess of Sutton, leaned forward and lowered her voice, though only she and her friend were present. “As to that, Eleanor, I must trust our friend the Brigadier General. He claims the lady as his daughter-in-law, secretly married to his son, the new Lord Renshaw, two months ago when she escaped her relatives. The attack was orchestrated by those relatives and carried out by a man Lord Renshaw had fired. With the assistance of that brazen woman Lady Fullerton. I was never more shocked in my life.”

Eleanor raised her brows. Given the activities of Lady Sutton’s father-in-law, husband, and son, this was strong language indeed. She nodded decisively. If Lord Henry Redepenning spoke for the lady, Eleanor’s path was clear.

“We must do what we can to establish Lady Renshaw in Society, then, Grace, and to remove those who would harm her. But first, tell me everything that happened.

Excerpt from A Raging Madness

Once Alex had succeeded in deflecting his admirers, he managed to locate Susan, talking to their father near the exit to the hall. Where was Ella? She had been watching him a short while ago, but he could not now see her anywhere. Had she gone out into the hall or to the terrace at the other end of the room?

He started towards the terrace, but a stir behind him set him turning. People surged through double doors into the next room, his father and Susan among them, and moments later Susan reappeared and gestured him to hurry.

“It’s Ella,” she whispered as he passed her, and he began to push his way through the doors and then the crowd gathered within. His father’s head showed over the crowd, and the buzz of muttering had muted enough for Braxton’s unctuous tones to reach him. “… not the first time, I fear. She was a camp follower, you know. And travelled with Lord Renshaw for weeks under an assumed name, as this gentleman can witness. We shall just take her…”

“You will not.” Lord Henry’s battlefield roar, which had cowed subalterns and offspring alike. “You will keep your filthy hands from my daughter-in-law. And you. Whoever you are. Seize this man and hold him for attempted ravishment of a peeress.”

The buzz had started again. Daughter-in-law? Ravishment? Peeress? Alex pushed harder, and the crowd parted to let him through just as Braxton said, “Daughter-in-law? This is Lady Melville. My sister.”

“Lady Renshaw,” Lord Henry insisted, but Alex barely heard him, his entire world narrowing to Ella, lying supine on a sofa with a shawl thrown over her, and Lord Henry standing protectively between her and Edwin Braxton, with that evil scum-sucker Farnham at his shoulder. Torn between throwing himself on his knees to check on Ella and hurling himself on Farnham to rip his throat out, Alex hovered for a moment, long enough for Lord Henry to say, “Alex, lad. See to your wife. We were in time, thank God, but she appears to have fainted.”

“She has taken laudanum.” Mrs Braxton’s shrill voice battered at Alex’s ears as he knelt beside Ella and took her in his arms. “Again.”

He ignored the bitch. Father would deal with her. “Ella, my love,” he murmured. She opened her eyes, and her pin-point pupils confirmed her sister-in-law’s charge. “The punch.” Her voice was slurred, her face intent. “Mrs Fullerton.”

Above them, Lord Sutton was saying, “What is going on, General? You introduced the female as Lady Melville.”

Ella, trembling, had hidden her face in the hollow of his shoulder. “The punch? Someone check the punch,” he ordered.

“I served no punch. There is foul play, here.” That was Lady Sutton. She nodded at Alex and rearranged the shawl that covered Ella’s torn dress. Torn! Alex wanted to howl. To break something or preferably someone. He forced himself to focus on his poor love, gentling his hand on the hair that tumbled to her shoulders. Susan patted Ella’s shoulder, as Lord Henry continued.

“I had not intended to air the disgraceful behaviour of my daughter’s family by marriage… But if you will have it, Lord Sutton. My son married his lady two months ago, in Cheshire, after rescuing her from her dead husband’s half-brother, who held her against her will, forcibly drugging her to prevent her escape. She could not, of course, travel with Lord Renshaw without the protection of his name, and their attachment was of long standing, their marriage delayed only because she nursed the Dowager Lady Melville until her death.”

Braxton began to speak, but Lord Henry spoke more loudly. “Or until this miscreant prevented her in that kind office. Who knows what this dear child suffered at his hands?”

“I saw the bruises myself, where three of them had held her to force the drug on her,” Alex said. The mood of the room was changing. Heaven knew what Ella would think, or what they could do tomorrow to fix this mess, but they had saved her from Braxton. No one would take a wife from her husband.

“But you presented her to Society as Lady Melville, General,” Sutton insisted.

