Look what was waiting for me when I got home.
Book series
Troubles in coverland
I do make trouble for myself. I have this concept for the cover of Farewell to Kindness. Since Anne’s ability as an archer is a pivotal plot point, I want the cover to feature a woman in regency dress with bow and arrow. I put the image on my working cover together from several other images – one person’s hair, another person’s body, and a random background. But all along, I’ve planned a cover shoot for the real cover.
I have a photographer (the charming Britt, who drew the chair for Candle). She has organised a model. We have a selection of places for the shoot. But do you think that we can find someone who will let us borrow their long bow?
I’ve tried the prop hire firms. Long bows are apparently not much in demand for New Zealand movies and television shows. I’ve tried the archery clubs. Some archery clubs do have long bow enthusiasts, but not within easy driving distance of my model and photographer.
I’m pinning my hopes on the re-enactment societies. I’ve made several approaches to different groups, and I think I may be getting somewhere. Yesterday, I spoke to someone who has spoken to someone… But no call last night, so if that hasn’t worked by next weekend, I’m off to the annual joust half an hour from here, where they’re advertising traditional archery.
Watch this space!
Meanwhile, here are the four designs (wrong photo, but experiments to look at typography and placement) Britt has sent me as concepts. What do you think?
Farewell to Kindness deleted scene – Anne’s trip to Bristol
I’m travelling today, and so I thought I’d post the deleted travelling scene from Farewell to Kindness. I enjoyed writing it, remembering all the times I’ve travelled with my own children or entertained someone else’s children on a train or a bus. But it didn’t help the pace of the story, it introduced a whole heap of characters who never appeared again, and the single plot point could be carried in the one or two paragraphs that replaced it.
The photos of luggage are from my Pinterest board Farewell to Kindness trip to Bristol.
A few minutes later, they were away. This was the shortest part of the trip. Some of the passengers had left Gloucester at 7.00 in the morning, but now there was just 15 miles to go. They would break the trip only once more, at Winterbourne.
Anne was squeezed between a large woman who had not woken during the Chipping Niddwick stop, and a small balding man who offered her a tentative smile over the top of his glasses. On the opposite seat, a young man was trying to keep a small boy occupied with cats’ cradle patterns in wool, while his wife rocked a sleeping little girl.
Before long, the boy lost interest in what his father was doing, and became restless.
“You look like a boy who enjoys stories,” Anne said to him. The boy looked to be of an age with Daisy, who had a robust taste in adventure, preferring Anne to spice her tales of fairies and princess with wicked pirates and hungry dragons. Playing down the fairies and playing up the dragons should work for a boy.
He looked at her with hope and suspicion. “He does love stories,” his father said, his own expression all hope. Then hastened to introduce himself and his family. “This here is Georgie, and that’s Millicent with my wife, Mrs Norris. George Norris, that’s me. And that there lady by thee, that be my mother.”
So Anne introduced herself before launching into a tale that she made up as she went along, in which a coach travelling through the Gloucestershire countryside was magically transformed into a ship that – beset though it was by storms, pirates, dragons, and a rather large giant who wanted to take it home for his bath – nonetheless managed to come safely to port not quite an hour and a half later as the coach pulled into Winterbourne.
By this time, young Georgie was leaning on Anne’s knee, anxious not to miss a single word of what she said, and Anne’s voice was growing hoarse. “The End,” she finished, with a sense of relief.
At the inn in Winterbourne, the older Mrs Norris woke, and levered herself out of the couch asking for the necessary. The guard poked his head around the door into the couch. “Does anyone else need to get down? We’ll be here 10 minutes. And we don’t wait for no-one.”
Georgie whispered something to his father, and they left the coach, followed by the small balding man.
“Can George get you a drink, Ma’am?” Mrs Norris said softly over the head of the sleeping girl. “Thy throat must be that sore from all that story. Why it was as good as the players that come to Christmas fair, and so it was!”
Anne turned down the drink, wanting to avoid her own trip to the necessary, but thanked Mrs Norris for the thought and the compliment.
