Lion’s Zoo

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Blurbs and trigger warnings on WIP Wednesday

Folks, for this WIP Wednesday, I want to trial a blurb.  I’ve tried to embed a trigger warning (not the note at the end–that’s just a courtesy to people who like ballgowns). Let me know if you think it works. The thing is, I deal with some pretty nasty stuff, but off stage and mostly by implication. Have I gone too far?

The Darkness Within

To save her, he must lose her

Ever since he escaped his childhood abuser, Max has killed for a living — first as a sniper and assassin in the war against Napoleon, and later ridding the world of those whose power on those around them allowed them to commit evil without fear of punishment.

The dead burden what is left of his soul, and he wants to retire, and kill no more. When a search for a missing comrade takes him into a religious community, he feels he has found a home for the first time in his life.

But there are cracks in the innocent surface the village shows its visitors. Max discovers hints at what lies beneath even as he falls for Serenity, who has recently been appointed Goddess-Elect, the designated virgin to take her place as three-month wife of the community’s leader, the Incarnate One.

The secrets of the community put Serenity and others in dreadful danger. To save her, he must lose her, for if he draws on his hard-won skills to stop the abuse he discovers, she will recoil from the darkness of his soul.

Note: This book is largely set within a cult, so is not a typical Regency.

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Tea with a worried son

Eleanor knew the signs. Anthony was worried about something. (She was so pleased that he had agreed to allow her to call him by his first name. He had been Aldridge since he was a babe in the cradle, but it made her stomach ache to call him Haverford, which was the proper way to address him, now. Haverford — her son’s father and her husband for nearly forty years — had always insisted on the formal address, and to address the son she loved by the title of the man she ha… that she did not love would be unpleasant, to say the least.)

Fortunately, Anthony and Cherry, his wife, were not keen on such formality when family were alone, so she could save the hated title for formal occasions, and even then found ways to address her beloved son without naming him. No doubt, in time, the memories would fade. Should she be fortunate enough to live long enough, Haverford past would be forgotten, and Haverford present would own the name, even in the mind of his predecessor’s widow.

Which was not to the point, but she was doing her best not to question the dear man, and thinking about something else was helping. She offered him another cup of tea, but he shook his head. He did take another shortbread biscuit. Anthony was very fond of shortbread the way the Scots made it. “Mama,” he said, as soon as he had swallowed, “did you know the Earl of Beckworth and his younger brother, Benjamin Famberwold?

“Yes, my dear,” Eleanor was pleased to be able to reply. “An unconscionable pair of rakehells. Even worse than your father, who at least felt a sense of duty to his estates and his country. That pair of reprobates cared for nothing and no one except their own pleasure. There were a number of very unpleasant incidents with innocent girls. No one was safe from them. They were, if you can believe it, worse than Richport, for he at least leaves innocent ladies alone, mostly.”

She frowned, slightly. “Although, perhaps I am being unfair. As I remember it, the younger one had a religious conversion, and convinced his brother to give up his evil ways. They retired to the country to live godly lives, or so we have been told. Certainly, I have not heard a word from them since. Except…” she paused to catch the elusive thought she had glimpsed from, as it were, the corner of her mind’s eye. “That’s it. Beckworth took a wife to the country, and has remarried twice since. Country marriages, I believe. A baronet’s daughter, and the spinster daughter of a viscount.” She frowned, and then brought the rest of the thought to the surface. “A lady in her thirties who had had a single Season in Town, where she did not take. I have heard of no children. Does that help, dearest?”

“It is of interest, Mama. It seems that the religious conversion was not to anything resembling Christianity, and the earl’s lack of children has been countered by a multitude belonging to his brother, who had more than fifty wives, many of them at the same time. I’m telling you in the strictest confidence, of course. We are trying to untangle the legal and moral mess, which also includes depravities I have no intention discussing with my mother, up to and including wholesale murder. Beckworth was in it up to his eyeballs, but the new Beckworth, whomever he may be, does not deserve to have his father’s and uncle’s scandals hanging over his head, and nor does Beckworth’s widow.”

