The Golden Redepennings

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Spotlight on Unkept Promises

It’s on preorder. My story of Mia Redepenning and her reunion with her absent husband, and what happened next, is finally with the proofreader, and I’m setting up a publication plan as we speak. Read on for an excerpt. See my book page for the previous three books, and The Golden Redepennings web page for more about the series. And all my novels are on 50% discount at Smashwords this month.

Unkept Promises

Book 4 in The Golden Redepennings series

She wants to negotiate a comfortable marriage; he wants her in his bed

“… oaths and anchors equally will drag: naught else abides on fickle earth but unkept promises of joy.” Herman Melville

Naval captain Jules Redepenning has spent his adult life away from England, and at war. He rarely thinks of the bride he married for her own protection, and if he does, he remembers the child he left after their wedding seven years ago. He doesn’t expect to find her in his Cape Town home, a woman grown and a lovely one, too.

Mia Redepenning sails to Cape Town to nurse her husband’s dying mistress and adopt his children. She hopes to negotiate a comfortable married life with the man while she’s there. Falling in love is not on her to-do list.

Before they can do more than glimpse a possible future together, their duties force them apart. At home in England, Mia must fight for the safety of Jules’s children. Imprisoned in France, Jules must battle for his self-respect and his life.

Only by vanquishing their foes can they start to make their dreams come true.

Buy links:
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/947394
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TXXK53N/

Excerpt

Jules had somehow found the time to organise for the military chaplain to visit Kirana, and he arrived later that afternoon when Mia was reading to her friend. The chaplain was a middle-aged man, balding and running slightly to fat, but with a kind eye.

Jules presented him to Mia. “Mrs Redepenning, may I make known to you Captain Albrooke, chaplain to the nth Regiment. He has been kind enough to come to see Kirana.”

What was the etiquette for introducing a man of the cloth to a mistress? Mia was certain the question had never been covered in any of her conversations with her mentors. She would have to behave according to her own best instincts, and hope she did not offend the man. “Captain Albrooke, thank you for coming. Please. Take my seat.” She rose, putting the book to one side “Kirana, my dear, Jules and I will be close by if you need us. Captain Albrooke, you may be wondering how to address my friend. Mrs Redepenning would be acceptable, or Mrs Kirana, if you prefer.”

Jules held the door for Mia, followed after her, and closed it not quite shut behind them. From inside the room they could hear the low hum of the chaplain’s voice, punctuated by Kirana’s cough.

“Albrooke was a bit non-plussed,” Jules told Mia. “More by your presence than by Kirana’s, I suspect. Not many wives would be as charitable, Mia.”

Mia shrugged, suppressing the movement part way through. Did Jules notice? Possibly not, but anyone raised as a lady would. Every day in a dozen ways she showed she had not absorbed the thousands of tiny rules of Society with her mother’s milk. Ladies did not shrug, or slouch, or skip, or shout, or saunter, or stride, or… she couldn’t think of another ‘s’ word, but she was sure she could create a list of ‘do not’s’ for every letter of the alphabet.

“Kirana had the prior claim, Jules.” Thinking about holding her body straight and still, she failed to guard her tongue. “I have never counted your relationship with her as a breach of your vows.” She would have caught back the last sentence, with its emphatic stress on the word ‘her’, but it was too late.

Jules was looking out of the window into the courtyard below, where Hannah was sitting with the two girls, reading them a book. But he heard the emphasis, for his head jerked around and she felt the burn of his blue gaze as he examined the flush that swept her face.

She bit her lip, but the words were said, and they were true.

“But you do count other relationships?” he asked. She was not deceived by the light conversational tone; not when the search beam of those eyes still stripped her soul bare.

“I daresay you think it presumptuous of me.” She could offer that much, though she herself did not think it presumptuous. He had acted in honour when he made sure she knew, before they married, that he intended to return to his mistress, and so she accepted that as a codicil to the vows they had exchanged in their hasty wedding. No exception for her, and only one for him.

