Book series

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Gossip and scandal on WIP Wednesday

So many of our historal romances, especially Regency romance, hinge on gossip and scandal. Is it a trope you use in your writing. If so, please put an excerpt of your current work-in-progress in the comments.

Mine is from To Mend the Broken-Hearted. My hero has just received a letter from my heroine’s brother.

He opened the letter, looking at the signature first, while Crick buttoned him into his clean shirt and put his feet into a pair of indoor shoes. Not the duke. Drew W. Lord Andrew Winderfield then, Lady Ruth’s brother. He read through quickly, surging to his feet so quickly that Crick fell backwards. “My lord,” the valet protested.

Val returned to his seat, but though he held his body still, but for presenting his wrists for the cuff buttons, and his neck for his cravat (build in discussion earlier), his mind continued in ferment. Lord Andrew wrote of the latest scandal seething through the beau monde, and Val was its object. Val lifted the letter so he could read the salient points again, while Crick fussed over his cravat.

“… your injuries have driven you mad, so that you are as much a monster within as you appear without…” No mealy-mouthed skirting around the point, there. Were all the Winderfields as direct?

“… you killed your brother and your wife, and your brother’s wife escaped by inches, having first hidden the children away for their own safety…” Which was no more than had been spoken in the village before they grew to know him again, though at least they knew that Val’s brother had been dead a fortnight before he arrived home, too sick to be a threat to anyone.

“… even the local villagers shun you, knowing of your madness…” Also true, or at least, it used to be.

The gossip wasn’t just about him, however.

“… would have warned you anyway, but this gossip also touches my sister’s honour. The common thread in the rumours about her is that you lived together for weeks. Some say you abducted her. Some say she came willingly. Either way — or so the rumours claim — you ruined her and cast her off when you had sated your lust.”

Drew seemed more amused than indignant when he wrote, “Those who believe that Ruth and her guards would allow such a thing don’t know our family very well. But they shall know us better, I warrant you.”

Winshire had ordered an investigation into the source of the gossip. Once Crick had placed his cravat pin, Val reached for the third page, which he read several times before allowing Crick to help him into his coat.

“Beyond a doubt, one person features as a common element in every story we have been able to trace back to its source. Your sister-in-law, the Countess of Ashbury, has denied all knowledge of the gossip, while making it clear that she gives it credence. However, every trail goes back to her, and everyone who admits to questioning her about the stories agrees that she supported them, with convincing detail. She told my cousin, who is part of her court, that she has sources who write to her from your household and the local village.”

Even without what they were saying about Ruth, Val would need to squash this nonsense for the sake of his girls. But the lies and half-lies about Ruth meant he needed to take action and be fast about it.

“Crick, tell Minsham that I need to see you and her in my study as soon as the girls go up to bed.” First step was to find the traitors under his own roof. Then the village. Then Society. Just a couple of months ago, he would have quailed at the thought of venturing to Brighton and even London. Now, any apprehension was swamped in the feeling that had him smile as he shrugged into the coat that Crick held ready. In a matter of days, perhaps a little over a week, he would see Ruth again.

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Spotlight on To Wed a Proper Lady

I’ve done a cautious prerelease of the first novel in the series The Children of the Mountain King. To Wed a Proper Lady is out on 15 April, and you can preorder now. But you can already buy it at Smashwords or from my SELZ bookshop. The prequel novella about the mountain king and his queen is now free in the same two digital shops, and when the price change filters out to Apple and Barnes & Noble, I hope to convince Amazon to make it free there, too.

Here are some of the early reviews.

A very well written story with wonderful characters. The pace is very good & drew me in from start to finish. I loved both James & Sophia, although they fell hard & fast for each other at first sight it then took some time for them to realise their feelings were reciprocated. The secondary characters also had depth, we met some new & some from other books, there’s one character whose story I’m impatiently waiting for! An engrossing, captivating read, which I didn’t want to end.

