The Children of the Mountain King

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Backlist spotlight on To Mend the Broken-Hearted

The ebook of To Mend the Broken-Hearted is set to Free at all retailers for the month of March, starting now. In fact, since the first in series, To Wed a Proper Lady, is only 99c, and the other two novels are $3.99, you can buy all four novels in the series for under $10, and add the 2 novellas and 1 set of vignettes in Paradise Triptych, plus the novella Melting Matilda, for less than $3 more. That’s a lot of reading!

To Mend the Broken-Hearted

Ruth is a healer, not a social gadfly. She’s glad to leave the foreign world of the ton to run an errand for her sister-in-law. She doesn’t expect to be caught up in a smallpox epidemic, nor to meet the man of her dreams.

War and betrayal have wounded Val beyond bearing. The woman who arrives at his retreat with patients who need shelter says she’s a healer. But he is beyond healing. Isn’t he?

Book links at Books2Read https://books2read.com/Broken-Hearted
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Tea with an interviewer

(I wrote this for Caroline Warfield’s blog back in 2015. I thought it was time to dig it out again. Enjoy!)

Eleanor Grenford, Duchess of Haverford, seldom consents to an interview. Though she lives, perforce, in the public eye—as wife to one of the most powerful men in England and mother to two of England’s most notable rakes—she carefully guards her private life.

She agreed to answer our questions only after being assured that this interviewer is from the future and from real life, not the fictional world she inhabits.

Born Eleanor Creydon, eldest daughter of the Earl of Farnmouth, she is related by birth or marriage to most of the noble houses of England and many in the wider United Kingdom and Europe. She married the Duke of Haverford before she attained the 18th anniversary of her nativity, and has since become one of the ton’s leading hostesses.

She has a supporting (but important) role in many of Jude’s books.

  1. What are you most proud of about your life?

“My two sons,” says the duchess, without hesitation. “Aldridge—the Marquis of Aldridge, my elder son and Haverford’s heir—is responsible and caring. And Jonathan, too. They are, I cannot deny, a little careless. But they are not heartless, dear. I’ve always thought that being heartless is the defining feature of a true rake.

“They take responsibility for their by-blows, which is so important in a gentleman, do you not agree? And neither of them has ever turned a mistress off without providing for her, or at least not since they were very young.

“Sadly, the example set by His Grace their father was not positive in this respect. I flatter myself that I have been of some influence in helping them to understand that they have a duty to be kind to those less fortunate and less powerful than themselves.”

  1. What are you most ashamed of in your life?

The duchess does not answer immediately. She seems to be turning over several possibilities. “I neglected him, you know. I neglected Aldridge. When he was born, I left him to his servants. I thought that was normal, and Haverford… he was very angry when I suggested I should stay at the castle instead of going to London for the season.

“Why; even his name… Haverford insisted everyone call him by his title. But I could have called him ‘Anthony’ in private, could I not?

“Dear Aldridge had no-one but his staff. I was seldom at Margate, and when I was… His Grace thought it my duty to spend my time with him. I saw Aldridge once a day, brought to me clean and quiet of an evening before his bedtime.

“I had no idea what I had done until Jonathan was born. He timed his birth for the end of the season, and His Grace left for his usual round of house parties, so I could do as I wished. I wished to be in the nursery with my sons.

“After that, I found ways to bring them to London with me, and to spend time with them at play as often as several times a week! Even so, I did not dare go against the duke’s orders, and I call my son by his title to this day. Everyone does. Poor dear boy.”

  1. What impression do you make on people when they first meet you?

“People don’t see me, my dear. They see the Duchess of Haverford. I cannot blame them, of course. I am at pains to project the image of ‘duchess’. I have cultivated it my entire adult life. Why! If people truly saw me, they would be very surprised, I think.”

  1. Do you think you have turned out the way your parents expected?

“My parents expected me to marry well and to present my husband with heirs. Had I married beneath their expectations, I daresay I would never have seen them again. I cannot say, dear, that such an outcome would have been entirely a bad thing.”

