A Raging Madness

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Festivals on WIP Wednesday

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like its predecessor in the Golden Redepenning Series, part of  A Raging Madness takes place against a backdrop of every day village life. In early 19th Century England, the changes of the season and the festivals of the church gave the year a rhythm and a pattern, celebrated with feasts and fasts, particular traditions and practices, and foods specific to the time of year and often the place.

This week’s excerpt is about Easter in the Lincolnshire Wolds, where pride of place is given to Tansy Pudding. Do you have special celebrations in your books? Weddings? Birthdays? Feasts? Or perhaps a superstition or special practice? Share it with us in the comments.

Amy agreed that she was looking forward to the afternoon’s egg-rolling. “Grandmama says I shall soon be too old for such things, but I plan to enjoy it while I may.” She screwed up her nose at her Grandmother Cunningham’s opinion.

“Why, Miss Cunningham, then you shall be old enough for other traditions. Do you know, in Lincolnshire they say if you wait in the church porch on St Mark’s Eve, at midnight you will be passed by those who will be married during the year? I daresay half the maidens of the parish shall be there next Sunday evening, all trying to be silent.”

“In Gloucestershire, we try that kind of fortune-telling on All Hallow’s Eve,” Susan told him. “I can remember bobbing for apples, and then putting the apple I caught under my pillow so that I would dream of my future husband.”

“And did you, Mama?” Amy asked.

Susan demurred and turned the subject to putting bride cake under the pillow for the sake of the dream. Ella told the story she had heard from her mother about the Dumb Cake made on St Mark’s Eve in February. Two friends, working in silence, would mix and bake the cake, then break it in half, eat it, and walk backwards up the stairs to bed. If they had managed the whole process in silence, they would see a vision of their future husband below them on the stairs.

Mr Morris had yet another story, and even Mr Smithers joined in with a piece of folklore from Cheshire.

The dinner proceeded so merrily that the triumphal entry of the Tansy Pudding caught Ella by surprise. It looked magnificent in its deep pie dish, with its rich layer of golden orange preserve, and Mrs Broadley stood by beaming as Alex served Amy, who sat between him and Ella, and passed the plate on for Mr Morris to serve Susan.

As the men then served themselves, a maid put a much smaller dish—a little blue bowl—in front of Ella. She picked up a mouthful on her spoon and had it almost to her lips when Mrs Broadley gave a wordless shout and darted forward to dash it from Ella’s hands.

Conversation, movement, everything stopped. Mrs Broadley broke the silence. “I am so sorry, my lady. I don’t know how it happened, but you were meant to get the red bowl. Betty, you fool. I told you the bowl on the dresser. I used the blue dishes for the leftover mix from the main pudding, my lady. Oh I am that upset. You silly girl, Betty.”

The maid protested that she’d bought the only dish on the dresser, everything else for the Viscount’s table being lined up on the servery, and Ella assured Mrs Broadley that no harm had been done, thanks to the housekeeper’s quick action.

It soured the end of the dinner, though Alex sent Mrs Broadley off to the kitchen to investigate. Ella and Alex both tried to return the conversation to folklore, passing the incident off as a foolish mixup, but when griping pains hit first Amy, then Mr Morris, then all of those who had eaten the pudding, the mistake took on a much more sinister cast.

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Surprises on WIP Wednesday

I’m on the home straight with A Raging Madness. Ten more scenes, I think, and the mystery will unravel, but not before Alex and Ella have to decide what matters to them most.

They have several more surprises in store;  the book has been a series of them, mostly nasty. They’re almost due a nice one. Almost. Meanwhile, one of the latest incidents has provided today’s excerpt.

As always, I invite you to post an excerpt on the day’s theme in the comments. Surprises. Of any kind: exciting, unpleasant, spoken or in action. Mine is snakes.