This story grabbed me on the first page when James Winderfield accompanies his father who returns home after thirty-five years in the mountains of the east, summoned by his dying father. After decades as The Mountain King, the elder Winderfield faces a step down to the title of English duke, and the challenge of shepherding his children, whose mother is a Persian princess, into the life of the ton with the respect they deserve and their innate dignity intact. The family bond, loyalty, and affection radiate from every page. James, as his father’s oldest accepts—if he doesn’t precisely embrace— a courtesy title as next in line, and can handle English society, but he detests his one large challenge. Both his vile grandfather and his loving father expect him to marry a proper English lady, a prospect distasteful for its implication his blood isn’t blue enough and a sense he’s being set out to stud for family purposes. What he wants is a loving marriage like his parents enjoyed. His journey held my heart from start to finish.

This was such a good read! I loved the characters of Jamie and Sophia. James was handsome, charming and honourable. Sophia was caring, not only for her family but also for various charities that she helped. When James first met Sophia, he felt he had met his soulmate. Although Sophia felt the same, she had her doubts, given that she was always overlooked when compared with her sister. I liked that Jamie saw Sophia for herself. They both had a strong love for their immediate families. There is also an old enmity that causes problems and the mystery as to who is trying to cause Jamie and his family harm. This was a very engaging read and I look forward to reading more in this series. Although this can be read as a standalone, I would say that the previous novella would give the background story to their life abroad. I received a copy via Booksprout and have voluntarily reviewed it. All thoughts and opinions are my own. However, I did preorder my own copy.

I really liked this skillfully crafted story. New to English society, James is confronted by prejudice and mistrust as he looks for a suitable bride with the hope of a love match. Suspense is added by the dealings of the Duke of Haverford, who has taken upon himself to cause trouble for the Winderfield family, not just in encouraging his sycophants to cut the family, but he also raises doubts regarding the Winderfield children’s legitimacy.
As can be expected in this genre there is a happy end. The journey there was very interesting and entertaining. Now to wait for the next installment.

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Self doubts on WIP Wednesday

Often — perhaps mostly — one of the major barriers my characters face in finding happiness is their own opinion of themselves. Is it the same for you? If so, how about sharing an excerpt where your character experiences self-doubt. Mine is from To Mend the Broken Hearted, the second novel in The Children of the Mountain King. My heroine is explaining her family to my hero.

His question, when it came, was not what she expected. “And your mother? Did she not come to England with you?”

Mami. The queen of their small kingdom and the heart of their family. Sometimes, Ruth could barely remember her face, and then a word or a sound or a smell would bring a memory and it was as if she had just stepped into another room.

“She died twelve years ago,” she told Ashbury. After a moment, she added, “I sometimes wonder if my father might have stayed in Para Daisa Vada had she lived. She always insisted she would not come to England and that Father should not, either. The old duke sent for Father when his second son died and it seemed likely my remaining uncle would have only the one heir and him sickly. He wanted Father to repudiate us all and go home alone.”

“Your father refused.” Ashbury didn’t phrase it as a question, but Ruth nodded anyway.

“After that, though, he kept telling us that we might one day have to come to England, especially Jamie, who might well inherit an English dukedom rather than Father’s kaganate — kingdom, I suppose you would say.”

Father and Mami had argued over Father’s sense of duty, though even as a child, she had understood that their bond was far too deep for any surface sound and fury to do more than ruffle the surface. Almost certainly, if Mami had lived, she would have come to England with Father. She gave a short bark of laughter at the thought of her mother in England.

“If she had come, she would have withered the likes of Haverford with a single glance. My mother was a queen to her fingertips, a warrior of great skill, and harem-raised by my great grandmother, who was an adviser to kings. Father says that Nano was the best politician he ever met, and Mami was nearly her equal.”

“She raised a strong daughter,” Ashbury observed.

