The Golden Redepennings

by

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.

by

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.)

by

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.”

 

by

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.

 

 

by

The disease that made you in fashion

One of the biggest killers of humankind in history (apart from other humans) has been a tiny organism we now call Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

In ancient Greece, it was considered the most prevalent disease of the age. Throughout history, it has been feared and the symptoms treated with despair. And in the nineteenth century, it was a fashionable way to die.

The most common form of tuberculosis attacks the lungs. Sufferers experience chest pain, fatigue, night sweats, loss of appetite leading to a general wasting away, and a persistent coughing up of phlegm and later blood (and bits of lung tissue). Eventually the patient’s lungs are so invaded by the disease that they suffocate and die. Sounds sexy, right?

No. Not that bit. What our Regency and Victorian poets and artists admired was those features of the disease that fit their ideas about the causes of illness and their concept of beauty.

First, not knowing about germs, they thought that the causes of the illness varied by social class. When the poor died in their filthy overcrowded rooms, they had the Graveyard Cough, the White Plague, the King’s Evil (so called, because the touch of a king was thought to be a cure for the version of the disease we now call scrofula, a tuberculous swelling of the lymph glands). These were diseases of poverty, immorality, and criminality, which were all clearly linked, since poverty was obviously the fault of the poor. (Come to think of it, some modern commentators haven’t moved on from that belief.)

When the wealthy died, it was clearly a different disease, since they were rich, moral, and altogether less smelly. It was consumption, so called because the person grew thinner and thinner. It was, so medical theory had it, an excess of emotion and genius typical of the artistic mind that slowly consumed the patient. They were killed by fiery passion.

And look how lovely they were while they died! Was it fashionable to be slender (rather than hearty and robust like the working classes)? Not being able to eat made you thin. Was it fashionable to be pale (rather than tanned like those horrid workers who must toil in the sun)? Loss of blood will make you positively pasty.

Since one in four deaths in the nineteenth century was caused by the disease, many fashionable poets, musicians, painters and authors died of consumption, which confirmed, in the minds of the fashionable, that their creativity had killed them. Add to that the predilection of said creative types to glorify death by consumption in their poems, operas, and novels, and hey presto. A horrible slow wasting death becomes desirable.

Kirana, Jules’s mistress, is slowly dying of consumption in my current work-in-progress, Unkept Promises. Her death will be written some time in the next few days, poor soul. 

by

Black moments on WIP Wednesday

Each story reaches a moment when things go wrong. In the most gripping stories, at some point, things go so wrong that the hero or the heroine or both can see no way out. Prue has been killed when the building exploded. Rede is in the hands of his enemies, bound and helpless. Even in a romantic comedy, the black moment (though it might be more of a grey moment) brings despair to the characters we’ve come to love. Cecilia and Marcel have a magical kiss, and then must part. They are from different worlds. It’s over.

It isn’t, of course, at least not in my stories. I choose for my protagonists to find love and for their love to be returned. The happy ever after is just within reach.

But, still, the barriers must seem, at least to them and preferably to the reader, impossible to overcome.

This week, I’m inviting you to give me a clip from your work-in-progress showing part of your protagonists’ black moment. Mine is from Unkept Promises. My hero is tied to a tree, bound and gagged. And my heroine is trying to rescue his son against overwhelming odds when this happens.

“Quick, Mrs Redepenning.” Luke was urging her down, his hands firm on her calves as he knelt. She leapt from his shoulders. “Quick,” he said again. He led the way slightly around the tower to put it between them and the carriage they could now hear approaching.

This side of the hill was less even, full of bumps and hollows. Mia followed Luke as quickly as she could. He had just entered the trees, and she was less than a dozen paces behind him, when she caught her foot and came down flat on the hillside.

For a moment she could only lie there, winded. Voices from the other side of the tower had her pulling her knees under her to get up, but she froze again as they grew closer.

“I’m telling you, Captain, we didn’t hear anything.”

