A Raging Madness

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Servants on WIP Wednesday

servants at keyholeIn Farewell to Kindness, my hero’s servant and dearest friend arranged for his nephew to act as servant to my hero’s cousin, Major Alexander Redepenning, who is wheelchair bound after an injury.

In A Raging Madness, the teenage Jonno is still serving Alex with devoted care. Do you have a servant or employee in your WIP? How about giving us a peek! Here’s mine.

As he expected, Alex could not sleep. Jonno, after being yelled at for fussing, lay wakeful on his palate, fretting until Alex apologised.

“I am a bear, Jonno. But there is nothing to be done about the pain except wait it out, and one of us might as well get some rest. It seems you will be driving tomorrow.”

“I could heat the bricks again, sir, and we could try to draw some of the pain now you are more relaxed, like?”

Alex shook his head. “More heat is the last thing I need, lad.”

“Ice then,” Jonno suggested. “I could see if they have some ice?”

“In October?” But Jonno wouldn’t rest until he had done all he could. “Go on then. But don’t get them out of bed, Jonno. If no-one is awake, come back here.”

Jonno took the candle and left Alex in the dark, with nothing to focus his eyes on as a distraction from the pain. He listened instead. Soft patter on the window pane; the rain had started again. A burst of laughter, muffled by distance; the public room downstairs? The Alex of another time would have been down there, laughing with his friends and flirting with the bar maid. A thump overhead; something dropped?

Somewhere close, a door opened and then closed; Jonno returning? No. No light dispersed the darkness, no cheerful voice presaged another attempt to make Alex comfortable. He could have sworn it was the door to his sitting room, but the sound must have come from further along the hall for it was some time before Jonno arrived back, bearing a basin containing a towel wrapped around a block of ice that, he said, came from the inn’s ice pit.

“Very proud of it they are, sir. Ice all year round, they say. Getting towards the end of it now, of course. But there won’t be much call now, with winter coming on.”

He chatted away as he applied the brick, and Alex half listened to reports on the local harvest, the charms of the bar maids, and the gloomy forecast from the local weather prophet.

 

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Eating on WIP Wednesday

toasting-fork-e1427826270973All my readers must realise I like food; I write so much of it. Breakfasts, picnics, formal dinners, snacks… my characters stop to refuel at regular intervals. Indeed, Lord Jonathan Grenford (Gren), the younger brother of the Marquis of Aldridge and a secondary character in Prudence in Love, spends much of the book consuming vast quantities of sustenance. But he is a young and active man, and they do manage to get through a lot of food!

So this week, I’m inviting excerpts that include food. Post yours in the comments; I’d love to see it. Here’s mine, from A Raging Madness.

Susan sent the nursemaid to let the kitchen know that three of the household’s adults would be taking nursery breakfast. Soon, Alex and Ella were sitting on the hearth rug, each with a toasting fork and an apprentice. Michael, his hands tucked inside Alex’s, sat between Alex’s knees, holding the toast carefully near the flame, and Anna curled next to Ella holding the fork by herself, with gently coaching. “Slightly further back, Anna. No, not quite so far. We want it to brown, but not burn, and we want to avoid smoke.”

Curved protectively over the child, her eyes and voice soft, she took his breath away. What a mother she would have made—could still make. She would be nearly thirty now, and still fertile, he imagined. Not that it mattered. He wanted her whether they could make children together or not. If only he could persuade her to want him.

In all their weeks of talking, she had not spoken of her marriage or of the child she had lost. Or children? Alex had refrained from prying, sure that the memories pained her, but now he wished to know all her secrets.

“Burning, Unca Alex,” Michael warned. Sure enough, while his attention had been on Ella the toast had wavered too near the flame and was well alight on one corner.

“And that, Michael,” Alex explained, “is what happens if you go too near the flame.”

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Scandal and gossip on WIP Wednesday

VFS109732 Ladies Gossiping at the Opera (oil on canvas) by Barnard, Frederick (1846-1896) (attr. to) oil on canvas 39.3x37.4 Private Collection English, out of copyright

Ladies Gossiping at the Opera (oil on canvas) by Barnard, Frederick (1846-1896) 

One useful trope in the historic romance writer’s arsenal is scandal. In the highly structured societies many of us write about, social censure was a powerful sanction. It could ruin lives—not just the lives of the women gossiped about, and occasionally even the men, but also those of their families.