“Not presumptuous at all.” Jules sounded tired all of a sudden, and her indignation evaporated. What a homecoming this had been for the poor man. “You are the one person on earth with the right to comment. And Kirana, perhaps, but she has never complained.”

Again, Mia spoke before her brain could censor her tongue. “You might be a better man if she had.”

He turned back to the window and his voice was dry as he replied, “You will undoubtedly amend her lapse. You’ve got yourself a poor bargain, Mia. I told you before I married you, I was not the Sir Galahad type. I’m no saint, either. Don’t expect me to be; I’ll only disappoint you.”

The door to the bedchamber opened. “Mrs Kirana Redepenning will sleep now,” Captain Albrooke said. “If I may, I will call again in a few days.”

“Of course,” Mia agreed. “Kirana will appreciate that.”

Jules carried the man off to his study for a drink and Mia set a maid to watching Kirana then went in search of a task, preferably one that involved punching things.

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Parents on WIP Wednesday

 

We all have parents and many of us have offspring. Both ways, the relationship is hugely formative, and in stories, scenes between a parent and offspring, or memories of such scenes, can be important for both plot and character. This week, I’m inviting excerpts about relationships between parents and children. Good or bad. Mother or father. Children grown up or still young. With our protagonist as parent or as offspring.

Mine is from Unkept Promises, and shows how Jules feels about his children by his mistress.

“I would rather do laundry than wash dishes,” Marshanda argued.

“Washing dirty pots is the worst,” Adiratna agreed, and Perdana nodded. “I hate washing dirty pots.”

The children fell into a discussion about the baked on grime that was hardest to remove, and Jules pulled Mia to one side, his face thunderous. “When have my daughters cleaned dirty pots?”

“While you were away,” Mia explained. “Maureen O’Riley sent them to the kitchen when she took over Kirana’s place.” She bit at her lower lip, frowning. Now to tell him her fears. But he spoke before she could, his voice cold enough to freeze.

“Took over Kirana’s place? Explain yourself, Mrs Redepenning.”

“Has no one told you? After you left, Maureen announced she was your new mistress, and was taking over the mistress’s room. She had the servants move Kirana to the little storeroom by the kitchen.”

“That hole?” Jules took a deep breath and two or three swift paces, back and forth, colour ebbing and flowing in face.

“Quite,” Mia agreed, reassured by the strength of his reaction. Clearly, Maureen had not had his authority for the move.

“No wonder she— Kirana told me you’d moved her from a hot stuffy room, and I thought she meant the one you are in now.”  He took another two swift paces, his struggle to remain outwardly calm clear on his face.

“Papa?” Marshanda left her conversation to run to Mia, putting an arm around her waist and peeping at Jules from that place of safety. “Why is Papa angry, Ibu Mia?”

“Your father is angry you were made to work in the kitchen, and your mother was made to sleep in the storeroom,” Mia said.

Jules had himself under control, and his voice dripped ice, though sparks of fire lit his blue eyes. “My servants will explain to me how they allowed this to happen — how they helped this to happen.”

Marshanda plastered herself closer to Mia, and Adiratna explained. “Dench said you had told him this was what you wanted. I told Marsha he was lying. I don’t like Dench.”

“You were right, Ada,” Jules told her. “He was lying. And I don’t like him, either.”

“Dench hits people if they say he is lying,” Marshanda warned. “He hit Japheth when Japheth didn’t believe you had given the orders. And he hit Ada when she bit him.”

Jules dropped to his knees and took his youngest daughter’s face between his hands. “He hit you, sweetheart?”

“Papa will hit him,” Perdana promised. “Papa will hit him right through to next Tuesday, won’t you Papa?”

“I will certainly make certain he never lies to my little girls or hits them again,” Jules vowed, not taking his attention off Adiratna. “Biting him was a very dangerous thing to do, my darling.”

Adiratna stuck out her lip and glowered. “I am not sorry,” she insisted. “He was dragging Mami by her arm. It hurt her. I made him stop.”