“She wished to honour her mother-in-law with three months of mourning, as decency demands, but that time was stolen from her by the actions of Braxton here. My son gave it back. That is all.”

“Was it this man?” Lady Sutton’s voice. Alex looked over his shoulder trying not to disturb Ella who had fallen unconscious in his arms. Lady Sutton had a maid with her, who was nodding vigorously and pointing to Farnham. “And that lady there, ma’am,” she declared, pointing to Mrs Fullerton.

“I found two glasses in the hall part filled with spiced punch, Sutton,” Lady Sutton told her husband. “And the maid saw two people force it on Lady Renshaw then drag her ladyship into this room.”

“The four of them arrived together. I saw them.” That was the Suttons’ son.

“Lies!” Mrs Braxton squeaked.

“You are the liars.” Mrs Fullerton turned on her co-conspirators. “You told me she was insane and a whore. I would never have agreed to help you…” She turned pleadingly to Alex. “Alex, I swear I did not know she was your wife.”

This time the excited buzz rose to shouting, and Mrs Fullerton shrank to silence under the condemnation.

“Father, I am taking my wife home.” Alex stood, holding Ella and ignoring the strain on his leg. “I will leave you to deal with her assailant and his accomplices. His name is Farnham, and I dismissed him two months ago for fraud and theft. This, I take it, is his revenge.”

Farnham’s face twisted with rage, and he lunged at Alex, but two men either side held him back.

Susan was at his shoulder then, and Gil Rutledge appeared on the other side to support his elbow and take part of Ella’s weight. “I have ordered the carriage,” Susan said, and the crowd drew back to let them through.

In the carriage, Alex insisted on continuing to hold her. She was lost in the laudanum dreams, stirring restlessly but stilling when he murmured to her. “I have you safe, Ella. I have you safe.”

Even semi-conscious, she trusted him. How would she react when she knew he had broken his word, taken her choices from her, claimed her as wife in front of half the ton?

A Raging Madness is the second novel in The Golden Redepennings series

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A bit of horse sense

In today’s Footnotes on Friday, I’m recycling a post I wrote for Regina Jeffers. If you didn’t catch it first time round, please enjoy.

My qualifications for writing about horses are ten years as a Riding for the Disabled mum, five as a Pony Club mum, and seven as the reluctant care-taker of one or more obstreporous ponies.

Yet I write Regencies, and in Regency times, gentlemen were as obsessed with their horses as today’s men are with their cars or motorbikes. In fact, in two of my books, including the latest release, the hero breeds horses for sale.

Which meant I had a lot to learn. I knew the smell of wet pony, and the tricks it can get up to when it doesn’t want the bridle and saddle. That was a start. Many blog posts, library books, video clips, websites, and questions to friends later, I still think that one end bites and the other kicks. But I’m slightly more confident about sending my horse-mad heroes out into the wide world.

In The Bluestocking and the Barbarian, Lord Sutton breeds Turkmen horses he and his family have brought from their home in the Kopet Dag mountains. Lord Sutton’s Turkmens, a predecessor of today’s Ahkal Teke, arrived in England well after the heyday of what they then called the orientals, or hot bloods. Finer boned, thinner skinned, faster, and more spirited than the European horses (known as cold bloods), the imports from Turkey, Persia, and middle Asia fascinated the English of the seventeeth and eighteenth centuries.

From the two lines came the warm bloods, direct ancestors of today’s thoroughbreds. Indeed, the thoroughbred stud book was founded in the late eighteenth century (for horses intended for racing) and records all English Thoroughbred breeding even today. A thoroughbred was a horse whose birth and lineage was recorded in the book. Other horses with the same breeding not intended for racing were known simply as ‘bloods’.

If you wanted to sell, or to buy, a horse, you might go to a local horse fair. Or, if you lived in London, you’d drop down to Tattersall’s on Hyde Park Corner. It had been founded in 1766 by a former groom of the Duke of Kingston, and held auctions every Monday and on Thursdays during the Season. Tatersall’s charged a small commission on each sale, but also charged both buyers and sellers for stabling.

Tattersalls was an auction ground, a meeting place for gentlemen, the home of the Jockey club, and the place gentlemen recorded bets on racing and other bets

You could buy horses, carriages, hounds, harnesses — whatever a gentleman (or his lady, but ladies did NOT go to Tattersall’s) needed. And in Regency times, gentlemen visited on other days to place a bet on an upcoming race, or just to meet and chat. The Jockey Club met there, and moved with it to a later London location and then to Newmarket. Tattersall’s is still a leading bloodstock auctioneer, and still in Newmarket.