“No thank you, Miller. I have had sufficient to drink. Indeed, you can put the rest of this into the slop bucket.” Ella handed her cup to Miller.
“But you must have your chocolate, my lady. I made it especially for you.”
Ella looked at the cup, and almost picked it up. Whether it was her irritation with the maid’s insistence or her revulsion at the thought of any more liquid, she decided against it.
“No, Miller. I thank you for making it, but I will not drink it this afternoon. In fact, please do not make it unless I ask for it.”
For a moment, she thought the maid would argue some more, but Miller pressed her lips together and turned away to take the remains of the tea into the bedroom.
“Amy, I will have my wash now, darling. And you should find your room and freshen up from your journey.”
Ella was about to follow Miller when the maid screamed.
*****
“Your Hounslow has won my admiration, Susan,” Alex told his sister over dinner after the fuss was all over. Hounslow had joined Jonno and Alex in recapturing the snakes Miller had released when she knocked the slop bucket over in her shock at its contents.
He was now directing an inch by inch search of the room to make sure they’d not missed any of the creatures, and proposed to spread the search to the whole house to prevent further nasty surprises. After he finished supervising the dinner service to his new employers and their guests.
Adders! They were shy creatures, on the whole, slithering away from an encounter with human beings. But, as Miller discovered, they would bite if they saw no alternative, such as if they were woken from hibernation as these were, disturbed with no way out except through a person.
The maid had been put to bed, her bite washed and Miller herself dosed with elderberry wine. Apart from some pain and swelling, she had not yet evinced symptoms of severe poisoning, but adder venom was not to be trivialised. Ella had set another maid to watch Miller, with a list of symptoms of which to beware.
The whole household was on alert to regard all receptacles with caution. Hounslow, however, had taken firm charge of incipient hysteria amongst the maids, and had fostered a competition in bravery amongst the footmen, grooms, and carpenters by suggesting the maids could depend on their protection.
“But how could the snakes have got there, Uncle Alex?” Amy asked.
Alex had just finished a frustrating and unproductive hour questioning servants and carpenters about who had been into the room, or seen carry the bucket or a bag that could have contained snakes. “I don’t yet know, Amy, but I intend to find out. Meanwhile, Jonno has gone into the village to see if he can find anyone who has recently uncovered a nest of the pests, and to borrow a couple of dogs to help search the house.”

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Weddings on WIP Wednesday

Weddings are a given in what I write. Sooner or later. Sometimes after the story ends, and sometimes before it begins, but weddings. So today I’m looking for you to post me an excerpt about a wedding. It doesn’t have to show the actual wedding of your hero and heroine, though it could. It could be weddings remembered, weddings planned for, weddings attended.

My two come from A Raging Madness. The first is Ella remembering her first wedding, what brought it about, and what her marriage was like.

“I don’t really remember the first time. Just disjointed bits. I was still fogged by the drug the second time, in the morning, when Dadda came. I remember him shouting, and Gervase laughing, and then lots of people. Faces. Eyes. Jeering.”

Like the other night. Alex would kill that bitch Patrice, and Farnham, and the Blaxtons. And then he would go to Cheshire and dig Melville up and bury him again in a pigpen. No. A midden. No, both. Every midden and pigpen in the county, till even Judgement Day couldn’t find all the pieces to put him back together again.

Ella snuggled into him again, putting a comforting hand on the side of his face. “It is alright, Alex. It was a long time ago. Dadda had a bad seizure right there in the tent, and I think the Colonel wanted to make sure I was protected, for he told Gervase he had a choice between wedding me or being shot. And he sent for the chaplain to perform the ceremony there and then.

It was not so bad. Dadda recovered, and he and the Colonel made Gervase look after me.”

Except for the constant sneering, the neglect, the disdain. Physical abuse, too, mostly where it did not show, but Alex had heard Ella explain away more than one bruise as a trip or a bump, darting a cautious glance at Melville all the while. And nightly rapes. And a camp full of men who should have been honoured to protect her and who instead abandoned her to her abuser.

The second is her wedding day to Alex. People have been told that the pair have been married for weeks, but those in the know have organised a celebration for when the couple return from the church.

When they entered the house, the nursery and schoolroom party were waiting to bombard them with ribbons and rice, and streamers cut from paper, and to escort them to the large parlour, where the adults waited under a big decorated sign with somewhat tipsy capitals that read, ‘Lord and Lady Renshaw’. Tea trolleys laden with sandwiches, pastries, cakes, and other tasty treats jaded it a party lunch, and they were the guests of honour.

