The Children of the Mountain King

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Haunted by the past on WIP Wednesday

Our heroes and heroines need a past, and in my kind of book, something about that past needs to still bother them.

I love stories where we get an early glimpse of this vulnerability, without lengthy backstory, then more and more comes out as the story unwinds. I was at a crime and thriller conference last weekend, and on a panel with Kirsten McKenzie, whose horror/crime story Painted does this to beautiful effect for both the horror and the crime plot threads. I didn’t finish the book until the trip home, and the others on the panel were all trying to discuss the history that motivated the key characters without giving away the key points. (Sorry, folks.)

Sometimes, readers of a series know at least some of what tears at the hero’s heart or the heroine’s, but we don’t know about the wounds of the other protagonist. Charles, in Caroline Warfield’s Children of Empire has kept his dignity despite his estranged wife’s lies and betrayals. We know this because those lies also hurt Charles’s cousins, each of whom stars in one of the previous two books. We learn more, and from Charles’s POV, but we also need to find out what drives Zambak to the other side of the world, where she and Charles will have to deal with their separate pasts as well as the budding Opium Wars, Zambak’s brother, a callous villain, and small-minded local society.

I could go on — in my favourite books, people all have pasts, and an important part of the story is them coming to terms with who they are because of that past.

This week, I’m asking you to share a passage where your characters share part of their past. It could be highly significant, like the books I’ve mentioned above, or it could be something quite minor. Mine is from To Win a Proper Lady: The Bluestocking and the Barbarian, which I’m rewriting as a novellisation of the novella I wrote for Holly and Hopeful Hearts. In this passage, I hint at a backstory that won’t become clear until book three of the series. Hint. The heroine of To Tame the Wicked Rake: The Saint and the Sinner, is Charlotte Winderfield. The hero is Aldridge.

Charlotte indicated the closed bedchamber door with an inclination of her head. “I take it Grandfather has heard that the Duke of Haverford has run mad,” she said.

“Mad like a fox,” James answered. “He has given up on the claim that my father is not the son His Grace of Winshire lost so many years ago. With our esteemed progenitor and Aunt Georgie both recognising him, that was a lost cause. He thinks to convince his peers that they don’t want half breeds living among them, dancing and worse with their daughters. It will be a simple thing, he thinks, to prove my parent’s marriage a fiction, and all of their children barred from my grandfather’s title.”

“Take a seat, James, and don’t loom over me. You don’t think it will be a simple thing?”

James obeyed, lowering himself into the chair opposite hers. “I think the man a fool for underestimating the King of the Mountains. You have heard our grandsire’s solution for swaying opinion our way?”

She had, of course. That was clear from the way she examined his face before she spoke; a considering look, as if wondering how much to trust him. “It is a good idea for you to marry an English girl with impeccable bloodlines.” With a snap, she closed the open book that was sitting on her knee. “That girl will not be me, James. I mean no offence, but I will not marry you, whatever Grandfather might say. I do not intend to wed, ever.”

“Thank you for telling me. Perhaps, you would be kind enough to help me find a bride that will fit the duke’s requirements and my own?”

“And what might your requirements be?” Charlotte asked.

“Someone I could grow to love. Someone who could be my friend and partner, as well as my wife.”

“You are a romantic, cousin. I warn you, Haverford is powerful. He will make it hard to find a girl from the right family who will accept you, despite our family’s name and your father’s wealth. Finding one who is your match may be impossible.”

James looked down at his hands. If she thought him romantic, she would be certain of it in the next moment. “Perhaps I have found her already. What can you tell me of Lady Sophia Belvoir?”

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Tea with Grace

 

Her Grace of Haverford enters the side door at Fournier’s. No one, not even her husband, would remark on her calling into a restaurant outside of opening hours, particularly one owned by protégés. Still, she does not wish to call His Grace’s attention to her visit. Her servants, she is certain, would keep her secrets — but it would be unfair to put their loyalties in conflict.

She spends a few minutes asking the restaurateur’s wife questions about her children. Though she is anxious to begin her private meeting, politeness is always important, and Cecilia and Marcel Fournier are very dear to her. Soon, though, Cecilia ushers her to the private room she was instructed to ask for.

Grace is already there. “Eleanor! You came.”

“Of course.” Eleanor hugs this dear friend. They have known each other since they were children, grieved together when Grace’s brother was exiled and believed dead, supported one another through the miseries of marriage to selfish brutal promiscuous men, rejoiced in one another’s children, worked together to better the lot of women whose marital unhappiness was made worse by poverty. They shared so much history, and now the respective heads of their families had decreed they must be enemies.

