Paradise at Last

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Tea with a daughter-in-law

This week’s post is an excerpt from Paradise at Last.

Eleanor was too busy to fret much about her would-be suitors, or about the chill distance between her and the one man for whom she might be tempted to forsake her new freedom. She and Jessica had much to do preparing for Jessica’s wedding in April and shopping for Jessica’s trousseau. She continued the work she had begun, seeking donations for the several charities she had offered to help when last in Town.

She also found herself deputising for Cherry on many of the same committees that she had managed when she was duchess. Eleanor met with her daughter-in-law after every meeting to report on progress.

They took tea one afternoon in the little parlour Cherry had made her own. The previous evening Haverford had escorted them both to a formal dinner, with dancing afterwards, at the home of Lord Henry’s daughter Susan.

“You will be able to take up the work again, now that you are feeling more energetic,” Eleanor told her daughter-in-law. “I’m very happy to hand it all back to you, or to continue with some of it. You must just tell me what you need.”

“We shall see,” Cherry commented. “I expect I will need your help later in the year. You have guessed have you not?”

Eleanor acknowledged the truth of that with a smile and a nod.

“I thought so. You have not fussed over me as much as Anthony, but you are always there with a snack or a drink when I need it, and always ready to take over when a nap overwhelms me.” She put a hand over Eleanor’s and squeezed. “You and Mother are the only ones to know, apart from Anthony.”

“And, I imagine, your dresser,” Eleanor joked. “It is hard to keep such a secret from one’s maid.”

It was Cherry’s turn to smile and nod.

“Dearest, I could not be more thrilled,” Eleanor said. “And not because of that nonsense about an heir to the Haverford duchy. I have seen enough of you together to know that the love you bear one another is far more important than who carries on the title after we are all gone. But you deserve the little blessing you carry. You and my son will be wonderful parents.”

Cherry burst into tears. “Excuse me, Aunt Eleanor. I seem to have little control over my emotions at the moment.” She put her arms around Eleanor and Eleanor hugged her back, then offered a handkerchief so she could dry her eyes.

“And what of you?” Cherry asked. “I always thought you and Uncle James would make a match of it after the old duke died. We would all be so pleased. Can you not talk to him, Aunt Eleanor?”

Eleanor shook her head. “I expect you know what he thinks of me. Sarah was there when he found out what I had done. I cannot even blame him for it, for I was wrong.”

Cherry made an impatient noise. “And I suppose he has never made a mistake in his life? To throw away all of your history and the friendship you have found in the last few years—surely he is not so foolish.”

Eleanor sighed. “Shall we talk about something else, my dear? What dreadful weather we are having.”

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Tea with a lover

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Tea with James

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Tea with Lord Colyton’s daughters

(Another excerpt post from Paradise at Last)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Colyton frowned.

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

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

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

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Villains on WIP Wednesday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Tea with various philanthropic ladies

(This post is an excerpt from Paradise At Last, which I am currently frantically trying to get finished. I hope to publish in March.)

“I did not realise that the Duke of Winshire was a close acquaintance of Mrs Kellwood,” Eleanor commented. An intimate acquaintance? Perhaps. He had certainly emerged from her house well before the usual visiting hours. She wrestled with the hot jealousy that attempted to escape her iron control. It is none of my business. James and I have—had—no understanding. Especially not after…

Henry, Baron Redepenning, leaned closer to the carriage window to watch the couple strolling down the street together, Mrs Kellwood clinging to James’s arm. “They are much in one another’s company at balls and concerts and the like, but I have not heard of an affair,” he said.

Not consoling. If James had taken the woman as a lover, he would be discrete, though leaving by her front door in full daylight was hardly inconspicuous. Did that mean they were not lovers? It is none of your business, Eleanor, she scolded herself.

She had encountered Henry at Chirbury House when she called to collect Frances. Frances had greeted her with enthusiasm, but was less delighted at the idea of returning to Haverford House.

She, Daisy, Antonia, and a couple of other acquaintances had a full timetable of activities planned, “And very little time to complete them all, Aunt Eleanor,” Frances had explained, “since Daisy is leaving London at the end of the week to go back to Gloucestershire. Coming home would mean extra time travelling every day, and I would miss out on all the fun in the evenings. I may stay, may I not?”

And so Eleanor had left without Frances, but with Henry, whom she had offered to drop at the headquarters of the Horse Guard where he had his office, on her way back to Haverford House.

On second thoughts, she might call on a couple of other acquaintances while she was out. Her niece-in-law, Anne Chirbury, had mentioned a few people who were in town, and had talked about the difficulties facing the country-folk with the summer’s poor harvest. And, too, Henry was concerned for the injured and sick soldiers and sailors who were still trickling home from foreign ports after the tragedy that was Waterloo ended the long war with France.

Surely Cedrica Fournier would be home, and she would have a different perspective on the problems facing Londoners, since she lived here year round, and she and her husband owned a successful restaurant.

None of the Winderfield women were in town, though Eleanor would, in any case, be reluctant to call on James’s family without a direct invitation. But Henry had mentioned that the Earl of Hythe had arrived back from Vienna, and his sister, Lady Felicity Belvoir, had co-operated with Eleanor on several philanthropic causes. She could think of one or two others, too.

By the end of the afternoon, she had met with five of the woman she had worked with before, three in high society and two with a firmer finger on the pulse of the merchant ranks of Society. All of them had causes to espouse, and all of them were doing something about it.

“I learned from the best, Aunt Eleanor,” said Cedrica, who was a distant cousin and had once been Eleanor’s secretary. “I see a need and figure out how to bring it to the attention of others, as you taught me.”

The other women repeated variations on the same theme. They credited Eleanor with the inspiration, which was kind of them, but the fact was they were doing very well without her. When they realised she was looking for work, they all suggested roles for her. And all of the roles were minor, and could have been done by anyone.

In penance for her pique at that thought, she accepted them all. At least she would be busy for the few weeks until Haverford and Charlotte returned from Paris, and they all retired to the country.