Monday for Tea

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Tea with two quiet little girls

The hostesses of today’s afternoon tea were very serious about the proceedings. Miss Frogmore had charge of the teapot. Miss Helena Frogmore was charged with carrying each cup carefully to its intended recipient. She did it very well, though holding the tip of one’s tongue in one’s teeth as an aid to concentration was not a common sight in most drawing rooms. However, this was the nursery and Helena was only five years old, two years younger than the sister who was pouring the lemonade.

The guests were very grand: two duchesses and a baron. Mind you, the baron was not yet a year old, and one of the duchesses had him on her knee, ready to feed him his drink–which was lemonade–from a tea spoon.

Her Grace the Duchess of Winshire thought they made a pretty picture, her daughter-in-law and the infant. She prayed that the Duchess of Haverford, her son’s beloved Cherry, would be blessed one day with a child of her own, but no one looking at her clucking over the little boy would know how much she longed to fill her own cradles.

When Eleanor Winshire received the invitation to visit, she had not expected to be whisked up to the nursery floor, and entertained with lemonade and shortbread in the schoolroom. Cherry had explained. Baron Frogmore and his two sisters needed a safe place to stay, and Cherry had agreed to provide sanctuary. Tomorrow, the children’s mother was appearing in court to argue that their current guardian had no right to the place, and was abusing the trust put in him by the courts. Eleanor hoped she would win, for the wicked man had taken the children from their widowed mother, who was a delightful young woman.

If necessary, her son was going to petition the courts to be made guardian in place of the usurper, but he and Cherry hoped for a different outcome. Either way, the dear little children would have their mother back, for the Haverfords would bring Seraphina Frogmore to live with them, if need be. But Anthony and Cherry hoped Lady Frogmore would marry again, to a gentleman respected throughout the ton. Eleanor would not have believed it if she had not seen it with her own eyes. She had thought Lord Lancelot Versey to be a confirmed bachelor. However, it was clear to anyone who saw them together, that he was head over heels for the widowed baroness.

Eleanor accepted a second cup from Helena. How lovely to assist, not only in reuniting a family, but in promoting a romance.

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In The Talons of a Lyon, Lance Versey kidnaps the three Frogmore children from the wicked couple who are attempting to abduct them from London, and takes them to the Duchess of Haverford. Here’s an excerpt from the story.

The house was so large, it took several minutes to reach the duchess’s private sitting room. Haverford poked his head around the door, and said, “I have some visitors for you, my love.” He opened the door wider, and ushered Seraphina’s two little girls in. Lance followed.

Haverford stopped the servants at the door. “Please take a chair while you wait,” he told them, and closed the door in their faces.

Lance bowed to the duke’s wife. “Your Grace, I apologize for calling unannounced.”

The duke said, “Lance has, I deduce, come for our help to hide his crimes. He has stolen Lady Frogmore’s children back from their wicked uncle.”

Helena tugged on Lance’s coat. “Have you? Are you going to give us back to Mama?” She had removed her bonnet, and the blonde plaits that confined her hair had tumbled down.

As if of their own volition, his arms tightened on little Harry, and the boy wriggled. Lance made himself relax. He did not need to protect the children against all comers. Not here in the duchess’s private sitting room.

The duchess will have them, will she not? He raised his eyebrows in question, and Her Grace exchanged glances with her husband and then nodded.

“Will we have to wait for very long?” Hannah asked, her voice girlish but her question suprisingly mature.  “Harry needs her. We tell him about her every night after the governess goes to bed, but I think he has forgotten her.”

“You shall see her soon,” Haverford declared. “You do not appear to be worried about Lord Lancelot kidnapping you, young ladies.”

Helena shrugged. “We recognized him. He is the man who comes every morning to the park with Mama.  She used to hide behind the bushes, so sad.” She drooped her shoulders and poked out a trembling lower lip to illustrate. “We would slow down as much as we dared, but Miss Brant, the governess, would hit us with her switch if we did not keep walking. I do not think Miss Brant ever saw her.”