They both sit, and Grace turns to the waiting tea service and the calming ritual of afternoon tea.

“How are you managing, my dear Grace? How are the twins?” Eleanor asks.

“Better than I had hoped. You assured me James would not have changed. He is older, of course, and much more commanding. I can imagine him as the king the papers call him. But he is still the kind man you remember from our first Season. He promises that the girls and I will want for nothing, and may live wherever we please when Winshire finally releases our reins.”

Eleanor looks down at her cup. “I have seen him. Just in passing, at the Monteforte Ball, before Haverford decreed that none of us may attend any event attended by Sutton and his children. Sutton looks well, Grace. He had two young men and a young woman with him.”

“Elfingham, his eldest, and Drew, the fourth son. They are fine young men, Eleanor, even if they are part-Persian. Sutton brought six of his children with him. The two sons you saw, plus two sons still in the schoolroom, and two daughters. The youngest is of an age to be presented, but we — Georgie and I — suggested she wait until next year. By then, all this nonsense will be over.”

“I hope so. What Sutton must be thinking!” James, now Earl of Sutton and heir to his father the Duke of Winshire in place of two deceased older brothers, faces having to prove the legitimacy of his marriage and his children to a committee of the House of Lords. Thanks to Eleanor’s husband, who is claiming that the foreign-born wife was a mistress and the half-breed children an abomination that must not be forced on English Society.

Grace gave a short laugh. “James just smiles, and says the marriage was legal, his children are legitimate, and Haverford is an ass. I beg your pardon, Eleanor.”

Haverford is being an ass, which is not unusual. Eleanor is not going to say so, even in private to this dear friend. She takes another sip of her tea.

“Winshire is in a rare taking, and declares that none of us may speak or even acknowledge any of you.” Grace sighs. “It will be very awkward.”

Eleanor echoes the sigh. “We must decide how to manage our committees, and how to make managing the conflict easier for hostesses who would normally invite us both.” She met her friend’s eyes, a twinkle in her own. “Co-ordinating our social calendars so we obey our respective tyrants may require weekly meetings, dear Grace.”

Grace chuckles. “After all,” she says, “making sure our families don’t mingle is a sort of obedience, is it not?”

***

This is a background scene that won’t appear somewhere at the beginning of To Win a Proper Lady: The Bluestocking and the Barbarian. Haverford’s attempt to have Sutton’s marriage declared invalid is part of that book, which I’m currently expanding into a novel from the novella that was in Holly and Hopeful Hearts. Haverford’s motivation is that he and Sutton were once rivals for Eleanor’s hand. Eleanor preferred Sutton, and Haverford conspired with Sutton’s father to have him exiled. Haverford won a wife, but never her heart.

 

 

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Marriage on WIP Wednesday

 

The goal of a romance is a happy ever after, or at least a happy for now — that is, we leave our readers confident that our pair are right for one another, and that they can navigate the storms and shoals of love together, finding safe harbour in one another. For most romance, this means marriage of some type, either at some point during the book or on the horizon as we finish.

In this week’s post, I’m inviting excerpts on marriage: what the characters think of it, how they approach it, how they live it, if they are wed during the book. My story for the Belles box set is about a couple who married over a decade ago for entirely practical reasons, who have eight children, and who have grown apart. Here they are with their children in a rare moment of peace between them. James has just returned home after months away.

James resented every circumstance that kept him from his wife. Not, perhaps, the children. He was introduced to little Rosemary, who was a perfect miniature of her mother, and became reacquainted with the rest of his offspring as he fished through his pack of surprises for their presents.

“Look, Mama, a sailing boat like in the book!” Andrew ran across the room to show his mother, wildly waving the boat and narrowly missing his sister as he passed.

Mahzad took him up onto her lap and showed him how to hold it safely.

“I have a boat for each of you,” James explained, looking up from showing young Jamie how to set the rudder on his perfect miniature of a jahazi, a broad-hulled trading dhow, “even Rosemary and little Ruth. When they are bigger, they will be able to race with you on your moth­er’s pond.” He met Mahzad’s eyes. Her frown was belied by her dancing eyes. “With your mother’s permission, of course.”

“Mine is a brigantine,” John boasted. “See Mama?”

He leaned on his mother’s shoulder and began a discourse on the difference between gaff-rigged and square-rigged sails, accurate as far as James’s recently-acquired knowledge went. He must have learned it from books, since he’d never seen a sail boat larger than the one in his hands or a body of water bigger than the pond in the valley when it flooded with the spring melt.