She recognised Hackett’s voice. “And I tell you to find him. You!” His voice retreated. “Get the boy. I’m not waiting to be ambushed.”

“Hey!” The man closest to her shouted after Hackett. “Not so fast. We haven’t been paid.”

“I don’t have time for this. Follow me, and you’ll get your money.”

Now. While they were arguing. Mia crept towards the tree line, keeping low.

She might have made it, but for the riders who appeared at that moment, coming up the hill through the trees on a path that approach the tower from the side. One of them turned his horse and in a few quick strides was in front of her. The moonlight glinted off the barrel of the gun he had pointed at her.

“Stand up very slowly,” said a cultured English voice; a woman’s voice, and one she had heard before, though she could not, for the moment, place it. The other riders had joined the first.

Hackett and his men came down the hill towards them. Any thought that the two parties were aligned faded in the light of the weaponry each pointed at the other. Perhaps Mia could use this to her advantage.

“Madam,” she said, “please, I beg you, help me. Those men have kidnapped my son.”

The woman nudged tell course closer and bent to look into Mia’s face. It was Lady Carrington! What was that wicked woman doing here? She had fled England long ago; indeed, most of the Redepenning family thought she must be dead. The lady raised both eyebrows.

“Euronyme Redepenning. How interesting. Fancy running into you, here of all places.” She looked up the hill at the approaching ruffians. “Do come closer,” she invited. “I may have captured someone of interest to you, and I am willing to trade.”

 

 

by

What could possibly go wrong? on WIP Wednesday

This, my friends, is a jack knife — a useful sailor’s tool.

 

My favourite question when writing is ‘what could possibly go wrong’? And then I make it happen. This week, I’m talking about those defining points where the story takes a twist to make things worse. Share me yours in the comments. Mine comes from a scene I wrote this morning in Unkept Promises. Lady Carrington, who you may remember as the villainess if you’ve read Farewell to Kindness, has a position with the French spy agencies. She has persuaded Murat, her spymaster, to let her return to England to fetch the fortune she was forced to abandon when her husband decided to get rid of her at the end of Farewell to Kindness. To help her get to her hiding place safely, she takes Jules Redepenning, my hero, who is a prisoner of war after being pushed off his ship by someone in the pay of the man who wants to abduct his son. (It makes sense in the book, I promise. And, after all, what could possibly go wrong? Right?

Though the sky was clear and the moon full, still, everything was grey on grey, and in the shadows, it was black as Lady Carrington’s heart.

“We will need transport,” Jules pointed out.

Lydia smirked. A moment later, a man leading a horse turned a corner further along the lane and began walking towards them. Four more horses followed behind, all strung together.

“Tha be the ’uns for these ’ere ’orses?” he asked, his eyes a suspicious squint as he looked from one man to another, ignoring Lydia, until she stepped towards him and held out a pouch.

“Your next payment,” she told him. “As promised, the third will be ready for you tomorrow night, when we return the horses. We will leave on the high tide, whether you are here or not.”

The man touched his cap; a response to her cultured tones. “I be here,” he said, his sourness not abated by the purse he weighed thoughtfully in one hand. “See that tha be.”

He disappeared back into the gloom, and Lydia ordered the disposition of the horses. Jules was ordered to take position between the two French officers, his horse on leading reins. Lydia led the fifth horse, which had been supplied with a pack saddle and paniers.

“If you lead us into a trap, Julius,” the Baroness said, “Pierre will shoot you without blinking.”

“You have my word,” Jules told her indignantly. After all, she was not privy to his inner justifications for abandoning her. “However, I cannot lead you tell you tell me where we are going.”

“Iron Acton will do for a start,” Lydia said. Iron Acton was five miles from Chipping Niddwick. Further confirmation that Lydia’s stash was hidden at the Carrington Castle, or nearby.

“I take it you want to avoid villages and farm dwellings. Very well. If we head south on this lane,” he pointed the direction he meant, “we will come to a turn inland in about seventy-five yards.”