Hannah nodded, and commented, “Then Lord Lance started bringing her, and soon she was not so sad.”

Helena continued. “Miss Brant said we would never see Mama again, but we saw her every day. Miss Brant said she had forgotten us, but we knew she had not. We knew she was afraid of Miss Brant and Uncle Marcus, so we did not tell them she came to watch us. When you helped us into the coach today—” she smiled up at Lance— “we knew Mama sent you. I am so glad. I like you, Lord Lance.”

Lance had a lump in his throat which needed to be swallowed before he could reply. A welcome interruption allowed him time to recover. Little Lord Harry struggled to be put down, and then set off at great speed across the floor, not so much crawling as wriggling like a caterpillar. His destination was a kitten, who had just stepped out from behind the duchess’s couch. The kitten, alarmed perhaps by the intent look in Lord Harry’s eyes, shot up one of the curtains, and Harry stopped, hoisted himself into a sitting position, and looked balefully around the room as if the kitten’s escape must be someone else’s fault.

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Tea with Chloe

“Don’t be nervous, my love,” said Dom Finchley to his darling bride. “She may be a double duchess, but she is very kind.” They were visiting the Duchess of Winshire, who had been the Duchess of Haverford until her husband died and she married again. Dom was in some sort related, for he was the product of an affair between his mother and the Duke of Haverford.

Lord and Lady Diomedes Finchley were in London, and Dom was determined that Lady Diomedes (who much preferred to be called Chloe) should be given a chance to make a splash on the London social scene. She had had a season, she pointed out to him. Somewhat belated, and in York not London. But both of those circumstances were to his advantage, surely, since he met her and married her.

Dom thought that the Duchess of Winshire might consent to introduce Chloe to some hostesses. He was sure she’d find Society much more fun as a wife than she did as a bookish wallflower. Chloe thought that Her Grace had no reason to think kindly of the Finchleys, and besides, she might not be a bookish wallflower, but she was a bookish wife.

She had just made that retort when the door opened, and the grand lady herself entered. The duchess set Chloe at ease immediately, by advancing to Dom with a hand held out for him to bow over, and the words, “Dom Finchley! How delightful of you to visit. And you have brought your wife. Lady Diomedes–oh I do hope you will let me call you Chloe, dear. I have been longing to meet you, ever since Charlotte and Anthony told me how nice you were, and how perfect for our Dom. I say ‘our’, my dear boy, for I do quite take a proprietary interest, since you are half brother to my sons and my darling wards.” Anthony was her son, the current Duke of Haverford, and he and his duchess had come to Dom and Chloe’s wedding, in York.

Her Grace invited them to sit, and sent immediately for tea. “You will have to come to my ball next week,” she said, before Dom could even introduce the topic of Chloe’s social life. “I will also speak to my girls and my friends about including you on their invitation list. Chloe, Matilda, who is your husband’s half sister, has a regular weekly meeting that might interest you: a book club. If you are interested, she would be delighted to hear. Oh. And the theatre! I am sure Anthony will allow you make use of his box. We shall have such fun!”

Dom and Chloe are hero and heroine of Lord Cuckoo Comes Home, which is a story in the Desperate Daughters collection.

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Tea with a nephew

“Dear Lord, Rede,” said the Duchess of Haverford. “The whole village?”

“Not the entire village, nor all of the household. The thing was, Aunt Eleanor, they had no idea who they could trust–who was working for that scoundrel and who was secretly their friend,” said the Earl of Chirbury, known to family and friends as Rede.

Eleanor fanned herself with her hand. “As a principle, dear boy, I do not like to hear the end of a story before the middle, but please tell me that our darling Kitty and her little family are safe.”

“Thanks in no small part to Kitty herself,” Rede said, proudly. “When the smugglers attacked en masse after her husband was captured and imprisoned, she helped to organise the defence and…”

Eleanor halted him with an exclamation. “Rede! Stop right there!”

His eyes twinkled, as he raised a single eyebrow at her, which was an annoying affectation that her son had copied from his favourite cousin. “Something wrong, Aunt Eleanor?”

