The Children of the Mountain King

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Best friends on WIP Wednesday

Best friends are a great help to a writer. They give the hero or heroine someone to talk to, someone to support them, even someone to act on their behalf. In this week’s WIP Wednesday, I’m inviting authors to show us all an excerpt from your WIP with a best friend in it.

In mine, my heroine’s twin is meeting with the man who deserted her sister seven years ago, and who has suddenly reappeared in their lives.

The butler unbent enough to say, “Lady Sarah left for the country this morning, my lord.”

Nate knew it was no use, but he asked anyway, where she had gone and how long should be away.

As expected, the butler refuse to answer. “It is not my place to say, sir.”

Nate was turning away when he had another thought. The butler had said Lady Sarah had left. “Perhaps you could take my card up to Lady Charlotte? Tell her I would be grateful if she could spare me a moment of her time.”

He more than half expected the butler to explain that Lady Charlotte was also out of town. However, the man merely bowed, and asked him to wait. He ushered Nate into a small parlour, and carried off the card.

Nate tried to remember what Lady Charlotte was like. He had barely noticed her yesterday evening, his attention all on not embarrassing Lady Sarah or, for that matter, Libby, by staring at his long-lost love like a gawky youth. He had a vague impression that she was much of a size with her sister, but brown haired where Sarah was fair. In that golden summer when he and Sarah had become friends and then lovers, Charlotte had been ill with some embarrassing childhood illness; mumps, he thought. Sarah—at a loose end without her twin—had wandered the estate and come across the vicar’s son in the woods, rescuing a rabbit from a trap.

Nate had met Charlotte once before the day he was plucked from everything he knew, but he remembered little. Thoughts of Sarah had filled his every waking moment and fueled his dreams, and when he was with her, he was blind to everything else. No wonder Elfingham, the twins’ brother, had guessed what they were about.

He knew her most through Sarah’s descriptions. Loving, loyal, the best friend a sister could have. If she would talk to him, he could, perhaps, find out what he most needed to know.

“Lord Bencham. Have we met, sir?”

Nate spun round to face the lady who had just entered the room. A maid crept in behind her and took station in the corner, but Nate’s full attention was for Lady Charlotte. She was similar in size and build to Sarah, but on the surface, little else was the same. Except that, as she tilted her head to the side to examine him as he was examining her, the gesture and her thoughtful expression brought powerful memories rushing back.

“She used to look at me like that when she was irritated with me,” he blurted.

Some of the tension went out of Lady Charlotte’s shoulders, and one corner of her mouth twitched as if she suppressed a smile. “She, so our old governess used to say, is the cat’s mother.”

Nate felt his cheeks heat. “Lady Sarah, I mean. I beg your pardon. And yes, we have met, though it was many years ago.”

Lady Charlotte considered him for a moment longer, then waved to the chairs set around a low table. “Sit down, Lord Bencham. Tell me what brings you here.”

The answer was the same two words. “Lady Sarah.” Nate had so many questions he wanted to ask that he couldn’t think what to say first.

Lady Charlotte spoke before he could. “My sister is in the country. She is seeking a husband this Season, and hopes to narrow her short-list.”

A short-list of potential husbands? The room spun for a moment and Nate spoke before his brain connected with his tongue. “Me! I should be on her short-list.” Lady Charlotte raised her brows at him, and he realized he was shouting. He lowered his voice, but he couldn’t retract anything he had said. “Just me.”

 

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First Meetings on WIP Wednesday

In fact, in my next two Works In Progress (To Reclaim the Long-Lost Lover and To Tame the Wild Rake), the first meeting in the book is not the first meeting of my couple. But that’s the one I’m sharing, since that’s the one on the page. Can you share one of yours in the comments?

First, To Reclaim the Long Lost Lover. Nate has come to London to find Sarah. Sarah has decided to marry at long last, eight years after she lost Nate.