At his admiring tone, Ruth’s eyes filled with tears. She blinked them away. “You should meet Rebecca, my older sister. She led her own guard squad by the time she was eighteen. She can outshoot and outride most of the men. When a rival kagan held her hostage, she escaped and kidnapped his son, and they fell in love, wed, and now command the forces of my brother, Matthew, who remained to take over Father’s kingdom. Rebecca inherited a full measure of Mami’s warrior talents, and Rachel, my eldest sister, the queenly ones. Her husband came to learn statecraft from my father, and took Rachel home to Georgia to rule beside him as his wife.”

Four sisters, and three of them exceptional. Rosemary, was a paragon of the womanly arts. She was an exquisite dancer, her paintings and poems were beautiful, and she navigated the fickle politics of the women’s side of the house with ease and tact, so that even the most difficult of females liked her. In the more mixed society of England, she applied the same skills to the gentlemen they met. In fact, even the old duke, their grandfather, made a pet of her, and he hated everyone.

And then there was Ruth. Awkward in company, impatient with polite nothings, always wearing a mask behind which she felt uncertain and out of place. Mami called her ‘my little scholar’,  and certainly as a child she was happiest with her books, though she dutifully took the same training in warrior craft and household management skills as the other girls.

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Tea with the children

Eleanor smiled at the family gathered in her favourite sitting room. Matilda was pouring the tea, and Frances was carefully carrying each cup to the person for whom it had been prepared. Jessica was sitting on the arm of Aldridge’s chair, regaling him with stories about the New Year’s Charity Ball he had missed when he left the house party early. Cedrica sat quietly, as usual, but the distracted smile and the glow of happiness were new, and her thoughts were clearly on her French chef, whom she was to marry in a private ceremony in the Haverford House chapel in just a couple of weeks.

Only Jon was missing. A month ago, he had sailed from Margate in Aldridge’s private yacht, and just this morning, a package had been delivered by a weary sailor, with a report from Aldridge’s captain for the marquis, and a brief note from Jon for his mother. “Married. Safe. More news later.” Which raised more questions than it answered, not least of which was why he’d not had time to write more. Brief though it was, it set her heart at ease as much as it could be, when he was deep in war-torn Northern Europe. Not as war torn as it was when he set out, while Napoleon’s army was retreating in the face of the severe northern winter. Thank goodness that somehow, through the battle-scarred and frozen country, the messenger had managed to get this note back to Aldridge’s captain, anchored of the coast of Latvia to wait for word.

Aldridge looked up from his conversation with Jessica and gifted her with the warm smile he saved only for the women of his family. “Jon has landed on his feet again, Mama,” he told her. He shook his head, his eyes twinkling. “I don’t know how he always manages to do that!”

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Jon’s hasty trip from Margate is mentioned in To Wed a Proper Lady, which also introduces Cedrica and features the house party. His story is all planned out, but has to wait till I have finished The Children of the Mountain King series, of which To Wed a Proper Lady is the first novel. It’s on preorder and will be published 15 April. Aldridge’s story is novel 3 in the series. All going well, you’ll have it in July or August. Cedrica’s part in the house party, and her romance with her French chef, is in the novella A Suitable Husband.

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Work in progress on Wednesday?

I haven’t forgotten you, I promise. I have To Wed a Proper Lady nearly ready to put out to as an advance reader copy, and I expect it to publish on time on 15 April. I’m working on getting the back matter of Paradise Regained up to date, and then I’m going to make it permafree as an introduction to the Children of the Mountain King series, and I’m writing a Paradise Lost companion piece to give away in my April newsletter.

But, in other news, I’ve just got back from a family holiday in Bali, and I have two and half weeks to pack up my house for moving, and less time than that to find a place to move to.

So, apart from what I’ve just listed above, the writing is going on the back burner, and I’m not going to be much around on the blog or online. Wish me luck, folks! See you mid-April.

 

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First Kiss on WIP Wednesday

 

How about a first kiss post for this WIP Wednesday? I have one. It’s from To Wed a Proper Lady. Full disclosure. This seen hasn’t much changed since the novel was the novella The Bluestocking and the Barbarian.

Please share your own work-in-progress first kisses in the comments.