“I did not mean for you to skip the middle entirely. Now answer my question, you wicked man, and then go back and tell the story properly.”

See The Flavour of Our Deeds for Kitty’s story.

 

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Tea with the Duchess of Haverford

In this excerpt post from The Flavour of Our Deeds, Kitty has been invited not just to tea, but to stay for a few nights until her sister returns to town.

Halfway through the afternoon, the butler announced that the Marquis of Aldridge wondered if Lady Catherine was at home. The gentleman in question was standing at the butler’s shoulder, one sardonic eyebrow raised.

Kitty leapt to her feet, but remembered her manners and greeted him politely. So did Pierrot, with a sniff to his boots and a sharp yap as he sat and offered his paw. Aldridge bent and gravely shook it.

“May I offer you refreshments, my lord?”

“If it pleases you,” he said, amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes, “you may fetch your pelisse and bonnet, and have your maid pack what you might need for several nights’ stay and bring it over to Haverford House. My mother has sent me to invite you for a short stay, for the sake of appearances. She also has another young guest whom I believe you shall be pleased to see.”

Young. So not Luke, who had been at pains on several occasions to point out the decade and a bit that separated their ages. “Paul has been released?” she asked.

“Into my custody,” he confirmed. “And before you ask, Ogilvy has been moved to a private room, where he shall have every comfort and a private guard to see to his safety.”

Kitty felt as if she could breathe freely for the first time since she woke to Thomson’s invasion. “I shall be five minutes,” she said, and hurried up to her room, giving the footman in the hall a message for Millie to meet her there.

Soon, she and Aldridge were on their way in the marquis’s exquisite high-perch phaeton, behind one of the sweetest-going teams she’d ever seen. Millie would follow with her bags.

With her anxiety lifted just a little, Kitty was able to enjoy her journey, especially when the crowds of London dropped behind them, leaving farmland and estates on either side of the road. Haverford House was on the Thames, several miles upriver from the capital.

The great house was in the shape of an H, with an ornate fence barring those without business from the huge front courtyard. Not them, though. The gatekeeper heard the toot of Aldridge’s groom’s horn, and had the gates open before the team swept through without breaking pace.

Whenever Kitty came here to visit her godmother, she felt like a princess called to attend a queen.

They swung in a large arc and pulled to a stop before the flight of steps that led up to a pair of doors that Kitty, as a child, had believed to be created for and by giants. The butler was already opening one of them, and standing before it to await the entry of the marquis and his guest.

Another servant stood ready to conduct Kitty to the duchess, but Aldridge waved him off.

He picked up Pierrot, who made no objection. “I shall escort Lady Kitty myself,” he said, and, with the dog in his arms, took her up four flights of stairs to the third level of the building, through the main wing of the house to the family wing, and then along a passage to the rooms that housed the nursery and schoolroom.

“We’ve made young Paul comfortable up here, with my sisters,” he told Kitty. Sure enough, they entered a large comfortable sitting room, where Paul sat on the hearth rug with the duchess’s youngest ward, Frances Grenford. Her Grace of Haverford and her other two wards, Jessica and Matilda, watched as Paul and Frances toasted bread and cheese over the fire.

“Again?” Aldridge asked him. “Good afternoon, Mama, ladies.”

Paul returned Aldridge’s grin. “You hauled me away from the bagwig’s office before I could eat the last lot,” he complained.

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Tea with Society’s great ladies

Her Grace the Duchess of Winshire asked her daughter-in-law, the Duchess of Haverford, to pour the tea. Her youngest stepdaughter, Rosemary, handed the cups around, her ward Frances following behind with plates of delicate treats.

The ladies who had gathered at Eleanor Winshire’s invitation chatted amongst themselves, waiting patiently for Eleanor to explain why she had called them together.

They were some of the most influential ladies of London, all of them connected to Eleanor by marriage, friendship or family. Eleanor planned to put them to work. She waited until all of them had been served, and then she spoke.