  1. What is the worst thing that has happened in your life? What did you learn from it?

“I could say losing James, or I could say marrying Haverford, but it is all of a piece. I cannot tell you where the one ends and the other starts. I gave my heart to James, but he was a second son. My father gave my hand to Haverford.

“And by ‘hand’ I mean the rest of me, dear. Imagine a sheltered seventeen-year-old, innocent but for a stolen kiss with the man she hoped to wed. And instead of that man, I spent my wedding night in the hands of a hardened roué with no patience… He is two decades my senior, dear. Thirteen years older than James.

“I believe my sons are known for their skills. (I speak of bed sports, dear, and do not blush for it, for at our age we should scorn to be coy, and this article will be published, you have assured me, some two hundred years in my future.) If Haverford has such skills, and the rumour is not just flattery aimed at money to be made from his patronage, he did not feel inclined to waste it on a mere wife.”

  1. How do you feel about your life right now? What, if anything, would you like to change?

“I am fortunate. I live in luxury. I have my sons (or, at least, I have Aldridge close by and regular letters from Jonathan, who is on the Tour, dear). I have the little girls, too—Haverford’s by-blows, but I love them dearly. I can give them an education, respectability, a little dowry… I do these things, too, for my poorer godchildren, and I love nothing better than to present one of my goddaughters for her Season.

“I enjoy entertaining—balls, musical evenings, garden parties and picnics in London, and house parties at our other estates. My entertainments are famous. I have promised to be honest with you, so I will say ‘not without reason’.” The duchess laughs, her eyes for a moment showing glints of the self-deprecating humour that is part of her elder son’s attraction.

“And, dear, I have come to an accommodation with Haverford. He leaves me to live my own life, while he carries on with his. Between you and me, my dear, my life is pleasanter without him in it.”

  1. What have you always wanted to do but have not done? Why?

“I have always wondered what my life might have been like had I defied my father and eloped with James. He came to me, you know, after the duel; after his own father exiled him. I turned him away. And then, six months later we heard he was dead. I didn’t care what happened to me after that, so I gave in to my father’s demands and married Haverford.

“It wasn’t true, as it turned out. He arrived back in London not long ago, with a great band of wild children. I could have been their mother, had I been brave enough to go with him.

“But there. Had I married James, I would not have Aldridge and Jonathan. Perhaps all is as it should be.

“You asked what I have always wanted to do? I want to see James again; to talk to him, just the two of us. Haverford… he and James do not speak. We Grenfords do not acknowledge the Winderfields and they do not acknowledge us. If people are inviting James or his offspring to their social gathering, they do not invite us. If us, then not him. We do not meet.

“But Society is surprisingly small. One day… one day…”

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Spotlight on The Husband Gamble

This week, The standalone novella The Husband Gamble is published as part of the multi-author series The Wedding Wager. It stars my Earl of Hythe from To Wed a Proper Lady and A Dream Come True, and the runaway bride from The Abduction of Amaryllis Fernhill.

The universal link to purchase is: https://books2read.com/HusbandGamble

And here’s an excerpt:

Four days into the interminable week, Hythe had made no progress in his bride hunt. It had taken him the space of an afternoon to discover that Miss Thompson was an unkind shrew, and if he doubted his own experience, the men who knew her from London confirmed it. One by one, he spent a little time with each lady at the house party. This girl was too frivolous. That one was waspish.

In any case, he did not find himself in the least attracted to any of them. Surely it was not too much to ask that the woman to whom he would vow to be faithful for the remainder of their days was one he actually wanted to bed? He could not imagine physical intimacies with any of the ladies currently on offer.

Except Miss Fernhill. She had grown prettier day by day—not the flashy kind of beauty some of the others had, but a quiet loveliness that comprised her character as well as her features. Her attractions were manifold, and not least of them was her mind. She commanded his attention whenever she was in the vicinity. Even when she wasn’t, he could not stop thinking about her.

Perhaps he was making things worse by spending so much time with her. But nobody else here challenged him to think the way she did. When he succeeded in winning a discussion point with her, he felt as if he had persuaded the entire House of Lords— yes, and the Austrian and Prussian negotiators.