Lydia nodded at his two escorts, and they wheeled their horses to follow his directions. There had never been any doubt about who was in charge.

He kept them to lanes that avoided the villages and towns. Little used except for stock movements and farm carts, they were mostly in poor repair, and recent rain had frozen in every rut and hollow, so that their way was marked by the crackle of breaking ice. Going was slow. From Iron Acton, the Baroness directed them toward Highwayman’s Hollow, a place just off the Yate to Chipping Niddwick road where, or so local legend had it, highwaymen used to lurk, waiting for a rich prize.

“We shall take a rest,” the Baroness announced, dismounting. Jules and the two silent Frenchmen followed her example. She beckoned the three of them. “Come closer so we can talk without me shouting.”

Sound did carry in the night air. Still, Jules thought she was being too cautious. Unless things had changed since he was last here, there wasn’t a dwelling anywhere within ten minutes’ walk.

Nevertheless, he joined the group, ready to hear their next destination. He wasn’t ready to be seized by Pierre and Victor, one on each side. He struggled, but he was soon bound to a tree and gagged for good measure.

“I know the way from here,” the Baroness told him. She caressed his cheek, a parody of affection. “I cannot trust you near people who might help you. We will be back, Julius, and you shall see us to the coast as you promised, and then I shall release you as I promised.”

Unable to comment, Jules merely glared. The Baroness laughed, and leaned towards him her lips puckered. He twisted his face, so that the kiss fell on his ear rather than his lips. She laughed again, and groped at his fall. “He is hardly a man at all,” she told her French lovers. “Such a disappointment. One expected better of a Redepenning.”

Jules raised a sardonic eyebrow. Lydia tipped her nose in the air and walked away to remount her horse. Pierre followed, and then Victor but only after a vicious punch to Jules’s stomach. “That is for disrespecting madame,” he hissed.

Jules had no choice but to keep his response to himself. He gave the Baroness precisely the respect she deserved. Probably as well he couldn’t speak. Another couple of blows like that, and he’d be in real trouble.

He watched them ride away before testing his bonds. Good. They’d left enough play for him to work with, and the jack knife he’d stolen on the ship was still concealed in his sleeve. He sneered after them. No sailor would have made such a mistake.

by

Honest work on WIP Wednesday

One of the things I need to consider when forming my plots is ‘how does the character’s everyday job affect their time and their location?’ In the Regency era, peers of the realm worked: they’re sort of like the ceo of a company, in charge of the direction, making the tricky decisions, approving the strategy and the budgets. They were also eligible to sit in the House of Lords, and many had vigorous political careers. Ladies might be expected to be decorative, but that could be work, too. Wives, sisters, and daughters managed households, which could be massive and have huge numbers of staff. They were also expected to be responsible for dispensing welfare to the less fortunate.

Younger sons of the very wealthy might be the equivalent of today’s idle rich, depending on someone else’s money for their affluent lifestyle, but everyone else needed to have some way to keep fed, housed and clothed.  I love putting snippets of this into my writing, and I’ve written whole books starring characters with what we’d recognise as a job. I have a maker of invalid chairs, a chef, a house flipper, a horse breeder and others.

I’m currently thinking and imagining a couple of books ahead, and discovering some main characters who are not peers or their families. One, Lucas Mog, appeared in Farewell to Kindness, has a part to play in the current Work in Progress, Unkept Promises, and will be the hero of the next Redepenning book, Flavour of Their Deeds. He is a gamekeeper — but who is he really? One makes a living in a morally objectional fashion. He was an assassin for the British during the Napoleonic Wars, and now kills for a price and to order. He’ll be the hero of an as yet unnamed book for the Common Elements Project. One was tutor and minder to a lonely English boy in far off Naples while the boy had surgery. Now the lad is grown up, an earl, and married, Peter needs a new job. (Yes, this hero has a part in The Beast Next Door, my novella in Valentine’s From Bath.)

