The Return of the Mountain King

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Secondary Characters on WIP Wednesday

I tend to have quite a cast of secondary characters, and to fall in love with them and want to know more. Other characters manage to be far more disciplined. How about you? Are your supporting cast just there to provide an ear (or a knife) at the appropriate time? Or do they insist on developing personalities and threatening to take over?

Give me an excerpt with a secondary character! I’ll show you one of mine. This is the Earl of Hythe in conversation with his older sister, the heroine of To Wed a Proper Lady. Hythe has a mania for tidiness which Sophia uses in this scene.

As soon as Sophia entered the house, Pinchbeck said, “Lord Hythe has arrived, my lady, and asks that you attend him in his study as soon as you return.”

“Very well,” Sophia agreed. “Tell my brother that I will be with him shortly. I will just go up to my room to wash.” London’s air and its filthy streets always left her feeling grimy.

The butler shuffled, but did not remove himself from her path. “Urgently, my lady, his lordship said.” His tone was apologetic, but uncompromising.

Sophia wondered what could possibly be so urgent. Hythe was not usually so peremptory. She handed her maid her bonnet, gloves, and pelisse. “Very well. Theodosia, take these up to my room, please, and begin to prepare for my next change. Lay out the green dinner gown with the deep flounce.”

The butler was leaving, his message delivered. “Pinchbeck, order tea and refreshments to Hythe’s study, please. Also, a bowl of hot water, soap, wash cloth, and towel. If Hythe wishes me to come to him directly, then he can watch my ablutions.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Sophia knocked and opened the door, catching Hythe with his boots on his desk, leaning back in his chair with his eyes shut. He swung his legs down and stood. “Sophia. Good. I wanted to talk to you.”

“So I understood from Pinchbeck. Immediately, he said. Without an opportunity to wash or tidy my hair.”

Hythe flushed. “I did not demand that you come as soon as you walked in the door. Old Pinchy exceeds his commission.”

“He misunderstood, then.” Sophia rolled her sleeves back, ready for her wash. “I was certain, my dear, that you would not be so discourteous.”

“Of course not.” Hythe was blushing still more, his eyes turned away from his sister’s scandalously exposed arms. “I only told him I wished to speak to you as soon as possible. When you returned, I said.”

“I collect that you told him it was urgent. You may be pleased, Hythe, that your butler is so eager to obey you.” While inconveniencing and potentially offending the woman who had been mistress of this house in the ten years since her mother died. The servants saw as clearly as Sophia did that her reign would end when Hythe took a wife.

“It can wait if you wish to…”

Hythe trailed off when a footman came in with a bowl of water, followed by Sophia’s maid Theodosia, carrying a towel, wash cloth, and soap.

“Not at all, Hythe. I have taken the liberty of sending for what I required.”

She sat on the sofa, and gestured to the footman to put the bowl on the table in front of her. Hythe, who hated anything out of order, looked at the arrangement with horror. To distract him, she asked Hythe, “Have you had a pleasant trip?” They conversed while she swiftly washed her face and then her hands. He had been to their estate in Sussex — to escape the social round, as she well knew, though he had clearly used the time to good effect, as he shared with her the decisions he’d made with his land steward while he was there.

Another pair of maids arrived with the tea service and a tray of tidbits. Sophia nodded to the footman to remove the bowl, and Theodosia took the towel Sophia handed her and wiped the table with it before the others put down their trays in front of Sophia.

Hythe paled at the misuse of the towel. Poor Hythe. It had been unkind of her to show her pique at his order by disrupting his study in this way.

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Published, in progress and planned books, mapped by series and connection

The image above shows my published books (black), those I’m currently writing (blue) and those I intend to write soon (red). If it’s shorter than a novel, I’ve put (novella) or (short story). A yellow container holds a series, with connected stories (those that are not part of the series but that include characters who’ve appeared in the series) out to the side and connected by a line. I have also marked my five mobile characters with a penciled line and the character’s names in green.

The plan is to complete The Darkness Within, then finish The Children of the Mountain King series before I start anything else. That’s about 300,000 words to write, so maybe ten month’s work. Since I like to publish a Redepenning book a year, I’m hoping it’ll be quicker. I’m looking forward to writing The Flavour of Our Deeds, next in The Golden Redepennings. Lucas Mogg, Kitty’s amour and Rede’s gamekeeper, is hiding a secret. I’m dying to tell you what it is, but we’ll all have to wait.