What an ambassador for Britain, she would have been, if she’d been a man. She knew several languages, understood the current political situation better most people of his acquaintance, male or female, and was invariably charming and composed.

The company that had been inclined at first to treat her with disdain was now, with few exceptions, thoroughly enjoying her company, and at least two of the gentlemen were seriously considering a courtship. Hythe felt she could do better than a penniless second son or a half-pay naval captain, but at least the lady would have choices.

 

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Tea with Anne and her sons

“No, Stephen,” the Countess of Chirbury said, moving a delicate vase away from the questing hands of her eldest son.

“But Mama,” the little boy protested, “I need a place to hide my soldier. He is an exploring officer, like Papa’s friend, Mr Bear. And if John’s soldiers see him, they will shoot him.”

“Yes, they will,” his twin shouted. Then bit his lip at his mother’s frown. He stood and bowed to the Duchess of Haverford, his hostess. “I am sorry for shouting, Aunt Eleanor.”

“We do not shout in a lady’s parlour,” Anne reminded her son, who sent his impish grin her way and plopped back down on the carpet to turn some of the row of lead soldiers around, presumably so they could better hunt Stephen’s little exploring officer.

“Hide your man behind the cushion, Stephen,” Eleanor suggested. Cushions were much more robust than vases. When she had invited her niece-in-law and sons to tea, she had expected the children would come with attendants to keep them entertained. But apparently Hannah, their nurse, was on her afternoon off, and the nursemaid was a substitute, the usual nursery maid having eaten something that disagreed with her.

The inexperienced girl was out of her depth with the twins. She was sitting in a chair by the window showing a picture book to little Joseph, who at eight months old was regarding the illustrations with dark intense eyes. His father already called the boy ‘the Professor’, and he certainly showed no sign of becoming like his older brothers. At four years of age, they had more mischief apiece than a barrel of monkeys, though Anne would insist, and Eleanor agreed, that they had not an ounce of malice between them. Just boundless energy, creative imaginations, dauntless courage, an inborn need to each outdo the other, and a restless curiosity that led them from near catastrophe to close disaster, so that their father swore he was growing grey before his time.

A voice spoke from her doorway. “Good day, Mama, Cousin Anne, boys. We have a freshly waxed floor in the picture gallery, Cousin Anne. If I promise to keep them away from stairs and anything breakable, may I take my little cousins to test how well it works?”

Anne smiled beatifically at the Marquis of Aldridge, Eleanor’s son. “Would you?”

Aldridge winked at her and addressed her twins. “Boys, put your armies away in their boxes. Your Mama says you may come and play with me.”

“Can we go for a ride in your phaeton, Lord Aldridge?” John asked, as he obeyed the command with more haste than delicacy, throwing the toys into the little leather box they had arrived in.

“I have another plan,” Aldridge said. “You will like it.”

“Is it going to the kitchen to eat plums?” Stephen wondered, his own soldiers–even the precious exploring officer–being tossed carelessly into his own box.

“Something different,” Aldridge told them, holding out his hands. “Something fun.”

With a boy attached to each hand, he nodded to the ladies. “Send a footman when you want to retrieve your savages, Cousin,” he said, and led them away.

“He is very good with them,” Anne told Aldridge’s mother. “He will make a good father one day.”

 

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Stereotyping on WIP Wednesday

This charming English cottage was once the village gaol and police station. It dates from 1859, But I like to think that the Barkers, bless them, had a similarly nice situation.

In Zara’s Locket, my heroine is arrested because she has brown skin and black hair, is bedraggled after being caught in the rain and running away from an assailant, is on foot, and has money.

This is evidence, think the villagers, that she must be a thief.

The village lockup was at least dry, and the constable’s wife brought Zahrah a couple of warm blankets as well as a pot of tea and two large slices of fresh bread with cheese. “For while you are in my husband’s custody, you are his responsibility, and I won’t have you starving to death or shivering your way into an ague,” she insisted.

For all her brisk manner and her practical reasoning, her eyes were kind, and she thawed still further when Zahrah thanked her. “Someone taught you nice manners, even if you are an Egyptian and a thief.”