“Ladies.”

The hum of conversation in the room trailed away, and all eyes turned to Eleanor. She had planned how to begin, what happened next would be up to her friends and allies.

“A newcomer to Society is being targetted with lying gossip, and I want to help her. I would welcome your advice and assistance.”

Those gathered nodded or inclined their heads, but no one spoke.

“I speak of the former Lady Arial Bledisloe, daughter of the House of Stancroft and now Viscountess Ransome,” she explained.

Someone, she did not see who, breathed, “Lady Beast.”

“Yes,” said Eleanor. “That is the problem in a nutshell. A fine young woman subjected to such a heinous name. What, ladies, do we know about her and her husband? And about those who are campaigning against her?”

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Tea with a second-time bride

Susan glowed. Her godmother, the Duchess of Haverford, had never found it to be generally true that a bride responded to marriage with a joy so palpable that it lit up a room. In Eleanor’s experience, marriage crushed the light out of more brides than not.

Susan was one of the rare exceptions, and about time, too. Her first marriage had been disappointing. Captain Cunnngham was not a terrible husband. He was an absent one. In physical fact, most of the time, and emotionally the rest. He had also been serially and frequently unfaithful.

Indeed, Susan had been so disappointed in her first marriage that Eleanor was surprised she had taken the risk of a second. Of course, her second marriage was to a man she had known since she was a child. Eleanor’s friend Henry had told her all about it.

“We all thought Rutledge was courting Susan during her first season, but then he disappeared and a few months later, she accepted young Cunningham. After that, she had nothing good to say about Rutledge. When we heard he had accompanied her north to help her rescue her kidnapped daughter… Well! I certainly didn’t expect them to fall in love and marry!”

Susan had been at least half in love with Rutledge all those years before, of course. Which was the reason she was so upset with him when he abandoned his courtship. And anyone who had seen the poor man yearning after her on the rare occasions they were in the same room knew that he had never ceased to be in love with her.

Eleanor was unsurprised to find that Rutledge’s nasty elder brother had come between the pair when Susan was young, unattached, and naive. He undoubtedly wanted her for himself, the horrid man.

“I need your help, Aunt Eleanor,” Susan said, once she and Eleanor were established with a cup of tea. “I want to reestablish Gil in Society. It is part done, of course, because my friends will accept him for my sake, but so many people still judge him by his brother and his father. He is nothing like them, I can assure you, but those two reprobates brought such dishonour to his name and title that he almost refused to marry me for fear he would never live it down!”

“People need to meet him and see for themselves that he is a good man,” Eleanor observed.

“Precisely.” Susan took a sip of her tea, watching Eleanor over the rim.

“Yes, Susan,” the duchess told her. “I will help you to change the minds of those who tar your husband with his family’s brush.”

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Tea with Ella and Alex from A Raging Madness

Her new set of carriage horses were everything the Duchess of Haverford could wish. A perfectly matched set of handsome bay geldings, gentle of nature and trained not only as a team of four, but to work in pairs or even alone.

Aldridge had brought them for her for a birthday present, and the breeder and his wife had delivered them in person, bringing them down from their estate in Suffolk by gentle stages. Lord and Lady Renshaw specialised in providing riding and carriage horses, and were gaining a stirling reputation among the ton. Lord Renshaw, or Alex, was an ex cavalry officer whose courage had been rewarded with the title of viscount and a rundown estate, which they were rapidly building into a prosperous going concern.

Aldridge knew them personally, of course. Alex was a Redepenning, a cousin of Stephen, Lord Chirbury, who was Eleanor’s nephew and therefore also Aldridge’s cousin. His wife was a less well known quantity. Ella had followed the drum as a child, had been married to a baronet, and there had been accusations of insanity around the time of her second marriage. All nonsense, as it turned out. A ghastly plot by her cousins in league with a villain whom Alex had killed in self defence.

As she poured tea for them all, Eleanor questioned them about the bloodlines of the horses and their training. “They will also take a saddle, Your Grace,” Ella said. “A gentleman’s saddle or a sidesaddle. We like our  horses to be ready for any eventuality.