“I told Anne you had not had a proper wedding celebration, dear Ella,” Susan said, “since you married under such hurried circumstances, so today is a party for you and Alex.”

“You must have wondered at it,” the countess commented, “that I sent you on such an errand when this is your first day in our home, but Susan and I plotted this last night, and it was her part to keep you out of the way till we were ready. We are so happy for you and Alex.”

The women carried Ella off to one side of the room, and the menfolk surrounded Alex and pressed a glass of wine into his hand.

“Your wife will be fine,” Alex’s brother Rick reassured him. “Our women just want to know her. They have heard fine praise from Susan.

“You’ve spoiled our fun a little,” Rede complained, “having the party eight weeks after the wedding. Now would be our chance to tell you everything that might go wrong on the wedding night.”

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A problem to solve in WIP Wednesday

I like to give my hero and heroine something to do together, and in my novels, at least, the problem they have to solve tends to be as intractable as possible. In Farewell to Kindness, both hero and heroine have their own missions, and each has to choose between their goal and the feelings between them. In A Baron for Becky, the men need to put aside their own desires for Becky to succeed—and even then, she is so broken it may not work. In Revealed in Mist, the two protagonists are working for different clients to solve the same mystery. And in A Raging Madness, I’ve upped the stakes.

In the extract below, Alex and Ella have just met after three years. Ella has broken into Alex’s hotel room and is begging for his help.

As always, I’m inviting you to post your own extract in the comments.

That she had taken opium in some form was beyond a doubt. The contracted pupils, the loss of appetite, the shaky hand, the restless shifting in her seat, all spoke to that.

Thanks to his injury, Alex had far too close and personal an experience of the symptoms to mistake them. The bruises on her jaw made him wonder how voluntary her drug taking was, but perhaps her keepers needed to drug her to keep her calm.

Sane or not, Alex hoped he would not need to hand her back to Braxton. Her fear might be irrational, but when she had stood at bay, begging for his help, he had been thrown back ten years. Not that she begged him then. But he left camp on a short mission, and to find Ella married and much changed, her fire banked; her joy extinguished. That time, he had ignored her plight, hardened his heart and left her to the fate she had engineered. And had suffered with her as the consequences quenched her vitality and sucked away the last of her childhood. Suffered, and been powerless to help.

“I have been drugged,” Ella said baldly. “Twice a day. For weeks now. They won’t tell me why. If I refuse, they force me.”

“‘They’ being Braxton and his wife?” Alex prompted.

“And Constance’s dresser.”

“Go on.” He was careful to show no disbelief, no surprise.

“I have been kept in my room. They locked the door. They took all my clothes, my shoes. I saw you out the window and so I came. Will you help me, Alex?”

“I can take you to the rector.” Even as he said it he remembered the plump little man greasing at Braxton’s elbow. Ella would find no help there.

“No!” Her rejection was instant and panicked. “He will give me back and they will send me to that place. No, Alex. You do not know what they plan for me.” She was weeping. Alex had seen her calm under cannon fire, dry-eyed at her father’s funeral, efficient and unemotional in the midst of the carnage of a hospital tent after a battle. He had never seen her weep.

He captured her hands, and kept his voice low and soothing. “I do not, Ella. Tell me.”

“I heard them last night. Edwin has found an asylum that will—Constance says I must be driven insane in truth. They rape the women there, Edwin says, and Constance says I am horribly resilient but even my sanity will not withstand multiple rapes.” The last word was whispered around a sob.

Alex kept his hands still with an effort. They wanted to punch and rend. No wonder she was panicked, but it could not be true, could it? Braxton was not a man Alex could like, but such wickedness? To his own sister-in-law?

“And you do not know why, Ella?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“The rector and the squire… They both believed Edwin and Constance. They came to see me, and I begged for their help, and they would not, Alex. They believed me insane. You do not believe me insane, do you, Alex?”

He did not know. That was the truth of it. His gut told him to destroy her persecutors and carry her off somewhere safe. His gut had never been reliable where Ella was concerned.

“Please, Alex.”