“My father was born in Egypt, but my mother is as English as you are, Mrs. Barker,” Zahrah said. “And I am no thief. The money was my own, my pay from the position I left this morning, and all that I have left after I was accosted by an actual thief.”

She had told the constable that when he arrested her. She had limped into the village, her gown torn, her hair a bedraggled mess, and attempted to use a silver crown to pay for a room at the inn. The innkeeper refused to believe she had come by it honestly, and the righteous citizens present in the taproom dragged her to the Barkers’ house and insisted that the constable lock her up.

“As to that,” Mrs. Barker replied, “you can tell the magistrate all about it, but not until after Christmas, for he has gone to visit his daughter and her children in Birmingham, bless the dear sprouts. Meanwhile, I will make sure you have a share of our meals, and you will have a warm bed out of the rain. If you would like, we can decorate in here for Christmas! Now don’t you worry, dearie. Sir William—that’s the magistrate—he’ll sort it all out when he returns.”

She bustled off, closing and locking the door between the lockup and the Barkers’ family quarters. The lockup was divided into three spaces. Bars formed two cells for prisoners, and the rest of the room held a table, a chair, a bookshelf, and a fireplace.

The constable was not, at the moment, in the room. He had locked Zahrah into one of the cells, chivvied the jeering onlookers out through the outside door, and disappeared through the inner one.

He had not returned, but Mrs. Barker had lit the fire when she came with her tea tray, blankets, and good advice. The woman was clearly in favor of looking on the bright side, and she was not wrong. Zahrah was grateful for food and shelter.

Grateful, too, that if English justice proved to be unreasonable, at least she would not be hanged out of hand. She would undoubtedly have time to get a message to her family, if she could find a way to pay the postage. Perhaps she could sell her boots? Perhaps Mrs. Barker would help her?

She regretted the loss of her book, though with the storm outside making the sky dark, reading was probably not an option. Not without a good lamp, and she lacked even a candle.

(The term Egyptian–short form, gypsy–is an outsiders’ name for the Romani, and many Rom find it insulting. It is based on the mistaken belief that they were originally from Egypt.)

Zara’s Locket is part of the Belles & Beaux collection, available to order for the special preorder price of 99c.

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Backlist spotlight To Wed a Proper Lady

To Wed a Proper Lady

Everyone knows James needs a bride with impeccable blood lines. He needs Sophia’s love more.

James must marry to please his grandfather, the duke, and to win social acceptance for himself and his father’s other foreign-born children. But only Lady Sophia Belvoir makes his heart sing, and to win her, he must invite himself to spend Christmas at the home of his father’s greatest enemy.

Sophia keeps secret her tendre for James, Lord Elfingham. After all, the whole of Society knows he is pursuing the younger Belvoir sister, not the older one left on the shelf after two failed betrothals.

To Wed a Proper Lady is the first book in The Return of the Mountain King, and is currently reduced to 99c, and free if you buy from my bookstore.

Books2Read *  Jude Knight’s book shop

Excerpt

A country road in Buckinghamshire

They heard the two curricles before they saw them, the galloping hooves, the cacophony of harness and bounding wheels, the drivers shouting encouragement to their teams and insults to one another.

Sutton turned his own horse to the shoulder of the road and the rest of the party followed his lead. As first one racing carriage and then the other careened by, James murmured soothingly to his horse. “Stand, Seistan. Stand still, my prince.”

Seistan obeyed. Only a stamp of the hind foot and muscles so tense he quivered displayed his eagerness to pursue the presumptuous British steeds and feed them his dust.

From their position at the top of what these English laughably called a hill, James could see the long curve of the road switching back at the junction with the road north and descending further until it passed through the village directly below them.

One of the fool drivers was trying to pass, standing at the reins, legs broadly astride. James hoped no hapless farmer tried to exit a gate in their path!

Seistan clearly decided that the idiots were beneath his contempt, for he relaxed as James continued to murmur to him. “You magnificent fellow. You have left us some foals, have you not, my beauty? You and Xander, there?”

