The Return of the Mountain King

by

First impressions on WIP Wednesday

 

We try to make an emotional connection between our protagonists and our readers as soon as we can in the story. We also need to show the character flaws that make our protagonists interesting. Balancing these two, especially when the characters have personality aspects or life histories that are going to upset some readers, is crucial. So we try to show them doing something nice early on. I’ve just been reading a book where the hero is a drunken cad when he is 20, and frightens heroine, who is only 15. He goes on to turn his life around, and comes back to court her. Ella Quinn manages the empathy by starting the story before he got drunk, making the reasons for his state of mind clear. You could say the story has two sets of first impressions — those the protagonists make on the reader, and those they make on one another.

How about you? What first impression do your characters make? Pick an excerpt that shows the first appearance of the hero or heroine, or what one of them thinks about the other on first meeting.

Mine this week is a newly written passage from To Wed a Proper Lady, which comes immediately after the rescue of the little boy that has already been published as part of The Bluestocking and the Barbarian (you can read it here).

“Oh my,” Felicity said. Sophia had not even noticed her until she spoke. All of Sophia’s attention was on the rider. Oh my, indeed.

“So that is what all the gossip is about,” her sister added. “No wonder he has ruffled the feathers of the biddies and the sticklers. He looks very exotic, does he not? And yet, he speaks like one of us and has the most elegant manners.”

“We must be glad he was there, and in time to help,” Sophia said, struggling to keep her voice calm when the thud of her heart must be audible throughout the village. “Tommy might have been badly hurt.” She managed to drag her eyes away from the retreating horsemen. Undoubtedly, Lord Elfingham had forgotten her already. He did not look back.

She turned towards the Children’s Sanctuary. Felicity fell into step beside her, still talking.

“I must say, he was not at all what I expected. To hear Hythe, one would think him a wild barbarian, uncouth and fierce, without manners or education.”

Sophia repressed a snort with some difficulty. “Hythe has been listening to the wrong Haverford. Our Godmama knew Lord Sutton, his father, when he was only a third son, before he left England to seek his fortune. Aunt Eleanor says that Lord Sutton was married to a Persian princess, and his children were raised as royalty, as well as English ladies and gentlemen. They were, Aunt Eleanor says, given the finest education.”

“His Grace of Haverford has forbidden Her Grace and Lord Aldridge to attend any event at which they might meet Lord Sutton or any of his children. Is that because she and Lord Sutton were once acquainted?”

Sophia knew that look on Felicity’s face. With the least encouragement, she would be interrogating the dowagers and the old maiden aunts, and increasing the storm of scandal around Lord Sutton and his family even further.

“Hythe says that the Duke is incensed at the dilution of another duke’s blue blood.” Felicity gave a little skip at the horror of it all. Hythe did say that, but Sophia was sure Haverford’s virulent enmity was more personal than a distaste for miscegenation.

“Apparently, Haverford believes that English dukes should marry only English ladies of an appropriate rank,” Sophia replied. “Foreign princesses need not apply.”

“If, in fact, Sutton did marry the foreign princess.” The scandalous nature of the conversation was delighting Felicity.

Sophia looked back over her shoulder. The horsemen were visible in the distance, just cresting the hill beyond the village. One of them had stopped — his horse gleaming golden in the sun. It was foolish to think she could feel his intense gaze from this distance. She couldn’t even see his features. But she did see one hand raised in salute before he wheeled the horse to follow his companions.

by

Tea with memories of Eleanor

 

Now for something different — the scene is about the Duchess of Haverford, but she only makes a brief appearance. This is an excerpt from the rewrite of what used to be The Bluestocking and the Barbarian. In To Wed a Proper Lady, the Earl of Sutton meets the woman he once loved at a ball, and afterwards thinks about the days of their youth.

The muttering of the assembled guests swelled and then stopped abruptly when the Duke of Haverford crossed the floor, and stopped in front of the Earl of Sutton.

Sutton inclined his head, his face impassive.

Haverford sneered and turned on his heel. Sighting his wife at one side of the room, talking to their hostess, he marched twelve paces and spat out, “Lady Finch, that man is an imposter. The duchess and I will not visit any home where he and his devil-spawn are welcome. Duchess!” He beckoned to Aunt Eleanor, as Sophia called her godmother, and stalked off up the stairs.

The duchess followed, hesitating for a moment as she passed Sutton. Their eyes met. Sophia could have sworn that his had a question. If so, the duchess didn’t answer. She hurried up the stairs after her husband. Most of the room watched the earl’s party crossing to Lord and Lady Finch, but Sophia continued to watch the duchess, and may have been the only person who saw her stop at the top of the stairs, to look after the earl.

***

“It went well,” Georgie proclaimed, once Drew and the girls had retired and only the older members of the household remained to consider the evening. “Haverford was a horse’s rear end, but that was to be expected.”

