Chaos Come Again

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Spotlight on Chaos Come Again

Hurrah! Chaos Come Again, the first novel in Lion’s Zoo, is out in the wild! Released 20 June.

Here’s an excerpt to whet your appetite.

Their lovemaking that night had an edge of feverish desperation, but by morning Lion had woken in a more philosophical frame of mind. “Perhaps the earl did me a favour,” he said, when she asked him how he was. She had woken in his arms, as she had every night since Gretna Green.

“How so?” she asked.

“He would never have let me go into the army had I been named his heir when I was a boy.” His smile was grim. “Or he would have asked for me to be given the most dangerous assignments so I was removed from the way of those with purer blood. Either way, the career I have had is my own.”

He rolled her, then, so she lay flat on the bed with him above her, his legs stretched between hers, his weight held on his elbows. “But I have cheated you, Dorothea. You thought yourself safe from marriage to a nobleman, and now look!”

“You are still my Lionel, and I am your Dorothea,” she reminded him. “For your sake, I will make the best of it.” She had puzzled it out for herself last night, while Lion was pacing the room, despairing over the loss of his military career. Indeed, he had lost more than her, since the earl’s heir she had inadvertently married was the man she wanted to be with for the rest of her life, whereas he would have to leave the army when his grandfather died.

Not before, he had insisted last night.

“But won’t the earl want us to stay now that he has named you his heir?” she had said.

The corners of his mouth had quirked in a wicked smile. “He has no say in where I go and what I do. I do not need his money, and nor does he have influence that will remove me from my post.”

So they were still bound for Portugal, and Dorothea was glad of it; glad of a year or two to become accustomed to marriage before they had to face the duties neither of them wanted.

Lion kissed her nose. “Are you tired of travelling? Would you like a few days rest before we leave for Portugal?”

“You are anxious to get back,” Dorothea said.

He kissed her again, a soft brush of his lips to the top of her head. “I am asking what you want,” he pointed out.

Whatever you want. But he would not accept that answer. “I would be delighted to leave Father behind, and to start our real life together.”

“Good,” said Lion. “Enough talking. All I want from you in the next half hour, wife of mine, are moans, the word more, and perhaps my name.”

And he made it so.

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Tea with a Fox

Every third Monday when she was at Haverford House, the Duchess of Haverford was at home to her unmarried godsons and their friends. Not all of them at once, of course. Sometimes only one or two felt the need to make the trek from London out to Chelsea to pay their respects to their godmother. Sometimes as many as a score all arrived in twos or threes over the two hours that she presided over the teapot.

Today, a merry group of officers on leave from Portugal had decided to visit her before returning to Portugal and their regiments. The summer campaign would begin in June. To hear them talk about the battles to come, one would think they headed off to a picnic or a fox hunt. How many of them would return whole? How many would not return at all? The long war with France had chewed up so many of the young men she knew; had swallowed some and spat the others out broken and forever changed.

She smiled and chatted, even laughed at their tales and their jokes. Eleanor was very skilled at keeping her sorrow hidden behind a pleasant visage and polite conversation.

One of the merriest officers in the group was a guest of two of the others. Major James Foxton, a handsome fellow with a full head of red hair, full of stories and sharp-witted remarks. Fox, his friends called him. Eleanor knew his great aunt, Patricia Strathford-Bowles–counted her as a friend, though Lady Patricia had been a woman in her late thirties when Eleanor was a young wife, struggling to keep her sense of self in a near intolerable marriage.

They had never spoken of it, she and Patricia. But Eleanor always went home from a meeting with her friend with the strength to endure for another day. Those years were long past. She had moved beyond endurance to finding her own power. Perhaps she could exercise it on behalf of her friend’s great nephew? Yet there was something about him that made her uneasy–an unkind bite to his words, a sneer in his stories. She needed to know the young man better in order to see her way. She also knew, from Patricia’s letters, that he was a disappointment to his mother and his elder brother, who was now viscount in their father’s place. Yet Patricia had never said why.