The earl heard his horse’s name and flashed his son a grin. “A good crop of foals, if their handlers are right, and honours evenly divided between Seistan and Xander. Except for the stolen mares.” He laughed, then, and James laughed with him.

Once the herd recovered from the long sea voyage, many of the mares had come into season. Not satisfied with his allotment, Seistan had leapt several of the fences on the land they had rented near Southampton, and covered two mares belonging to other gentlemen. Most indignant their owners had been.

“They did not fully understand the honour Seistan had done them, sir,” James said. Which was putting it mildly. When James arrived, they had been demanding that the owner of the boarding stable shoot the stallion for his trespass, and probably the owner for good measure.

The earl laughed again. “I wish I had been there to hear you explain it, my son.”

A thirty-minute demonstration of Seistan’s skills as a hunter, racer, and war horse had been more convincing than any words of James’s, and a reminder of the famous oriental stallions who founded the lines of English thoroughbreds did the rest. In the end, he almost thought they would pay him the stud fee he had offered to magnanimously cut by half.

But he waived any fee at all, and they parted friends. Now two noblemen looked forward to the birth of their half-breed foals, while James had delivered the herd to his father’s property in Oxfordshire and was riding back to London to be put to stud himself.

“Nothing can be done about his mother, Sutton,” the Duke of Winshire, had grumbled, “but marry him to a girl from a good English family, and people will forget he is part cloth-head.”

The dust had settled. The earl gave the signal to move on, and his mount Xander took the lead back onto the road. James lingered a moment more, brooding on London’s Season, where he would be put through his paces before the maidens of the ton and their guardians. One viscount. Young, healthy, and well-travelled. Rich and titled. Available to any bride prepared to overlook foreign blood for the chance of one day being Duchess of Winshire.

Where was the love of which the traveling musicians spoke? The soul-deep love for which his own parents had defied their families? James couldn’t do that. Too many people depended on him—his father, his brothers and sisters, even the wider family and the servants and tenants who needed certainty about the future of the duchy. At least his cousins had adamantly turned him down. Not that he had anything against Sadie and Lola, but they did not make his heart sing.

The racing curricles had negotiated the bend without disaster and were now hurtling towards the village. Long habit had James studying the path, looking to make sure the villagers were safely out of the way, and an instant later, he put Seistan at the slope.

It was steep, but nothing to the mountains they had lived in all their lives, he and his horse, and Seistan was as sure-footed as any goat. Straight down by the shortest route they hurtled, for in the path of the thoughtless lackwits and their carriages was a child—a boy, by the trousers—who had just escaped through a gate from the village’s one large house, tripped as he crossed the road, and now lay still.

It would be close. As he cleared one stone fence and then another, he could see the child beginning to sit up, shaking his head. Just winded then, and easier to reach than lying flat, thank all the angels and saints.

Out of sight for a moment as he rounded a cottage, he could hear the carriages drawing closer. Had the child recovered enough to run? No. He was still sitting in the road, mouth open, white-faced, looking as his doom approached. What kind of selfish madmen raced breast to breast, wheel to wheel, into a village?

With hand, body and voice, James set Seistan at the child, and dropped off the saddle, trusting to the horse to sweep past in the right place for James to hoist the child out of harm’s way.

One mighty heave, and they were back in the saddle. James’s shoulders would feel the weight of the boy for days, but Seistan had continued across the road, and just in time. The racers hurtled by so close James could feel the wind of their passing.

They didn’t stop. Didn’t even slow. In moments, they were gone.

The boy shaking in his arms, James turned Seistan with his knees, and walked the horse back to the gates of the big house. A crowd of women waited for them, but only one came forward as he dismounted— a gentlewoman, if her aristocratic bearing and the quality of her fashionable gown were any indication.

“Forgive my temerity in speaking without an introduction, my lady,” he said, “but have you perchance mislaid this child?”

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Tea with a lover

Eleanor kept peeking at her lover over the rim of her tea cup.  Strictly speaking, she supposed, he was her betrothed. Certainly, he had stated his intention to marry her. It had been thrilling, at the time.