Nate smiled and nodded, keeping his reservations to himself. Not unless my Sarah is present. But she is not yet in town, so it won’t be tonight. And even if she was in town, she would surely not be visiting the Hamners. Lady Hamner had been a ward of the Duchess of Haverford, and the Dukes of Haverford and Winshire had been feuding since Winshire arrived back in the country with a whole quiverful of foreign-born children.

He allowed day dreams about their next meeting to while away the carriage ride and the wait in the street for other carriages to move out of the way. Libby continued to chatter, but she seldom required a response beyond ‘Is that right’ and ‘If you say so’.

It must have been a good thirty minutes before they were being announced by Lord and Lady Hamner’s butler. Libby led him over to the Hamners to be introduced, and Nate looked around as he crossed the room.

A profile caught his eye. He shrugged it off. He had been Sarah wherever he went for the past eight years, and a closer look always disclosed a stranger. This stranger turned towards him, and he stopped in his tracks, cataloguing changes. The hair was slightly darker. The heart-shaped face he remembered had matured into a perfect oval. The slender body of the long-remembered girl had ripened to fulfill its promise. But, beyond any doubt, Lady Sarah Winderfield stood on the other side of the drawing room, a smile on her lips as she talked with her friends.

Her gaze turned toward him just as Libby tugged on his arm. “Bencham! Are you well?” He let her pull him along, and Sarah’s gaze drifted away. He wanted to cross the room to her; accost her; demand that she recognise him and all they’d once meant to one another.

Some modicum of sense kept him stumbling after his step-mother. Men change between seventeen and twenty-five, he reminded himself. And people who have been through experiences like mine more than most.

Still, of all the meetings he’d imagined, he’d never thought of one in which she didn’t know him.

And then To Tame the Wild Rake.

Aldridge stood as she entered the parlour. He’d chosen a seat on the far side of the room for the door, and he now ordered the footmen to wait outside. “I require a few moments of privacy with my betrothed.” After a moment’s hesitation, they obeyed, leaving the door wide open.

As she took a chair, he murmured, “Are there servant passages near us? Can we be heard if we keep our voices low?”

So that is why he’d chosen a seating group by the outside wall. “Not if we are quiet,” she confirmed.

He was examining her in the way that always made her restless — a steady look from intent hazel eyes, as if he could see her innermost thoughts. “You asked to see me,” she reminded him, to put an end it.

That broke his gaze. His lids dropped and he laughed, a short unamused bark. “And you would like to see me in Jericho. Straight to the point, then, Lady Charlotte. Your mother told my mother that you are being threatened with dire consequences if you do not marry me.”

He leaned forward, meeting her eyes again, his voice vibrating with sincerity. “I have never forced a woman, and I don’t plan to do so. I will not take an unwilling wife.”

Lola tried to hide the upwelling relief, but some of it must have shown, for he sighed as he sat back, his shoulders shifting in what would have been a slump in a less elegant man. “It is true, then. Given a choice, you will not have me.”

Lola had not expected his disappointment, the swiftly masked sadness. Before she could measure her words, she leapt to reassure him. “It is not you. I do not plan ever to marry.”

He grimaced. “So my mother tells me. Is there nothing I can say that would change your mind? You would be an outstanding duchess.”

No. She really wouldn’t. Like everyone else, he only saw the duke’s granddaughter, not the woman within. Perhaps, if he had been a man of lesser estate, if he had spoken about affection and companionship, she might have risked it. Not love. Lola didn’t trust love.

Again, he read something of her mind, for he sighed again, and gave her a wry smile and the very words she wanted. “We were friends once, my Cherry, were we not? Long ago?”

Her resolve softened at the nickname he had given her that golden summer, before it all went wrong.  “I was very young and you were very drunk,” she retorted.

He huffed a brief laugh. “Both true. Still, we could be friends again, I think. I have always hoped for a wife who could also be my friend. Is it my damnable reputation? I am not quite the reprobate they paint me, you know.”