Jamie and Matthew abandoned their model boats when he handed over the cases holding their next presents. In moments, they were taking sword craft positions, balancing lightly on the balls of their feet, a scimitar in one hand, a rapier in the other.

“These are not toys, my sons,” James warned. “Your mother and I judge you old enough to treat them with the respect they deserve and to learn how to handle them without danger to yourself or others.”

“Except those who threaten our people, Papa,” Jamie insisted. “There is another case,” Matthew observed.

Mahzad looked in alarm at John, who was too absorbed in his boat to notice.

James was quick to reassure her that he did not mean to set John to sword fighting with an edged weapon. Not yet. “It is for your Mama,” James told Matthew.

He’d received the benison of his fierce warrior queen’s smile when he had given Rebecca and Rachel good English yew bows in miniature and a quiver full of arrows each, but it was nothing to the glow that greeted her own sword case. The children, hugging their own gifts, stopped to watch her. Matthew let out a long sigh of pleasure as Mahzad lifted the sheathed sword in two hands.

“Toledo made,” James said. It was a Western-styled small sword, like the ones he’d taught her with but in the best steel in Europe, perhaps the world.

She slid the blade partway from the scabbard, and when her eyes met his, the heat in them made him wish his much-loved offspring at the other end of the palace. He smiled her a promise for later and turned back to passing out children’s books in English that he’d purchased in Siricusa, in Sicily.

He’d left the Christmas presents outside the valley to be brought in after they’d dealt with the Qajar troops. If Mahzad loved her blade, she would adore the pistols that were still packed in the abandoned luggage.

He was smiling at the thought when the messenger arrived.

 

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Tea with Mahzad

 

The garden was beautiful. It was a long rectangle, walled on three sides and on the fourth bounded by steps up to a house. Or perhaps a castle, though unlike any castle Eleanor had ever seen. A fort of some kind, its arches and domes giving it an exotic air entirely in keeping with the garden.

A pool divided the garden in half; no, in quarters, for it had two straight branches stretching almost to the walls from the centre point of the walled enclosure. Eleanor had woken to find herself in one quadrant of the garden, surrounded by flowers in a myriad of colours, some familiar and some unknown. Not woken. She could not possibly be awake. Nowhere in England had the mountains she could see over the walls, and nor was this an English garden.

She must have spoken the last thought, because a voice behind her said, “Not English, no. Persian, originally, though I am told they are found from Morocco to Benghal. It is a chahar bāgh; a Paradise garden.”

Eleanor turned. Behind her, a lady as exotic as her garden stood on the steps of a pavilion, raised to give a sheltered place from which to enjoy a view over the garden. “I am asleep and dreaming, I think,” the lady said, “for it is afternoon by the sun, and at such a time my garden is full of my children and my ladies.” She waved to indicate the deserted space, her lips gently curved and her face alight. “We should enjoy the peace while it lasts. Will you join me for coffee, or perhaps tea?”

Eleanor nodded and mounted the stairs to join her, following her into a space as alien as the garden, the stone-paved floor almost invisible under brightly coloured rugs and cushions. “Is it your dream or mine? For when I went to sleep, I was in Haverford House, in London. And this is not England.”

The lady raised both brows, and then let them drop, her face suddenly bland. “You are, perhaps, the Duchess of Haverford?”

“Forgive me, I should have introduced myself. Yes, I am Eleanor Haverford.”

If Eleanor had any doubts that this was a dream they were dispelled in the next instant, when a small table appeared from thin air, laden with a tea pot, a long full-bellied coffee pot, two cups, and plates of small delicacies.

The lady gave a brief huff of amusement. “The dream reminds me of my manners. Please be seated, duchess. Your Grace, is it not? I am Mahzad.”

Now it was Eleanor’s turn to wipe all expression from her face as she inclined her head. “Your majesty. Is that the correct form of address? Cecily McInnes spoke of you when she returned to England.”

“Please call me Mahzad. After all, we have a lot in common, you and I. Tea? Or coffee?”

“Coffee, and please call me Eleanor. Cecily said he was well, and very much in love with his wife.” And Eleanor was happy for the man she had once loved with a maiden’s ardent passion. Of course she was.

Mahzad smiled and placed a protective hand over her belly, where a slight rounding indicated yet another child on the way to join the already large family. “You have a generous heart, Eleanor. You have not been as fortunate as James and I, I think.”

Eleanor waved away the sympathy. “I have my children and my work. I am content. But tell me about your family. Who knows how long the dream might last, and I wish to know all about them.”