Have you used scandal, or the threat of scandal, as a plot point? Share a bit with us, if you would, in the comments.

Here’s mine, from A Raging Madness.

When Alex finished, Lord Henry turned to Ella. “You have shown exemplary courage, Lady Melville. Thank you for what you did for Alex. This family owes you more that we can ever repay. What are your plans? You may call on our help for anything you need. ”

Ella blushed. “Alex helped me first, my lord. He saved my life, I believe, and certainly my sanity. But I would be deeply grateful for help. I must work for my living, and I thought perhaps Susan might advise me on how to find an employer? I thought I could nurse, perhaps, or be a companion to someone elderly, as I have been these five years.”

“Oh, but…” Susan began, then fell quiet, her eyes sliding to Alex.

Lord Henry frowned. “There may be a more immediate problem, Ella. May I call you ‘Ella’, as my children do? You saved my son’s life and so I quite feel you are part of the family, my dear.”

Ella nodded her agreement, lost for words. The man was the son of an earl, and a brigadier general, and he wanted to include her in his family?

“I have met your brother-in-law, I am sorry to say. He is here in London, and he called on me to demand that I tell him the whereabouts of my son.”

“Edwin is here?” Ella said at the same time as Alex said, his mouth curving in a predatory grin, “I would be delighted to meet with Braxton, the hell-spawned bastard.”

At Lord Henry’s raised eyebrow, he muttered an apology, which Susan ignored, saying, “Braxton? You are Braxton’s mad sister!” She patted Ella’s hand again. “Not that you are, of course, I do not mean that. I mean Braxton and his wife have been spouting that story all over town. That their sister is not in her right mind, and that she has been abducted by a…” She trailed off. “Oh dear.”

“Yes,” Lord Henry murmured. “That is the problem.”

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Sidekicks, Henchmen, and BFF on WIP Wednesday

jiltedI’m writing romances, so my stories need two main characters. And most of them have an antagonist or two to throw barriers in the way of my protagonists’ happy ending. But few indeed are the stories—mine or other people’s—without other people important to the plot because of their supporting role. Today’s work-in-progress Wednesday is dedicated to those others: to the confidants, the best friends, the offsiders, the sisters, even the rivals.

Usual rules. I show you mine, and you show me yours in the comments. This is Jonno Price, the teenage valet of my injured Major Alexander Redepenning (retired). The piece is from the first chapter of A Raging Madness.

Out in front of the house, Alex’s chaise waited, with his man Jonno—stripling boy, rather, barely out of his seventeenth year—leaning against a tree at the head of the horses. Alex was nearly up to him before he jerked fully upright.

“Major!” Jonno’s brain woke a second after his tongue, and he corrected himself. “Mr Redepenning, sir. Are we off, then?”

Alex ignored the slip and the stab of regret it caused. “Back to the inn, Jonno. I’d like to make an early start of it. There’s heavy weather coming, they were telling me, and if we have to hole up until it is over, I’d rather do it in a decent sized town than in an inn at the rear end of nowhere.”

“Right you are, sir. Close lot they have here, sir.” Jonno kept up a comfortable patter as he put down the modified step that allowed Alex to drag his bad leg up into the chaise with the minimum of help from his man. Jonno’s conversational overtures had been rebuffed, no refreshments had been offered to man or beast, and Jonno had been directed to water for the horses only reluctantly, after a direct request.

Alex let the boy’s words wash over him as he settled into his seat stifling a groan. Eight hours on the road followed by all this standing around had inflamed the constant ache he lived with into active knives of pain. Jonno, having folded away the step, led the horses around to face the carriage way, then leapt up beside Alex, released the brake, and chirruped the pair into movement. His unconscious ease of movement made Alex’s command sharper than Jonno deserved.

“Give me the reins. I’m not dead yet.”

Jonno handed them over, wisely saying nothing, though his face spoke for him.

“I don’t drive with my legs, Jonno,” Alex said, trying to sound more conciliatory. With Jonno on the brake, and a tired pair of not particularly fine post horses, he was putting less strain on the damned limbs than he would sitting tense beside Jonno fretting about his incapacity. He had a flash of memory: a carriage race in Syria, every bone and muscle in his body called into glorious service as he and his colonel’s four blood horses swept to victory against the competitors from three other brigades, his own screaming support from every hillock along the track.