Sure enough, Sophia was alone in the room to which the doddery old butler directed James when he asked after the second parlour. He gave the room a quick and cursory scan before focusing his attention on the woman standing on a ladder and hanging garlands across the huge painting on the window wall. She leaned to her right to reach up to the carved pediment above the window, clutching at the draped maroon curtains to keep her balance.

James was across the room in seconds. “Careful,” he said, steadying the ladder.

Sophia looked down. “Lord Elfingham. What are you doing here?”

“I was looking for something useful to do, Lady Sophia. May I be of service?”

She examined his face and then nodded. “You are between Scylla and Charybdis, are you not?”

James laughed. “You have it exactly. On the one side, the ladies who think it worth the gamble to pull a possible future duke down into their watery vortex, and on the other, the multi-headed monster of innuendo and insult in the company of the gentlemen.”

“Neither ladies nor gentlemen by their behaviour,” his own lady said tartly. “Very well, Lord Elfingham, I will put you to work.” She put one hand on his shoulder to help herself from the ladder. “Bring the ladder, please. I have more garlands to hang.”

James lifted the ladder and followed obediently in her wake. “What are we doing, pray tell?”

“We are having a costume party tonight. You heard?”

James nodded. His wardrobe was limited to what he could carry in his saddlebags, but the duchess had ordered chests of costumes and fabric brought down from the attics, and he had found the means to replicate his festival clothes as a mountain prince, or at least close enough for the audience.

If they wanted a barbarian, he would give them a barbarian.

“We did not decorate in here on Christmas Eve, since we had so much else to do, so I am putting up Christmas decorations. See? The evergreen is a symbol of life in this most holy season. And the holly, have you heard the song about the holly?”

Sophia sang for him, in a light alto, all the verses his father had taught them when he was a tiny child. This European holly was not precisely the same as the holly he had grown up with, but it was similar. For the pleasure of hearing her voice, he kept his counsel.

She went on to explain the other Christmas customs, not just the foliage and ribbons and other materials used in the decorations, but the pudding that had been served at Christmas dinner, the Yule logs burning in various fireplaces around the house, and the boxes that the duchess had delivered the previous day to poor families around the district.

“Cedrica and I, and several of the other ladies, were her deputies,” Sophia explained. “It was wonderful to see the happy little faces of the children, James.”

James had stayed back from the hunt organised for the men in the hopes of spending time with Sophia, and had found out about the charity expedition too late to offer his services. “I am sorry that I missed it,” he said sincerely.

He noted one glaring omission in her descriptions. “Just a decoration,” she had told him, mendaciously, when he asked about the kissing boughs.

And now pretending to be ignorant of these English Christmas customs was about to pay off. One day, when she was safely his wife, he might admit to Sophia that he and the whole citadel had hung on his father’s tales of an English Christmas, that his mother and her maids had decorated high and low, and his father had led the troops out to find a fitting Yule log to carry home in triumph on Christmas Eve. A harder job in his dry mountains than in this green land.

But this was not the time for that story. Not when Sophia was relaxed and about to pass under a kissing bough that retained its full complement of mistletoe berries.

James suppressed a grin. “Look,” he said, at the opportune time, pointing up. “My kaka—my Papa—told me about these.”

She stopped, as he had intended, and with a single stride, he had reached her, wrapped her in his arms, and captured the lips that had been haunting his dreams this past three months.

And she kissed him back. For a moment… for one long glorious moment, while time stood still and the world ceased to exist, Sophia Belvoir kissed him back.

 

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Dastardly villains on WIP Wednesday

 

I do love a dastardly villain, and I quite like what I’ve done with Weasel Winderfield, one of the villains in my To Wed a Proper Lady. How about you. Do you have an excerpt about a villain that you’d like to share? Pop it in the comments.

Mine is at the tail end of a duel, brought about because my villain called my hero’s mother an oriental whore. He’s back in the next book, too, still causing trouble. In fact, I’ve just realised that he had a part to play in the backstory of book four, when he seduced the woman who was quickly married off to my hero’s father as his second wife.