“I want to take you back to the townhouse you have rented, lock all the doors, take you to bed, and show you those young people at the farmhouse had no expertise in what they were doing. And after that, I want to marry you, make you my duchess, and spend the rest of my life loving you.”

She supposed, in accepting his invitation, she had replied, in a way. She would be his wife and his duchess soon. But meanwhile, she had taken a lover for the first time in her life, and she intended to enjoy the naughtiness of it.

“A penny for your thoughts, my love,” James said.

Eleanor felt the heat rise. She must be bright scarlet. She had been thinking about precisely how naughty James had been when he took her to bed not three hours ago.

She had been nervous, and no wonder. Though she had been a wife for thirty-six years and had given birth to two sons, both now adults, she knew next to nothing about bed sports. Just what she had picked up from the gossip of wives who had been more fortunate than she. Since Haverford appeared to have no trouble attracting women of every class, she had always wondered if some sort of a lack in her caused his perfunctory attention to bedding her, as if it was a tedious duty to be completed as quickly as possible.

“I don’t know what to do,” she had told James, shyly, as he helped her out of her clothing. He was kissing her back, going lower with each button opened, and there were a lot of buttons. But at her comment, he stopped. “Anything you wish, Eleanor,” he said.

“But I don’t know what to wish,” she objected, annoyed at herself for her own ignorance. She should have asked more questions when the conversation turned risque, instead of reminding those present that they were ladies by introducing another topic of conversation.

James turned her in his arms so that she was facing him. He had removed his outer clothing, and his shirt gaped at the neck. She stared at a patch of dark chest hair, wondering if it would be soft or wiry to the touch.

“Tell me what troubles you, my love. If you wish, we can wait until we are wed.”

For pique at his obtuseness, and to distract him, she almost reminded him that he had not proposed and she had not accepted. But that was hardly relevant to her dilemma. “I want us to be lovers, James. Now. Today, that is. But I have never done this before. Haverford never…” She took a deep breath and shut her eyes so that she did not have to seem him. That made it easier to explain. “In my marriage, I waited in bed. He visited. He pulled back the sheets, climbed on top, pushed himself into me, heaved a few times until he was done, and then left. I know there is more, and I trust you to show me, but James!” Her voice rose into a wail. “You have to tell me what to do!”

His voice was strained when he replied. “Give me a minute, beloved. I am fighting the urge to mount horse immediately, ride to Kent, fetch your husband out of his tomb, and kill him again.”

Her eyes flew open. Her lover’s face looked as if it had been hewn from granite, and his eyes blazed. His anger reassured her. James didn’t believe that her dismal experience of marital relations had been her fault. “A better revenge, I suspect, would be to thoroughly tup his wife.”

He laughed at that. “True. And show her the many ways that our bodies can give one another pleasure. Let me take you to Heaven, Eleanor. You don’t need to do a thing, but anything that occurs to you is good, too. Do whatever pleases you. And if anything I do does not please you, then tell me, and I will stop.”

It had worked. And it proved to be true that a man of his age had stamina and staying power. She smiled at her lover as she recalled her three occasions of pure bliss before he found his own completion.  “I was thinking that we should finish our tea then go back to bed and do it all again,” she said.

The proposition above is what James, the Duke of Winshire, said to Eleanor, the Duchess of Haverford, towards the end of Paradise At Last. Come on! It’s hardly a spoiler. You knew they were going to end up together, but what a journey they had to get there! Between the end of the last chapter of that book and the Epilogue that follows (a letter to her son who is on holiday in Europe), they clearly followed through on James’s suggestion, but I don’t show that in the book. So here is part of that scene. I left the bedroom door shut for the crucial part, because Eleanor is, after all, a lady and little shy about such things. Except, as it turns out, with James.

Paradise At Last is being published on March 15th, as part of Paradise Triptych, and is available on preorder.  Order now on https://books2read.com/Triptych

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Tea with James

(Or brandy, to be precise. This is another excerpt post from Paradise at Last, which will be published as part of Paradise Triptych. It’s on preorder now and out in three weeks. In the excerpt, Eleanor has been sitting by Cherry’s bedside.)