“She was very brave, Papa,” Marshanda insisted, her whole body trembling as she stood up for her sister. “Mami tried to walk, but she fell down, and he said a bad word and began to drag her, but when Ada bit him and ran away, he ran after her and Japheth and I had time to help Mami to her new room.”

“You were both very brave, then,” Jules said. “I am proud of you. And Ibu Mia is proud of you, too.”

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First meeting on WIP Wednesday

 

This week, I’m thinking about first meetings. My Maximum Force story is percolating in my head, and I’m also planning the first meeting scenes in books 3 and 4 of Children of the Mountain King. As in Unkept Promises, the heroines of those two books met their heroes when they were still schoolgirls, and I haven’t decided whether the scenes will be in flashback, or just narrated as a memory. Max’s heroine, Serenity, is an adult, though — whatever the elders of her cult may think.

Today, I’m inviting authors to give me an excerpt with the first meeting between the hero and the heroine. Mine is from the first chapter of Unkept Promises. The first two chapters are set seven years before the rest of the book. Jules has been captured by smugglers and locked up in a cell.

The light came as a surprise, shining like a beacon from the other side of a barred opening set high up in one wall. Standing, Jules managed to reach the bars and pull himself up, to look through into another cell very much like his own. A man lay still, curled on a mess of rags and clothing. His eyes were shut, and he had not responded to the girl who crouched beside him. She was a skinny child, still boyish in shape, but Jules did not suppose that would discourage the smugglers from making use of her body or selling her to someone for that purpose. He made an instant vow to save her, whatever the cost.

The girl held the candle she had lit away in one hand to cast its light without dripping its wax, and brushed back the hair that fell over the man’s forehead. “Oh, Papa,” she said, her voice trembling.

“Miss,” Jules hissed. The girl startled back from her father. Her face, already pale, turned whiter as she faced the door, putting her body between herself and the unconscious man.

“I’m a prisoner,” Jules reassured her. “In the next cell.”

The girl held the candle high as she stood, peering towards the sound of his voice. He kept talking to guide her. “Lieutenant Julius Redepenning of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, at your service, Miss. I am going to get out of here, and I’m going to take you and your father with me.”

The face turned up to him was just leaving childhood behind, but the eyes shone with intelligence and her response indicated more maturity than he expected. “I hope you can, Lieutenant. But if your cell is as sturdy as mine, I beg leave to reserve judgement.” She sighed. “I am sorry for your predicament, but I will not deny I am glad to have company.”

“May I borrow the candle?” Jules asked. Her eyes widened in alarm and he rushed to add, “just for long enough to check my cell. They left me without light.” Without food or drink, either, but he would not tell her that. Perhaps the smugglers intended to supply him, and if they didn’t, he would not take the supply she needed for herself and her father.

She passed the candle up, her worry palpable, and he hoisted himself higher with one hand so he could stretch the other through the bars. “I will be careful, Miss, I promise.”

“Mia,” she said. “Euronyme Stirling, but formality seems out of place, here.”

He returned her smile. She was a brave little girl; he had to find a way out for her. “Call me Jules,” he offered, “as my friends do.”

He rested the candle—a stubby bit of wax with a rope wick—on the sill between the bars and dropped, shaking the ache out of the shoulder that had taken most of his weight. When he reached the candle down, Mia let out an involuntary whimper at the loss of light.

“I have it safe,” he said. “You shall have it back in a minute.”

“I do without it most of the time,” she replied. “It’s just—I have always known I could light it again.”

Most of the time? “How long have you been here?” Jules asked, keeping his voice light and casual against the lump in his throat at her gallantry.

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Tea with Jude

 

Her Grace gestures to a seat, and begins to pour a fragrant cup of tea from the teapot she has ready at her elbow. She does not ask how I have it — medium strength, no sugar, no milk or cream. We have been together now for more than six years, and we know one another’s habits.