Eleanor nodded her agreement. “Both brothers are dead,” she deduced.

Anthony nodded. “the Famberwolds made the mistake of tangling with one of Lion’s Zoo,” he said.

The former Aldridge, now the Duke of Haverford, is on a Parliamentary committee making enquiries into the scandalous goings on at a village called Heaven, a month or two after the events covered in The Darkness Within, Book 4 in Lion’s Zoo, planned for publication in December 2023

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Tea with Mrs Moriarty

This was not the first time that Eleanor, the Duchess of Winshire, had sat down to afternoon tea with Mrs Moriarty. The young woman was the daughter of an excellent family, but had been ruined—by the rules of Society, at least—several times before she was out of her teens. 

She had hidden in the slums to escape from the murderers of her parents. That was the first count against her. Eleanor had heard the cats among her peers saying, “Of course one cannot blame the child, but she survived on the streets for two years. Heaven knows what she did to feed herself. Any proper young lady would have been dead in a week.” 

Eleanor, of course, admired Mrs Moriarty for her courage and her resilience.

The second mark on her copybook was her uncle, who had taken her from the slums and, instead of retrieving her reputation and seeing her reestablished in Society, had taken her to Spain to follow the army. Rumour had it she had been a spy and worse. Those who raked for scandal never worried about whether rumour was correct or an outright lie.

Then, when she turned up in London again this summer, she was somehow involved in a vast criminal enterprise. It did not matter to the gossips that she and her husband had been instrumental in bringing down said criminals. Ladies, they said, did not involve themselves with such things.

The final count to her demerit was that her husband was a commoner, a former street boy and current Supervisor with the Thames River Police. A wife took the status of her husband, and so Mrs Moriarty could safely be ignored.

Not by Eleanor, she could not. Eleanor found her to be an estimable young woman.

“Let me pour you a cup of tea, my dear,” she said to her guest, “and tell me more about your place for an agency of hired guards. Moriarty Protection, I think you said.”

Eleanor’s guest is the heroine of One Hour in Freedom, published yesterday.

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Spotlight on One Hour in Freedom, published today

Book 3 in Lion’s Zoo

Once they meant everything to one another.

First, in London’s meanest streets and later in Spain facing Napoleon’s army, where betrayal and lies tore them apart. When the machinations of a criminal compel Ellie Nomikos to seek out Dan Moriarty, she doesn’t know what to expect.

With the mysterious King Nemesis circling for the kill, they must learn to trust one another again. Together, can they discover his identity and bring him to justice before he finds and kills the person most precious to them in the world?

The stakes could not be higher. Their love. Their lives. Their daughter.

Buy now: https://books2read.com/LionZooOHiF

Excerpt

The neutral expression Daniel habitually wore dropped for a moment to reveal surprise, then delight and lust, before he reimposed control over his features.

He stood to one side. “Ellie. Please come in.” The huskiness of his voice sent her body humming, as did his state of dress—or undress. He had wrapped a towel around his waist to open the door, but—apart from that scrap of fabric—he was naked.

She swallowed against a suddenly dry throat and walked past him into the room.

“Give me a moment,” he demanded. He went behind a dressing screen. He is quite correct. We need to talk. Ellie took a deep breath and attempted to distract herself from her sudden lust by cataloguing the contents of the room. A bed. A couple of chairs by the fire, one of which had a half full glass on the little table beside it. She sat in the other chair, and continued her examination.

A clothes press. A side table under the window. Another by the door. Very similar to her own room, so probably a washstand and some pegs for clothes behind the dressing screen.

Daniel was there, too, presumably armouring himself against her lustful eyes by hiding his glorious chest and strong legs under clothing. But the sight was engraved on her eyeballs, and her efforts to think of something else were not working.

He emerged in a pair of trousers, with a shirt worn loose over the top. “Still undress,” he said, “but not quite as scandalous.”