Mrs Norris senior clambered back into the coach. “Move over, Lilly, do. How’s my Milly?”
Mrs Lilly Norris, who had relaxed into the middle of the seat, shifted sideways again to accommodate her mother-in-law’s bulk, and dropped the little girl’s head so that Mrs Norris could see her.
“You should wake her, you should.” Mrs Norris turned to her son as he put his son up into the coach and followed. “I’ve been telling Lilly she should wake Milly, else she’ll not sleep tonight.”
The guard poked his head in the door again. “Are we all aboard, then?”
“There is still one gentleman to come, I think,” Anne told him.
The guard said something scathing about passengers, adding, “Not present company, ma’am. Best take your seats. We’ll be off in just a tick, whether the gent comes back or no.”
Mrs Norris was still organising her children and grandchildren, and took no notice, but it didn’t take her long to set Norris next to Anne, and settle herself beside her grandson, with her yawning granddaughter on her knee.
“There, now we shall be comfie,” she announced, with satisfaction. “Feel under the seat, young Georgie, and tha shall find summat tha’ll like, I warrant.”
Georgie obeyed, pulling out a rectangular basket just as the thin balding man attempted to climb into the coach.
“Here, be careful, fellow,” the man said.
Norris apologised, and helped Georgie hoist the basket onto the seat between his wife and his mother.
He sat back just as the coach started with a jerk, and Georgie fell backwards against the thin man, prompting more apologies.
“Tha’ll have one of my apple turnovers, and all will be well,” offered Mrs Norris, digging into the basket with one capacious hand, while steadying the child on her knee with the other. And she and her daughter-in-law proceeded to hand out food from a seemingly bottomless basket – pork pies, apple turnovers, gloucester tarts.
Anne accepted a tart, offered shyly by Lilly Norris. “Tha should have a pork pie, ma’am,” Mrs Norris told her, frankly. “Tha has no meat on thee.”
The thin man shared his name after the first apple turnover, and the reason for his journey after the second. He was Frank Durney, and he was on his way to Bristol to take up a job as a clerk in a counting house. This coach, which he had joined at Chipping Niddwick, was his second of the day.
After his third tart, Durney complimented Anne on her story, and after the basked had been packed away, he launched into a song that, he said, had always amused his own little one.
It involved dancing for all kinds of rewards, and the others knew it. Norris and his wife joined in the singing, and Mrs Norris danced little Milly on her knee to the music, until both children were weak with giggling.
Norris produced another basket from under the seat, and pulled out a jug of cider and some wooden beakers, which he passed out to everyone in the coach, even the two children.
“And what about yourselves?” Durney asked. “It’s a long trip for the children. Cheltenham, was it, you came from?”
“Gloucester,” Norris told him, leaning out to see Durney around Anne. “But Mother has always had a yen to see Bristol, and Mrs Norris here,” he raised his cup in a salute to his wife, “she wants to stay at the seaside. So we’re off on holiday, we are, just like the nobs.” He said the last with great satisfaction, then looked at Anne with alarm. “Saving your presence, Ma’am.”
“All that way for a holiday!” Durney sounded shocked.
“What I say,” said Mrs Norris cheerfully, “is you’re a long time dead. That’s what I say. Let’s go and have a good time, I said to George here.
“But such a long way. And so much money!” Durney was clearly having trouble grasping the concept.
“Business is doing well, lad, and George deserves the time off, I told him. You’re a long time dead, I said.”
Durney looked inclined to continue arguing, so Anne hastily changed the subject. “The ride seems much smoother.”
This worked, as Durney had information he wanted to share. “We’re on the Bath road, Ma’am,” he told her. “Up till now we’ve been on lesser roads, but the Bath to Bristol road is a major post road. The toll charges are higher, but they put the money into keeping the road up.”
The following dissertation on road maintenance soon lost Anne, but clearly fascinated Norris and his son, and Anne ended up crossing the coach to sit between Lilly Norris and Mrs Norris, so that the two men could talk about various methods of road surfacing and maintenance while the boy listened.