When the clock struck the hour—three bongs—Ruth yawned and stood. “Go to bed, Your Grace. Get some sleep. Please send someone to sit with these two, and I will go to bed myself.”

Eleanor found a footman in the hall, waiting to take messages. She told him to find someone to replace Lady Asbury, and he said Lady Rosemary had asked to be fetched. He set off to knock on the lady’s door.

When he was out of sight, Eleanor realised that she had no idea which bedchamber she had been assigned. She set off for the guest wing on the other side of the stairwell, hoping a footman might be awake there to direct her. But as she crossed the upper landing, she saw light spilling from a doorway downstairs. Someone was in the drawing room.

Perhaps it was Rosemary. Eleanor should check, and if so, send her up to Ruth.

But when she entered the room, she found James sitting, staring into the embers, deep in thought. He must’ve heard her in the doorway, for he turned, stood, and took a step towards her. Whatever he saw on her face, he held out his arms and Eleanor ran into them and burst into tears.

***

James had no idea what kind of nonsense he spouted as he held Eleanor tenderly, supporting her weight with his arms around her, patting her back, letting the long hours of iron control loose in an abandonment of grief.

He had heard the reports, how she had taken charge at the scene of the accident. She did everything that needed to be done, except, perhaps, she could have thought to send someone after the assailant. All the reports he had received so far said the same thing—no one had a single clue that led anywhere.

He was thinking as a military commander. Eleanor’s focus was on Cherry, as it should have been—on getting her to help as quickly as possible. Then she spent fifteen hours supporting Cherry and Haverford through their ordeal—always calm, always encouraging, Ruth had said when he had met her on her way to bed.

The respect she had won from him since his return to England four years ago, that he thought lost, had returned full force.

Eventually, the stormy tears settled to a quieter weeping. He coaxed her to the chair by the fire and sat, settling her on his knee. He wiped her eyes with his handkerchief. She rested against him, totally spent, occasionally hiccupping another sob. “I have made your shoulder all wet,” she murmured.

“Not for the first time,” James assured her. “I have four daughters, remember.” Although it had been years since his had been their favoured shoulder when life was too cruel to bear. He had not held a woman in his arms for a long time, and this one was not his daughter. Tired as he was, his body reminded him that he desired her.

He shifted her slightly away from the evidence of his inappropriate response. “Would you like a port or a brandy? Something to help you sleep?”

She chuckled. “I will sleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. But I don’t know which room my things are in. I saw the light and came to see if it was someone who could direct me.” She reached and cupped his face with her hand, and he had to exert an iron control not to turn his mouth into her palm and kiss it. He would not seduce her while she was so emotionally raw.

And his mind raced on to a future time, when she was not so vulnerable. For he would seduce her. Yes, and marry her, too, if she would have him.

She was speaking again, and he must pay attention. “I did not intend to weep all over you. I apologise, James.”

“It was my privilege. You have carried your family today; I am proud to be the person you did not have to be strong for. I think, perhaps, you do not realise how amazing you are, for it is what you always do. It is I who should apologise to you, for my cruel words and my coldness after your mistake with Cherry and your son. I hope you will forgive me for being such a self-righteous idiot. My female relatives have pointed out that I am not so perfect myself that I have a right to demand perfection from my friends. Can we be friends again, Eleanor? Will you forgive me?”

The tears welled again but she smiled as she dashed at them with his handkerchief. “I am not usually such a watering pot,” she complained. “James, if you can forgive me, I can forgive you.

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Tea with Lord Colyton’s daughters

(Another excerpt post from Paradise at Last)

Colyton’s mother and Colyton’s three daughters arrived in London several days before the wedding. Lady Colyton had been living retired in the country for some years and had never moved in the same circles as Eleanor, so a dinner Cherry hosted was the first opportunity that Jessica’s family had to meet the lady.

“Perhaps she was over-awed by her company,” Cherry said, charitably, the following morning.

“Yes, perhaps.” Eleanor voiced the agreement, but privately thought that Lady Colyton thought herself too good for the company. The brief and rare comments she had made were all animadversions about the morals of the fashionable world.