“Good shooting, brother,” James said, clapping Drew on the shoulder.

“Idiot would have been fine if he hadn’t moved,” Drew grumbled. Weasel had shot before the final count and missed. When Drew had taken his turn, he had announced his intention of removing Weasel’s watch fob from the chain that drooped across his waist, and ordered the man to stand still.

At the other end of the field, Weasel was carrying on as if death were imminent. His second, the Marquis of Aldridge, after a brief examination, sent the Winderfield men a thumbs up before leaving Weasel to the ministrations of the doctor. Aldridge was now giving orders to the servants by the carriage that had brought him and Weasel to the duelling grounds.

“Breakfast?” James suggested.

“Good idea,” Drew said. “Let’s collect Yousef and…”

As if his name had conjured him up, their father’s lieutenant appeared from the trees and stalked towards them. Something about his posture brought James to full alert, and Drew sensed it too, stiffening beside him.

“Trouble?” James asked, as soon as Yousef was close enough.

“An assassin in the woods, armed with a pistol like these.” He gestured to the gun that Drew had replaced in its case until he had time to clean it. “You were not meant to walk from this field, Andraos Bey.”

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Fish out of water on WIP Wednesday

Part of the fun of writing is to put your characters into situations they don’t much like, and no one is more fun to torture than a hero who is usually in charge. Do you have an excerpt where your character feels like a fish out of water or the fox in a hunt? Please share in the comments. Here’s mine, from the beginning of To Tame a Wild Rake. It follows on from the piece I used a couple of weeks ago.

“Do not leave my side,” he whispered to Jessica, sternly.

She grinned up at him. “You already threatened the loss of half my dress allowance if I do.”

“Make it the whole dress allowance,” he growled, but she treated the threat with the contempt it deserved, and giggled. He’d never been able to resist any of his half-sisters, and had been putty in Jessica’s hands since she arrived in the nursery, a little infant, too thin for her age and too weak to do more than grizzle. He had put his finger into her little fist, and she had gripped it firmly, smiled at him, and made him her besotted slave from that moment.

“I mean it, Jessie. For your own reputation, even if you don’t care about feeding me to the harpies.”

Her smile slipped and became brittle. “My reputation was ruined before I was born. We cannot all be as fortunate as Matilda, Aldridge.”

He couldn’t help his wince, though the guilt was not his. Though no one risked the wrath of the Duchess of Haverford by shunning the sisters or gossiping in public, everyone knew her three wards were the base-born and unacknowledged daughters of the Duke of Haverford. As soon as Aldridge was duke, he intended to repair what he could, and acknowledge them. It wouldn’t satisfy the high sticklers, but it should help Jessica, and later Frances, to find a match.

At least his eldest sister, Matilda, was now happily married, her husband willing to ignore the scandal for love’s sake.

Jessica ignored his reaction, her mind on her own thoughts. “I will protect you, though, if only because I don’t want to live with a harpy.”

I should choose a wife and be done with it. Without his volition, his eyes scanned the room until he saw her. He had known she must be here; the hostess was, after all, her cousin. The musicale was a benefit to provide medical services in one of the poorest parts of London, or at least to provide the rental for rooms and a salary for a doctor. Lady Ashbury was rumoured to be a healer, and was certainly patroness of the proposed doctor’s clinic.

Lady Charlotte Winderfield sat with her sister, the pair of them somehow an island of serenity in the sea of ferment that was Society at its endless posturing.

“Lady Charlotte won’t have you,” Jessica observed. He glanced down into hazel eyes very similar to his own. She touched his hand. “She swears she will never marry, Aldridge. She has refused every offer, and resisted even when her father and grandfather tried to bully her.” A fact Aldridge well knew, since he had made one of the earliest of those offers, and reluctantly withdrawn it when he discovered the pressure she was under to accept.