She has become more than I expected when she first surfaced from the depths of my imagination. My notebook says:

Anthony George Bartholomew Philip Grenford, Duke of Haverford, Marquess of Aldbridge, Baron Chillingham
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Eleanor Frances Sophia Grenford nee Creydon (daughter of Earl of Farnmouth)

Duchess with two sons and unhappy marriage treasures her many goddaughters. Links books through goddaughters. Sons have their own stories.The Duchess also rescued her husband’s by blows and put them into school etc. See David. Could be more stories about these by-blows.

“That was the start,” Eleanor agrees, “but we have gone beyond that, have we not?”

We have. Even from her first appearance, she has demanded her own voice. She is the maternal aunt of the hero of my first novel, and he goes to her when he needs help with the social circumstances of his lovely widow. England is in the middle of the 1807 election, and Eleanor has been canvassing the Kent electorate on behalf of her husband’s candidate.

The sun was setting on Saturday evening, and Rede was beside himself with frustration, before the Duchess of Haverford’s coach was finally seen tooling up the road to the castle.
He was waiting when she entered the front door, and she greeted him with pleasure. “Rede, darling. What a lovely surprise. Have you been waiting for me long?
“Such a circus in Deal. The electors were inclined to listen to the merchants, and the merchants did not favour Haverford’s man. Not at all.
“So I had to visit every shop in the town and buy something. The carriage, I can assure you, is laden. But Haverford believes that it may have done the trick.
“Just as well, dear, for I have enough Christmas presents for every one of my godchildren for the next three years. And some of them are not of the best quality, I can assure you.”
She was talking as she ascended the stairs, giving her cloak to a maid as she passed, her bonnet to a footman, and her reticule to another maid.
“You want something, I expect. Well, you shall tell me all about it at dinner. I left most of the food I purchased at the orphanage in Margate, but I kept a pineapple for dessert. Such fun, my dear, have you tried one?”
“No, dear aunt,” he managed to say, sliding his comment in as she paused to give her gloves to yet another maid. Or it may have been the first maid again.
“Well, today you shall. Join me in the dining room in—shall we say one hour?” And she sailed away towards her apartments, leaving him, as always, feeling as if he had been assaulted by a friendly and affectionate hurricane.
Over dinner, he laid all honestly before her. Well, perhaps not all. The lovely widow, betrayed by George, the three sisters, the little daughter. No need to mention that he’d played fast and loose himself with the lady’s virtue. Just that he needed to rehabilitate her. Just that he wanted to marry her and she had refused.
“She has refused you, Rede?” Her Grace was surprised. “But you are handsome, titled and charming. And rich. What does she object to?”
Rede hadn’t been able to work it out, either. “I know she cares for me, Aunt Eleanor. But she keeps saying no. The first time—to be honest, the first time I made a disaster of it. I told her… I gave her the impression that I only wanted her for a wife because she was too virtuous to be my mistress.”
Her Grace gave a peal of laughter. “Oh Rede, you didn’t.”
“I’m afraid I did. But the second time I assured her that I wanted her for my Countess.”
“And you told her that you loved her,” the Duchess stated.
“No. Not exactly. I told her I wanted to keep her safe. I told her I wanted to protect her.”
“I see. And I suppose you think if you bring her into society, she will consent to marry you?”
“I don’t know, aunt. I only know that she deserves a better life than stuck in a worker’s cottage in the back of nowhere working as a teacher so she can one day give her sister a decent life. If she won’t have me… Well, she has been to see a lawyer about a small inheritance she has coming. I thought perhaps I could make it a bit bigger. Without her knowing.”
“You do love her,” said the Duchess, with great satisfaction.
“Yes, but… Yes.” There were no buts. He loved her. At least he hadn’t told her so. He had no taste for laying his heart on the floor for her to walk on.
“You need to tell her so.” The Duchess echoed and denied his thinking, all in one short sentence. “She is probably afraid that you are marrying her out of a misplaced sense of duty. You are far too responsible, Rede.”
“No, she couldn’t think that. Could she?”
“Who knows? Well, I will do it. I cannot have my niece-in-law having her babies in scandal. I take it there is the possibility of a baby? You would not be feeling so guilty otherwise.”
Rede was without a response for a long moment, finally huffing a laugh. “Aunt Eleanor, a hundred years ago you would have burnt as a witch,” he told her.