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Tension on WIP Wednesday

Tension is an important part of a story. If we’re not on the edge of our seat wondering how it’s all going to turn out, we might as well be painting our nails or watching the grass grow.

This week, I’m inviting you to share a passage where you ratchet up the tension. It might be dramatic tension, romantic tension, suspenseful tension, comedic tension–your choice. Mine is from To Wed a Proper Lady, and is set in the aftermath of a duel between my hero’s brother and his loathsome cousin.

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

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

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

“Breakfast?” James suggested.

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

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

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

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

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Animal friends on WIP Wednesday

 

Animal companions can be useful in a book. They show our character’s empathy and kindness (or lack thereof). They can be comic relief. They might, if the character doesn’t have anyone else to talk to, be an ideal recipient of the kind of information we want the reader to know and need the character to talk about.

So give me an excerpt with an animal. Mine is from To Wed a Proper Lady, the rewrite of The Bluestocking and the Barbarian. My hero is gate crashing a house party with the help of his horse.

Limp,” James said to Seistan. “Limp, my lovely, my treasure, my Jewel of the Mountains.”

The horse obeyed his master’s hand signals and limped heavily as they turned through the gates of the manor, beginning the long trek along the dyke that led between extensive water gardens to where Lady Sophia Belvoir was attending a house party.

In his mind, James was measuring his reasons for being here against his reasons for staying away.

His grandfather faded fast, and the end of the year – and his reprieve – was fast approaching. Lady Sophia was the other half of his soul, and only she could fill the place in his heart and at his side. Every meeting since the first had merely confirmed the connection in his mind. Was it only his imagination that had him believing she felt it too?

Surely her eyes spoke for her, finding him as soon as he entered a room and following him until he left, blue-gray eyes that veiled themselves when he caught them watching, in the longest soft brown lashes he had ever seen. She was not, as these English measured things, a beauty: her arched nose and firm chin too definite for their pale standards, her frame too long and too robust. They preferred dolls, like her sister, and Sophia was no doll.

On the other hand, there was Hythe’s threat and Lady Sophia’s rejection to consider. Beyond that, his father’s greatest enemy owned the house he approached. The party would be full of aristocrats and their hangers on, ignoring him until they found out whether he was a future duke or merely the half-breed bastard of one.

The family needed him to marry a strong woman, one with family ties to half the peerage of this land to which they somehow belonged, though he had only first seen it eight months ago. His foreign blood and upbringing meant he needed a wife who was English beyond question, and English nobility to her fingertips.

James needed to marry Sophia; had needed to since he first saw her in a village street. And then he found she had all the connections his family could desire. Surely their love was fated?

The house came into view—a great brick edifice rising four stories above the gardens and glittering with windows. Nothing could be less like the mountain eerie in which he had been raised, but he squared his shoulders and kept walking, soothing Seistan who reacted to his master’s nerves with a nervous sideways shuffle.

“Hush, my Wind from the North. We belong here, now. What can they do, after all?”

Beat him and cast him out, but from what he knew of the Duchess of Haverford, that was unlikely to happen.

“It is, after all,” he reminded his horse with a brief laugh, “the season of goodwill.”

The stables were off to one side, on a separate island to the main house. At the fork in the carriageway, James hesitated, tempted to take Seistan and see him cared for before chancing his luck at the house. If they invited him in, he would need to hand his horse over to grooms who were strangers while he consolidated his position.

But if they turned him away, he might need to remove himself at speed, Seistan’s convenient limp disappearing as fast as it appeared. Besides, in the mountains between Turkmenistan and Persia, as in England, one did not treat a private home as a caravanserai. He must be sure of his welcome before he took advantage of their stables.

The carriageway crossed the moat surrounding the house and ended in a generous forecourt. James left Seistan at the foot of the long flight of steps leading up to the front door, giving him the command to stay. Seistan stood, weight on three legs and ears pricked with interest as he watched his master climb the steps. Nothing short of outright panic would move the horse from his silent watch before James gave the counter command.

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Tea with Cedrica and Sophia

Today’s post is an excerpt from To Wed a Proper Lady, the novel I’m creating from The Bluestocking and the Barbarian.

Several days after her arrival in London, Sophia followed the liveried footman through the ornate splendour of Haverford House paying little attention to the treasures around her. What could Her Grace mean by the cryptic comment in her note of invitation?