“We will be in Bristol soon, I think,” Anne told Milly, who was shifting restlessly on her grandmother’s knee.
“I going to the sea,” Milly told her, before putting her thumb firmly back in her mouth.
“How exciting. Have you seen the sea before?”
Milly had never been to the sea, it appeared, and neither had any of her family. Anne talked to them for a little while about walking on the sand and wading in the surf, and about the shells, and strangely shaped wood, and other things that washed up on the beach.
She was surprised when she realised they were coming into Bristol. This last part of the trip had gone very quickly. Both children abandoned the adult conversations to press their noses up against the coach windows.
Before long, they turned into the yard of the coaching inn.
Lydia is bored – an excerpt from Farewell to Kindness
On this visit to Swinbeck Castle, Lydia was finding the country less boring than usual. Quite apart from the young and lusty lover who kept her amused and the servants scandalised, she was gaining unexpected entertainment from joining the committee that was organising an assembly in the nearby town.
She sniggered inwardly. The most recent committee meeting had been particularly funny. The other ranking lady was a nobody from a trade family who had married into a title. Lydia made a point of opposing her at every turn, just for the pleasure of seeing how the other three women, toadies all, coped with trying to please both her and the upstart. The upstart had a higher title, but Lydia had the higher pedigree.
She didn’t attend every meeting, of course. She was on the committee to lend it her name and influence, but the commoners could do the actual work, and she included Lady Upstart Avery, who was as common as muck.
This afternoon, though, there was no meeting and Chirbury’s nephew was asleep in her bed. The game they’d played until dawn had involved a number of challenges for young Nat, sending him running and climbing all over the castle, with the challenges becoming more demanding and the rewards more intimate as the night wore on.
Lydia’s exertions had been confined to the interludes between challenges, and she’d drunk water while he tossed down brandy. She was wide awake and looking for something to do.
After a long soothing bath, she submitted herself to her maid’s hands. This girl was one of Carrington’s cast-offs, and credited Lydia with her change in status. No need to tell the girl that she’d developed too many curves to retain Lord Carrington’s interest. Gratitude made her loyal. And she’d become quite skilled at dressing hair, mending dresses, and creating lotions that softened her mistress’s skin.
Dressed at last, she checked Nat, but he was still asleep. She toyed with the idea of waking him. Still, he’d be of more use well rested.
She frittered away half an hour trying on jewellery. Most of these were family pieces. Her stepson, Tony, had asked for some when he married his little mouse. She told him he could pry them out of her dead, cold hands.
Still, she’d sent him a few pieces when she sent him her daughters. Not the best pieces, of course. But she was grateful that he’d taken his four half-sisters: Carrington’s daughter by his second wife, and her own three girls.
Carrington had not been amused at her decision to send them away five years ago. “Do you think I am a danger to my own daughters?” he challenged her, impaling her with his pale blue eyes. She denied it, of course, but still she knew, deep in her mind, that her intervention had been too late for the step-daughter.
She didn’t dwell on such thoughts. She’d learned as a trembling teenager, offered to Carrington by a debt-ridden brother, not to think about past or future, but to enjoy the moment as well as she could, and to please her husband.
Sending her daughters away was the one time she defied him, and even then, she did it without his knowledge and faced him only when—weeks later—he noticed his daughters were gone.
Though he punished her for her presumption, Carrington didn’t confine her as he promised, or send to bring his daughters back, which was confirmation of a sort, if Lydia cared to think about it.
She did not.
Kill your darlings – a deleted scene from Farewell to Kindness
I have a jackdaw mind. I fall in love with shiny facts, and I just have to keep them. And then I’m tempted to show them to everyone, as I did with the following deleted scene from my forthcoming novel, a small celebration of the counting rhyme used by generations of Cotswold’s shepherds.
The scene introduces a whole lot of characters that never appear again, it doesn’t advance the plot but instead slows the action, and it adds nothing to our knowledge of the hero or heroine. It had to go.
But, oh, the amputation hurt.