Eleanor reads the words over my shoulder and laughs. “Silly boy,” she observes. “But it all turned out in the end.”

“And then you helped Becky and Hugh,” I reminded her. A shadow passes over her face. That also turned out in the end, though perhaps not for Eleanor’s son, the Marquis of Aldridge.

By that time, Eleanor Haverford had embedded herself into my Regency world. She appears again and again, always helping, always protecting the defenseless and supporting the cause of true love.

From her wistful look into her cup, I know what she is thinking. I know the question she wants to ask.

“Will it ever be my turn?” The room hums with the unspoken words.

I can’t answer; those stories are not written yet, although I’ve begun them. Things change as I’m writing. I can’t imagine that the one-word answer will reverse, but she will want details, and I need to write the six-novel series, Children of the Mountain King, to find out for certain whether it will ever be Eleanor’s turn.

I hope so. She deserves it.

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Random thoughts on WIP Wednesday

I often have random scenes playing themselves out in my head, not just from the books I’m currently writing but from books I’m not going to write for a while. Do you do that? Share an excerpt in the comments from a scene that’s in your head and not yet on paper.

Mine is from the Redepenning book after next, and it might be the beginning. Or I might begin with a scene from Valeria.

Harry sat drinking a coffee and pretending to read a book while the abyss hovered, a seething mass of black memories, with tendrils of despair ever reaching, and ever having to be beaten back so he could pretend that all was normal.

The abyss, rather than the lingering weakness from his wounds, was the true reason he was still staying at his father’s townhouse instead of finding rooms nearer to the barracks. The need to mimic a well man before Brigadier General Lord Redepenning dragged him from bed every morning, and gave him a motive to keep the darkness at bay for another day.

Lord Henry was on the other side of the library study reading the files and letters sent over from the horse guard. He pretended, too. He and Harry both knew that he worked here rather than his office at the Horse Guard for fear of leaving his eldest son to his own devices, rather than because of the encroachments of age. If neither spoke of it, it did not have to be faced.

”Harry.” An odd note in Father’s voice sparked a thread of interest. Father was holding out to him the letter in his hand. “Tell me what you think of this.”

Harry set down the book and his cup and crossed the room, standing beside the desk to scan the two pages.

He’d not completed the first paragraph before he collapsed into the nearest chair. “A widow? She thinks I’m dead?” A few lines more and he lifted his head, meeting his father’s eyes. “I have a son? Father! I have a son.”

”And, it seems, a wife you acquired in Spain five years ago and never mentioned,” Father replied.

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Tea with Gil

The invitation had been for the new Viscount Rutledge, but Her Grace of Haverford was unsurprised to find his mother had accompanied him. The duchess had never warmed to Lady Rutledge, but the woman must be tolerated for the sake of her son, who deserved her support. Lord Rutledge, or Gil as his friends called him, faced an uphill battle to reinstate the wealth and reputation of the title he had just inherited after the excesses of his disgraceful rakehell of a brother.

“Of course, Rutledge is nothing like his brother,” Lady Rutledge complained. “My dear Gideon knew what he owed the title. Why, he would never have missed the Season. As for involving himself in estate business like some kind of peasant! Gideon would have no more demeaned his whole family in such a manner than he would have appeared in public in last year’s fashions.”

Eleanor was well aware of how the former Lord Rutledge spent the Season when he and his mother came up to Town, leaving the man’s poor little wife at home in the country. Gideon Rutledge seldom appeared in a gathering for polite Society, and would have been evicted from most had he tried. He was, however, to be found throwing money like water wherever vice and debauchery reigned. Hence the challenge facing his successor.