Lola shook her head, then rethought her response. His reputation might outrun his actions, but he was reprobate enough, and the lifestyle he brushed off so casually had destroyed her brother. “Not that, though if I were disposed to marry, I would not choose a rake. Marriage is not for me, however.” Should she tell him? “I cannot be your duchess, Aldridge.”

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Medicine: a woman’s place

For my current work-in-progress, I’ve been looking at women physicians in history. My heroine is a doctor, informally trained as an apprentice to other doctors and through private tutorials. Most of this learning took place in her parents own kingdom in the Central Asian mountains of Kopet Dag, or in nearby Iran. This was certainly the path to knowledge for most female practitioners of medicine in Western history. Was it feasible for my Ruth?

In short words, yes. Looked at from the point of view of gender politics, the history of medicine in most cultures has been depressingly similar. Women have done most of the work and got the blame for things going wrong, while men have got the education, the pay and the glory. That might seem quite a large claim, but think about it. Women were responsible for the management of a household, which included care of the sick and treatment of minor injuries. Even today, who usually puts band aids on the cuts and kisses the bruises better? On a community level, someone usually had a greater interest in and better knowledge of herbs and their effects than others, and that person would pass on her knowledge. When home care failed, those who couldn’t afford a university educated doctor or even a surgeon-barber would see the local herb-wife.

A particularly successful healer might find herself something of a threat both to those doctors and to the local religious authorities, who, in many cultures, ran the universities and licensed the doctors. So women’s knowledge was downplayed or discredited. The only part of medicine that women were encouraged to practice was midwifery, until men began to take that over, too.  Until recently, the contribution of women has been largely ignored in medicine, as in other fields.

“How amazing is this [that patients are cured at all], considering that they hand over their lives to senile old women! For most people, at the onset of illness, use as their physicians either their wives, mothers or aunts, or some [other] member of their family or one of their neighbours. He [the patient] acquiesces to whatever extravagant measure she might order, consumes whatever she prepares for him, and listens to what she says and obeys her commands more than he obeys the physician.” Sā’id ibn al-Hasan (died 1072)

Nonetheless, the tradition of female physicians and healers goes back to ancient times. There’s a story of a woman in Greece around 2400 years ago who went to Alexandria to train, since the Egyptians had female doctors, and was so successful when she got back to Athens that she was arrested for breaking the law. Her female patients mobbed the court and they had to let her go. (In another version of the story, she trained privately with a sympathetic doctor, and practiced disguised as a man. Other doctors, jealous of her popularity with female patients, accused her of sleeping with them. In court, she stripped off to show she was female.) Be that as it may, we know that Greece had women practicing medicine, as did the Romans.

Most cultures have left traces of elite women who practice medicine–women who are born into a physician family and grow up as apprentices in the trade, or who have access to the wealth and education to defy the norms.

In Britain, we know of at least one woman who attended university as a man and practiced medicine for more than 50 years. She was identified as a man after she died in 1865. Other women were accepted (reluctantly) into the profession because they had qualified in universities overseas. One woman was harassed and abused right through her medical course at Edinburgh university and was awarded a Certificate of Proficiency when she completed the course, rather than the degree given to her male counterparts. She went to Berne, and then to Dublin, and returned with a qualification that allowed her to be registered as a doctor.

In the Ottoman empire, men had several recognised roles in medicine: physician, surgeon, ophthamologist. Women did not have access to formal training or formal recognition, and female medical practitioners were all called midwifes, whatever form of medical care they offered. But nonetheless, women practiced medicine, learning from family or other mentors and private tutors. Indeed, given the strict segregation at the highest level of Ottoman society, female physicians must have been essential on the women’s side of any great house.

My interest, though, is in Iran and its sphere of influence, the Turkmen tribes to the north and east. Did the same apply there? It certainly did in medieval times. I’m still trying to track specific sources for the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, but meanwhile I’m following the usual cultural pattern in my Ruth’s training.