He pulled back over himself the cover of the insouciant ducal heir. “There are others who may suit. But I am in no rush to put on shackles, Jessie. “ Not that he could fool Jessica with the part any more than he had deceived Lady Charlotte. She had been able to see through his mask since they first met. She had still been a child in the schoolroom, only fifteen. He had been twenty-seven and sozzled to the gills, nearing the end of three months of drinking and wenching that had failed to dull the edges of a loss he still shied away from considering.

He had known from the first time she scolded him for allowing his pain to make him stupid that he wanted her for his duchess. But by the time she was old enough to court, she’d grown past the friendship they’d forged that long-ago summer, and learned enough about him to reject him out of hand.

He needed to accept his dismissal like a gentleman. But that didn’t stop his yearning.

“They are about to start,” he pointed out to his sister. “Shall we find a seat?”

Lady Ashbury had hired professional musicians to entertain her guests, which was both good and bad. Good, because he didn’t have to suffer through the mediocre performances of debutantes hawking their accomplishments. Their proud mothers must all have cloth ears, or perhaps they hoped that some patron of the musical arts might marry one of them just for the right to forbid them from every playing or singing in public again.

Bad, because the dullards in the audience saw no need to pay the performers the courtesy of their attention, and insisted on chattering the whole way through.

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Setting the scene on WIP Wednesday

Today I’m thinking about how to provide information without doing an information dump. How much do people need to know? Can I get it out in action or conversation? Show don’t tell, but then, if it is important but would be boring at length, tell it and get on. How do you set the scene? Do you have an excerpt you can share? Here’s a rather raw piece from To Tame a Wild Rake.

Why on earth had he agreed to escort Jessica to a musicale?

In the vicious hunt most debutantes and their mothers made of the marriage mart, a title, wealth, acceptable looks and amiable disposition marked a gentleman as a prime quarry. The Marquis of Aldridge, heir to a duke since birth, regarded the scene before him in near despair.

He would retire to the country to become a hermit, if he could. The business of the duchy required him to be social and in London, but the risk of being saddled with a wife he hadn’t chosen required constant vigilance.

He defended himself with his abysmal reputation, constant watchfulness, and the willingness to be ruthless when required. Even so, the inevitable gossip about his father’s swift decline and approaching demise sent the hunt into a frenzy.

He went nowhere without first considering how to avoid any traps that might have been laid. If forced to attend a ball, he eschewed the dance floor for the card and billiards rooms. He ventured outside of these rooms, and to other entertainments, only in the company of his mother or one of his sisters. He’d not been to a house party in over a year, and the last one was under his mother’s own roof, and had required him to administer a sharp lesson to a particularly rapacious debutante.

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Tea on the Ice

UPDATE: The prizes for the blog hop have been awarded, but please read on for flash fiction and historical tidbits. Prizewinners names at the bottom of the post. Comments always welcome.

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It was going to work!

Maddie Forrest had called in so many favours and promised more, that if she’d been wrong, she’d be ruined in all the ways a disgraced former lady’s maid could be.

“The ladies will want somewhere they can sit down and warm their hands around a proper cup of tea,” she’d told her brother Will.  It was the first Frost Fair in a generation, and Maddie was sure they’d all come.

Will had scoffed. “Them proper ladies won’t even come down ’ere. Think they want to rub shoulders with the likes of us? Leave it to me, Maddie. This is our chance to make some real money.”

Maddie refused to listen. Will’s ideas about getting his hands on some cash were shady at best and mostly downright criminal. If she’s was going to get herself and little Nan out of London before Will found himself imprisoned or worse, she needed money, and the Frost Fair was her chance. Maddie knew what ladies liked. She’d been a favourite until she fell for the false promises of a black-hearted gentleman.

That, she thought, as she smiled a welcome at yet another group of fashionably dressed ladies as they entered her booth, was her biggest remaining risk, now that the Duchess of Haverford had made all her dreams come true by bringing some huge ton event onto the ice. She was counting on no one knowing her from her former life and spreading around the gossip that the hostess of this discreet and convenient booth was a fallen woman, dismissed without reference when found to be with child.