In her youth, Eleanor loved James Winderfield, who was exiled for his temerity in aspiring to her hand. This year, the Bluestocking Belle’s box set includes Paradise Regained, a story from me about James and his Persian wife, Mahzad. For more about the box set, keep an eye on the Belles’ website. We’ll be putting the details of the book up on the Joint Projects part of the site as soon as we reveal the name and cover. Or come to our cover release party, on Facebook on the 8th September 2pm to 9pm Eastern Daylight Time. And I’ll put Paradise Regained up on my book page once the cover is released and we have the buy links.

Oh, and for those who remember The Bluestocking and the Barbarian from nearly two years ago, Mahzad is the mother of the hero of that novella, which is soon to be rewritten as a novel. (It is still available as part of Holly and Hopeful Hearts, the Bluestocking Belles 2016 collection.

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Tea with Sophia and others

An excerpt post from The Bluestocking and the Barbarian. Her Grace is having a celebratory lunch with guests when she is interrupted by a new arrival. I’m in the early stages of considering the extra scenes and plot threads to turn this novella into a novel.

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After dinner, Sophia joined several of the other women in Esther’s room, to help her decide what to wear the following day when she and her Mr. Halévy gave their formal consent to marry.

“Your betrothal,” Felicity said, prompting a whole discussion about how a consent to marry differed from a betrothal, and the differences and similarities between betrothals and weddings in the Church of England, and those in Jewish tradition. Sophia found herself wondering how the Assyrian Christians managed such things.

The consent to marry ceremony the following morning was held in the gold drawing room, with everyone in attendance.

The duchess had offered her own lap desk and quill for the signing and watched all with a benign smile.

Sophia envied Esther and her Adam, who lit the room with their smiles, eyes only for one another, and wished devoutly that she had gone with James.

Before they could sit down to the celebratory lunch that the duchess had ordered and Cedrica had organized, another commotion in the hall disturbed the assembly.

“See who is making such a fuss, Jonathan, please,” the duchess said. “Poor Saunders sounds out of his depth.”

A moment later, the shouting in the hall rose still louder, and Gren was shouting back, though both the visitor and Gren were speaking a language Sophia did not understand. Lord Aldridge hurried out without waiting for his mother’s signal, and his own voice sounded sharply. Silence fell. The guests exchanged glances, and the duchess hurried to fill the void.

“There. Aldridge is handling the matter, whatever it is. Now, Miss Baumann, explain to me what you and the chef have managed to produce for us.”

Esther began awkwardly and then with increasing enthusiasm to describe the dishes on offer, and one by one, the guests began to serve themselves. Sophia, though, caught the duchess sneaking glances towards the door until eventually Aldridge reentered the room and hurried to his mother’s side.

The duchess excused herself and left, to return after a few moments. “A messenger has come to fetch my son Jonathan. If you will excuse me, my friends, I will go and help him prepare for his trip. Please. Continue the celebrations. I will join you again as soon as I can.”

Sophia followed her into the hall in time to hear Aldridge say, “If you must go, use my yacht. It stands off Margate, but we can be there in two days, and she is faster than anything you’ll pick up in London. You will not have to wait for the Thames tide, either.”

“What you propose is not safe, my darling boy. The Grand Army is in your way. You could be shot as a spy,” the duchess said. “Why, this friend of yours cannot even give you assurance that the grand duchess will not behead you on sight. It is possible that…”

“Mama, all things are possible.” Gren was lit from within, bouncing on the balls of his feet as if his joy were too big to contain. “All things but one. I have tried living without the woman I love, Mama, and that, that is impossible. Anything else, I can do. Wait and see.”

“I have sent a message to the stables,” Aldridge said, “and another to my valet telling him to pack for us both. Mama, we shall rest overnight in London then leave at first light for Margate. If you have any messages, write them now.”

“Take me.” Sophia did not know she was going to speak until the words were from her mouth.

“Lady Sophia?” Lord Aldridge was frowning.

“You are right,” Sophia told Gren. “Only one thing is impossible, and that is living without the man I love. I should have said yes. I will say yes. Take me to London, Gren, and to James.”

Gren looked at his brother and then back at Sophia. “We shall be travelling fast,” he warned.

“All the better.”

“What shall Hythe say?” the duchess asked.

“I hope he shall wish me well, but I am going, Aunt Eleanor. If Lord Aldridge will not take me, then I shall catch a mail coach.” The decision made, she would not let anything stand in her way.

Lord Aldridge spread his hands in surrender. “Say your farewells, then, Lady Sophia. We leave in thirty minutes.”