“Not scandalous at all, under the circumstances,” she pointed out.

“Yes, but the household doesn’t know that, do they?” he argued. “Do you want a whisky, Ellie? Lion brings it down from Northumberland. They brew it in the hills there. He has his family seat up that way.”

“I have never tried whisky,” Ellie admitted. “Perhaps just a little. As to the scandal of my presence here, or not… that is one of the things I wanted to talk about.”

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Starting the story on WIP Wednesday

Here’s the start of The Darkness Within, my current WIP.

Max paused in front of the elegant townhouse. What did the Earl of Ruthford want? There was never any question about Max obeying the summons. Even an occasional and remote member of Lion’s Zoo like himself would never ignore a message from their former colonel.

Still, he didn’t want to be here. He’d seen Lion a number of times since returning to England, mostly here in London, but he was never comfortable in the man’s home. Years of training and experience meant he could walk the stately halls of the wealthy and wellborn without displaying his discomfort , but all the same, he’d not breathe easy until he was back in the shadows where he belonged.

Besides, he was retired. If Lion wanted him for his old skills, he would have to disappoint the man.

He set his jaw, and climbed the short flight of steps to rap the knocker. A year ago, he would have found his way inside unnoticed—did, on several occasions. Lion had asked him to train the servants to see those who knew how to remain concealed, and they had proved good pupils.

The butler who opened the door wasn’t Blythe, who was in some sort a former colleague, as Lion’s soldier servant during the war. This one was the sort of superior creature he’d enjoy tweaking in a more cheerful mood, but today he just wanted to get the meeting over with. His facsimile of what the butler would undoubtedly call his betters was perfect. For most of his life, his survival had depended on his ability to imitate others, choosing as his model whomever would best achieve his goals, in this case, an upper class younger son.

The butler did not smile, but he at least gave a small bow, the depth precisely calculated, and marched off towards the rear of the house with Max’s card on a silver platter. In short order, Lion followed the butler back out into the entrance hall, hurrying towards Max with his hand stretched before him in greeting.

“Chameleon! Welcome. Thank you for coming.”

Max shook the extended hand. “I am always happy to see you, Colonel.”

“I’m not in the army any more. Lion will do fine,” the earl insisted, as he always did. “Come on through to my library. Would you like a brandy?” He led the way, still talking. “How have you been keeping, Chameleon?”

The library was a spacious room lined with book shelves, with a large desk in the bay window where the light was best. “Max. I prefer Max.”

Lion knew that. What was the man up to? Lion waved him to a chair by the fireplace; unlit on this warm day in May. Next to the matching chair, a small table held a book and half a glass of brandy. Lion poured another glass from a decanter, and brought it over before reoccupying that seat.

“Not Zebediah, or Zeb?” he asked.

Max raised a brow. The name by which the army had enrolled him. Curiouser and curiouser. “Max.”

“As you wish, Max.” Lion took a sip from his glass. “How have you been keeping?” he asked again.

Social chit chat? Even if Lion really wanted to know, did Max want to tell him? He gave a non-commital answer and returned the conversational serve by asking after Lion’s wife and children. The earl’s eyes lit up but he answered briefly.

“Both well, but Dorrie prefers not to bring the baby up to town in this heat.”

Clearly, Lion was still as besotted with his countess as he’d been nearly a year ago, last time Max’s path had crossed his. “I daresay you are missing them,” he ventured, inviting Lion to stay on that topic rather than Max’s own activities.

Not that he had anything to hide. Indeed, since he’d given up his profession, he’d not found anything to occupy himself. He’d toyed with buying an estate, but he knew nothing about farming and the idea of living in the country made him shudder. His only experiences with country living had been in Spain, Portugal, and France, where the landscape often hid snipers or troops of enemies in ambush.

He’d investigated various business interests to buy, and even invested in a couple—a canal they were building in Wales, a company to produce gas to light the streets of York. Investing his ill-gotten wealth was fun of a sort, but it wasn’t enough to fill his days.