John Price rapped briskly on the street door of Lilac Cottage.
Thanks to his sister Dorcas, he now knew Hannah Cooper’s full name, that she was a widow, that she was maid-of-all-work to Mrs Forsythe and her sisters, and that she was devoted to her ladies, especially Miss Daisy Forsythe, whose wet-nurse she had been.
From behind him, a small voice said, “They be out.” An interested audience of three small children and a dog watched him from the dust of the street.
“They be gone to Squire’s,” the tallest of the three children offered. They stood hand in hand, dressed alike in men’s shirts cut down to fit, with rope belts and bare heads, the older two with trousers under and the youngest just bare grimy legs. He guessed from the once pink ribbon adorning the slightly longer locks of the youngest that she was a girl.
“Are they now? All of them at the Squire’s, is it?” he asked.
The tallest child thought about this for a moment. “Just t’ ladies. Miss Daisy and the daftie are over t’Rectory, and Mizzus Cooper be out.”
The little girl took her thumb from her mouth to remark, “Collecting pots,” before plugging the thumb back again.
“And who are you, then?” John asked.
Again, the tallest child took a moment to think about the answer. “Forthery Williams,” he conceded. He nudged the boy on one side of him. “Fant.” Then he lifted the hand holding the little girl’s. “Sahny.”
John recognised the old sheep counting rhyme, and had no trouble translating. Forthery, Fant, and Sahny. Fourth, Fifth, Sixth. Come to think of it, there was a maid at the Court called Williams, and one of the other servants had called her Hant, which was First from the same rhyme. “I think I know your sister,” he told the children. “I’m John Price.”
Forthery looked him up and down from clear light blue eyes. “You be t’ Earl’s man,” he stated.
Fant spoke for the first time, a husky little voice that sounded not much used. “You be Willy Barret’s Uncle John.”
Yes. Though Dorcas’ second son Willy was a bigger lad, the well-fed son of a labourer on a prosperous farm, he and Fant could well be of an age.
“Yes to both,” John told the boys. He squatted down in the road, bringing his eyes closer to their level. “What sort of pots is Mrs Cooper out collecting, then?”
Sahny moved her thumb again, holding it an inch away from her lips ready to plunge back into the depths as she said, “Jam. She be making jam for t’fête.”
“I tasted it once,” Forthery said, his voice soft and reverent. The other two nodded, and the eyes of all three glazed over as they thought about jam.
John dug through his coat pocket to find the packet he’d bought at the tea shop in the village. He could soon pick up some more comfits for his nieces and nephews. He handed the twist of paper over to Sahny. “Here. Share this with thy brothers.”
She unwound the top and peeked inside, then closed it again, folding a tiny hand protectively around it. “And Tant and Tothery?” she asked, anxiously.
Second and Third, he translated. “Of course.”
Flanked by her brothers, she hurried away down the row.
Forthery stopped after a couple of steps and turned back.
“Happen Mizzus Cooper be at t’inn,” he offered, then hurried after his sister.
First 5 weeks of Candle’s Christmas Chair, graphed.
Where in the world are those books going? This is a chart of the Amazon downloads of Candle’s Christmas Chair. Mostly to readers from the US and UK sites, but a substantial number from Italy, Germany, India, and Australia. Note the enormous jumps on the days each site in turn price matched (to free).
I meet Candle and Min
This excerpt from Farewell to Kindness is for those of you who have read and enjoyed Candle’s Christmas Chair (27,500 downloads so far, not counting those resellers that don’t report free book downloads, libraries, Scribed, and the three pirate sites I’ve found). Thank you for the wonderful reviews and star ratings.
In the back of the novella, I say:
Candle and Min first appeared when I was writing my novel Farewell to Kindness. I needed someone to diagnose sabotage on an invalid chair that collapsed in the middle of an assembly, and Min pushed her way out of the crowd, with Candle hovering protectively behind her.
I wondered how two such different people got together, and this story is the result.