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Tea with the Duke of Winshire

After a particularly vigorous practice bout with his son Andrew, the Duke of Winshire was mopping the sweat from his torso. He had held his own, Persian art of the samsir against the French sword play that Andrew and his older brother James, Lord Sutton, had been learning here in London.

The three of them were arguing the finer points of the match when the butler entered, his usually bland face unusually anxious, a calling card held high on a silver tray.

“You have a visitor, Your Grace. Two visitors, I should say.”

Winshire lifted one brow. “Am I at home to callers? It is but eleven of the clock.”

Bartlett’s frown deepened. “If you would look at the card, sir.”

Winshire picked it up, and the second brow flew up to join the first. “Her Grace of Haverford? Here?”

“Escorted by the Marquis of Aldridge, Your Grace. Should I tell them you are not receiving?”

“Are you not receiving, Your Grace?” The voice from the doorway had him spinning around and reaching for his shirt, all in one movement.  Eleanor Haverford’s hazel eyes twinkled, not in the least abashed at his lack of attire. “Are we to go away and try again by appointment?” she asked.

Winshire barely spared a look at the tall fair man at her shoulder, though he noted that the slight amused curve of Aldridge’s lips belied the watchful caution of the hazel eyes inherited from his mother.

On either side of him, his sons were also on full alert. The feud between the Haverfords and Winshires  had so far confined itself to insults and legal wrangles between the heads of each house. Winshire would prefer to keep it that way.

And whatever Eleanor wanted, it would not be war between them. She had welcomed his heir into one of her houses (albiet in the absence of her husband). Yes, and supported Sutton’s courtship of her goddaughter, Sophia.

He bowed, conscious that her gaze was not unapproving, and resisting the urge to preen. “If you will forgive my state of undress, Your Grace, and give me a moment to amend it, I will be at your service. Bartlett, show Her Grace and his lordship to the Red Parlour. Order tea and refreshments, please.”

“If I might strain the bounds of my welcome still further, perhaps Lord Sutton and Lord Andrew would be willing to show Lord Aldridge their weapons. I am sure he will find that far more interesting than the conversation of two old friends.”

Aldridge’s startled look lasted a fraction of a second, replaced by the bland expression the English aristocracy practice from the cradle.

Winshire bowed again, and Eleanor followed the butler from the room, leaving the three younger men to cluster around the swords, and Winshire went off to wash and change, wondering what had brought her to him.

He’d been back in England a year, the second son returned to inherit all after the death of the first. He’d spent the previous thirty-four years in exile for daring to love, and be loved, by the lady the Duke of Haverford had chosen for his bride.

Haverford still held a grudge. He had claimed that Winshire’s marriage was invalid, and his sons illegitimate. He had lost the case, and now refused to occupy the same room or even street as Winshire. Haverford’s wife and son clearly had a different view.

And, equally clearly, Eleanor wanted to speak with him alone.

Time to go and find out why.

In Part 3 of A Baron for Becky, Eleanor and Aldridge go to the Duke of Winshire to seek his support to have Hugh Overton’s peerage descend to his daughter. The scene above shows what happened when they arrived. The courtship between James, Lord Sutton, and Sophia Belvoir, mentioned above, is described in The Bluestocking and the Barbarian.

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A bit of horse sense

In today’s Footnotes on Friday, I’m recycling a post I wrote for Regina Jeffers. If you didn’t catch it first time round, please enjoy.

My qualifications for writing about horses are ten years as a Riding for the Disabled mum, five as a Pony Club mum, and seven as the reluctant care-taker of one or more obstreporous ponies.

Yet I write Regencies, and in Regency times, gentlemen were as obsessed with their horses as today’s men are with their cars or motorbikes. In fact, in two of my books, including the latest release, the hero breeds horses for sale.

Which meant I had a lot to learn. I knew the smell of wet pony, and the tricks it can get up to when it doesn’t want the bridle and saddle. That was a start. Many blog posts, library books, video clips, websites, and questions to friends later, I still think that one end bites and the other kicks. But I’m slightly more confident about sending my horse-mad heroes out into the wide world.

In The Bluestocking and the Barbarian, Lord Sutton breeds Turkmen horses he and his family have brought from their home in the Kopet Dag mountains. Lord Sutton’s Turkmens, a predecessor of today’s Ahkal Teke, arrived in England well after the heyday of what they then called the orientals, or hot bloods. Finer boned, thinner skinned, faster, and more spirited than the European horses (known as cold bloods), the imports from Turkey, Persia, and middle Asia fascinated the English of the seventeeth and eighteenth centuries.