The duchess entered the lists on the side of the new viscount. “I am always delighted to see a peer who values the welfare of his people and his estate above his own pleasures,” she said. “Lord Rutledge, your many years of successful leadership in the service of the King will undoubtedly stand you in good stead as you face these new challenges.”

“Rutledge’s only challenge,” Lady Rutledge insisted, “is finding a wealthy bride willing to accept such a barbarian.” She shrugged. “The title covers a multitude of sins.”

Eleanor only just avoided showing her astonishment. To call one’s son a barbarian before a mere acquaintance! Was the woman mad? “It certainly did,” she countered. “How glad you must be that your second son is so much more responsible and civilised than your first.”

It was Lady Rutledge’s turn to gape. “Gideon? Are you calling Gideon uncivilised? Why, he always dressed in the first stare of fashion, and he knew all the on dits. He was even invited to Carlton House and the Duke of Richport was an intimate friend.”  She sat back proudly, clearly confident that she had rousted the opposition with the final argument.

Gil Rutledge caught Eleanor’s eye. He gave a slight shake of the head, before asking, “The landscape over the fireplace, Your Grace, is that one of the ducal estates? I do not recognise the house, but the painting is truly lovely.”

Eleanor accepted the change of subject, and followed his lead in ruthlessly keeping conversation during the remainder of the call on innocuous topics. Lady Rutledge followed the footman out after the requisite half hour. Gil remained long enough to say, “Thank you, Your Grace. It does no good to talk sense to my mother, but I appreciate you making the effort.”

“Hurry up, Rutledge,” Lady Rutledge’s voice called, but the duchess put a hand on the viscount’s sleeve to detain him.

“Lord Rutledge, I have heard many good things about you. You have the respect of much of Society; certainly of those who count. My nephew stands your friend, I know, and my son and I are pleased to know you. Remember that, when your mother’s insults become burdensome.”

The young man’s sombre mood lifted a little and he smiled. “Thank you, Your Grace,” he said again.

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Gil Rutledge is the hero of The Realm of Silence. Check it out for more about the burdens he faces and how a love he believes he does not deserve finds him anyway.

 

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Marriage proposals on WIP Wednesday

 

The marriage proposal is often a highlight of a historical romance. Tender, inept, funny, disastrous — it shows the character of both protagonists and is an important point along the plot arc: often the penultimate moment, but also frequently much earlier in the plot. Show me the passage with your proposal, if you have one. If not, share another important declaration of intent, feelings, or both.

Mine is from Unkept Promises, and happens in Chapter Two.

“Jules,” Father said gravely, leaving the point, “her father appears to have been her only family. She has been left near destitute and with her reputation in ruins. But she refuses the remedy that would save her.”

“I heard,” Jules said. “Marriage to me. Because of Kirana.” He met his father’s gaze, his own solemn. “Kirana and I have two children, Father, if all went well with her lying in. I cannot desert them. My life is in Madras. I am posted to the Far East fleet, and should have been on my way back days ago. In addition, Mia is a child—just fourteen. Her peculiar upbringing has made her mature in many ways. She is not ready for marriage.”

“Mia is…” Susan began, but Father waved her to silence, leaving Jules to finish his own arguments for and against.

He was thinking about what his life might look like with Mia as his wife. He could think of worse fates. She would, as Aldridge had implied, be a magnificent woman when she grew up. “Can I leave her with you? If I marry her… Would you take her in as a daughter and look after her until I come home?” Which could be years from now, and anything could happen. He was going back into the war. He might die. Any of them might.

Yes. He would marry Mia and let the future look after itself.

It happened quickly after that. Mia argued when he proposed, but he assured her he was not being coerced. She looked gravely at him as he explained the arrangements he had made to leave her in England, and agreed. “That would be best, I expect. Kirana would not like if you arrived home with a wife.”

Would Kirana be upset? He worried about that for a moment, then put the thought aside. He was doing the best he could for everyone, and they would just have to accept it.