Ashbury pursed his lips and she waited for him to lecture her on her presumption, but he surprised her with a question. “Minnich tells me you are a physician. Where did you train, Lady Ruth? In the same place as you acquired your warlike attendants? Somewhere in the East, I assume?”

She inclined her head in agreement. “I apprenticed with several healers, including a physician who trained at a teaching hospital in Baghdad. I have also studied with Western physicians, though not since my family arrived in England.” She sighed. “I am well qualified to attend your niece, my lord, even though I am a woman.” And you have no one else, she wanted to tell him.

His eyebrows jerked upwards in response. “That’s not — I am not questioning your abilities, my lady.” His short laugh held no amusement. “I cannot afford to, after all. I have no alternative to offer.”

 

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Do children have a place in romance? Work in Progress Wednesday

‘Black Monday or the Departure for School’, 1919. After William Redmore Bigg (1755–1828)

Somehow, I find myself including children in my stories. Perhaps it is because I am a mother and a grandmother and I write what I know. Or perhaps that putting children into the equation of a marriage adds an extra element with huge potential for plot and character development. However that may be, I’m back into blogging again with another Work in Progress Wednesday invitation. If you have children in your current work in progress, how about giving us a sneak peak by posting an excerpt in the comments?

Mine is from To Mend the Broken Hearted. My hero, Val, is helping in the sickroom, where two of the sick are the little girls he is responsible for. They were born after he was posted overseas, and have been at school for the entire three years he has been home. Mirrie is at the sore throat stage of the smallpox, by the way, hence the staccato delivery.

He entered the room as quietly as he could. The sickest of the schoolgirls was coughing bitterly as a maid tried to encourage her to drink something for her throat. The adult patient was sleeping. The two girls Val was responsible for had reached an arm across the gap between their beds, their hands held in the middle. They lay, each on the edge of their own bed, facing one another, talking in scattered words with long pauses between.

“I met Father.” That was Mirabelle. She had her mother’s build; small-boned and slender, but the blonde hair could have come from either side.

“Nice?” Genevieve was also fair-haired, but with the heavier build of the Ashbury line.

Mirabelle moved her head in a shallow nod. “Kind. Looks a bit like Uncle. But not angry. Kind, Genny.”

“Did you ask?”

Mirabelle shook her head. “Not yet.”

Genny roused enough to insist, “He can’t send us away again while we’re sick.”

“Kind,” Mirrie insisted.

“You think he will let us stay home?”

Mirrie nodded. “Kind,” she repeated

Val concealed his wince. He had no right to the child’s good opinion. He’d done his best to forget the pair of them, even resented Mirrie’s monthly letters because he was honour-bound to think about her long enough to write a cursory reply.

He backed to the door again, and called, “Greetings, ladies. I am on my way to bed, and thought I would come to wish you a day of healing.” The words took him across the floor to the bedsides of the two girls. He smiled at Genevieve. “I know who you are. You are Genny, my brother’s little girl.”

“Lord Ashbury,” the child answered, hope and hesitation mingled in her eyes.

“Uncle Val,” Val suggested. No doubt purists would have a fit to hear a child use such casual address, but hearing their opinion of his brother — angry? what had the old devil put them through? — made him determined to distance himself from the name Mirrie had known the man by. What did Genny call her father? Not Papa, Val was certain.

Genny rewarded him with a smile. “Uncle Val.”

“Rest, my ladies,” he told the two of them. “I need to talk to your attendants, and then I’m off to bed, for I was up all night helping Lady Ruth. I will see you this evening, and will hope to find you both much better.”

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Tea with the Countess of Sutton

Sophia came to the door of the heir’s wing, and was conducted to Eleanor’s private sitting room by Aldridge’s major domo. Haverford had been upset, when he returned from his convalescence in Kent, to discover that the sister of his protege had married the son of his bitter enemy. But his one attempt to suggest that the Earl of Hythe should cast his sister off for her messalliance had been met with a cold stare, and had nearly cost him the boy’s political support. After that, he gave the new Countess a frost nod when they met, and otherwise pretended that she did not exist.