This week, give me an excerpt of a character at work — or at least of one who works. Mine is from Unkept Promises. My hero is a naval captain who has been lost from his ship, thank to the machinations of my villain.

Bruised and battered, every muscle aching, sick to the stomach from the sea water he had unwillingly ingested, Jules wanted nothing more than to lie on the sand just above the reach of the waves. But he was wet to the skin and cold to the bone. He needed to move before he froze, and he also needed to find cover before sunrise, because this was almost certainly a beach in enemy France.

He forced himself to his feet. In the dark, all he could do was set his back to the waves and start walking, feeling for each step, his hands before him to fend off any obstacle before it connected with his face. The rain had started again, which at least let him suck in a few drops of fresh water to ease his thirst.

He found a low bank by stumbling over it, stepping up from the sand onto a stiff grass that crunched under his feet. A few yards further on, his hands met leaves. Bushes, and when he pushed between them, they seemed to extend for some distance. He found a hollow in the ground surrounded by the foliage, hoping it would be enough to hide him until he could see well enough to find better concealment and make a plan.

It was a miserable wait for dawn, but at last the landscape emerged from the darkness. He would stick to the coast, he decided, in the hopes of finding a sail boat he could steal. England wasn’t above thirty miles away, though hidden in the persistent drizzle. He would probably not need to sail all the way; the channel was constantly patrolled by British ships.

He kept to the cover of bushes as much as he could, running across any open areas while scanning for other people. In the rain, they could have been almost upon him before he saw them, but all the more reason he would himself stay unobserved.

He also kept an eye out for better shelter; with luck, somewhere he could find dry clothing, or even something to wrap himself in while his own clothing dried. This must be the most deserted, Godforsaken piece of coast in all of France.

Then all of a sudden it wasn’t. Out of the mist came a column of marching soldiers, and Jules was surrounded before he could convince his tired bones of the emergency.

Someone shouted at him: a command by the tone. If it was a question, it was peremptory. I should have paid attention in French lessons, Jules thought. “My regrets, sir,” he said. “I do not understand.”

A rifle butt descended, and he sank into blackness.

by

Parenting on WIP Wednesday

This is my idea of how Marshanda Redepenning might look.

I like to have children in my stories, which means one or more of my characters are parents — and all of my characters have had parents (many still do). In today’s post, I’m asking for comments with excerpts that are somehow to do with parenting. It might be a secondary character or a main protagonist; parenting in action or thinking about the actions of a parent; the character as parent or the character as child.

In the excerpt I have today, from Unkept Promises, Mia sees her husband with his children by his mistress. Backstory: they married many years ago, when she was still a school child, for the sake of her reputation, and he sailed straight away for the Far East to return to his mistress, Kirana, and their children. Kirana and Mia became friends by correspondence, and Jules has just arrived home from a sea voyage to find that Mia has been in his house for a week and has taken over running it.

Adarinta suddenly remembered that Jules had not yet disgorged his gifts. “Where are my…” she broke off, sneaking a glance at Hannah, who had been impressing the little girls with the unexpected information that they were ladies. Marshanda stuck her nose in the air. “Ladies,” she informed her sister, “do not ask. Ladies wait to be offered.”

Jules frown over her head at Mia. “Who has been telling you that?” he asked.

Adarinta, however, was not to be deflected. “I like presents,” she announced. “It makes me very happy when people give me a present. Ibu Mia brought presents for me and Marsha. I expect she brought presents for you, too, Dan. I do like presents.”

Faced with this flagrant attempt to get around the ‘ladies do not ask’ rule, the adults were struggling to maintain their gravity. Even Jules, who was holding onto whatever grudge had blown in with him, couldn’t resist a twinkle. “I happen to have some presents,” he commented.

Adarinta, climbing off his knee, stood before him, her hands clasped before her, her wide eyes pleading. “Oh Papa,” she pleaded, then looked back at Hannah again and chewed thoughtfully at her upper lip. Her eyes lit, and she said, “I have been very good, Papa, have I not, Hannah?” Then added mournfully, “Not as good as Marsha.”