“Major Foxton,” she said. “Come and sit by me, please, and let me pour you another tea while you tell me about yourself.”

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In-laws on WIP Wednesday

[From Chaos Come Again, which just squeaks in, it is not yet published, but won’t be a work-in-progress by this time next week]

The Earl of Ruthford and Lady Patricia both hugged Dorothea when she and Lion said their farewells. They had come as far as the foyer, but would not go out to the carriage.

“Look after my boy,” the earl begged, when Lion hurried outside to make sure all was ready. “Despite the way I treated him, he’s made himself into the finest man I know, but he has scars, Dorothea. He has scars—some I put there myself. He will be a great earl with you beside him.”

“I know nothing about being a countess,” Dorothea protested.

“You know how to love him,” said the earl. “That is the best thing an earl—any man—can have. A woman who loves him and believes in him. He will step into my shoes sooner than he would like, but I am not worried for him. Not now that he has you.”

She kissed the old man’s cheek with tears in her eyes.

She turned to Lady Patricia. Aunt Patricia. The old lady had asked Dorothea to address her in more intimate terms yesterday afternoon, as they went through the still room putting together a medicine chest for Dorothea to take with her.

Aunt Patricia enfolded Dorothea in her arms. “You are a dear girl, Dorothea. Be certain I will look after Persham Abbey for you until you come home to be its mistress.”

“I don’t wish to take over from you, Aunt Patricia,” Dorothea objected, honestly. In fact, she was terrified at the prospect.

“I am more than ready to hand over the reins, my dear,” Aunt Patricia insisted. “I am so pleased Lion married you. You are good for Lion and you will be good for the family and our people. Come home while I am still fit to help you make your place here, if you can. You have made a good start, Dorothea. Never doubt it.”

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History on WIP Wednesday

One of the first things I do when planning a story is find out what was happening in the world at the time of the story. In 1815, few events could have been more significant to a retired soldier than the Battle of Waterloo. It was obvious to me that my epilogue for Chaos Come Again had to touch on the arrival of the news from Belgium.

By the next day, rumours that battle had been joined were swirling around London. Lion went out in the morning to see what he could find out, but no one knew anything concrete.

“I don’t know how many people I spoke to who are convinced the Corsican monster is even now on his way to England having massacred the largest army the allied forces have ever put into a single field,” he told Dorothea, disgusted. “You will be pleased to know that I punched none of their stupid faces.”

By that evening, the rumour was that there had been a great battle, a retreat, and a defeat. It was now the twentieth of June. The more credible reports suggested the French had crossed the northern border of France some five days ago, and engaged the Prussians, who had fallen back.

“Not a defeat,” Lion scoffed, and the veterans among their friends agreed. “A fighting retreat until they can gather their numbers. If the Prussians were the only troops involved, it wasn’t the main battle.”

As Lion and Dorothea drove back to their townhouse, the streets were thronged with people waiting for official news.

The following morning, several of the London newspapers claimed that a bloody battle had been fought and won. But they provided no detail and ascribed the news to a gentleman who had arrived in London from Brussels. And a couple of them even said there may have been not a victory, but a defeat.

The couple kept themselves busy, but dread and hope mingled as they waited. “Even if the battle is over,” Lion pointed out, “that doesn’t mean the war is won.”

Lady Sutton and her mother-in-law, the Duchess of Winshire, were holding a ball that night. Lion and Dorothea decided to go, rather than sit around their townhouse and fret about the outcome of the battle. “We will dance and talk with our friends, even as we pray for our comrades,” Dorothea said.

It was close to midnight when the Duke of Winshire suddenly halted the orchestra, and called out in a battlefield roar, “Listen! Outside! Do you hear?”

In the silence, the shouts of a crowd carried clearly through the French doors that were open all along one side of the ballroom. As one, the ball-goers surged for those doors, the closest reaching the terrace first and joining the shouting. “Victory! Hurrah!”