The chance was low. No one looked at servants. As she served tea and plates of tiny tarts and cakes, the ladies in their fine gowns and warm coats huddled around the braziers that she had begged from a friend in the Night Watch and ignored her, except to speak orders to the air with every confidence that their desires would be met.

A gentleman entered, escorting two ladies. Maddie took their cloaks and showed them to a table. The tent had come from the pawn shop, and she shuddered to think of the payment the pawnbroker would have demanded had she not made its hire fee in the first day on the ice. Yes, and enough to pay for the tables and chairs, too.

“I’ll think of something a fine woman like you can do for me,” he’d told her, his leer leaving no doubt about his meaning.

She didn’t need to worry about the pawnbroker now. She already had his fee wrapped in a package and hidden under her bed. And she’d arranged for her landlady to give it to the man the day after Maddie and Nan got on the stage and left town.

“What is your pleasure?” she asked the ladies who had just taken their seats. She rattled of the types of tea she had available; the foods that local bakers were supplying for her to sell on their behalf, with a small commission sticking to her pocket with every sale.

She was also being paid for supplying the booth two doors up, where the Ladies Society was giving pamphlets about the plight of those returned, and the families of the dead and injured. Yes, and the fortune teller’s booth, and the book tent. She was even making a few extra coins selling tea out the back of the tent made from the great folks’ leavings, with each steep fetching a progressively lower price. Even the chestnut seller could afford to bring her own mug to Maddie’s friend who was serving out the back, for a weak brew that cost her a farthing.

Maddie’s grin at her own success won an answering smile from the gent. He was a handsome fellow for an old man. “Can you also take tea – strong, black and sweet – to my two men outside the tent? They’re the ones in the red coats and large hats.” He handed over a half crown, and for that she would have served half a regiment. Maddie offered him change and her heart sang when he refused.

She poured the ordered tea into mugs for the lesser folk, and carried them outside. Her eyes widened. The men were barbarians of some kind, in red coats like banyans, almost knee length and richly embroidered, and bushy hats made out of sheep’s wool.

“Your master asked me to bring you this,” she told them. They thanked her like civilised beings, but her heart still thumped in her chest as she retreated inside, stopping in the entrance to allow a veiled lady to go first.

Before she could show the lady to a table, the gentleman with the barbarian servants stood and pulled out a chair for her.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” the lady said. His Grace? The gentleman was a duke? He must be the Duke of Winshire, then. Maddie should have realised. The papers had been full of him for nearly a year, ever since he arrived back in England with an army of barbarians, including his own foreign born children. And there were some of the barbarians right outside her tent!

She crossed to the table to ask for the lady’s order, hoping she would lift the veil. Surely she knew that voice? She was to be disappointed. But as she turned away to make the ordered Oolong, the Duke of Winshire leaned forward and used a finger to lift the veil aside. “How is it?” he asked.

Maddie had a bare moment to catch sight of the lady’s face. The Duchess of Haverford herself sat in Maddie’s tent with the Duke of Winshire, one side her face a massive bruise discernible even through powder intended to conceal.

There must be a story there. Perhaps Maddie could tell the Teatime Tattler, which had a booth several Frost Fair streets over? But no. She’d done all sorts of things to win the funds she needed to give her and Nan a fresh start, but she’d never hurt another person. Whatever the duchess was up to meeting her husband’s greatest enemy, it was nothing to do with Maddie or the Teatime Tattler.

Besides, she owed the Duchess of Haverford for the success of her booth, and for the idea that had just entered her head. She’d taken home one of the pamphlets from the Ladies Society last night, and read it, too. All about the plight of those hurt by the wars over in France, where that fiend Napoleon was trying to scoop up all the countries over there before coming for England. Injured soldiers had a hard time, and so did their families. But widows and orphans were even worse off.

Maddie could be a widow. Why not? Start again where nobody knew her. Perhaps get work in a shop, or even – if the Frost Fair lasted long enough and the crowds remained as large – rent a shop: one that dressed ladies. Who better? Maddie almost sang as she tidied up tables and served more customers.