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How to use the wheel on a sailing ship

I’ve been bringing my heroine and her entourage from South Africa to England in the latest draft of Unkept Promises, which has meant a lot of research about the type of ship, its size and configuration, what type of accommodation Mia might have found herself in, where she and children might be out of the way but also out in the air during the day, and all sorts of other things that I never mention in the book (but that I need to know so I don’t make any egregious errors).

At one point, she goes off to talk to the ship’s captain, and I set out to find out where the wheel was on a brig-rigged schooner. Which led me to wondering how the wheel worked, which led me to this YouTube clip. You’re welcome.

(The maker of the video notes that he didn’t include the use of the sails, a major factor in steering a sailing ship, as any yachtsman knows.)

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Introspection on WIP Wednesday

 

I try to write characters with side-kicks so they have someone to talk to. My hero of Unkept Promises has no-one for most of the novel, so readers need to see inside his head. ‘Show, don’t tell,’ they say, but don’t you sometimes find that your hero, heroine, or even villain is all alone and you need the reader to know what they’re thinking? Share me an excerpt with some introspection. Here’s a bit of mine, from Unkept Promises.

The house had been sold, the remaining servants had all taken positions elsewhere, so Jules was bunking down in the spare room at a friend’s place. He was sailing soon, and perhaps would never return. The navy wanted him in the Bay of Biscay: him and his ship. When the war was over, he’d retire. He had been at sea, man and boy, for nearly twenty years, and what he’d said to Mia had been echoing ever since. Once the war was over, the Navy would offer little chance for advancement. They’d have more captains than ships, and he had never been willing to use his family connections to edge out men as well qualified as him and perhaps in greater need.

Besides, he had a family. He wanted to build a home with them, see his children grow, wake up to his wife’s welcoming smile.

The cemetery was his last stop before he sailed. He stood before Kirana’s grave, the flowers someone had left long wilted on the mound of still raw earth. The tombstone he and Mia had planned was not yet in place, but he could see it in his mind’s eye. “Here lies Kirana Redepenning, devoted mother and friend. Taken from us far too soon, she will always be in the hearts of Julius, Euronyme, Perdana, Marshanda and Adiratna.”

“I will look after them, Kirana,” he promised. “They will want for nothing.”

 

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Tea with Kitty and Mia

 

Eleanor was delighted to have Lady Catherine Stocke and Mrs Julius Redepenning to tea with her this afternoon. The two had been friends since they met at Haverford Castle half their lifetimes ago, when they were children. Lady Kitty was one of Eleanor’s many goddaughters, and Mia was the daughter of the man who had, in that long ago summer, been cataloguing the Castle’s library.

It was not many years later that Mia married in Haverford Castle — married Captain Julius Redepenning, who was a cousin of Eleanor’s nephew, the Earl of Chirbury.

Eleanor knew that Mia hadn’t seen her husband since the day of the wedding, since he immediately returned to his naval posting in the Far East — and the native mistress who had borne his children.

“What brings the pair of you to London?” she asked, as she handed them their tea and invited them to help themselves to the delicately iced cakes. She had heard, but gossip could distort, as none knew better.

“I am sailing to the Cape Colony where the Captain is currently posted,” Mia replied. “Kitty has come to see me off.”

“How lovely,” Eleanor said. “You and young Jules are to be reunited.”

The amusement in Mia’s eyes suggested she knew that Eleanor was fishing for confirmation of the rumours, and she kindly obliged. “He has been away at sea and might not be aware I am coming,” she explained. “But my friend Kirana is very ill — consumption, I believe. I am going to nurse her, and to bring Jules’s children home with me if the worst happens.”

Eleanor, who had rescued a number of orphaned Haverford by-blows and given them homes, educations, and futures, found nothing to object to in that objective. “So I understood,” she conceded. “I have been telling the harpies I totally approve, and you will apply to me, Mia dear, if you need any help.”

This happens just before Mia leaves for the Cape Colony, and the bulk of Unkept Promises begins.