My hero in A Raging Madness had been a cavalry officer. Britain had no formal studs for breeding war horses. Instead, they bought their horses from civilian breeders. This meant the British cavalry rode horses bred to be hunters, race horses, and carriage horses—usually thoroughbreds or thoroughbred crosses. Each colonel bought the horses for his own regiment. In 1795, the regulations established a budget of thirty pounds for a light mount and forty for a heavy mount. This budget didn’t change for the rest of the war with France, despite wartime shortages.

Here Alex is telling his brother his plan:

“Father says you are planning to breed horses. For the army, Alex? Racing? What’s your plan?”

“Carriage and riding horses, we thought. I know more about training war horses, of course, but to breed them to be torn apart for the sins of men? I don’t have the heart for it. And there’s always a market for a good horse.”

Alex buys his first stallion from another cavalry office, Gil Rutledge, who is hero of The Realm of Silence, my current novel-in-progress (the third novel in

series.

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More about horses

Geri Walton tells us about work horses, especially the heavy breeds. https://www.geriwalton.com/work-horses-in-the-regency-era/

Regency Redingote explains the origins of the term ‘blood horse’, and the pedigree of the General Stud Book. https://regencyredingote.wordpress.com/2010/11/05/the-english-blood-horse/

Regency Writing has a useful article on housing horses, and the work of a stable. http://regencywriter-hking.blogspot.co.nz/2013/07/eighteenth-and-nineteenth-century-horse.html

Shannon Donnelly’s Fresh Ink explains the many different uses of the horse in Regency England. https://shannondonnelly.com/2011/07/28/the-regency-horse-world/ This article also describes common carriage types, side saddles and riding habits.

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I love research

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I love research. I even love research when I have a perfectly delightful plot that falls apart when research proves it couldn’t have happened. Working out what might be historically probable instead, or at least plausible, has allowed me to drop down many an exciting rabbit hole into research wonderland.

For example, in  A Raging Madness, my hero Alex has a leg full of shrapnel, and is currently helping my heroine to escape from relatives who are determined to lock her up in an asylum for the mentally unwell.

Shrapnel? What kind of shrapnel? What munitions carried shrapnel at that time? What battles were they used in? How were shrapnel wounds treated? What was the long term prognosis? How about complications? And did they even call it shrapnel?

It took me a while to find a suitable battle, but eventually I put Alex the right place to be on the business end of a canister shell, a cannon ball with a weak outer shell filled with scrap metal. When the cannon fired, the shell burst apart, and a broad fan of metal caused devastation among the enemy troops. And, in my case, on the body of the assigned escort of a British diplomat who was observing the battle.

Ella, my heroine, was the daughter of an army doctor, and I figured she’d solve all of Alex’s problems by removing the shrapnel (and no, they didn’t call it that). But not so. Then, even more than now, removing shrapnel or even bullets (unless they are lead) was a very bad idea.

Even today, going in after a splinter of metal might cause more harm than good, and the world is full of people walking around with bomb fragments buried inside. Back then, with no antibiotics and no anaesthetics, the treatment of choice was to leave the mess alone.

Over time, one of three things would happen. The body and the shrapnel would adjust to one another. The body would reject the shrapnel, moving it piece by piece slowly out to the surface. An abscess would form, and the poisons from the infection would kill the patient unless someone acted to drain the abscess.

Hurrah! I had my intervention. Poor Alex developed an abscess.

But escape? Alex can barely walk, let alone ride. Ella is recovering from addiction to the laudanum that her relatives have been force-feeding her. (Another rabbit-hole: what does laudanum withdrawal look like? Feel like?)

I needed a plausible way for two such invalids to escape.

I chose a canal narrowboat for a number of reasons.

One: I loved the idea of the villains haring all over the countryside looking for them while they ran away by the slowest form of non-pedestrian transport ever invented.

Two: I’ve always wanted to go on a canal cruise, and this way I got to watch YouTube clips and call it working.

Three: By 1807, when my story is set, the canal network stretched from the Mersey (with access to Manchester and Liverpool) all the way to London. Travelling by narrowboat was feasible. Canals were a supremely profitable way to move goods in the early 19th century, and had been for a number of years. At a steady walking speed, a horse could move fifty times as much weight on a boat as it could on a road. The canals provided still water and tow paths to ease the travel, and locks, tunnels, and viaducts to overcome obstacles. Later, canal boats were mechanised, and later still the railways put the canals out of business. But in 1807, Alex and Ella hitched a lift with a charming Liverpool Irishman called Big Dan.