From the two lines came the warm bloods, direct ancestors of today’s thoroughbreds. Indeed, the thoroughbred stud book was founded in the late eighteenth century (for horses intended for racing) and records all English Thoroughbred breeding even today. A thoroughbred was a horse whose birth and lineage was recorded in the book. Other horses with the same breeding not intended for racing were known simply as ‘bloods’.

If you wanted to sell, or to buy, a horse, you might go to a local horse fair. Or, if you lived in London, you’d drop down to Tattersall’s on Hyde Park Corner. It had been founded in 1766 by a former groom of the Duke of Kingston, and held auctions every Monday and on Thursdays during the Season. Tatersall’s charged a small commission on each sale, but also charged both buyers and sellers for stabling.

Tattersalls was an auction ground, a meeting place for gentlemen, the home of the Jockey club, and the place gentlemen recorded bets on racing and other bets

You could buy horses, carriages, hounds, harnesses — whatever a gentleman (or his lady, but ladies did NOT go to Tattersall’s) needed. And in Regency times, gentlemen visited on other days to place a bet on an upcoming race, or just to meet and chat. The Jockey Club met there, and moved with it to a later London location and then to Newmarket. Tattersall’s is still a leading bloodstock auctioneer, and still in Newmarket.

My hero in A Raging Madness had been a cavalry officer. Britain had no formal studs for breeding war horses. Instead, they bought their horses from civilian breeders. This meant the British cavalry rode horses bred to be hunters, race horses, and carriage horses—usually thoroughbreds or thoroughbred crosses. Each colonel bought the horses for his own regiment. In 1795, the regulations established a budget of thirty pounds for a light mount and forty for a heavy mount. This budget didn’t change for the rest of the war with France, despite wartime shortages.

Here Alex is telling his brother his plan:

“Father says you are planning to breed horses. For the army, Alex? Racing? What’s your plan?”

“Carriage and riding horses, we thought. I know more about training war horses, of course, but to breed them to be torn apart for the sins of men? I don’t have the heart for it. And there’s always a market for a good horse.”

Alex buys his first stallion from another cavalry office, Gil Rutledge, who is hero of The Realm of Silence, my current novel-in-progress (the third novel in

series.

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More about horses

Geri Walton tells us about work horses, especially the heavy breeds. https://www.geriwalton.com/work-horses-in-the-regency-era/

Regency Redingote explains the origins of the term ‘blood horse’, and the pedigree of the General Stud Book. https://regencyredingote.wordpress.com/2010/11/05/the-english-blood-horse/

Regency Writing has a useful article on housing horses, and the work of a stable. http://regencywriter-hking.blogspot.co.nz/2013/07/eighteenth-and-nineteenth-century-horse.html

Shannon Donnelly’s Fresh Ink explains the many different uses of the horse in Regency England. https://shannondonnelly.com/2011/07/28/the-regency-horse-world/ This article also describes common carriage types, side saddles and riding habits.

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Tea with Sophia

monday-for-tea

On this fine afternoon in September, the duchess had ordered tea served on the terrace overlooking the rose garden. “We should enjoy the sunshine while we can,” she told her goddaughter, Lady Sophia Belvoir.

Sophia had been surprised—and somewhat disconcerted—to find she was the only guest. What was Aunt Eleanor up to?

But Her Grace discussed only the weather and the roses as she poured the tea and passed the cucumber sandwiches; tiny triangles of finely sliced bread with the cool crisp vegetable melting on the tongue.

Sophia took a sip of her tea. Ah. The finest oolong with just a touch of lemon. Aunt Eleanor never forgot.

At that moment, the duchess pounced. “Tell me about Lord Elfingham, my dear.”

Sophia’s hand jerked as she returned her cup to its saucer, and it clicked loudly. She blushed. At her clumsiness, of course, not at the mention of the young viscount who had been everywhere she went for months

“You met him even before most of London, his aunt tells me,” the duchess prompted.

“Not met, exactly,” she demurred. “We were not introduced.”

Aunt Eleanor said nothing; just raised her brows in question, and after a moment Sophia added, “I was visiting the orphanage at Bentwick. A child ran out of the gate into the road, and was almost run down by racing curricles. Lord Elfingham rescued the child and returned him to the- the orphanage servants.”

Appearing from nowhere just as she emerged from the gate and saw disaster unfolding before her. Riding down on the cowering boy right under the noses of the teams that threatened to trample the child underfoot. Scooping up the runaway and leaping to safety on his magnificent stallion. Fixing her in place with a fervent gaze from his dark eyes. Haunting her in dreams ever since.

“He has been pursuing Felicity,” she told Her Grace. “Hythe will not consider it.”