Never again. Those days were behind him.

Jonno whistled. “What a beauty!”

The colt paced them in the half light of dusk, whickering at the stranger horses on the other side of the stone wall that closed him in, then tired at the lack of response and kicked up his heels, racing off into the gloom.

Jonno and Alex shared a smile. “A fine yearling,” Alex observed, “and bidding fair to be a racer, I would say. Are we still on Melville lands? He has the look of Captain Melville’s old horse.”

“It’s a Melville field, right enough,” Jonno agreed. “That old oak we’re passing? Marks the boundary, they told me in the village. We’ll be back at the inn in a few minutes, sir.”

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Antagonists on WIP Wednesday

maxresdefaultI do enjoy writing a good villain. Not all of my books have one. Sometimes, the only obstacles to the hero and heroine come from within, or from their life circumstances. Overcoming those can be hard and the journey can be satisfying, but for a true hiss-boo moment, with rotten tomatoes flying from the audience and ladies fainting in the gallery, we need a moustache-twirling, hand-rubbing, snickering,  wicked villain.

So what does your WIP hold? Is your antagonistic force a person, and is that person a villain? Share an excerpt that shows him or her in all their dreadful glory! (And if you don’t have a villain, share your antagonist anyway.)

Here are two of my villains, from A Raging Madness. Ella is escaping from the window of her bed chamber, and stops at the bottom of the climb for a rest.

Inside, a very long way away on the other side of the gentle fog that embraced her, two people were talking. Constance and Edwin. It did not matter. They were silly people, anyway. Gervais had not admired his older half-brother; a matter in which he and Ella were in rare accord. The two men shared a mother, but little of that kind, gentle woman showed in either son: the one a bullying, often violent rake; the other a sanctimonious Puritan—but another bully for all that. Not as much so as his wife.

The bully was bullied. Ella suppressed her giggle. Sssshhh. Mustn’t make a sound. She was running away. Soon. First she would have a little sleep.

But as she closed her eyes, her own name caught her attention. Constance and Edwin were talking about her? She forced herself to concentrate, to listen.

“No, Mrs Braxton. Ella 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 worse 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 Kingsford, but the other servants may start to murmur. It will drive her insane, you say?”

“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.”

“The doctor will be here tomorrow,” Edwin said, with enormous satisfaction. “And she will be safely tucked away where she can do no harm.”

Their voices faded as they moved away, clearly leaving the room since the window went dark.

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What went wrong in WIP Wednesday

What could possibly go wrong?

What could possibly go wrong?

And I didn’t choose the title of this post to acknowledge that it isn’t even Wednesday. Today, I’m using a writing tip as my starting point for the day’s theme.

When writing, don’t ask yourself what happens; ask yourself what goes wrong.

If nothing goes wrong, there isn’t a plot, and every plot is a series of obstacles, external or internal, between the protagonists and their goals.

So please share a few lines in your WIP where things seem to be going as they should but suddenly turn pear-shaped.

My excerpt is from the second book in The Golden Redepennings series, A Raging Madness. Alex and Eleanor have stopped in a village so that Alex (who has large chunks of shrapnel floating around in his thigh) can rest and Eleanor can go through the worst of the withdrawal from the opiates her horrible relatives have been forcing down her throat. But Alex has just met someone that Ella knows; someone who believes her brother-in-law’s claims that she is insane. Note that Alex, a product of his time, tries to avoid a direct lie.

Ella sat at the table under the window, where she could peer around the curtain at the garden without being seen. No rector yet. Down below, Alex had moved her chair so he could watch the path from the house. He was eating her toast, and drinking tea from the cup Jonno had poured her. After a moment’s hesitation, she lifted the window, just slightly. There. If they talked in the garden, she would hear the whole conversation.

She flinched at the sound of the door knocker, and fought the urge to run across to the other side of the house to see who was calling.

“See who that is, Jonno, would you, since our landlady is out?” Alex said calmly, and he had buttered and jammed another slice of toast before Jonno ushered two men out into the garden. Yes. The rector, and the other must be his friend, the local vicar.