The orchestra struck up again, this time to the tune, God Save the King. Lion could feel tears prick his eyes. It was over, then.

 

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Tea with Lady Patricia

“Milk and sugar, is it not, Patricia?” Eleanor asked her guest.

It had been years since Eleanor, Duchess of Haverford, had seen her godmother, Lady Patricia Strathford-Bowles. The elderly lady had been chatelaine for her brother, the Earl of Ruthford, for more than twenty years. Ever since his failing health precluded him from making the long trip from his family seat in County Durham to London and the House of Lords, Eleanor and Patricia had kept in touch by letter.

A letter had already informed Eleanor about the family crisis that had brought Patricia south without her brother. Her brother’s announcement that his supposedly illegitimate grandson was, in fact, born the heir the Ruthford title was a topic of discussion at all levels of Society, and the earl’s concealment of his son’s marriage until all other possible heirs had died was drawing much comment. Society was divided between those indignant on behalf of the overlooked heir, and those who thought his tainted blood reason enough to pass him over.

Furthermore, the newly announced heir had married suddenly and in suspicious circumstances. Eleanor and her allies had been doing their level best to put a romantic gloss on the wedding, but others were working just as hard to make the young wife appear a grasping witch, and the heir a lustful fool.

The heir and his wife, Lord and Lady Harcourt, were not known to Society, and not present to make friends of their own. Lord Harcourt, a colonel in the cavalry, was leading his men in Spain, and his wife was with him.

“I am here to represent the family,” Lady Patricia said. “I believe we may need to address the poisonous lies about my great nephew and his wife at the source. Will you help me to confront the Westinghouse family, Eleanor?”

Lord Harcourt, also known as Lionel O’Toole, and Dorothea, his wife, have their story told in Chaos Come Again.

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Civilians and the army

To our modern minds, it seems strange to think of civilians, including women and children, travelling into combat zones. Yet until the second half of the nineteenth century, civilians were an essential part of how armies worked. Collectively, anyone who followed the army that was not a soldier was called a camp follower. And every army had all kinds of followers.

All non-military supplies came from the commissariat, a civilian service, funded by Treasury. They searched for supplies, found a depot in which to store them, and staffed the depot and those who drove the mule carts that brought supplies in and out. Each local group of soldiers probably had a sutler, either semi-official or unsanctioned.

Sutlers negotiated with locals and sold goods that were not supplied by the commissariat: tobacco, coffee, sugar, and other supplies. A sutler was usually authorised at brigade level, and the role in each brigade often went to the wife of one of the soldiers.

Saddlers, tailors, shoemakers, and farriers might be soldiers (if someone with the right skills could be found) or civilians, but they were all essential to the operation of the army.

So were medical staff. The Army Medical Department employed around one surgeon for every 250 soldiers. Military surgeons were not commissioned into the army, so were technically civilians, but they were on the payroll. They were assisted by soldiers with more or less medical training, gained on the job, and by camp followers, usually wives of soldiers.

Wives and families formed the largest group of camp followers. In England, soldiers’ families lived around the barracks, as military families do today. When the regiment travelled overseas, regulations stated how many wives they’d take with them (one for every six soldiers was common). To be in the ballot, a woman had to be a wife of good reputation. Mostly, women with children were excluded. On long overseas postings, babies arrived anyway, often on the march or even during battles.

Those not selected could seldom afford to follow their menfolk. They stayed in England and survived the best they could, often in a garrison city far from family, lacking work opportunities and not recognised as part of the local parish for poor relief.

Those selected faced hard work and unknown risks, but—though they might not be an official part of the army—they were on the books. Yes, they had to have an officer’s approval to follow the army and they were subject to military discipline, but they received rations (a half ration for a wife and a quarter ration for a child) and they were paid for the work they did.