Alex made up his mind. “Ella, you will be safe here. Jonno and I will go and see what we can find out. Jonno, tell the innkeeper we are taking the room for another day. Then have my chaise brought round.”

He had not taken his eyes from Ella’s. She was calmer now, the tears drying on her cheeks. “You will not betray me? No, of course not. I trust you, Alex. I know we have not always agreed, but you will not betray me.”

“I will not betray you.” Though how he would keep his word if she was, in truth, insane, he did not know. Certainly, her story sounded crazy. But she had bruises on her jaw, and the rector had been lied to. And Alex did not like Braxton or his wife.

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Backstory on WIP Wednesday

One of the tricky tasks an author has to manage is to tell those crucial bits of history a reader needs to sympathise with the hero or heroine, or despise the villain. But what to do? Hint and let the reader guess? Have the character explain themselves to another? Do a flashback in memory? Jump between present and past entirely?

All can work, or can be disastrous.

This week, on WIP Wednesday, I’m inviting you to post excerpts that carry your backstory. Mine is from A Raging Madness. Ella is telling Alex about her first marriage, which he had observed as a fellow officer.

He had seen the signs and ignored them, told himself that he had no right to interfere between husband and wife, told himself that she had made her bed and could lie in it. Arrogant, conceited pup. Twenty-one years old and full of his own pain. He hated that long-ago version of himself nearly as much as he hated Melville. Long ago? He had been believing lies against her as recently as two months ago.
“I often thought of sending him into the thick of battle, like David did to Uriah the Hittite. I should have done it.”
Ella, her eyes soft, reached up and kissed his chin. “Was I your Bathsheba then? I am flattered.”
“Always, Ella. My guilt made me cruel to you. I cannot tell you how sorry I am.”
Her eyes rounded and she shook her head. “No, Alex. You were always kind and polite. Distant. Disapproving sometimes. But I knew I could rely on you. I do not think I could have survived after Dadda died if not for you.” Her eyes filled with tears, and he bit back the self-recriminations. He did not deserve her praise, but nor was he selfish enough to deny the comfort her memories gave her in order to seek his own absolution.

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Unwilling attraction on WIP Wednesday

out of copyright; (c) Museum of London; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

They met, they fell in love, their families were delighted, and they married. It would be a lovely life, but not a particularly exciting story. We authors like to torture our characters with all kinds of barriers along the way, and a favourite trope is the push-pull of unwilling attraction.

You know the sort of thing. Intellectual women with sharp tongues are not my type, but I can’t resist her. He is an unreliable rake, but his kindness is hugely appealing. We readers look forward to finding out how they get past their own preconceptions.

So share an excerpt, if you will, where your characters are feeling this dilemma, and I’ll give you one from the very start of A Raging Madness.

The funeral of the dowager Lady Melville was poorly attended—just the rector, one or two local gentry, her stepson Edwin Braxton accompanied by a man who was surely a lawyer, and a handful of villagers.

Alex Redepenning was glad he had made the effort to come out of his way when he saw the death notice. He and Captain Sir Gervase Melville had not been close, but they had been comrades: had fought together in Egypt, Italy, and the Caribbean.

Melville’s widow was not at the funeral, but Alex was surprised not to see her when he went back to the house. Over the meagre offering set out in the drawing room, he asked Melville’s half brother where she was.

“Poor Eleanor.” Braxton had a way of gnashing his teeth at the end of each phrase, as if he needed to snip the words off before he could stop chewing them.

“She has never been strong, of course, and Mother Melville’s death has quite overset her.” Braxton tapped his head significantly.

Ella? Not strong? She had been her doctor father’s assistant in situations that would drive most men into a screaming decline, and had continued working with his successor after his death. She had followed the army all her life until Melville sent her home—ostensibly for her health, but really so he could chase whores in peace, without her taking loud and potentially uncomfortable exception. Alex smiled as he remembered the effects of stew laced with a potent purge.

Melville swore Ella had been trying to poison him. She assured the commander that if she wanted him poisoned he would be dead, and perhaps the watering of his bowels was the result of a guilty conscience. The commander, conscious that Ella was the closest to a physician the company, found Ella innocent.