From this angle, she could see Alex’s face, but not the rector’s. She could hear their voices, though.

“So! You are this Mr Reid. What are you playing at, Redepenning, and what have you done with poor Lady Melville?”

At the last question, Alex, whose eyes had been twinkling, sobered. “Lady Melville? She is still missing then? Surely you do not think I…?” He stood suddenly, looking so affronted that the rector took a step back. “Rector, I must protest. What sort of a gentleman would take advantage of a woman of frail mental capacity? I am not such a villain!”

He subsided back into his chair, waving the piece of toast he still held at the other seating around the table. “You will excuse me; the walk tired my leg. Please. Take a seat, gentlemen. Can my servant fetch you tea? I regret that our landlady is from home, but I would happily convey a message.”

The vicar sat, while the rector remained standing. “Mr Reid, or is it Major Redepenning…?”

“Mr Redepenning, in fact. I have sold out, sir, because of my injury. But I beg you to keep my true name a secret. A lady’s reputation, you know, though I am embarrassed to discuss such a matter with a man of God.”

The rector sat then, and rushed into speech, leaning towards Alex in his urgency. “Yes. Well that is the point, is it not? This so called lady; this Mrs Reid. If she is not Lady Melville, who is she? Eh? Who is she? That is the point.”

Alex, amusement lighting his face, said, “Jonno, is Mrs Reid still off on her walk?” He dropped his voice, confidingly. “You would be reassured if you could meet the lady, gentlemen, though I do not suppose she would be pleased with that solution. Alas, I fear I have been a disappointment to her. Hence the walk! And last time she lost her temper, I did not see her for months. Still, you are welcome to wait. I am sure she will return.”

He dropped his voice, and Ella had to strain to hear him. “She is not happy about her condition,” he confided. “Well. And one cannot blame her, of course.”

“Her condition?” The rector seized on the words. “She is ill?”

“Oh yes,” Alex confirmed. “That is why we stopped in this village. The motion of the carriage… One hopes the child is her husband’s, distressing though the thought is. It would be most unfortunate were it born with fair hair like mine. Or the Redepenning blue eyes. That would be hard for a husband to overlook, do you not think?”

“Sir!” The vicar rose to his feet, almost spitting with shock and horror. “I take leave to tell you, sir, that you are a despicable cad.”

(And yes. I’ve been missing my usual WIP Wednesday posts because things went wrong. But hey. Life.)

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What’s in a name?

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Book titles matter. A rose by any other name, Juliet claimed, would smell as sweet, but would people be as willing to put their noses close if it were called Skunkstink, or Fartflower? And titles bother me.

Sometimes, a title will occur immediately, surfacing from the interior of my brain without any effort on my part. Gingerbread Bride was like that. As soon as we came up with the concept of runaway brides for the Bluestocking Belles 2015 holiday box set, the title and the basic story appeared in my mind.

Sometimes, I’ll come up with a concept for a series, then have to find titles that will fit. All the titles for novels in The Golden Redepennings series are excerpts from quotes. Farewell to Kindness comes from The Count of Monte Cristo.

“And now…farewell to kindness, humanity and gratitude. I have substituted myself for Providence in rewarding the good; may the God of vengeance now yield me His place to punish the wicked.”

The one I’m working on now is called A Raging Madness, which comes from a quote by French philosopher Francois de La Rochefoucauld.

“…envy is a raging madness that cannot bear the wealth or fortune of others.”

Do these fulfill the criteria that Tucker Max lists in How to Title a Book The Right Way?
  1. Attention Grabbing
  2. Memorable
  3. Informative (gives idea of what book is about)
  4. Easy to say
  5. Not embarrassing or problematic for someone to say aloud to their friends

You tell me.

I’ve been fretting over two other titles, both books I’ve just finished.

The novel I have just received back from beta readers has been Seeking Prudence, Encouraging Prudence, and most recently Embracing Prudence. And it is part of a series loosely known as The Virtue Sisters. The other books would include a sequel to the current one, and also a book for each of Prudence Virtue’s sisters, Hope, Faith, and Charity. And all my titles are pretty blah.

After talking to friends and thinking—a lot—I’m leaning to the series titleThe Wages of Virtue.