Four: I could put my hero and my heroine in close confines, calling themselves married, for five to six weeks. Not only did they have heaps of time to talk and even to succumb (or nearly succumb) to their mutual attraction, they were also in deep trouble (or Ella was) if anyone found out. They used false names. They stayed away from fashionable places. But even so, their novelist made sure that someone with no love for Alex saw enough to cause trouble.

Five: The time frame let Alex develop an abscess and recover from the operation, all before he needed to be on hand to save Ella when rumours spread about the two of them and their canal interlude.

And down the rabbit hole I went.

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Adversaries on WIP Wednesday

This will be my last WIP extract from A Raging Madness. By next Wednesday, it will be a published book. So I thought I’d take the opportunity to share a bit about one of my villains. I’d love to see an extract from you about one of your adversaries; not necessarily a villain, but someone that the hero or heroine is in conflict with.

The adversaries in my extract are utterly villainess. My heroine overhears them  plotting to confine her in an asylum for the insane.

“No, Mrs Braxton. Eleanor will not convince them she is sane. I have chosen with care, I tell you. I visited six asylums before this one, and this is perfect for our purposes. The doctor in charge has promised to keep her dosed, and even if he does not, the place itself will drive her insane. If you saw it, heard the noise… Yes, my dear, I can assure you, our plans are sound.”

Constance answered, the whine in her voice grating against Ella’s eardrums. “But what if you are wrong, Edwin? If she convinces someone in authority that she is sane, prison will be the least…”

“No, my dove. Not at all. No one at the asylum will listen to her ravings, and if they did, what of it? Who will they tell? Even in the worst case, all we need do is say her mind was turned after Mother’s death and how glad we are that she is well again.”

“I do not know.” The frown was heavy in Constance’s voice. “But we cannot keep her here. I trust Kerridge, but the other servants may start to murmur. Any one of them might have spoken to that lawyer!”

“The lawyer is gone, my love. He was no harder to send away this time than last.”

“It will drive her insane, you say?” Constance asked.

“It will. I guarantee it. I hesitate to mention it, Mrs Braxton, it not being a topic for a lady’s delicate ears…”

“Spit it out, Edwin. What?”

“My own treasure, I am given to understand that the attendants avail themselves of the, er, charms of the patients and even do a– er– trade with the nearby town. Not, of course, with the approval of the medical staff. No, of course. That would be most unprofessional. But it is most enterprising of them and serves our purposes rather well, dear sister being a comely woman.”

Ella puzzled this out. Surely Edwin did not mean that the attendants forced the women and prostituted them?

“Ah. Very good,” Constance said. “The woman is horribly resilient. Any decent gentlewoman would have succumbed to madness long since with all your brother put her through and what has happened since. But surely even she is not coarse enough to withstand multiple rapes.”

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Who inherits the title and the estate?

The heroine of A Raging Madness is a penniless widow, with no family except her horrible in-laws,  her dead husband’s loathsome half-brother and his even more ghastly wife.

So why was she penniless? She is living in a substantial house on a nice little estate which has been comfortably supporting her, her mother-in-law, and the two villains, as well as a number of students. Who owned it, and why didn’t she?

Down the research rabbit hole I go

In order to know the answer, I had to research inheritance law in the early 19th century. What happened if a man died without a will? What if he had a title? What if his property was entailed. If he left a will; could he leave his wife out of it?

In this post, I’m going to talk about titles and entails. In part 2, I’ll get to wills and widows.

Gervase was a baronet

Ella was married to a baronet who inherited his estate while he was still a boy, and to understand why that matters, you need to know about entails.  Entails were to do with real property (land and buildings), not with titles.

(I’m not a lawyer, and this is all in layperson’s language, so please correct me in the comments if I’ve got anything wrong.)

Your title went to your heir

Who inherited a title was decided by the wording of the document setting up the title in the first place. Mostly, this was ‘heirs male of the body’, which meant the eldest living legitimate male in a direct male line from the most recent of the title holders to have male descendants.

That’s a complicated sentence, so let’s tease it out. If the baronet was married and had living sons (biological—adoption didn’t count), the eldest son would inherit the title. If he had no sons, but grandsons, then the eldest son of the eldest son would be baronet. If he had no male descendants, but his brother had sons, then the heir was the eldest living male descended from the baronet’s father, the most recent of the title holders to have male descendants.