He listened to Lion talk about his family, offering a remark or a question whenever needed to keep the conversation going. He could manage his part with just a small fraction of his mind, while another part catalogued the contents of the room, the available exits, the likely obstacles on each route out of the house. The rest wondered if he would spend the rest of his life living on the edge of a hair, ready for battle and calculating the odds. Even here, in the private home of a man he loved like a brother and for whom he would cheerfully give his life, he could not relax.

“Of course, you are battle-ready,” said that inner part of him that spoke with Sebastian’s voice. Sebastian was eight years dead, and his voice only a memory, but sparring with that memory had become a comfort in all the years alone, skulking behind enemy lines, as uncomfortable with the army he served as with the one he hunted.

“You were at war with the rest of the world when I found you,” Sebastian jeered, “and you were then only ten, as best as we could figure it. One of the many life-lessons I taught you was that letting your guard down exacts a terrible price. You’ll never trust anyone fully, ever again.”

“Enough about me,” Lion said, silencing the old ghost as the rest of Max’s mind came to attention. “You don’t want to talk about you, so let me explain why I asked you to visit. Remember Squirrel?”

Lieutenant Stedham had been dubbed Squirrel for his ability to scavenge whatever was needed by the motley band of exploring officers who served under Colonel O’Toole, now the Earl of Ruthford. With their commander already known as Lion and a Fox, a Bull, and a Bear in the line-up, they all soon gained animal nicknames. Lion’s Pride, one wag dubbed them, but another claimed they were more Zoo than Pride, and the name stuck.

“I remember Squirrel,” Max admitted. Young, eager, and with an optimistic outlook that even five years of a brutal war could not suppress.

“He has gone missing. He has not written to his sister for more than five months, and her most recent letters to him have been returned as undeliverable.”

Max lifted his brows. “You want me to find him?”

“If you are not too busy. It is not like him, Max.”

That was true. Max could see the boy in his mind’s eye, sitting close to the flickering light of yet another campfire in yet another godforsaken hollow of yet another bleak mountain, penning yet another letter to the much older sister who had raised him. He didn’t bother to protest that hunting men was no longer his job, and England not his hunting ground. He would do this for Lion. He would do it for Squirrel, whose cheerful outlook had intrigued as much as annoyed him. Above all, he would do it because a hunt might stave off boredom for the few days or weeks it took, and it was unlikely to involve killing someone. Max didn’t do that anymore.

“What can you tell me, Lion? Where do I start?

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Scandal and risk on WIP Wednesday

Scandal is part of the stock in trade of a historical romance writer, and particularly the writer of Regency and Victorian novels, whose stories are set against a rigid, if hypocritical, standard of publicly moral behaviour. If my characters didn’t ignore it, or be accused of ignoring it, my stories would be a lot shorter! Here are the hero and heroine of One Hour in Freedom, ignoring social norms. Or are they?

After she was ready for bed, Ellie sat in a chair by the fire, waiting. He had stopped in the hall as Mrs Blythe showed them to their rooms. From the look in his eyes, he had thought about kissing her, but had changed his mind. Why? Were they still estranged? Was she a fool to hope they could be together again? Surely he had the same questions.

After half an hour, she decided that Matthias was not coming. Does he not realise that they needed to talk? They had both been given rooms in the guest wing, and were the only occupants. Furthermore, when they had come up together after the meeting with Max, she had seen which room he had entered.

Well then. She let herself out into the dim hall and counted doors until she reached the one Matthias had been given. Light still shone under the door. Good. That made things easier. She knocked and listened for a response from inside the room.

The door swung open, and Matthias stood in the opening, his neutral expression dropping for a moment to reveal surprise, then delight and lust, before he reimposed control over his features.

He stood to one side. “Ellie. Please come in.” The huskiness of his voice sent her body humming, as did his state of dress—or undress. He had wrapped a towel around his waist to open the door, but—apart from that scrap of fabric—he was naked.