In the excerpt below, we’re at a country Assembly. One of the organisers is Lady Avery, the wife of a local viscount. Supper is over and Major Alex Redepenning, an injured war hero and current user of the chair, is refusing to allow his broken and infected legs to spoil his fun.
The dance was a line dance, the Bloom of the Pea, and Alex—invalid’s chair and all—was taking part. Jonno promenaded him up the centre and back, and twirled him around his partner, she entering into the escapade with enthusiasm by holding the steering column of the chair when the pattern called for her to hold her partner’s hand.
Some of the bystanders, and even some of the other dancers, were crowding closer to see this original version of the Bloom.
The last part of the pattern called for the lead couple to weave down the line of other dancers, and Jonno began pushing Alex down the men’s line, as the Major turned the chair from side to side to go in and out.
They were halfway down the line when, with a loud crack that could be heard over the orchestra, the chair collapsed, spilling Alex into the man he was passing.
Jonno stood bewildered in the middle of the floor. Susan hurried to her brother’s side, getting there just after Rede. And Lady Avery hurried up to kneel beside the broken pieces of the chair.
The man Alex had knocked to the ground was getting up, carelessly shoving Alex to one side. Alex let out a muffled grunt. “Careful, man!” Rede told the stranger.
“He knocked me. Tell him to be careful,” the man protested, but Rede gave him no further attention. Alex was white as bone, his teeth gritted.
“Everyone stand back,” Rede commanded. “Give him room.”
“It was his own fault,” the felled dancer continued grumbling.
Dr Millburn pushed his way through the crowd and knelt beside Alex. Leaving him to provide the needed care, Rede focused on getting people to move back, widening the circle of gawkers.
Susan spoke to Jonno, and he pulled himself together and went off, coming back a few minutes later with John and a board large enough to provide a stretcher.
With Dr Millburn supervising, they moved Alex carefully onto the board. He had recovered enough to joke, “How convenient that I’m staying just down the hall.”
“It is indeed, Major Redepenning,” the doctor said cheerfully. We can examine you in comfort. Doesn’t seem to be too much damage done, except to the chair. Odd. I wouldn’t have expected it to come apart like that.”
Lady Avery, who—with Bradshaw her father—had been carefully examining the broken pieces, said, “It had help.”
“What do you mean?” Alex asked.
“She means sabotage,” said Bradshaw. “Someone deliberately damaged the chair so that it would break.”
“And it has been done in the last fortnight, since I gave the chair to Dr Millburn,” Lady Avery insisted.
“How can you be sure?” Rede asked.
“I gave it a complete overhaul before I sent it to him,” she replied.
“You can believe her.” That was Lord Avery. “The chair is her design. If she says it was in good order, it was. If she says it was deliberately damaged, it was.”
A dozen voices all started up at once, far more titalated by idea of a peeress who made invalid carriages than by the putative assault on Alex. In the chaos, John and his nephew carried Alex off to the bedroom wing of the hotel, followed by Dr Millburn and Susan.
Rede sent Will to find the manager of the hotel, and secure a room where he could question staff about who had access to the chair.
“We’ll need to clear the floor,” said the Master of Ceremonies. “That,” he pointed to the wreckage of the chair, “is in the way of the dancing.”
Lady Avery nodded at Rede’s quizzical look. “I have learned everything I can from where it is lying. Just give me one minute to make a sketch and we can clear floor.”
“Madam, I do not think…” the Master of Ceromines began.
“Lady Avery will make her sketch,” said Lord Avery, firmly. The Master of Ceremonies looked at the tall young viscount, and Rede, who was standing shoulder to shoulder with him, and clearly decided against arguing.
“Yes, well,” he said. Then turned and raised his voice. “Perhaps everyone would like to move through to the supper room while we clear the floor? Dancing will resume shortly.”
Lord Avery grabbed a footman by the arm as he passed. “Fetch something for my lady to draw on,” he commanded.
Lady Avery, who had been talking in low tones with her father, turned and slipped her arm into his. “I am sorry, Ran.”
He looked down at her affectionately, a tall greyhound to her little kitten. “For what?”