A few titles were set up to go to females if there’s no male heir. If a qualifying heir is thought to exist but can’t be found, the title goes dormant (EDITED I originally said into abeyance, but that’s different. See Nancy’s correction, below). If no heir exists, it becomes extinct. That’s what happened to Gervase’s baronetcy. His son inherited it the moment he was born, since Gervase was already dead, but he died while still a baby.

I’ve posted before about male primogeniture, which was the English system. Primogeniture just means the eldest offspring.

If your land was entailed, it also went to your heir

Most titles, when granted, came with land, villages, and one or more houses or castles. The wealth of the aristocracy was still, in the early nineteenth century, in their land. Not because the real property naturally belonged to the title, but because the aristocracy had figured out a way to stop a careless descendant from getting rid of it all. They could create a agreement that settled the property on the heirs to the title, whether or not those heirs had been born yet. This agreement was called a Deed of Settlement and it meant that the current title-holder had life possession of the property, but that it belonged to the heirs.

This was the fee tail (or entail). By contrast, land owned in fee simple belonged to the current title-holder.

Entails needed to be renewed, generation by generation

In English law, real property was covered by something called the Rule Against Perpetuity. The Rule meant you couldn’t make a will stick if it left your house and land to your own descendants forever and ever. The Deed of Settlement could leave real property to your heir and maybe your heir’s heir.

I’m guessing that Gervase’s grandfather had a conversation with his son (we’ll call him Horace) that went something like this. “Now you’re twenty-one, boy, I need your signature on these documents. It’s the entail. It’ll keep the house and land with the title, so it goes to your son.”

Horace takes a quick look and frowns. How is he to support himself in London if he can’t use the land as a stake in a gambling match or as security for a loan? His father, who had the same conversation with his own father, can see the way the boy’s mind is working.

“Obviously, lad, you’ll need a raise in your allowance, and I’ll pay the lease on your London townhouse.”

Horace looks his father up and down. The old codger is hale and hearty; could live till he was ninety, beyond a doubt. Probably by then Horace will have settled down and will be glad to still have an estate on which to settle his wife and family. He signs the Deed of Settlement, and the land is safe for another generation.

Which is tricky if the heir has only daughters or the title holder dies young

Marry your daughters to someone who could support them

Of course, your heir signs the Deed of Settlement fully confident that he’ll eventually have sons. What if he doesn’t? There he is, with the whole estate tied up in the entail, and five daughters. He’d better find husbands for them all, for the next heir, his second cousin twice removed, won’t want to house them.

Or what if he has a son and then dies before the son is twenty-one? The agreement has to be made between adults. In my story, Horace inherited and then died before Gervase turned twenty-one. The entail meant the property was settled on Gervase by the agreement between Horace and his father, but the entail goes no further than Gervase, the next generation after Horace. Gervase can leave his real property however he likes, or die without a will, in which case the rules of inheritance come into play.

More about that next time.

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Uncertain love on WIP Wednesday

Unrequited love.

He loves me, he loves me not. It’s not just a rhyme to chant while picking petals off a daisy or counting cherry stones; it’s an essential tool of the romance writer’s arsenal. We love to give our hero or heroine a bit of uncertainty to raise the stakes, and if each doubts the feelings of the other, all the better.

Do you have an extract to share in the comments where your hero or heroine thinks about or expresses their uncertainty? Or perhaps another character loves the hero or the heroine, and is doomed to disappointment? My expert is from A Raging Madness.

He was very tempted to kiss her but feared to change their relationship. Change it more. They were friends again, as they hadn’t been since she was a young girl and he a cheeky subaltern missing his home and his family.

But she loved him. One should not treat those one loves. That’s what she’d said. Those one loves. Loved how, though? As a friend? As a—Heaven forfend—as a brother?

Even if her love included the large measure of lust that coloured his for her, she had never been available for dalliance. If he tried a kiss, he would be lucky to get away with a slapped face. At worst, she would assume he was courting her. How he wished he could! For the first time in his life, he was experiencing the joys of that happy state, all but the physical intimacies, and he wanted them to go on forever.

But he had no place asking Ella to wed him. All he could offer was a broken crock of a man, made ugly with scars, subject to nightmares, prone to shedding splinters and lumps of metal from his leg.

A bored and useless man, at that. He had been a career officer. What was he now? He had investigated the Chirbury estates as a favour to his cousin, removing the land agents in two of them and buttressing the third with an assistant. But for all it proved to be necessary, the task had started as make-work, and his pride would not let him accept more.

He had no idea what to do with himself, and he certainly would not inflict himself on someone he was fast coming to love.