She swallowed against a suddenly dry throat and walked past him into the room.

“Give me a moment,” he demanded. He went behind a dressing screen. He is quite correct. We need to talk. Ellie took a deep breath and attempted to distract herself by cataloguing the contents of the room. A bed. A couple of chairs by the fire, one of which had a half full glass on the little table beside it. She sat in the other chair, and continued her examination.

A clothes press. A side table under the window. Another by the door. Very similar to her own room, so probably a washstand and some pegs for clothes behind the dressing screen.

Where Matthias was presumably armouring himself against her lustful eyes by hiding his glorious chest and strong legs under clothing. But the sight was graven on her eyeballs, and her efforts to think of something else were not working.

He emerged in a pair of trousers, with a shirt worn loose over the top. “Still undress,” he said, “but not quite as scandalous.”

“Not scandalous at all, under the circumstances,” she pointed out.

“Yes, but the household doesn’t know that, do they?” he argued. “Do you want a whisky, Ellie? Lion brings it down from Northumberland. They brew it in the hills there.”

“I have never tried whisky,” Ellie admitted. “Perhaps just a little. As to the scandal of my presence here, or not… that is one of the things I wanted to talk about.”

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Tea with the duke

“Mama,” said the Duke of Haverford, strolling into his mother’s private parlour, “I have come to ask a favour.”

”Sit down, Anthony, and let me pour you a cup of tea,” the Duchess of Winshire replied. Since she abandoned widowhood to marry again, she did not see nearly as much of her son as when they lived in the same house. “What can I do to help you?”

Haverford accepted tea, prepared just the way he liked it, and two of the three tiny iced cakes that his mother adored. She had a standing order with Marcel Fournier, the proprietor and chef at Fournier’s Tea Rooms. Haverford thought of suggesting that his darling wife also placed such an order. They really were delicious.

Mama waited patiently until he had eaten the first cake, then raised one eyebrow in question. “It is for Lion, Mama—the Earl of Ruthford. Or, rather, for one of his exploring officers and the man’s wife.”

“Is this to do with that man who calls himself the Kingpin?” Mama asked. “Dorothea, Ruthford’s countess, was telling our ladies about it just a few days ago. Lion and his men think the villian is one of us, Anthony. Dorothea wanted to know the names of men who had suddenly came into money without a known source.”

“It is the same case, Mama. They have reason to believe that Lady Blakeley is involved in some way, and they want to set up a situation in which they can talk to her without the villain knowing. The couple I mentioned? The Kingpin is threatening their child.”

Mama was too polite to snort, but her expression said clearly that she thought the plan misguided. “I am quite prepared to believe that Margaret Blakeley is involved in villainy, but I very much doubt that she is a minion. That woman doesn’t take orders from anyone.”

“Be that as it may, the plan is to give her a titled neighbour who invites her to tea. Something quite normal and casual that neither she nor any of her friends will regard as suspicious. They need a genuine person. Someone who is in Debretts but isn’t well known in London, preferably isn’t in England ,and won’t mind if Lion’s man’s wife pretends to be her.”

“That is easy,” replied Mama. “Eloisa Ormond. My second cousin on my mother’s side. She has not been in England since we were girls. Her father married her off to the Earl of Ormond the year before I married your father, and lived in Scotland until she was widowed ten years ago. She has been travelling ever since. Her last letter was sent from a place called Bali, which is, apparently, in the East Indies.”

“Cousin Eloise,” the duke repeated. “Mama, that is perfect.”

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Tea with Mrs Clifford

The innkeeper could not be more apologetic. There had been a misunderstanding. He had not been expecting Her Grace until the next day. The letter requiring a private parlour to be set aside for her comfort for an hour in the afternoon specifically said Thursday. He was terribly sorry.

Eleanor listened as her major domo conceded that they were a day early, but demanded the private parlour anyway.

“But I cannot turn out the lady currently using it,” the innkeeper protested. “She is elderly, and not too well.”