The duchess’s brows rose again. “Your sister Felicity? Are you certain? It is you his eyes follow when you are at the same entertainments, Sophia.”

For a moment, Sophia’s heart leapt, but Aunt Eleanor was wrong. She was too old for the marriage mart, and had not been as beautiful as Felicity even when she was a fresh young debutante. Besides, her brother the Earl of Hythe would not countenance the connection, whichever sister was being courted.

She shook her head, not trusting her voice. “May we speak of something else?” Which was rude, but Aunt Eleanor graciously allowed it.

“Very well. Let us discuss next week’s meeting to set up the fund for the education of girls. You will take the chair, my dear?”

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Sophia is the heroine of The Bluestocking and the Barbarian in the Belle’s box set Holly and Hopeful Hearts, now on sale.

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Win a kitten in the Holly and Hopeful Hearts kitten tour

A kitten from the Bluestocking Belle’s box set Holly and Hopeful Hearts needs a home.

Meet Snowball, the kitten who captured the heart of the Earl of Hythe

Meet Snowball, the kitten who captured the heart of the Earl of Hythe

In my story, The Bluestocking and the Barbarian, Snowball is tempted from hiding by dangling gold tassels on James’ boots.

“I reckon gold tassels on the boots would be right proper, my lord,” the footman ventured.

He was right, too. Gold tassels that swung as James walked, catching and then losing the light. Not that gold tassels were going to make up the ground he’d lost with Sophia, but still…

“See what you can find,” he told the servant. “Adam, go on ahead and find your lady. I’ll be down in a minute.”

So it was that when he left his chamber, three gold tassels dangled from the front of each boot and proved a tempting target. A white kitten darted out from under an occasional table when James stopped to close the door behind him and took a flying leap at the tassels, as James discovered when he felt the sudden weight.

He took a careful step, expecting the small passenger to drop away, but it buried its claws and its teeth into its golden prey and glared up at him.

“Foolish creature,” he told it, going down onto the knee of the other leg so he could remove it, carefully lifting each paw to detach the tangled claws. “These gaudy baubles are to attract my lady, not a fierce little furry warrior.” He lifted the kitten in one hand and held it up to continue his lecture face to face. “Now where do you belong, hmmnhmmn? Have you wandered off from your mama? Do you belong to this house, I wonder, or did you come with a guest?”

The kitten squeaked a tiny meow.

“No, little one. I will not put you down to chew my tassels, or to trip one of the great ladies or to be trodden on by one of the gentlemen. You are a pretty little fellow, are you not?” He tucked the cat against his chest and rubbed behind its ears, prompting a loud rusty purr incongruously large for the small frame of the kitten.

Although focused on the kitten, he was aware of footsteps approaching. It was Hythe, who looked uncomfortable in a tight-fitting jerkin over short ballooning breeches that allowed several inches of clocked stocking to show between the hem of the breeches and the thigh-length fitted boots. The short robe, flat cap, and heavy flat chain gave a further clue, and Hythe had tried for authenticity by stuffing padding under the jerkin—a pillow, perhaps?

“Henry the Eighth?” James ventured, half-expecting Hythe to walk past without speaking or make another intemperate verbal attack.

Instead, the younger man nodded. “My sister Felicity picked it. Er… I wanted to speak with you… I owe you an apology, Winder… Er… Elfingham. My sister Felicity told me that… Well, the fact is I made an accusation without checking my facts.” Hythe nodded again, clearly feeling that he had said what he needed to say.

“Very handsome of you, Hythe,” James said.

Hythe ran a finger around inside his collar, flushing slightly. “Yes, well. The thing is… You will tell Sophia that I apologized, will you not?”

Ah. Clearly Sophia had expressed her discontent.

“Sisters can be a trial, can they not?” James said, and Hythe warmed to the sympathy.

“Just because she is older, she thinks she can…” He visibly remembered his audience. “Sophia is of age and will make her own decisions, but I think it only fair to tell you that I have advised her to wait until after the hearing at the Privileges Committee before she makes any decision.”

James inclined his head. “I understand your position.” Which would not prevent him from doing his best to persuade Sophia to ignore the advice.

Time to change the subject. He held up the little kitten. “Do you happen to know where this little chap belongs?”

Hythe flushed still deeper. “So that’s where he got to. He… ah… appears to be mine. In a way. The housekeeper’s cat had kittens, and this one seems to have adopted me. Little nuisance.”

But Hythe’s hands were gentle as he took the kitten from James, and he tucked it under his chin, his other hand coming up to fondle the furry head.