I have someone for you to meet and a job that I think you will enjoy.

The thought crossed her mind that her godmother might be match-making, but she dismissed it. Aunt Eleanor would never be so obvious. Still, when she was ushered into the duchess’s private sitting room, she was relieved to see that the room held only Aunt Eleanor and a younger woman – a soberly-dressed girl perhaps a year or two older than Felicity.

Something about the face, particularly the hazel eyes behind the heavy-framed spectacles, identified her as a Haverford connection. Another of the duke’s poor relations, then. Aunt Eleanor had made a calling of finding them, employing them, discovering their yearnings and talents, and settling them in a more fulfilling life.

“Sophia, my dear,” the duchess said, holding out both hands in welcome. Sophia curtseyed and then clasped her godmother’s hands and leaned forward to kiss her cheek.

Her Grace immediately introduced the poor relation. “Sophia, allow me to make known to you my cousin Cedrica Grenford. Cedrica is staying with me for a while, and has been kind enough to help me with my correspondence and note taking.” The undoubtedly very distant cousin was the duchess’s secretary, in other words.

Cedrica served the tea, enquiring timidly about her preferences. She seemed overwhelmed by her surroundings. She addressed Sophia as ‘my lady’ in every other sentence, and had clearly been instructed to call the duchess Aunt Eleanor, for she tripped over every attempt to address her directly and ended up calling her nothing at all.

“Please,” Sophia told her, “call me Sophia as my friends do. Aunt Eleanor’s note suggests we shall be working together on whatever project she has in mind, and we will both be more comfortable if we are on first name terms.”

The duchess leaned forward and touched Cedrica’s hand. “May I tell Sophia some of your circumstances, my dear? It is pertinent to the idea I have.”

Cedrica nodded, and Her Grace explained, “Cedrica is the daughter of a country parson who has had little opportunity to set money aside for his old age. When he fell into infirmity, Cedrica wrote to ask for her cousin’s help, as was right and proper, and I was only too happy to have her here to be my companion, and to arrange for her dear father to be comfortably homed on one of our estates.”

Very much the short version of the story, Sophia suspected. Cedrica was blinking back tears.

The duchess continued, “As it turned out, Cedrica has a positive gift for organisation, and is extremely well read. She is proving to be an absolute genius at my secretarial work; so much so that Aldridge has threated to hire her from under my nose to assist with the work of the duchy.”

Cedrica protested, “He was only joking, Your Gr… Aunt… um. Who has heard of such a thing!”

“That brings me to my point, dear,” Aunt Eleanor said. “Cedrica is entirely self-educated, except for a few lessons at her mother’s knee before that dear lady passed beyond. Why, I ask you? Are women less capable of great learning than men? Cedrica is by no means an exception. You and I, Sophia, know a hundred women of our class, more, who study the arts and the sciences in private.”

Sophia nodded. She quite agreed. Part of Felicity’s restless discontent came from having little acceptable outlet for her considerable intelligence.

“I have done what I can in a small way to help my relatives,” the duchess went on. “Now, I want to do more. Sophia, Cedrica, I have in mind a fund to support schemes for the education of girls. Not just girls of our class, but any who have talents and interests beyond those assigned to them because of their sex and their place in life. Will you help me?”

In the discussion that followed, Cedrica forgot her awe at her exalted relation and that lady’s guest, and gave Sophia the opportunity to see the very gifts Aunt Eleanor spoke of. In a remarkably short time, the young woman had pages of lists — ideas for the types of project that might be sponsored; money raising ideas; names of people of who might support the fund; next steps.

“We are agreed, then,” the secretary said, at last, losing all self-consciousness in her enthusiasm. “The duchess will launch the fund at a Christmas house party and New Year Charity Ball to be held at one of her estates.” She glanced back at her notes. “Our first step will be to hold a meeting at a place to be decided, and invite the ladies whose names I’ve marked with a tick. The purpose of the meeting will be to form a committee to organise the event.”

She sat back with a beaming smile, clutching her papers to her chest.

“An excellent summation,” the duchess agreed. “My dears, we have work to do, but we have made a start; a very good start.”

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Courtship woes on WIP Wednesday

Cicely and Gwendoline put their would-be suitors through their paces in The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde.

They met, they fell in love, they wed, they lived happily ever after. Where’s the story in that? We need conflict. We need challenges. In romance, we need courtships to go wrong.