Even so, Eleanor saw no reason to rub his nose in her continued meetings with the darling girl, and so she had suggested the more circuitous route. What Haverford did not see would not annoy him.

The duchess rose to give Sophia a hug. “You are looking well, my dear. I was concerned when you had to leave the garden party early.”

Sophia blushed. “I am generally well, Aunt Eleanor. But I become very tired, these days. I am told it will be easier in a month or two. For a short time.”

She looked down at the hands in her lap, a small smile playing around her lips.

“Sophia! How wonderful! You are with child? When do you expect the happy event?” Eleanor couldn’t be better pleased. How lovely for this much loved god daughter, who had suffered much from the loss of two betrothals and had resigned herself to becoming an old maid before Viscount Elfingham, now the Earl of Sutton, saw what a treasure she was.

And how lovely for James. The father, not the son. Well, the son too, of course. He must be very proud of his wife and thrilled to be becoming a father. But James, through the marriage of his son, had secured the duchy as he desired. Eleanor beamed, and set about a cross examination of Sophia’s health and wellbeing.

Sophia is the heroine of To Wed a Proper Lady.

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Wounded heroes on WIP Wednesday

Or heroines, for that matter. Or even villains. As writers, we learn to look for the flaws or wounds that prevent our characters from reaching their happy ending. In a compelling story, while there may be external challenges, the internal ones are what gives the story depth and makes it a must read. Think Frodo. Think King Arthur. Think Jo Marsh of Little Women.

If you’re an author and want to play, use the comments to give me an excerpt from your work-in-progress that touches on a character’s wounds. Here’s a piece from To Mend a Proper Lady, the next book in the Mountain King series.

Val left Barrow to his son and horses, and set off to trudge back through the fields to the house, running the last few hundred yards through blinding hail.

Crick, his manservant, fussed over his towel and his bath and his dry clothes, and Val allowed it. This kind of weather was too much like Albuera for Crick’s demons, immersing him back into the confusion and the pain. Val told himself that he kept the old soldier out of compassion. During his worst moments, he feared his motivation was more of a sick desire to have someone around who was worse than him.

By the time Val was warm and dry again, the thunder had started. He sent Crick off to bed. There’d be no more sense out of the poor man tonight, nor much from Val, either. He refused the offer of dinner and shut himself up in his room so no one would see him whimpering like a child.

It was not until the following day, after the thunderstorm had passed, that he remembered the mail, but he couldn’t find it. Mrs Minnich, the housekeeper, remembered that it had been delivered, and thought Crick had taken it, but what happened after that no one knew, least of all Crick. He had got roaring drunk and surfaced late in the day with a bad headache, a worse conscience, and no memory of the previous day at all.

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Tea with a duke

Today’s Monday for Tea post belongs between To Wed a Proper Lady and To Mend the Broken Hearted, and is referred to in A Baron for Becky. It follows on from a post I wrote just over two years ago, from the point of view of the new Duke of Winshire.

Eleanor was tempted to fan herself as she waited. From Aldridge’s expression, he regreted impatiently following the butler to be announced — undoubtedly he expected his mother to be embarrassed at breaking in on three gentlemen in dishabille. In their shirtsleeves, or at least James’s two sons were in their shirtsleeves. Their father — Eleanor’s lips curved — was naked from the waist up, and his knitted pantaloons hugged hips and thighs that made no account of his decades and owed nothing to padding.

As a woman in her fifties, Eleanor came from a bawdier time than this mealy-mouthed generation, and was well accustomed to listening as her contemporaries assessed the bodies of the young men who pranced the drawing and ballrooms of Society. She had never contributed when such conversations turned salacious. She could admire male beauty of form in flesh, stone, or paint, but it left her cold. She was not cold now, and it hadn’t been the younger men who moved her.