“I’ll just put him back in my room so he doesn’t get in anyone’s way. Foolish boy, Snowball. Do you wish to be lost? Was the fish not to your taste?”

Hythe retreated back down the hall. James could not hear individual words, but from the sound of his voice, he was continuing his loving scold. And James had managed to have what almost amounted to a conversation with his intended brother-in-law. He would count that as a win.

Follow the book links to learn more about the stories. Enter the rafflecopter below to be entered for the random draw to win the kitten.

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The winner will be announced at the Book Launch Party on November 13th. The other kittens in the novellas are also looking for new homes, so be sure to keep an eye out for them! Good luck!

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How a disease of cows saved hundreds of millions of lives

Would people innoculated with cowpox become cows? The cartoonist James Gillray lampooned the fear.

Would people inoculated with cowpox become cows? The cartoonist James Gillray lampooned the fear.

I’ve been looking back over 250 years of growing knowledge about the human body, the ills that befall us, and how to treat them. In her book Smallpox, Syphilis, and Salvation, Sheryl Persson points out that the idea of curing disease is a very new one. For most of history, and for many illnesses even today, physicians have treated symptoms and tried to keep the body alive long enough for it to cure itself.

smallpoxAs for eradicating a disease, we’ve managed to get rid of one, and it took us 180 years from the time a country doctor in England first published a pamphlet suggesting not just the possibility, but the method.

How can we who live in the West in the 21st Century imagine a society where a single illness killed one tenth of the population every year? Where a quarter of the entire population was killed or permanently scarred by that same illness?
Smallpox was no respecter of persons, killing kings and street beggars alike. It was responsible for one out of every three deaths in childhood at a time when a third of children died before they were nine.

It changed the course of history several times, contributing to the fall of Rome, altering the succession of the British throne and ushering in the Georgian era, killing the rulers of the Aztec and Incan nations and crippling their nations so the conquistadors could sweep all before them… The list goes on and on.

Death among the Mezo-Americans

Death among the Mezo-Americans

By the middle of the 18th century, England had learned the practice of variolation; fundamentally, the practice of rubbing a cut or scratch with material from a smallpox scab to give a healthy person a case of smallpox. As long as the person administering the treatment avoided both of the two major risks, the person had a far better chance of surviving the disease, and then they wouldn’t catch it again.

The risks? Doctors tried to find milder strains of smallpox by looking for people who were recovering, but sometimes they got it wrong. And—without a germ theory of disease transmission—some of them weren’t that careful about washing their instruments (or even their hands) between patients. Variolation was common during a smallpox epidemic, and doctors carried contagion from their dying patients to their well ones.

George III of England lost two infant sons to variolation within six months of one another. Still, a death rate of less than one in fifty was an improvement over the status quo.

A physician inspects the growth of cowpox on a milking maid' Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org A physician inspects the growth of cowpox on a milking maid's hand while a farmer (?) passes another physician a lancet. Coloured etching, c. 1800. Published: [ca. 1800]

A physician inspects the growth of cowpox on a milking maid’
Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images, http://wellcomeimages.org

Edward Jenner, the country doctor I mentioned, drew on folklore to find a better way. While not the first to inoculate healthy patients with cowpox, he was the first to press his treatment on the medical community. Cowpox was a related disease, seldom fatal or even serious, and country folk had long known that milkmaids were immune to smallpox.

When, in 1796, Jenner inoculated his gardener’s son with cowpox taken from a local milkmaid, he founded the science of vaccination, and took the first step in the long road to the last natural case of smallpox, a hospital cook in Somalia in 1977.

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I’ve been reading about illnesses and deaths in the 18th and 19th centuries, and about medical knowledge, for some of my books. In A Raging Madness, (Book 2 of the The Golden Redepennings) the hero is crippled after being hit by a canister shell (today we’d call it shrapnel) and the heroine is a doctor’s daughter and was her father’s apprentice. In the Mountain King series, the next book after The Bluestocking and the Barbarian is The Hermit and the Healer. My healer takes on a cholera epidemic at a girls’ boarding school, and needs to deal with the prejudice of the locals as well as the suspicion and anger of the reclusive parent of one of the girls.

I have one of my regular background characters dying of syphilis (the great pox—more about the medical history of that scourge next week).

And I’m still working out what will kill Mia Redepenning’s husband’s Javanese wife so that Mia can finally have her happy ending in Unkept Promises, Book 4 of The Golden Redepennings. (Something lingering, so she has time to send a letter halfway around the world to her English ‘sister wife’ to beg Mia to be a mother to her four little children.)

The first vaccination

The first vaccination