Wives were not only sutlers and nurses. They were also responsible for many other important jobs that kept the army operating: laundering clothes, cooking food, sewing and mending, watching the baggage, looking after sheep and cattle (food on the hoof), and acting as servants to officers and their families.

And, of course, they provided sexual services to their husbands. The rest of the soldiers in the unit would have to make other arrangements or go without. Wives who followed the army were, as I said before, women of good reputation.

Local women filled the gap, either on a temporary basis, as prostitutes, or longer term as mistresses or even wives. Locally acquired wives and families provided the same wide range of services as those brought overseas with the regiment, but the army didn’t hold itself accountable for paying them or for transporting women and their children to England when the war was over, or when the soldier died, unless the woman could produce proof of a legal marriage, recognised by the Church of England.

As to the marriage of officers, the army discouraged young officers from taking a wife. Not only was it likely to ruin them financially, given the cost of being an officer—commission, uniforms, equipment, subscription, and the officers’ mess. Marriage was thought to disturb the camaraderie of the mess, as it took the officer out of the all-male brotherhood of warriors.

A young officer who married without permission risked ruining his chances of promotion.

That changed as he went up through the ranks. An old rhyme said:

“A Subaltern may not marry,
captains might marry,
majors should marry,
and lieutenant-colonels must marry.”

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Partings on WIP Wednesday

A small excerpt from Chaos Come Again, out in three weeks.

Dorothea was clearly going to have to get used to Lion going away at a moment’s notice. The meeting with his exploring officers as soon as they arrived back in camp, the interruption in the night to deal with a drunken brawl, and with breakfast, a message from Wellington, asking for Lion’s presence at headquarters immediately.

“Of course, I do not mind,” she replied mendaciously to his worried enquiry. “I knew you had to lead your part of the army. I will be here when you have time for me, and find things to do when you do not. You need not worry about me, Lion. I married an officer with responsibilities, and I do not mean to be a burden to you.”

Which was all very well, but now he had ridden out of camp, with Bear, Fox and a platoon of troopers, she had no idea what to do with herself. Both Emily and Amelia viewed officers’ wives as useless ornamentation, and Dorothea had no intention of being that.

But wait. How was this different to what I am trained for? Manage the house and its servants. Ensure that meals palatable to her husband were put on the table in a timely fashion. Look after the welfare of those who answered to her husband as servants or tenants, and more widely the welfare of the poor of the parish.

If she had married in England, she would not have hesitated to call the cook and the housekeeper to her and learn all about the house, and to question them and the local vicar about the estate and the surrounding area.

Who would be the equivalent in her current situation? Major Cassiday, perhaps. He was in disgrace after getting into a fight with Roderick Westinghouse, and had been left behind. He might be able to advise her. She wondered if the troops had a chaplain. He, too, could be helpful.

She would start, however, with Michael’s mistress, if only because she shared a house with the woman. Bianca was a little stand-offish. Asking for her help and advice might attract scorn. On the other hand, she might appreciate it. It might break the ice between them.

Certainly, making friends with Bianca and asking her advice was a better idea than sitting here on the bench outside the farmhouse, staring at the road down which Lion had disappeared, and feeling sorry for herself.

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Tea with Aldridge and a letter from a concerned aunt

The Duchess of Haverford looked up from the letter she was reading. “Aldridge, dear, have you ever met Ruthford’s grandson?”

Aldridge lowered his newspaper to attend to his mother’s question. “Matthew Strathford-Bowes? Tragic, what happened to him. Or one of the Foxton brothers?”

“The other grandson, Aldridge,” the duchess clarified. “Lionel O’Toole.”

“O’Toole,” Aldridge repeated, frowning as he considered. “Ah yes. The illegitimate grandson. Part-Indian, or so I understand. Though one would think Irish, with a surname like that.”

“His mother was the daughter of an Irish soldier who married a Bengali lady,” the duchess explained. “I remember when the poor little boy arrived here from India. Ruthford acknowledged him, had him educated, and bought him a commission in the cavalry.”