Lady Avery waved her unused hand at the crowd. “Now they’ll all be talking again.”
He smiled, taking her hand in his. She had removed her gloves while she examined the wreckage, and Rede felt a pang of longing when Avery lifted her hand to kiss the palm and fold her fingers over the kiss. Had he ever had someone to touch with such casual affection? His children, of course, but the Wades and Spencer had taken that from him. He saw Anne hovering on the edge of the crowd, and took comfort from her presence.
“They always talk, Min,” Lord Avery said to his wife. “Stupid cats. We don’t care, remember? I’m very proud of my lovely, clever, creative wife, and I don’t care who knows it.” He looked challengingly at Rede over her dark head.
“I am awestruck,” Rede told her. “You really designed the chair yourself, Lady Avery? Alex loved it. He already had great plans for touring our boyhood play places. I hope it can be fixed!”
Bradshaw, who had drawn closer, said diffidently, “I could take a look at ‘er, MIn. I’ve a wee workshop set up at home.”
Lady Avery laughed. “So have I, Papa. Lord Chirbury, if we cannot get it working again, we will get Major Redepenning another one.”
‘Just friends’ – a scene from Encouraging Prudence
Prue blew out the candle, sinking the summer house into darkness. On the second floor of the house, a window showed light, and a shadow moved back and forth on the curtains. Whoever was inside was pacing the floor.
“Madame’s room,” Prue said. “Bother the woman. How am I going to get back to my room?”
“Sleep here,” David suggested. “I’ll wake you in time to get back into the house before the servants are about.”
The knack of waking at whatever time he chose had come in handy many times. And he could do with a few hours sleep himself. He’d sleep better if Prue was close. Though he’d sleep better if she hadn’t agreed so quickly that they were friends. Only friends.
Prue hesitated, but then turned and made her cautious way back across the dark room to the chest to recover the blankets. He helped her spread them across the bed. Working by touch, he couldn’t help but brush up against her several times. Each time, she stiffened and moved away.
Even when they lay side by side under the blankets, she kept herself apart.
He forced himself to keep the hurt from his voice, and speak calmly.
“Sleep, Mist. I’ll wake you with the dawn.”
“Goodnight, David,” she answered, her voice sounding small, even humble. “David; we are just friends, are we not?”
Just friends. So many answers crowded his mind, tangling into one another on their way to his tongue that he said nothing. And, as the silence stretched, he heard her breathing change. She was asleep.
He moved a little closer, close enough to sense the shape of her without any part of him touching any part of her. The only possible answer was suddenly clear. Just friends. If that was all she was prepared to offer, then he’d take it. For five months there had been a Prue-shaped hole in his life, and much though he wanted her back as his lover; much though her rejection clawed at his vitals; being near her, talking to her, working with her was better than living with the emptiness.
“Yes, Prue,” he whispered. “Just friends.”
~*~
During the night, they drifted together. The cold, Prue told herself. It was the cold that had them spooned together, sharing body heat in the cocoon of blankets.
He didn’t want her. “We are just friends?” she’d asked him, hoping he would say they were far more than that. She thought he wasn’t going to answer. She’d schooled her breathing to the rhythms of sleep, afraid that if she said anything more she would beg. And long after she had asked the question, he finally answered. Just friends.
“Prue?” he murmured in her ear now. “Prue, it’s almost morning.”
He was moving away from her, leaving a void of cold all down her back.
She rolled over, looking after him as he slipped from under the covers and began pulling on the boots he’d discarded the night before.
He was so handsome. Shorter than both his half-brothers, and dark where they were fair. The straight brows and the firm chin were the same shape. His broad shoulders flexed as he tugged the boots into place. It crossed her mind that she’d now seen the naked torsos of all three brothers.
She had a sudden vision of David’s naked back and small firm buttocks moving away from her across their bedroom on the island. Her mouth went dry at the thought.
She clambered past him out of the bed. She needed to get these ridiculous longings under control. However much David desired her when they were isolated, he didn’t want her now. Why would he, after all? She knew she was nothing special. Here, in London, David had access to women more beautiful, more witty, more cultured, more in every way.