So that’s the theme of this week’s invitation. Share an excerpt from your romance where a courtship is failing to take off, or is taking a wrong turn. Mine is from To Wed a Proper Lady.

When the other guests went up to change for dinner, James met Lady Sophia by the stables. He drove her over to the far corner of the estate, nearly a mile by the lanes, happily filling in the time by telling her the history of the Turkmen horse breed.

She asked interested and intelligent questions, which pleased him enormously. He’d love for his own passion for horse breeding to be something they could share. From his observation, couples who had at least some interests in common had better marriages and happier lives.

Should he hint at his desire to make her his wife? She must suspect by now, surely. He’d been careful to stay within the boundaries of an English courtship, as explained to him by his aunt: no more than one dance an evening, no steering straight to her side as soon as he saw her at any event they both attended, no singling her out without including her sister to give the appearance of propriety, no gifts beyond a polite note or a bunch of flowers. But within those constraints, he had been faithfully attentive for months.

And he’d sought her out in Cheltenham and organised this journey to spend time with her. Did that not tell her his intentions? Although she believed he was on his aunt’s errand.

In Para Daisa, his mother or another female relative would already have met with a female relative of hers. In England, he should, according to the courtship rituals Aunt Grace had described, call on the Earl of Hythe, the male head of the lady’s family.

Given Hythe’s attitude, such a meeting was unlikely to produce the results James needed.

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The villain of the piece on Work in Progress Wednesday

This week’s challenge is to post an excerpt with your villain. I’m looking for his entry onto the stage; as always, just post your piece into the comments.

I’ve been rethinking To Wed a Proper Lady. It had mired in the last third, and I needed to take a step back. I’ve now done a hero’s journey chart for both protagonists, and mapped the overarching plot line for the series, and one of the things I’ve decided is to introduce my series villain early on. He has been lurking in the background of a number of my books, but it is in Children of the Mountain King that he steps up into the key negative protagonist role. He dies somewhere before the fifth book, but the nastiness he foments isn’t all solved till the end of the sixth.

The Duke of Haverford had been at the ball for nearly two hours, which was unusual enough to catch Sophia Belvoir’s attention. He’d been attending more events in polite Society than usual this Season, the first for two of the duchess’s wards, but this was the first time Sophia had known him to stay beyond the first half hour

He was strolling through the crowded reception rooms, stopping from time to time for a brief conversation, then moving on. After a while, a pattern emerged: all the people he stopped were men, peers, and members of the loose political group that voted with Haverford in the House of Lords. What was his Grace of Haverford campaigning for now?

The Earl of Hamner asked Sophia to dance. She was sought as a partner by husbands and confirmed bachelors who wished to dance without giving rise to gossip or expectations. Twice-betrothed, she was clearly not a wallflower. Twice-bereaved, she was nearly, but not quite, a widow. The never-wed sister of a protective earl, she was off-limits for seduction, but at twenty-five she was too old to expect a proposal of marriage. Being outside the expected categories for high-born females was a sort of freedom, she had discovered.

When Hamner returned her to the matrons with whom she’d made her debut, she was the only one not to blush and turn away as Haverford paused in front on them. His attention was on Hamner, another of his acolytes, and not on the ladies, but they fluttered as if a fox had strolled into the dovecote.

Not far from the truth, though if the elderly rakehell was on the hunt tonight, it was for naïve politicians and not the young wives of other men.

Sophia, protected by her virgin status and her relationship with the evil old man’s wife, curtseyed and said, “Good evening, Your Grace.” He cast a wintery eye in her direction. He had no time for women who did not conform to his expectations, and she was surprised even to receive a stiff nod. “Lady Sophia.” She had heard the man had charm; had even seen him executing it. Clearly the elderly spinster sister of the Earl of Hythe did not warrant his further attention. “Hamner, a word, if you please.”

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Dancing and other moves in WIP Wednesday

The chair of the panel I was on last week writes television scripts. “These people all write full books,” he told the audience in his introduction. “I just write a few words and somebody else makes the pictures happen.” In a novel, we need to describe the action in a way that lets the reader see it. They make the pictures happen, but we provide the raw material in our words. This week, I’m inviting you to post excerpts that describe activities — fighting, riding, dancing or whatever else your characters are involved in. Mine is from To Wed a Proper Lady, and describes a dance.