The Duke of Winshire came to talk to her after the veiled lady left. “I think you recognised the lady who joined me at my table,” he said.

“Discreet and comfortable, it says on the sign, Your Grace,” she told him. “I saw nothing and I know nothing. You can count on me, Sir.”

He examined her face, and must have been satisfied, for he smiled again. “Be sure that you speak of this to no one,” he advised, and she nodded.

He pressed something into her hand then turned away and unhurriedly joined his companions, who were waiting by the door.

Maddie watched him go before looking down. She knew it was a coin by the shape and size of it, but a spade guinea! She could get 27 shilling for that, easy. Why, even as a maid, she’d not made that much in a month! She hadn’t had any idea that keeping secrets could be so lucrative!

For the rest of the day, Maddie hummed as she worked. If just a few more people came to the tea booth seeking a place to hide their secrets, she and Nan would be in clover.

Comment to win

Tea was not the only beverage on sale. No doubt coffee and hot chocolate had their place, too, and all kinds of hot and cold alcoholic beverages. What would you want to drink and eat if you were attending a frost fair. Comment on this post, each of the other four, and the page on the Belles’ website to go into the draw for the main prize in the blog hop, a $50 US Amazon card.

All comments on this post will go in a draw for an e-copy of one the four earlier Bluestocking Belles’ collections, plus a copy of my Paradise Regained, the prequel to The Children of the Mountain King.

Next up: Anna’s Hot Roast Chestnuts!

Could ladies get a discreet cup of tea on the ice?

I don’t have any evidence that the 1814 Frost Fair included a tent where ladies of refinement could escape from the crush of the common people to purchase a good cup of tea, but why not? The ice offered entertainment for all classes and of all kinds, and not everyone enjoys mulled wine and copious quantities of ale.

My tea lady’s experience with the ton was not uncommon. A maid seduced or raped by a so-called gentleman was assumed to be of loose morals and carried all the consequences, while the gentleman was forgiven, because everyone knew that the lower classes were asking for it, and men couldn’t be blamed for taking what was offered.

The secret meeting touches on the matters in my series, Children of the Mountain King, but the main action here and in the rest of the blog hop is Fire & Frost. Don’t miss our five tales of love in a time of ice.

Fire & Frost

In a winter so cold the Thames freezes over, five couples venture onto the ice in pursuit of love to warm their hearts.

Love unexpected, rekindled, or brand new—even one that’s a whack on the side of the head—heats up the frigid winter. After weeks of fog and cold, all five stories converge on the ice at the 1814 Frost Fair when the ladies’ campaign to help the wounded and unemployed veterans of the Napoleonic wars culminates in a charity auction that shocks the high sticklers of the ton.

In their 2020 collection, join the Bluestocking Belles and their heroes and heroines as The Ladies’ Society For The Care of the Widows and Orphans of Fallen Heroes and the Children of Wounded Veterans pursues justice, charity, and soul-searing romance.

Celebrate Valentine’s Day 2020 with five interconnected Regency romances.

Melting Matilda by Jude Knight – Fire smolders under the frost between them.

My One True Love by Rue Allyn – She vanished into the fog. Will he find his one true love or remain lost, cold and alone forever?

Lord Ethan’s Courage by Caroline Warfield – War may freeze a man’s heart; it takes a woman to melt it.

A Second Chance at Love by Sherry Ewing – Can the bittersweet frost of lost love be rekindled into a burning flame?

The Umbrella Chronicles: Chester and Artemis’s Story by Amy Quinton – Beastly duke seeks confident woman who doesn’t faint at the sight of his scars. Prefers not to leave the house to find her.

Congratulations to Cheri, winner of the overall prize for the blog hop, and to Kimberly, who has won two ebooks: her choice of one of the Bluestocking Belles’ earlier collections (Holly and Hopeful Hearts, Never Too Late, Follow Your Star Home, or Valentines From Bath), plus a copy of my Paradise Regained.