Perhaps it had all caught up with her. Perhaps a flaw in the mind was the reason why she tried to trap Alex and succeeded in trapping Melville into marriage, why she had not attended Melville’s deathbed, though Alex had sent a carriage for her.

“I had hoped to see her,” Alex said. It was not entirely a lie. He had hoped and feared in equal measure: hoped to find her old before her time and feared the same fierce pull between them he had been resisting since she was a girl too young for him to decently desire.

“I cannot think it wise,” Braxton said, shaking his head. “No, Major Redepenning. I cannot think it wise. What do you say, Rector? Would it not disturb the balance of my poor sister’s mind if she met Major Redepenning? His association with things better forgotten, you know.”

What was better forgotten? War? Or her poor excuse for a husband? Not that it mattered,  any more than it mattered that Braxton used the rank Alex no longer held. It was not Braxton’s fault Alex’s injury had forced him to sell out.

The Rector agreed that Lady Melville should not be disturbed, and Alex was off the hook. “Perhaps you will convey my deepest sympathies and my best wishes to her ladyship,” he said. “I hope you will excuse me if I take my leave. I have a long journey yet to make, and would seek my bed.”

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Reprobates on WIP Wednesday

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:G-Cruikshank-Inconveniences-Crowded-Drawing-Room-1818.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:G-Cruikshank-Inconveniences-Crowded-Drawing-Room-1818.jpg

The world seems to love a scoundrel. Me, I tend to make villains out of them, but fiction is full of rogues as both protagonists and antagonists. Readers like those with wounded hearts waiting for circumstances or the right influences to make them whole. So this week, I’m inviting you to show me an excerpt with the retrobate from your work in progress. Mine is a right evil so and so, from A Raging Madness, caught in the act of compromising my heroine.

An instant before the drug in the drink hit her, she saw the flare of triumph in Mrs Fullerton’s eyes, and 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 chin, 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, pushing her from him so that she fell face forward onto a sofa.

In an instant he was on her, tugging her head back by the hair, straddling her torso. “This will do well enough,” he commented, lifting himself enough that he could 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.”

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After the kiss on WIP Wednesday

canal-path-at-nightIn a romance, so various mentors have told me, the sexual tension builds and builds until at last the couple kiss. And if that moment is not at the end of the story, when all the conflicts and plot twists are resolved, than the writer has a problem.

We’ve got them together. Now how do we pull them apart? For the tension to continue, their relationship can’t stay in calm waters. Our readers need to feel their longing. After the kiss comes the slap, or the fight, or the pull between loyalties, or some other interruption to their courtship.

This week, I have another excerpt from A Raging Madness. It comes when my couple’s first kiss, began almost accidentally but continued with enthusiasm, has been interrupted by external noises.

She dropped her hands from his shoulders, tried to cover her breast and pull down her hem, blushed furiously in the dark. “I am so sorry, Alex,” she said. Though whether she was sorry to stop or sorry that they had ever started, she had no idea.

After a moment, he pulled away, swinging his legs around so that he sat beside her on the bed.

“I am not that kind of woman,” she said, trying to sound convincing to herself when her whole body was screaming to complete what they had begun.

“Right.” He sounded strained. She could hear him sucking a breath in, then letting it slowly out through his teeth.

“I cannot apologise enough…” Ella began, but Alex interrupted, his voice as courteous as ever, though she could hear the strain in it.

“The fault is mine, Ella. I meant only to salute you for the gift of my future, and I forgot myself. I..” He stopped, and took another deep breath. “I cannot bring myself to apologise. For any impression of disrespect, yes, indeed. I beg your pardon with all my heart if I have offended. But for offending you, not for kissing you.” He stood, and moved away from the bed. She could not make out what he was doing, but he had not returned to his own bed on the other side of the cabin.

“It was everything I have dreamed this age,” he said, almost under his breath. This age? He had been dreaming of kissing her this age?

But she had to correct his misconception. “Each other,” she said.

Whatever he was doing—it sounded as if he was putting on his boots—he stopped. “Each other?”

“We kissed each other,” she explained.