The individual books would be Firstname in Something.

So either Prudence in Love followed by Prudence in Peril or Prudence in Desire followed by Prudence in Danger.

If we go with the ‘d’ words, we’d have Hope in Despair, Faith in Decline, and Charity in Doubt.

Otherwise, I’m sticking with Hope in Despair, but I might go for Faith in Jeopardy and Charity in Tribulation.

The novella is an entirely different matter! Tentatively entitled The Bluestocking and the Barbarian, which at least means what you see is what you get, it is again the first of a series. What to do, what to do?

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You cannot always choose both

choicesMy usual answer when I’m asked to make a choice between two good things is ‘yes’. Would you like chocolate cake or banana muffins? Yes. Would you prefer to have a bath or watch tv? Yes. Do you want to dance or have a glass of wine? Yes.

And this last two years, since I’ve started writing fiction for publication, I’ve been piling on the ‘boths’. I figure I have four lives, any one of which could be full time: writing fiction, a full-time day job, family and friends (including some fairly demanding responsibilities as an arms-length care giver), and then a whole mix of community activities I’m involved in.

It is interesting, sometimes thrilling, and mostly a lot of fun. But there’s no room for anything else. With a couple of health and family crises simmering since November, somethings had to give. I’m two months behind the frequently revised date for my draft of Embracing Prudence. And my marketing activity is way, way down, as shown by my book sales figures.

Thinking about priorities

I had a wake-up call, recently. I read a published book by a writer I admire, and it sounded to me like a first draft. Lots of long sequences of backstory, telling rather than showing, some odd sequencing stuff. And I think I know why.

Publish a book every three months, received wisdom says, and then live in the marketplace telling people about it. The pressure is on to rush to get stuff to the publisher or (in the case of us independent publishers) to get it on the bookshelf. And the time isn’t there to make it as close to perfect as we can.

I am not playing that game. I want every book to be better than the last. Because I don’t like doing the same thing over and over, I may not always please the same readers, but I need to know that at least I’m improving my grasp of the craft of writing.

Here are my priorities, more or less in order.

  1. to deepen my relationship with God
  2. to look after my family
  3. to stay healthy
  4. to give my employer my best attention and commitment during working hours until the mortgage is paid and I can retire and write fiction as my full-time job
  5. to write books I am happy to put my name on
  6. to share those books with readers.

So writing comes ahead of marketing

When the squeeze is on, as it has been over the past four months, in future I’m choosing writing over marketing. Maybe this means that I’ll have another two years of adequate but not spectacular sales. (My author rank at Amazon generally sits somewhere in the 20,000–25,000 bracket. To put that in perspective, I’m not millionth, but each step from here is tightly fought, and I won’t be anywhere near making even a modest living till I’m up around 10,000th.)

In two years, when the mortgage is paid, I might be able to spend more time thinking about how to get my print books into libraries and book shops, and which review sites and other gate keepers might be persuaded to take a look. Meanwhile, I’m in the writing cave. I’ll pop out to play with my friends. Yes, and to do a bit of marketing, too, when I have time. But my priority is going to be the books.

What’s next from Jude Knight?

I’ve recently been project manager for the Belles on the Combined 2015 Editions of the Teatime Tattler, published last week. Click on the title to find out about it, and to get your copy while it is still free.

While you’re there, check out our previous box set, Mistletoe, Marriage and Mayhem. We’re removing it from publication on 31 March, so get it now for only 99c, all proceeds to the Malala Fund. After 1 April, we’ll each publish our own novella. I’m targeting 8 May with my Gingerbread Bride, which is about Rick Redepenning and his courtship of Mary, seven years before the events in my novel Farewell to Kindness.

Before the end of June, I plan to publish Embracing Prudence. That’s pretty tight, since I’m only halfway through the beta edit, so it may slip (once more), but no later than July.

I’ve made a good start on A Raging Madness. I’m 12,000 words in, and I have the rough plan for the rest mapped out. I expect to publish before the end of the year, possibly as early as September.

I have a 1 May deadline for the novella for the next Bluestocking Belles holiday box set, which has a house party theme. All our novellas have their lives affected in one way or another by the festivities at Hollystone Hall. The venue has its own Facebook page, where we’re posting character sketches and scenery on our way to publication on 1 November. My contribution is titled The Bluestocking and the Barbarian.