“Dan, would you fetch my duffel?” Jules asked his son, shifting slightly to allow the boy to pass.

“Perhaps, you might take your father up to the nursery, young ladies?” Mia suggested. “Hannah could bring you up some scones. I am sure your father would like a scone his daughters have made.”

Jules, who had his mouth open — Mia was certain — to repudiate the suggestion, shut it again.

“Oh yes, Papa. Come and see.” Marshanda took one of Jules’s hands, and Adarinta, not to be left behind, took the other. “Hannah made us some curtains, Papa. And Ibu Mia bought us a table and chairs to do our schoolwork. I can read, Papa. Truly.”

by

Rough drafts on WIP Wednesday

My writing has speeded up marvellously since I learned a simple trick. If there’s something I don’t know, or a sequence I can’t quite visualise, I make a note and move on.

Below, I’ve included an excerpt from Unkept Promises, the next Redepenning novel, full of notes to myself

How about you? What do you do in your rough drafts, and are you game to post an example in the comments?

Fortune and Hannah met them at the dock gates with the break, a large open carriage capable of taking the entire family along the coast to eat the picnic that was undoubtedly in the covered baskets Jules could see tucked under the seats.

[check where a picnic might take place. During drive, Jules abstracted, thinking about what the girls and Mia have told him. Dan pointing out all the different types of ship in the harbour, where they might have come from and be going, and what they were good for. Girls asking questions until he gets to one he can’t answer and askes Jules who shakes off his mood and attends.]

Hannah and Mia set the picnic up in the shade of a tree [rock?? Pavilion they brought with them???] and soon they were all enjoying [etc. Not sure what I want to do with this part of the scene. Girls need to ask politely to be allowed to leave the …. blanket? ]

[Hannah produces a ball, suggests a game. Girls against boys. Dan scathing about the girls’ likely ability.]

“Could we sit this one out?” Jules asked Mia. “I’d like for us to talk, if you do not mind.”

“Of course,” Mia said. “Hannah, you and the others go ahead.”

In moments, the game was underway, Hannah and the girls against Fortune and Dan. Dan’s confidence took a swift knock when Fortune failed to catch the ball Dan had thrown and Marsha raced in front of him and kicked it to Hannah, who in her turn kicked it between the rocks they had marked as the girl’s goal.

He rallied, though, and the next round of play saw him sneaking the ball from under Marsha’s nose and kicking his own goal.

“This will do the girls a world of good,” Mia decided. “I have not wanted to venture beyond the boundaries of town without an escort, and there is no where there they can run and romp like this without censure from the biddies.”

“You are determined to turn them into English gentlewomen.” Jules tried to keep the censure from his voice. He would allow his unaccountable wife her chance to make her case, but what the hell was she thinking?

“I am determined to make sure they know Society’s expectations,” Mia corrected. “I know how it feels to be at sea, knowing that something you have done has drawn disapprobation, but having no idea what it is or how to correct it. I will not leave them as ill prepared as I was.”

What had happened to Mia to fuel the vehemence of her tone? He supposed he understood. The child he’d met in the smuggler’s cave had been raised by a reclusive scholar — or had raised herself while ignored by her father.

“I thought my father and Susan would look out for you,” he said. They should have. He had trusted them to do so.

“It was not their fault, Captain.” Mia smiled, and reached out as if to pat his hand where it rested be-side hers on the blanket. If that was her intent, she thought better of it and instead folded it in her lap with its counterpart. “They are part of Society. They grew up knowing all the habits of courtesy your kind take for granted, and all your silly little rituals. It never occurred to them that I was as ignorant of what to them seemed natural behaviour. They were always there to tell me what I had done wrong, and they tried to predict my next mistake and prevent it — but I made so many!” The last was said with a laugh, but Jules could sense pain beneath it, and his heart ached for the little girl he had abandoned.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I had no idea.”

“I will not have that happen to Marshanda and Adarinta.