The entry of servants with refreshments forced her to compose herself and turn her attention to the purpose of her call. Would James sponsor the bill she intended to propose? She marshalled her arguments, and was cool and composed by the time he entered the room.

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Spotlight on Suffering, Hope, Romance and a new release

 

Eggs are a symbol of hope. Hence the saying about counting chickens before they are hatched.

In much of the Christian world, people are celebrating Easter Sunday, and its message of hope. We’re on Monday here in New Zealand, and I’ve been reflecting overnight about pandemics, lock down, the resurrection, and historical romance. Romance as a genre, in fact. The common thread, I think, is hope.

The message of Easter is that happy ever after is possible. Suffering during the days and nights of pain, but at last comes the dawn of the day of joy. Most religions, I think, have a similar message. Bad stuff happens to good people, but endure. This too shall pass. In the end, it’ll all work out.

As for pandemics, we’ve been here before. You’ve probably heard that the Black Death wiped out a third of the population of England. At the time, they thought it was the end of the world, and it was the end of the world as they knew it. But they replaced it with a one that was in many ways better — no more serfs, for a start. After the 1918 to 1919 flu epidemic, the world bounced into the buoyant and productive years of the 1920s. For each disaster, there is a recovery.

Lock down — being shut into a small space alone or with your nearest and dearest — is going to end. Hope helps us to come through better than before. I’ve decided I’m not in lock down; I’m on a retreat! (Spiritual, writers, or gardeners, it varies according the day and the weather). For children, it is the temporary normal. I strongly suspect that, decades from now people will be telling their children stories of the things they did as children in the Covid-19 lockdown. For many of them, it will sit in their minds as a golden period during which they had the attention of both parents, though I know that isn’t all the story. Some families have been forced to make hard decisions about putting their children with relatives while they continue to work in essential services. Some households are not nice places to be at the best of times. Still, there is always hope for a better tomorrow.

(See the lovely New Zealand series, Inside my bubble, for what New Zealanders are doing on lockdown. This is microbiologist Siouxie Welles, who has become a bit of a media star for her clear, calm, interesting explanations about the pandemic.)

Suffering, leavened with hope, and ending well, is a pretty good description of the romance genre. Without a bit of a challenge, sometime a lot of a challenge, we don’t have a story. But it’s a romance precisely because it promises that things will work out in the end. Personally, I prefer to read books where the stakes are high, and the dangers real. I can enjoy them, knowing that my hero and heroine will fulfill the promise of happy ever after, and their near brushes with disaster make things even better. Romances aren’t the only happy endings, though. Many people find their fulfillment in their jobs, or friendships, or craft, and that, too, can be a happy ever after. Still, romances — and specifically historical romances — are my escapism of choice.

That’s why I’m still launching the first novel in my Mountain King series on Wednesday. I thought about delaying To Wed a Proper Lady when Amazon offered to let people off their usual punishment for not keeping to release dates (usually, if you miss a release date, you can’t do preorder for a full year).  But the world is in lock down, right? Escape is a great idea! You can read more about it and find buy links by clicking on the name, and that page also has a link to the prequel novella Paradise Regained (which is free on most platforms, and will soon be free on Amazon, I hope).

I’ve also written a prequel novella about the Duchess of Haverford, who appears throughout the series. This one isn’t a romance. Eleanor gets her happy ending, but it’s the other kind (although, to be fair, this is only the end of the novella — for the end of her story, you need to read the whole series). You’ll get access to a copy of Paradise Lost if you’re a subscriber to my newsletter, but as a teaser, here is the cover.

All the very best from my household bubble to yours in this time of hope.

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Gossip and scandal on WIP Wednesday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The gossip wasn’t just about him, however.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Spotlight on To Wed a Proper Lady

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

Here are some of the early reviews.

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

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

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

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