Jessica had no concerns. “I am not marrying Colyton’s mother, Aunt Eleanor.” She shrugged. “Colyton says she will be moving to a townhouse in Cheltenham as soon as we are wed. I will be there to supervise the children and the servants, so she will no longer be needed.”

If Colyton’s mother was less than happy about the marriage, his daughters were ecstatic. Eleanor had asked to meet them, and Colyton brought them for afternoon tea with Eleanor, Cherry, Jessica, and her sisters. The three little girls were polite, but very quiet. However, when Jessica asked if they would be her attendants at the wedding, along with Frances, the youngest girl pounced on her heels with glee. The eldest cast an anxious glance at their father. The middle child piped up, “Grandmere says that children do not go to weddings. Children should not be heard, and preferably not seen.”

Jessica met Colyford’s eyes as she said, “I am sure your grandmother will agree that on her wedding day a bride has a right to decide who comes to the wedding. Unless your father forbids it,” and an incipient glare hinted that he would be in for an argument if he tried, “you shall come to my wedding.”

Colyton frowned.

Eleanor could not resist. “Perhaps Lady Colyton, living retired as she does, does not realise that the rules are different for close relatives of the bride and groom. When the Earl and Countess of Ashbury married, his daughters were her attendants, and at the time, they were younger than any of you.”

“Yes, and my nephew was at my wedding,” Cherry said.

Colyton inclined his head. “How can I refuse my bride? I shall speak with Mother.”

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Villains on WIP Wednesday

I’ve been having fun with the last surviving villain from the group of them that have hounded my Haverfords, Redepennings, and Winshires through a dozen books. My WIP excerpt today is from Paradise at Last, the last novella in Paradise Triptych, which I plan to publish in March. My Duchess of Haverford puts her trust in the wrong employee. Please share an excerpt that includes your villain. Just pop it in the comments.

“How could you, Marigold?” Eleanor asked her former secretary. Not that she had fired the treacherous female, but conspiring with a criminal to disable her servants and abduct Eleanor herself was surely tantamount to a resignation.

“I am merely seeking a better position, Your Grace,” Marigold sneered. “One your money will buy me.”

“Us,” said her collaborator. “You will buy us a future, Ellie. Do your friends call you Ellie? Your son took everything I have and you owe me. My first idea was to kill you, Haverford’s wife, and all three of his sisters. Let him feel what I felt when he took everything away from me.”

He slipped his arms around Marigold from behind and fondled both her breasts. She tipped her head back, and he bent to kiss and then lick her neck, which made the girl groan.

Marigold surrendered utterly to the sensual spell the boy wove, but he was watching Eleanor the whole time, his eyes cold and alert.

She gave no reaction—to his words, or to his behaviour.

One of his hands crept down Marigold’s body to the cleft between her legs. Eleanor steeled herself to show nothing.

Marigold’s words stopped his hand. “But you have me, now, Kit. And when we get our money, we will be able to run far away. We will have everything, you and I.”

Kit nuzzled her neck again, before letting her go. “Everything,” he said. Including my revenge. You should be grateful, Your Grace. Marigold’s idea was much better than mine. Have you written the letter, darling?”

Marigold nodded. “Ten thousand pounds, in gold. It will take them a while to get that much, Kit. Could we not settle for less?”

He rounded on his accomplice, snarling. “I am already settling! They owe me their lives!” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly then visibly forced a conciliatory smile. “We will give them time, darling. I have it all planned. You have done a wonderful job, and no one will know where we have gone.”

He turned his attention back to Eleanor, his smile gone. “Now. I can untie you, and you can walk out of here yourself, keeping your mouth shut, and climbing into the carriage like a good little dowager duchess. I will have a gun and a knife on you at all times. I warn you not to make any fuss! I really did like my first plan.”

He sighed. “But I have promised Marigold not to hurt you as long as you behave, so if you cannot give me your solemn promise that you will not attempt to escape or to attract attention, I will just have to knock you out, gag you, and take you out the back door rolled up in a sheet.” His smile was stretching of the teeth without an iota of humour.