The major domo was of the view that his great lady’s convenience superseded the needs of anyone else, so it was time for Eleanor to intervene.

“If your guest would be kind enough to share the parlour for an hour, I shall do very well,” she said. “And if not, you might perhaps have a bedchamber I could use?”

The innkeeper looked even more worried, and no wonder. Eleanor’s impetuous decision to bring her plans forward a day had landed her in this town on the day some sporting event was about to take place. Her major domo was not prepared to discuss the nature of the match, so Eleanor assumed it was boxing or something equally unfit for the gentle sensibilities of ladies.

Fortunately for the poor innkeeper’s peace of mind, the lady in the parlour proved willling to share, and Eleanor spent a pleasant hour with her feet up, a nice hot cup of tea, some delightful ginger biscuits, and the company of Mrs Clifford, the original occupant of the parlour.

Eleanor knew who Mrs Clifford was, of course, but did not embarrass the lady by mentioning it. And she was a lady, by her behaviour. Indeed, as mistress to the recently deceased Marquess of Raithby, she had been more faithful to the gentleman over thirty or more years than the marquess’s wife. Kinder to his children, too.

Eleanor said none of that, but simply talked about the purpose of her trip. “My foster daughter’s confinement is fast approaching, and I completed the last of the obligations that kept me in London, so I wished to wait not a moment more. I must beg your pardon for intruding on your peace. It is entirely my fault for leaving early.”

Mrs Clifford raised a hand in demurral. “It is my pleasure to have your company, Your Grace.” She paused, then confided, “I am also travelling to see a beloved relative. My sister’s child. She lives in the village where I spent my childhood, and I wish to see it and her one more time before…” She trailed off, but Eleanor could finish the sentence in her own mind. It was clear that Mrs Clifford was very ill.

“Do you have far to go?” Eleanor asked, and discovered that the other lady was going all the way to the Wirral Peninsula in Cheshire.

“I am travelling a day and resting a day,” she assured Eleanor. “I shall see Rosabel one more time, and I shall be happy.”

Eleanor’s maid popped her head around the corner of the door to let Eleanor know the carriage was ready. Eleanor stood, and could not resist saying, “I hope the rest of your journey goes well, Mrs Clifford. And may I express my sincere condolences on your loss? Raithby was a great man.”

Mrs Clifford’s raised her eyebrows but smiled. “He was, Your Grace. He was.”

Mrs Clifford is a secondary character–and a scandal–in Grasp the Thorn, published tomorrow.

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Exploring officers

Lion’s command includes a group of exploring officers, whose job it was to collect information about enemy movements. They would have denied being spies. Spying was considered underhanded and dishonourable, and simply not the way that a British gentleman acted. Indeed, while several government officials are known to have run spy networks both within Britain and overseas, Britain didn’t have an official department for spies until the 20th century.

In real life, as opposed to books, Exploring officers in Wellington’s army worked for the Intelligence Branch of the Quartermaster General’s office. They operated on their own or with one or two local guides. Their task was to collect first-hand tactical intelligence by riding to enemy positions, observing and noting movements and making sketch maps of uncharted land. It was a dangerous job and they had to be fit, good horsemen, and ready to escape at any moment. They wore their uniforms at all times (at least in theory), because they were officers, not spies.

The famous exploring officer Lieutenant Colquoun Grant was captured by the French while in uniform, and treated as an officer. Grant gave his parole, which basically meant he agreed to not try to escape. However, he discovered that the French general whose prisoner he was had written a letter that said  ‘His Excellency thinks that he should be watched and brought to the notice of the police’.

In other words, the French consider Grant a spy, to be dealt with by the police and not the army. Grant decided that the French had broken their agreement so his parole no longer counted, and he escaped.

Another job of the Intelligence Branch was intercepting letters, such as those sent from French generals to their officers.

They also collected information from networks of local spies. In my books, I have my exploring officers joined by a Greek spy and his niece, who claim to working with the British because the British are the enemies of the Turks.