Yousef, the head of Sutton’s household staff, had been leaning against the back of his wife’s chair, but he came alert like the old campaigner he was. “What happened?” They had all agreed only the family would attend the ball, the first social outing from the house of Winshire since Sutton and his children arrived in England. Sutton’s closest friend and advisor had clearly been fretting the entire evening.

Sutton answered before his sister or one of the other ladies could. “Nothing much, Yousef. He left when we arrived, after announcing that the Haverfords and Winshires were at odds.” He took a sip of his drink. “I agree the evening was a success, Georgie.”

“Our girls made an impression,” Grace commented. Her smug smile at Lettie hinted at the hours the two women had spent concocting the scene that began the evening: the four Winderfield cousins at the top of the stairs, each beautifully coiffed and dressed in vibrant colours that contrasted and complimented each other.

“Keeping young Jamie in reserve was a good idea, Patience.” Georgie raised her glass to Yousef’s wife, who made a return salute with her teacup. “It worked just as you suggested,” Georgie continued. “They are intrigued. If I had one person ask me if the heir was as good looking as Drew, I had twenty. And I told the biggest gossips in the ton how glad I was that you were so wealthy!” She grinned at her brother. “When Jamie arrives back from the errand you sent him on, make sure he knows not to be alone with any marriageable female, anywhere, at any time.”

The others continued to dissect the evening, prompted by questions from Yousef and Patience. Haverford’s claim that Sutton was an imposter could be ignored, they all agreed. If recognition by his father and sister was not enough, at least a dozen people at the ball last night had known him as a young man. Sutton did his best to pay attention, but his mind kept drifting back to the encounter with Haverford and the glimpse he’d had of Haverford’s duchess.

The old man, he’d called him when he was twenty-four and a fool. “You can’t marry her to that old man,” he’d screamed at Eleanor’s father when his own suit had been rejected because she was already promised. Haverford was thirteen years his senior, and that seemed old to him then, especially compared to Eleanor’s seventeen. The man would be in his seventies now—an old man in truth, gnarled and bent as an old tree, the once handsome face withered and twisted into a peevish mask.

Eleanor, though… Sutton would have known Eleanor anywhere, as soon as her lovely eyes met his. Through a long and happy marriage to the mother of his children, the bittersweet memory of the young Eleanor had lingered in a corner of Sutton’s heart, and seeing her had brought all those memories flooding back.

She was older, of course, though if he’d not known she was approaching her fifty-second birthday he’d have guessed her no more than forty. Time had delivered on the promise of great beauty and grace.

From what his sister-in-law said of her—they were dear friends, it seemed—time had also honed the strength under the softness that made her submit to her father rather than run away with Sutton. His Eleanor had become the Duchess of Haverford, a grande dame known for her works of charity, her kindness to those who fell afoul of Society’s censure through no fault of their own, and her generosity to her husband’s poor relations and a whole tribe of godchildren.

Such a pity that the feud with Haverford would mean they could not meet. He would have liked to know the woman his Eleanor had become.

by

Tea with Cedrica and Sophia

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 some one 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.”

This is a new scene I’ve written for To Wed a Proper Lady, the novel form of The Bluestocking and the Barbarian, which appeared in Holly and Hopeful Hearts. Holly and Hopeful Hearts was the story of the duchess’s house party. Buy it and the eight great stories it contains at most online retailers.

by

First seven sentences in WIP Wednesday

The journey begins with the first step.

I’ve typed THE END in Unkept Promises. I’ve also written the first paragaphs in To Mend the Broken Recluse, so I’m thinking about ends and beginnings. This week, how about putting seven sentences in the comments. You choose what they begin: the book, a chapter, a new scene.

Here’s mine.

The crows rose in a flock over the tower on the borders of Ashbury land, a cacophany on wings. Val straightened and peered in that direction, shading his eyes to see if he could tell what had spooked them. It was unlikely to be a traveller on the lane that branched towards the manor from  the road that passed the tower. After three years of repulsing visitors, the only people he ever saw were his tenant farmers and the few servants he had retained to keep the crumbling monstrosity he lived in marginally fit for human habitation.

He bent back to the plough, but called the team to a halt again when a bird shot up from almost under their hooves. Sure enough, a lapwing nest lay right in the path of the plough. Val carefully steered around it. He knew his concern for the pretty things set his tenants laughing behind his back, but they didn’t take up much room, and they’d soon hatch their chicks and be off to better cover

Okay. That’s eight sentences, but I won’t count if you don’t.

by

What Ash Wednesday has in common with creating characters

Outward signs. We burn last year’s palms from Palm Sunday and mix them with consecrated oil mixed with incense, also from last Easter. Inner meaning: we burn all the failed attempts of the year to make a new beginning.

I have been thinking about outward and visible signs of what is inward and invisible. Rituals, actions, habits, practices. They all hint at inner beliefs and motivations. This month, I’m slaving over the backstory, character, and inner motivations of characters for the next four books (one novella and three novels, one of which I need to have completed by the end of May). They’re all crowding my head with scenes that are giving me glimpses of my character’s inner self. But, I have to ask, do they show the character’s true self? Or do they show the mask they display to the world? To write them, I need to know both.