The amusement was back when he replied. “We did, and very nicely too.”

“And we cannot do it again,” Ella warned, hoping her regret was not obvious.

“No, I suppose not. I am going to take a short walk, Ella. I won’t go far, but the cold will be— beneficial.”

He had opened the hatch and was leaving before she spoke again, giving him a gift of words in return for his.

“It was better than I dreamed.”

His only response was a catch in his step before he continued, but a few minutes later she could hear him begin to whistle as he walked the canal path.

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Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected

drugs-mrs-winslows-soothing-syrupI’ve been researching drugs and poisons for A Raging Madness. The book opens with my heroine forcibly addicted to laudanum, which was a mix of opium and alcohol. And then things get worse.

I needed a potion or a poison, or a variety of them, that the heroine could be fed without her knowing, and one that was available in England in the early 19th century. I found that I had a wealth to choose from.

Opium was out. She knew the effects, had fought her way out of addiction, and would have known immediately if it happened again. In describing both the addiction and the withdrawal, I drew (among other sources) on a first-person account from Victorian times.

I’m just mad at myself for having given in to such a fearful habit as opium-eating. None but those who have as completely succumbed to it as I did, could guess the mischief it would do. Even you, with an experience which must be extremely varied, being as you are, in such a good place for studying people’s brains (or rather their want of them), cannot know the amount of harm it did to me morally, though I must say you did seem to have a pretty fair idea of it. It got me into such a state of indifference that I no longer took the least interest in anything, and did nothing all day but loll on the sofa reading novels, falling asleep every now and then, and drinking tea. Occasionally I would take a walk or drive, but not often. Even my music I no longer took much interest in, and would play only when the mood seized me, but felt it too much of a bother to practice. I would get up about ten in the morning, and make a pretence of sewing; a pretty pretence, it took me four months to knit a stocking!

Worse than all, I got so deceitful, that no one could tell when I was speaking the truth. It was only this last year it was discovered; those living in the house with you are not so apt to notice things, and it was my married sisters who first began to wonder what had come over me. They said I always seemed to be in a half-dazed state, and not to know what I was doing. However they all put it down to music. Mother had let me go to all the Orchestral Concerts in the winter, and they thought it had been too much for me. By that time it was a matter of supreme indifference to me what they thought, and even when it was found out, I had become so callous that I didn’t feel the least shame. Even mother’s grief did not affect me, I only felt irritated at her; this is an awful confession to have to make, but it is better to tell the whole truth when you once begin, and it might be some guide to you in dealing with others. If you know of anyone indulging in such a habit, especially girls, just tell them what they will come to.

Of course its effects differ according to one’s nature, and it’s to be hoped few get so morally degraded as I did. This much is certain, few would have the constitution to stand it as I did, and even I was beginning to be the worse for it. For one thing, my memory was getting dreadful; often, in talking to people I knew intimately, I would forget their names and make other absurd mistakes of a similar kind. As my elder sister was away from home, I took a turn at being housekeeper. Mother thinks every girl should know how to manage a house, and she lets each of us do it in our own way, without interfering. Her patience was sorely tried with my way of doing it, as you may imagine; I was constantly losing the keys, or forgetting where I had left them. I forgot to put sugar in puddings, left things to burn, and a hundred other things of the same kind. [Letter in the British Journal of Medical Sciences, 1889: Confessions of a Young Lady Laudanum Drinker]

Laudanum, as the young writer says, was readily available and often prescribed for things as diverse as “Laudanum, the most popular form in which opium was taken (dissolved in alcohol) was recommended in cases of fever, sleeplessness, a tickly cough, bilious colic, inflammation of the bladder, cholera morbus, diarrhoea, headache, wind, and piles, and many other illnesses” [See more at: https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/representations-of-drugs-in-19th-century-literature#sthash.v6f0LIBt.dpuf].

drugs-vin-marianiAnother common tincture — too late for my story — was Vin Mariani: coca leaves ground into Bordeaux wine. Red wine and cocaine. It debuted in 1863, and took the polite world by storm.