So it was true. Ella was as involved in the stud farm as her husband. Indeed, one of their two most successful studs had been her dowry. “Do you drive, Lady Renshaw?” Eleanor asked, on a sudden whim. At Ella’s nod, she suggested, “Let us have two of my fine new fellows harnessed to the tilbury. We will leave your husband and my son to the brandy they would much prefer to have to their tea, and you shall drive me around the grounds and tell me all about your children.”

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Tea with Anne and her sons

“No, Stephen,” the Countess of Chirbury said, moving a delicate vase away from the questing hands of her eldest son.

“But Mama,” the little boy protested, “I need a place to hide my soldier. He is an exploring officer, like Papa’s friend, Mr Bear. And if John’s soldiers see him, they will shoot him.”

“Yes, they will,” his twin shouted. Then bit his lip at his mother’s frown. He stood and bowed to the Duchess of Haverford, his hostess. “I am sorry for shouting, Aunt Eleanor.”

“We do not shout in a lady’s parlour,” Anne reminded her son, who sent his impish grin her way and plopped back down on the carpet to turn some of the row of lead soldiers around, presumably so they could better hunt Stephen’s little exploring officer.

“Hide your man behind the cushion, Stephen,” Eleanor suggested. Cushions were much more robust than vases. When she had invited her niece-in-law and sons to tea, she had expected the children would come with attendants to keep them entertained. But apparently Hannah, their nurse, was on her afternoon off, and the nursemaid was a substitute, the usual nursery maid having eaten something that disagreed with her.

The inexperienced girl was out of her depth with the twins. She was sitting in a chair by the window showing a picture book to little Joseph, who at eight months old was regarding the illustrations with dark intense eyes. His father already called the boy ‘the Professor’, and he certainly showed no sign of becoming like his older brothers. At four years of age, they had more mischief apiece than a barrel of monkeys, though Anne would insist, and Eleanor agreed, that they had not an ounce of malice between them. Just boundless energy, creative imaginations, dauntless courage, an inborn need to each outdo the other, and a restless curiosity that led them from near catastrophe to close disaster, so that their father swore he was growing grey before his time.

A voice spoke from her doorway. “Good day, Mama, Cousin Anne, boys. We have a freshly waxed floor in the picture gallery, Cousin Anne. If I promise to keep them away from stairs and anything breakable, may I take my little cousins to test how well it works?”

Anne smiled beatifically at the Marquis of Aldridge, Eleanor’s son. “Would you?”

Aldridge winked at her and addressed her twins. “Boys, put your armies away in their boxes. Your Mama says you may come and play with me.”

“Can we go for a ride in your phaeton, Lord Aldridge?” John asked, as he obeyed the command with more haste than delicacy, throwing the toys into the little leather box they had arrived in.

“I have another plan,” Aldridge said. “You will like it.”

“Is it going to the kitchen to eat plums?” Stephen wondered, his own soldiers–even the precious exploring officer–being tossed carelessly into his own box.

“Something different,” Aldridge told them, holding out his hands. “Something fun.”

With a boy attached to each hand, he nodded to the ladies. “Send a footman when you want to retrieve your savages, Cousin,” he said, and led them away.

“He is very good with them,” Anne told Aldridge’s mother. “He will make a good father one day.”

 

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Tea with a new granddaughter

Outside of the nursery they may be the Duchess of Winshire and the Duchess of Haverford, but leaning over the ornate and much befrilled cot, Eleanor and her daughter-in-law were merely Grandmama and Mama.

“She is so beautiful, Cherry,” Eleanor exclaimed. “Look at the little darling.” Her voice slipped into the higher register that is natural to even the most dignified of ladies when speaking to a tiny infant. “Are you smiling? Are you smiling at your Grandmama? You are, Sally. Yes, you are.”

The baby, highly amused at the faces Eleanor was pulling, chortled.

“She is so precious,” Eleanor added.