At last, it was time for their dance; a country dance in the long form, which was fortunate, for they would have time for conversation in the privacy formed by the music and the concentration of the other dancers. First, though, James could take his turn with her in the patterns of the dance, his hand holding his hers, his gaze fixed on her fathomless brown eyes. A pattern of two couples followed, a swapping of partners, and then back to circle with Sophia before they separated once more, each to their own row.

The couple leading the line wove in and out of the dancers before promenading back up the middle of the rows, and setting off the patterns again: each couple meeting and circling, two couples, swapped partners, and back to Sophia again before the lead couple danced away down to the other end of the rows and the next couple began the sequence over again.

In their turn, he and Sophia would find themselves odd pair out at the end of the rows, and would stand aside for several minutes. Meanwhile, James enjoyed Sophia’s grace, the fleeting touches of her hand, even the sway of her body against his when they linked elbows in passing. Under the blazing candlelight, he could not tell whether the flecks in her pupils were green or gold, but her hair certainly glinted gold as the well anchored curls in her coiffure bounced with the vigour of the dance.

At last, came their turn to lead the line, and then to circle around to the back, there to stand and rest for a few minutes. James kept his eyes on the other dancers, rather than allowing them to feast on her as he would prefer.

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Expect the unexpected on WIP Wednesday

 

I love twists and turns. One of my favourite plotting mechanisms is to think about what might possibly go wrong, and then make it happen. How about you? Do you enjoy surprising your characters and your readers? Show me an excerpt in the comments!

Mine is from the start of To Mend the Broken-Hearted, the second book in the Mountain King series. My hero, Val, is a recluse after some terrible experiences at war and at home. His seclusion is about to end.

Val heard Crick before he saw him. “My lord, my lord,” the man was shouting, his voice high with barely suppressed panic. Val excused himself from a discussion about clearing a blockage in a stream that was threatening to flood the young barley, and took a few paces to meet Crick as the butler came hurtling across the field, careless of the new shoots.

“My lord, we’re under attack. They’ve captured the house, my lord.”

Val took the man’s arm and led him to the side of the field. “Take a deep breath, Crick,” he soothed. “All is well. We are in England. For us, the war is over.”

Crick pulled his arm free and so far forgot himself as to seize Val’s shoulders. “No, sir, you don’t understand. Soldiers on horseback. A lady with a sword. Another lady in the carriage. I tried to stop them, sir, but they forced their way into the house. They made Mrs Minnich take them to the family wing. We have to marshall the tenants, my lord, and rescue the servants.”

Being addressed as ‘my lord’ gave Val pause. Usually, when Crick had one of his episodes, he reverted to Val’s former rank. Always, in fact. When Crick called Val ‘major’, the whole household knew to hide anything that could be used as a weapon.

Barrow and his gangly young son had followed and were listening. Val met Barrow’s concerned eyes. “A carriage and some horsemen went down the lane a while back,” Barrow disclosed. The lane was out of sight from here, but Barrow explained his knowledge by fetching his son a clip across the ear. “The boy here saw them when he went to fetch the axe, but didn’t say nothin’”

Young Barrow’s observation suggested some truth to Crick’s fantasy, but it couldn’t possibly be the invasion Crick imagined. What would be the point? “I’ll investigate,” Val decided.

Crick and Barrow protested him going alone. “Five men, my lord,” Crick insisted. “Foreigners, they were, and the lady, too.”

Val’s troops were a half-mad butler, a burly tenant farmer, and his fifteen-year-old son. Val would do better alone. “You shall be my back-up,” he told them. “Stay at the edge of the woods where you can see the house. If I don’t come out within thirty minutes and signal that everything is safe, ride to the village for help.”

Crick argued, but Val was adamant. Still, as he crossed the open ground to the house, his skin prickled with the old familiar sense of walking into enemy territory.

He diverted his path to pass the stables. Sure enough, a strange carriage stood outside the carriage house, and through the open door of the stable block he could see two strangers, one with a fork of hay and one with a bucket, heading towards the stall. They stopped when they saw him, and stood waiting for him to approach.

Val saw why Crick had identified them as foreign. The olive skin and the beards would have been enough, without the red tunics that flowed loosely to mid thigh, the loose black trousers gathered into knee high boots, the bushy sheepskin hats. They did not put down their burdens, which argued for peaceful intentions, but the weapons in their belts, their alert stance, and their wary eyes suggested that ‘warrior’ was the correct identification.

“Who told you to make free with my stables?” he demanded.