I’m religious, which (to me) means that I love the rituals and practices of my church. I’m also (I hope) a person of faith. I believe, and I try to act accordingly. The books I enjoy, and the books I try to write, are about characters with depth. I want the words I use on the page to hint at dimensions to the character that I don’t spell out in words; not just the rituals and practices, but the beliefs and motivations. And I want them all to be different — not the same hero and the same heroine in book after book with just the physical appearance and the name changed.

My husband has been watching best man speeches on YouTube. (No, I don’t know why, but he has.) The jokes and male-to-male insults of a best man speech are a ritual that indicates the support and affection of the selected friend for the groom. Outward signs with inner meaning.

At Mass today, they had the ashes ceremony for those who missed it last Wednesday, on Ash Wednesday. That day marks the beginning of a period of fasting, abstinence, and prayer in preparation for Easter, more than six weeks away, and the ashes are meant to remind us of the shortness of our lives (‘for you are dust, and to dust you shall return’, says the priest as he marks the forehead of each believer with a cross made from a mix of ashes and oil). They also call to mind the ancient practice of wearing sackcloth and ashes for remorse or mourning. Outward signs with inner meaning.

Oddly enough, one of my characters is a widower who may or may not be called Ash. That’s his name, in the notes about his story that I made close to six years ago; a shortened form of his title. However, in the last month I’ve given him a backstory that includes an unfaithful wife, a manipulative older brother, and a couple of daughters, one (and possible both) of whom is definitely his niece, rather than his own child. This means he hasn’t been Earl of Ashbury for very long, so he might think of himself as Val or Fort. I’m still working on it. Inner motivations. He’s a grumpy devil, and a recluse. He arrived home after his brother’s death three years ago to find that his brother’s widow has sent both girls off to boarding school, washed her hands of them, and departed for parts unknown. He has left them there, figuring they’re better off without him. I’m also still working on his heroine, but I need to know her a lot better before she turns up at his house with a carriage full of children, including his own two, refugees from the cholera epidemic sweeping the school.

I know that he will refuse her admittance and she will demand it, and refuse to move on since two of the girls (including his niece) are showing early signs of the disease. I know she shows her anxiety in contempt for his reluctance, not realising he is already thinking about how to help her. I know that he’ll marshal his pitiful complement of servants to look after the well girls and join her in nursing those who have become ill.  Outward signs with an inner meaning.

I know those things, but I have a lot more work to do before I start to commit the random scenes swirling around my brain onto a page.

I wonder if the whole story could happen around an Ash Wednesday?

by

Tea with Sophia Belvoir

“So tell me, my dears,” Eleanor said, as she poured tea for the two Belvoir girls, “what do you know of this duel? I understand you were present at the time of the challenge!”

Felicity’s eyes shone with excitement. “Mr Winderfield was given no choice, Aunt Eleanor,” she insisted. “Mr Andrew Winderfield, I mean.”

“You probably know more than we do,” Sophia ventured. “After all, Aldridge was second to Weasel; that is, Mr Wesley Winderfield.”

The duchess shook her head. “Aldridge would not discuss dueling with his own mother, Sophia. Especially since he knows I disapprove of the way His Grace encourages Mr Winderfield — Weasel, I should say, for clarity — to behave towards his cousins. I have heard he shot before the end of the count!”

“The scoundrel,” Felicity said. “He has had to leave town, of course, and Lord Aldridge says he will never be his second again, so he had better not go around any more insulting people’s mothers.”

“And quite right,” Eleanor agreed. “The Winderfield brothers are among your admirers, are they not?” She was looking at her tea cup, so could have been referring to either sister.

Sophia, who was still smarting from her brother’s lecture about not encouraging the possibly base-born sons of the Earl of Sutton to dangle after Felicity, said, “We see them from time to time at Society affairs. But we leave for Bath this week, Aunt Eleanor, so I imagine we will not come across them until next Season, by which time this controversy about their birth should be resolved.”

The duchess, whose spy network in Society must be the envy of governments everywhere, did not comment on what she must know: that ‘from time to time’ meant nearly every event she and Felicity had attended all Season, since she first met Lord Elfingham, the older brother, in a small village in Oxfordshire. He had snatched a child from the path of two runaway carriages and ridden away with her heart. If he was courting either of the sisters, it would be Felicity, of course: the younger, prettier, more vivacious one. Sophia had no intention of discussing any of that.

Perhaps Aunt Eleanor understood, for she changed the subject. “I hope you will be back in London for the meeting of our philanthropic committee in September, my dears. I think you will like what I have in mind.”

***

Sophia will be part of the organising committee for Aunt Eleanor’s house party, which was featured in Holly and Hopeful Hearts. Watch this year for To Win a Lady, the novel-length form of my novella from that collection, starring Lady Sophia Belvoir and James Lord Elfingham.

 

by

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?”

by

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.

 

 

by

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.

 

by

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.