At least he still wanted her friendship.
It would have to be enough.
Prue had slipped out of her gown last night, before lying down to sleep. In the dark, she’d thought nothing of it. Now, the pallid light of dawn filtering through the canvas meant she was dressing in front of him. No. He wasn’t watching. He had crossed the room and was examining his coat.
Confirmation, if confirmation had been needed, that he no longer saw her as a woman. Just friends. Right.
“Today, perhaps I will be able to investigate the book room,” she said as she stepped into the gown, forcing her voice to sound cheerful.
“Can I help?” he asked. “With your lacing, I mean.”
No! A thousand times no. When he’d touched her accidentally several times last night, she had nearly disgraced herself. She shuddered at a picture of herself at his feet, clinging to his knees and begging him not to spurn her. “No, thank you.” She managed to keep her voice steady. “I can manage. It laces at the front.”
Meeting the neighbours – a Farewell to Kindness excerpt
Another Farewell to Kindness excerpt. Rede sees Anne for the first time:
The service wound to its final blessing, and the congregation followed the Rector from the church as the bells pealed.
He moved towards the door, through a rippling sea of bows, curtseys, touched foreheads, murmured ‘My Lord’s’. Out in the churchyard, the villagers and gentry stood in groups, exchanging greetings and enjoying the warm spring sunshine. Children ran in and out of the shrubbery in the adjacent Rectory garden, in a game of chase. Some had the look of the Rector, who introduced Rede to his wife. Mrs Ashbrook had a no-nonsense manner, direct light-blue eyes, and the well-padded shape of a matron with a growing family and a healthy appetite.
A trio of prettily dressed young ladies—the dark-haired girl from the Ashbrook pew, the Saxon-blonde Redwood and a remarkably attractive girl whose face was framed in brown curls—strolled arm and arm up and down the path to the church gate, as bright as butterflies in their light dresses and their charming bonnets, chattering away like starlings.
Rede stayed for a while, shaking hands with those who came for an introduction, catching up with those he’d met during the week, and generally making himself pleasant.
Several times, he met eyes as blue as his own, fringed like his with dark lashes. His predecessors had certainly left a mark on the population. Many of the poorer members of the community bore the certain sign that a female ancestor had caught a Redepenning’s fickle attention.
Mrs Forsythe, the tenant who lived unaccountably rent free, wasn’t introduced. He had been hearing her name all week. His tenants spoke of her warmly, and with respect, listing her good deeds, and praising her kindness. From what they said, she was a lynch pin of village life. Listening to their stories, he’d formed a picture of a mature widow; a gentlewoman of private—if straightened—means; a bustling matron with a finger in all the charitable activity of the parish.
The trio of young ladies on the path broke up, two coming over to be introduced as the daughters of the Rector and the Squire. The third young lady collected a child and another young woman from the Rectory garden.
The child was a little older than his Rita would have been; perhaps the age Joseph would have been, had he lived. She studied him curiously as she passed; meeting his blue gaze with her own. Indeed, he could have been looking at one of his own childhood portraits, cast in a more feminine mould.
She didn’t take her colouring from the two young ladies with her. And a quick glance after her showed that bonnets masked the faces of the two ladies they joined.
“Once my cousins arrive, we’ll invite the local gentry to dinner,” he told Mrs Ashbrook. “I’ve met some of them. Could you perhaps introduce me to others?”
As he’d hoped, she launched into a list of all the gentlemen and ladies in the neighbourhood, starting with those present. He listened impatiently as the objects of his interest moved further and further towards the gate.
At last, just as they passed under the arch, Mrs Ashbrook said, “and Mrs Forsythe and her sisters, the Miss Haverstocks. They were standing right there by the church… oh dear, you’ve missed them. They’ve just left.”
The slender figure hurrying away down the road with her sisters and daughter did not fit the picture he’d formed of the busy Mrs Forsythe. Not at all.