The man with the hay fork used his head to indicate Val’s elderly stable master, who appeared from the aisle the men had been heading into. “Is it a mistake, my lord?” Greggs stammered. “Only, Mrs Minnich said I was to let them have what they needed.” His eyes lit and he smiled blissfully. “Such horses, my lord! I have never seen such horses in my stables. No, not in all my years.”

The man with the hay fork bowed. “Lord Ashcroft, I take it. I regret the necessity to trespass on your hospitality, your lordship.” The English was perfect, but Val could not place the accent any more than he could the clothing.

“You have the advantage of me,” he pointed out.

The thick brows drew together over the eagle’s beak of a nose. “The advantage, sir?” He cast a glance at his companion, who did not quite shrug.

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Tea with James (Part 2)

 

Eleanor could not take her eyes off him. She had seen him, of course, since he returned to England; not just at that memorable ball when they stood face to face for the first time in nearly thirty-five years then passed without a word, but also in the distance on the street, in the park, even at other social events that they accidentally both attended at the same time.

She had not stood close enough to catalogue all the ways he had changed and all the ways he was still the young man — almost a boy — that she had loved and lost.

“James,” she said again, her vocabulary deserting her.

His eyes were the same warm brown, but the face from which they smiled had matured into a shape far distant from her memories. His height had not changed, nor were his shoulders broader. Indeed, if she ignored the maturity lines, and the wisdom and knowledge in his eyes, she would not believe him to be nearly sixty. He had been a handsome youth, almost pretty. The prettiness had worn into something sharper, something stronger.

“I waited,” she said, not knowing the words were in her mind until she heard them leave her tongue. “I told them if they dragged me to the church I would refuse Haverford at the very altar. Then they told me you were dead, and it didn’t matter any more.” It didn’t matter now. More than thirty years had passed. She had two sons. He had married a woman he loved and had ten children with her. How could she possibly care what he thought about the actions of that girl from so long ago. But somehow, it did matter that he knew she had tried to be faithful to their love.

His gaze had not left face. “Winshire had reason to believe that I was dead. My captor said he would kill me if Winshire did not pay the ransom he wanted.”

“Georgie explained.” She flushed, suddenly aware that she was gawking like a giddy girl. “Please, Lord Sutton, do have a seat.” She arranged herself in the chair closest to the tea makings. “May I pour you a cup.”

James’s lips curved, just a little. “Thank you. Black, please. No milk, cream or sugar.” As he took the chair opposite, he added, “Are we to be formal, then, Eleanor? Or should I say ‘Your Grace’?”

No. Never that. For James to address her as Haverford’s duchess struck her as a perversion of all things righteous and good. Floundering to regain her balance, she thought again of his wife. She had suffered decades of marriage to a monster, but he had loved and been loved, and she was glad of it. “I was sorry to hear about the death of Lady James. When Georgie told me she had died, I so wanted to write, but…” Unable to find the words to explain the social constraints she would have needed to ignore to write a condolence letter to her first love on the death of his wife, she gestured meaninglessly with one hand.

He seemed to understand. “Thank you.” He put out his hand to receive the cup she passed and her hand touched his. Even through two layers of glove, she felt a jolt, as if all the barely contained energy that gave him such presence and power had discharged up her arm and through her — through her torso. She snatched her hand back, and only his quick reflexes allowed him to take a firm grip on the cup in time to prevent more than a slight slosh into the saucer.

It was a relief when the door opened again, to let in Grace and Georgie. The flurry of greetings gave her time to calm down.

James said, “I will leave you ladies to your meeting and walk on to my own. The carriage will wait for you, my ladies. Your Grace, thank you for sparing me a few moments of your time.”

Eleanor curtsied and allowed him to bow over her hand, very properly not touching it. “It was a pleasure to see you, my lord,” she managed to murmur, her voice creditably even.

But one thought beat persistently in her mind all through tea with her friends, the ride home in the unmarked carriage she had borrowed from her son, her entrance into his private wing — yet another anonymous veiled lady visiting the wicked Merry Marquis — and her retreat to her own side of the house. Her attraction to James Winderfield, Earl of Sutton and future Duke of Winshire, was as potent as it had been when she was an innocent girl.

It was foolishness. She was married. They were enemies by her husband’s decree. James was a widower famous for still loving his deceased wife. Foolishness or not, he was still the only man who had ever made her heart race and her body melt. And nothing could ever come of it.