The child’s mother was wearing a frown. “Anthony says that he does not mind that she is a girl,” she said.

“No more he should,” Eleanor replied, stoutly. The next words were cooed to the baby. “She is a little blessing, and he adores her from the tip of her sweet little toes to the dear little curls on her head.”

“He does.” Cherry sounded uncertain, and Eleanor dragged her attention from the dear little angel to focus on the mother.

“Cherry, he will has five nephews to be duke after him. He married you because he loves you, knowing the pair of you may never have children, and has never regretted his choice. He did not expect a child, and is over the moon with this one. Believe me. He is my son.He adores this little miracle, and would not change anything about her.”

Once, long ago, Eleanor had tried to talk Cherry out of accepting Haverford’s offer of marriage, knowing that Cherry had been told a disease had made her unlikely to carry to term, and being convinced her son would resent a barren wife.

She had been wrong. She had castigated herself many times for putting doubts in her beloved daughter-in-law’s mind, since they surfaced to torment Cherry every time a pregnancy failed.

“Come, darling,” she suggested, “let us send for a pot of tea and sit and talk. You shall tell me what is worrying you, and I shall rattle on about how happy we all are that Sally is a beautiful, healthy, little girl.”

She picked the baby up and cradled her in her arms. “You darling, darling child. You are going to be a heartbreaker, I can tell. Your father’s eyes and the curls your father cuts off lest anyone call him pretty! You shall be wooed by every nobleman in Great Britain. Yes, and Europe, too!”

That made Cherry laugh. “Her father swears that he will turn Catholic, just so that he can lock her up in a convent when she turns fifteen.”

Eleanor dropped a kiss on the little girl’s petal soft skin. “Do not you worry, Sally. Mama and Grandmama will make Papa behave.”

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Tea with Arial

 

This is an excerpt post from Lady Beast’s Bridegroom, now on preorder on Amazon, and out on 16 February. My heroine Arial has been the victim of a scurrilous caricature campaign. Then our Duchess throws the weight of her approval behind Arial and her husband. (This is not a scene in which they have tea, but I like to imagine that she invited Arial to visit shortly after.) The scene begins with Peter showing Arial the caricatures.

Arial raised her eyebrows at the pictures and blushed at the indecent ones. She was inclined, though, to be optimistic about their likely impact. “They have gone too far, Peter.” She raised one of the worst and put it down again. “Our friends will be as indignant as you are, but even those who are mere acquaintances will recognize these as outrageous rubbish. The viciousness of the lies may work in our favor by garnering us the sympathy of Society’s leaders. After all, if people can be made outcasts on the basis of provable fictions, nobody is safe.”

Peter shook his head, doubtful. However, on the drive through Hyde Park and at the theater that evening, many people approached with invitations, compliments on Arial’s gown or her mask, and even outright statements of support. Even one of the patronesses of hallowed Almack’s sought them out to assure Arial that she would be sent tickets.

Then the Duchess of Winshire, one of society’s most influential matrons, cast the weight of her reputation on their side. She had one of her stepsons escort her to the Ransomes’ theater box, where she reminded Peter that she had known his mother. She further claimed to have kissed Arial when she was a baby. She took a seat next to Arial, in full view of the rest of the theater, chatting for several minutes.

When she stood to leave, she said, “You are doing the right thing, my dear Lady Ransome. Facing down these ridiculous calumnies is your best option. It is unpleasant, I know, and takes courage, but I and my friends have seen that you have plenty of courage and are of good character, besides.”

She held out her hand to Peter. “You have found yourself a treasure, Lord Ransome. Young ladies who are beautiful on the outside are common enough in Society. Young ladies who are brave, wise, and honorable are much rarer—and my friend Cordelia Deerhaven assures me your wife is all three.”

Peter bowed and mimed a kiss above the back of the duchess’s hand. “I am fully sensible of how fortunate I am, Your Grace. My wife is a delight to my eyes as well as a true friend and partner.”

“Good answer,” the duchess replied. “Come along, Drew. Your father will wonder what is keeping us.”