Devotees of the drink included Alexander Dumas, Emile Zola, Presidents William McKinley and Ulysses S. Grant, and countless monarchs including Queen Victoria of England. In addition, actress Sarah Bernhardt and Pope Leo XIII (who gave him a Gold Medal!) were among the many who actually appeared in advertisements. [http://vinepair.com/wine-blog/vin-mariani-bordeaux-wine-coca/]

Mercury, arsenic, and cyanide were all used in medicines, their effects often more dire than the illnesses they were intended to treat.

I wondered about marijuana, which was readily available and eaten in cakes. I thought maybe it could be stirred into a drink, but I was assured by a friend that the taste would be a clear giveaway.

I’ve finished up with nutmeg, salvia divinorum, and morning glory.

drug-nutmegNutmeg contains myristicin, a naturally occuring drug with effects similar to LCD when consumed in high enough doses. Doses high enough to cause the effect are also really hard on the heart, so it wouldn’t be my drug of choice, since the villain wants her alive. I haven’t yet figured out how high the dose needs to be, and whether it could be slipped past the victim without her knowing. If I’m arrested, it’ll be for this research.

drugs-salvia_mainachtSalvia was used as a drug by shamans in Mezo-America, and is another hallucinogenic. The leaves are bitter though, so as a tea or an addition to a salad, it seems unlikely. Perhaps a tea sweetened with honey? Or an extract made into a tincture with alcohol, and introduced into an otherwise harmless drink.

And the same with morning glory. A heightened sense of awareness and a diminished sense of reality, my sources say. Poor Ella.

(The heading is a quote from Hamlet.)

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Seduction on WIP Wednesday

No heroine she, but I rather liked the expression on Joseph's face as he tries to reject Potiphar's wife.

No heroine she, but I rather liked the expression on Joseph’s face as he tries to reject Potiphar’s wife.

Well, maybe not seduction, precisely, because some of us write heroes and heroines who are far too well behaved to get up to that kind of mischief, at least on our pages.

But this week, I’m looking for excerpts that show one character being aware of their physical attraction to the other, especially if they act on it.

Mine is from A Raging Madness. My heroine has not just been compromised, but assaulted, and only the quick thinking of Alex’s father has saved her. Marriage to Alex is the best way to keep her safe, but her previous marriage has left her with bad memories. Never a woman to back away from her fears, she goes to see Alex in his room.

“Is something wrong, Ella? Can I help?”

She wore an ankle-length nightrail, and as she passed in front of the fire, he could see her legs outlined through the fine material. She dropped the shawl she wore and his mouth instantly dried.

“Show me I am not cold, Alex.”

His brain had emptied, too. Surely she could not mean…? Suddenly, he realised that he was naked, and the sheets were down by his hips. He shifted to pull them up and stopped. Too late. She had seen his scarred torso and had not run screaming from the room. That was good, surely?

She was flushing; shifting from one foot to another. “You do not have to if you do not wish to, Alex.”

She thought he was rejecting her? Without stopping to think about it, he threw back the sheets, disclosing his very male reaction to her suggestion, and her eyes riveted on it.

“Someone salutes the idea,” she said, with an entirely feminine smirk. Then her uncertainty returned. “If we do this, I want you to know… If it doesn’t work, if I cannot… I will go away, Alex. I will not burden you with a wife who cannot please you.”

That raised the stakes to a whole new level.

“You will please me, Ella. You please me very much. I thought to wait out of respect to the woman who will be my wife.” He gave her his best roguish grin. “But it occurs to me that bedding you might be the best way to make sure you don’t wriggle out of this, Ella. You really are the most elusive woman! Come here.” He held out his hand, and she took one hesitant step towards him, then another until her hand was in his and he could draw her to the side of the bed. Her colour had deepened as she walked, but he could not keep his eyes on her face with her dark aureole showing through the thin fabric of the nightrail.

Almost without volition, his other hand came up to shape one breast, to linger lovingly over a nipple that tightened and peaked as he touched it.

She trembled and sucked a breath sharply through her mouth, and he looked up into her wary eyes.

“Come here,” he said again, shifting sideways in the bed to make room for her.

She allowed him to help her up on the bed, sitting beside him, upright and tense.