And Mariana Gabrielle and I are cowriting a novel that ambushed us when we were thinking about something else. We haven’t set a publication date for Never Kiss a Toad, but watch this space.

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Assumptions on WIP Wednesday

eve2I’ve been banging my head against assumptions today. Four different parts of my busy life blew up on me because of diverse assumptions where people had decided what was happening without checking the facts. So I’m late posting, but it is still Wednesday somewhere, right? And keep right on adding those excerpts, folks. People look at these pages right the way through the week.

Wrongful assumptions, or diverse assumption, can be a useful plot hinge. Have your characters gone off in different directions or locked horns because of assumptions? Mine have. I haven’t yet written the major incorrect assumption that my heroine Sophia has about my hero James (that he is courting her sister), but Embracing Prudence is full of assumptions, Never Kiss a Toad has quite a few, and here’s one from A Raging Madness.

“Lady Melville keeps very little in her room,” he commented.

The maid frowned, and moved closer to him, lowering her voice to a thread above a whisper. “Miss Kerridge packed it all away. Said the lady did not need any of it and might use it to harm herself. They could have left the poor lady with her father’s picture. And the toy Sir Gervase bought for the baby. It was soft. She couldn’t hurt herself with a stuffed cloth cat.”

A baby? Ella had said nothing about a child.

“Perhaps they thought the child should have his father’s gift? Or hers. A boy or a girl?” Not that it mattered.

But the maid was shaking her head. “Poor little mite. It died. It was terrible.” Her eyes gleamed with the pleasure of a dreadful story. “The master was dead, and the old mistress had taken to her bed with a seizure (she was never the same again, poor lady) and my lady slipped on the ice. The fall started the baby coming. But it was not the right time, and the wee one was not lying right in the womb. She had it powerful bad.”

“The baby was born dead?” Dear God.

“Not then, sir. First Mr and Mrs Braxton arrived, and then the baby was born, and we were that pleased, and then the mistress was sick, and the baby, he just died in his sleep, poor little lamb. She looked fit to be buried herself, poor lady, but she got up from her bed and started nursing old Lady Melville, and she nursed her ever since, these three years till a month gone.”

Three years. Three years ago, Braxton had come to London to collect the body of his younger half-brother. He had said that Ella had refused to come with him—that she had social engagements she would not leave for a husband she did not want. And Alex had believed him. When he travelled down here for the funeral, he had made his contempt clear to a pale and silent Ella. How had he not seen that she was ill and grieving?

 

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First kisses on WIP Wednesday

Today, I’m featuring first kisses. With four works-in-progress underway at the same time, I have a few to choose from. Two of them are not at all far along, but I was in a party on Facebook where kisses were the theme of the day, so I wrote a kiss scene for each.

Below is the first kiss between Alex Redepenning and Ella Melville, hero and heroine of A Raging Madness, the second Golden Redepenning book. How about showing me yours?

In A Raging Madness, Alex Redepenning is rescuing the widow Eleanor Melville from her scheming relatives. Alex and Ella are fighting the attraction between them. I haven’t yet written as far as their first kiss, but I’m guessing it is going to go something like this:

“How is your leg?” she said, doing a creditable job of keeping her voice steady. Alex could not be so calm. He had nearly lost her!

She knelt beside him looking anxiously at the pernicious limb. To hell with the leg. “Ella!” She turned her head to meet his eyes. He said it again, his voice breaking. “Ella.”

Her eyes full of wonder, she lifted her hand to touch his face, and he noticed the holes in the crown of her hat.

“Your hat!” he managed. She untied and unpinned it; removed it and poked a finger into one hole and then the other.

“The bullet went through my hat!” She sounded surprised, but not alarmed.

“Too close.” Unable to bear the distance, he tugged her into his arms. “Too close, Ella.” He folded her close and tucked his face into her hair.

She pulled back, warning him, “Alex, be careful of your leg!” Her face turned up to him tempted him beyond measure, and he covered her mouth with his, the thwarted desire of a decade or more released by the fear of the last half hour.

Damn the leg, he would have said, but her mouth had risen to meet his, and he had no breath for speech; no mind with which to think. In all the universe, there was only Ella.