“Ah, yes. He serves with the younger Foxton,” Aldridge commented. “I know the older one, Viscount Westberry. Fellow doesn’t think much of his brother, but likes his cousin. Says it’s a pity the man is illegitimate.”

Her Grace waved the letter. “Not illegitimate apparently. The letter is from Ruthford’s sister, Lady Patricia. Apparently, Ruthford concealed a marriage certificate. Lionel is the only son and rightful heir of Ruthford’s eldest son.”

Aldridge whistled. “That will ruffle a few feathers in the Committee for Priviliges. I imaging O’Toole is none too pleased, either.” He gave a bark of laughter. “Mind you, I’d love to know what the mothers of marriageable maidens will make of it. The heir to an earldom. Healthy, wealthy, and with all his teeth. And a war hero besides!”

“They are too late,” the duchess said, waving the letter again. “Lionel is married. Quite suddenly apparently, and under some unusual circumstances involving an heiress on the run from Roderick Westinghouse.”

“Hernware’s brother? I don’t blame her for running away.”

“Neither does Lady Patricia, but she is concerned about what the Westinghouses might say,” said Her Grace.

Aldridge grinned. “What does Lady Patricia want us to do about it, Mama?”

The duchess gave her son a fond smile. “You are correct, my dear. Lady Patricia would like the ton to know the truth about her grand-nephew and his new wife and their romance. The ton does love a love story.”

“The truth, Mama? Or a favourable version of it?”

She shook her head at him. “You are a cynic, Aldridge. But you will help me, will you not?”

Lionel O’Toole is the hero of Chaos Come Again.

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Compromised on WIP Wednesday

In Chaos Come Again, a neighbour of my hero’s grandfather discovers him with the runaway heiress he has rescued.

“Lady Blaine,” Colonel O’Toole said. “It is Lady Blaine, is it not?”

The lady lifted a lorgnette to examine him and raised both brows. “Surely you must be Lionel O’Toole? Lion, my dear boy! How charming to see you. But what are you doing in Darlington? No, do not tell me. Of course, you are going to Persham Abbey. Is the earl dying at last?”

“As far as I know, my lady, my grandfather is as fit as ever, and will outlive us all. But yes, I am bound for Persham Abbey.”

She rapped the colonel’s arm with her lorgnette. “Ruthford is very proud of you, Lion. Every time you are mentioned in despatches, we hear about it from him, and when you made colonel, one might have thought you had been appointed king. He won’t tell you, of course. Too proud. So, I am letting you know myself.”

Colonel O’Toole looked startled, but he said, “Then I thank you, my lady. May I ask after Anthony?”

“He is Lord Blaine now, and can you believe that his eldest daughter will be making her come-out in two years? Ridiculous how time passes. He will be delighted to hear I have seen you. I daresay he shall ride over to visit you while you are at the Abbey.” She turned to Dorothea. “But I am being rude, my dear. You must forgive me. Lionel and my son Anthony were great friends in their school days.”

Mrs Austin inserted herself. “This is Miss Brabant, my lady.”

“My betrothed,” the colonel added, taking Dorothea’s hand and squeezing it in an unspoken message.

“The Brabant Mills heiress,” Lady Blaine said. “Oh, well done, Lion. Congratulations. And my very best wishes to you, Miss Brabant. Lion is a splendid fellow. I am sure you will be very happy. But you are in a hurry. We will leave you to your lunch and hope to see you during your stay at the Abbey. Come along, Mrs Austin.”

Dorothea protested as soon as the door shut behind the two women. “Betrothed?” Her heart had given a jump when he said it. He didn’t mean it, of course. There was no use hoping he did, and the sooner she heard him say it was a ploy, the better.

“We’ll discuss it in a minute,” the colonel promised. “Corporal, give them the signal to serve lunch, would you?”