He continued listening to Mrs Ashbrook, commenting when appropriate, murmuring pleasantries to the people she took him to around the churchyard. And with another part of his mind he planned a change in the order of his tenant visits.
Meeting Mrs Forsythe, owner of the trimmest pair of ankles he had ever noticed and mother of a Redepenning by-blow, was suddenly a priority.
My hero disports himself in a brothel
Time for another excerpt? Here’s the hero of my current work in progress, Encouraging Prudence. David is visiting a brothel in the course of his investigation.
He arrived at the Admiralty steps just as Captain Talbot passed the guard on the front door.
“Sir,” he said, putting on his persona of eager disciple, “I cannot thank you enough.”
Talbot smiled, expansively. “Ready for a night on the town, young Walker, eh?”
Their first stop was, predictably, a brothel – an expensive brothel, by the youth of the workers and the quality of the fittings, but with the same sickening smells of cheap perfume, sex, sweat, and despair as the others his work had taken him into. He allowed himself to be introduced to Fanny, a statuesque redhead who was considerably older than she was made up to appear, and followed her to one of the rooms.
He looked longingly at the bed. He was beginning to feel the loss of a night’s sleep.
“Don’t bother,” he told the prostitute, as she began to unbutton her blouse. “When were the sheets last changed?”
“Maybe three days.” She looked uncertainly at the bed and back at him. “How do you want me then?”
David explained. “What I’d like you to do is sit in the chair over there, and wake me in half an hour. Before we leave this room, I’ll give you double what I gave your mistress. And when we get back out there, you’ll pretend to everyone, especially my friend, that we’ve coupled.”
The prostitute frowned. “You’ll pay me. Just to sleep in the bed.”
“On the bed, but yes. Miss Fanny… or is it Miss Frances… you’re very desirable, but I’m very, very tired, and I’d rather nobody knew…”
She nodded. “It’s Dorothea, really. But Old Hatchet-Face, her as owns the place, she said that weren’t a good name for a whore.”
“Do you have a way to tell the hour, Miss Dorothea?” He’d removed his coat, but he laid it on the bed and stretched out beside it. No point in putting temptation in the woman’s way. He’d wake in an instant if she approached the bed to check his pockets.
She nodded. “I can hear the clock tower down the street. Chimes the quarters, it does. It’ll be just on the half I wake you.”
“Good. Thank you.” His nose wrinkled, but he’d slept in places more rank. Willing his body to relax, he closed his eyes, and Mist was suddenly there stretched out beside him. No. He was here to sleep, not to fantasise about the only woman he desired.
“Mister? Mister Walker?” He woke to the woman’s whisper. “It’s been half an hour.”
Yes. He could hear the half still chiming. Half an hour was not enough, but it took the edge off his weariness. He’d cope.
In the main sitting area, Dorothea poured him a glass of wine, and perched on the arm of his chair, leaning against him while he waited for Talbot. Her silence money safely in the pocket she had tied to her waist under her skirt, she had obviously decided to throw herself fully into her part.
Talbot arrived some minutes later, buttoning his pants. His companion was smiling admiringly up at him, but David caught the contemptuous grimace she passed to her companions behind Talbot’s back.
“That’s the ticket,” Talbot said to David, grinning at the way Dorothea was draped over him. “Can’t get enough of you here, can they? They should pay us for servicing them, eh? Hah! That’s a good one. They should pay us, eh?” And he slapped the bottom of his companion with expansive glee.
“You want another round, Walker? Or what about an exotic dance, eh? I know a place where the girls…” he gestured expansively, shaping improbable globes in the air.
“That sounds very exciting, Sir,” David said, back to being suitably grateful. “Is it a place we could get something to eat, Sir? All that exercise…”
“Good lad. Worked up an appetite, eh? Oh, to be young again. Come on, then, lad. The night is young, eh? We’ll stop at a coffee house and then go on to Sultan’s Palace.”
David saluted Dorothea with a kiss on the cheek and received a warm smile in return. “Best half hour I ever spent in this place,” she told him loudly, “and that’s the truth.”