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Attraction on WIP Wednesday

 

If our story includes a romance, it includes attraction. (Sometimes, it includes attraction even without a romance!) This week, I’m sharing another bit from The Gingerbread Caper, and I’d love for you to share an extract of yours in the comments.

She joined him at the table. “It’s our quiet time, and I was about to stop for a cup of tea myself.” She offered him a plate with pieces of gingerbread cookie and a slightly flattened cupcake. “Milk?”

“A little bit, please and no sugar.” Her physical impact wasn’t lessened by her proximity. He’d been imagining a middle-aged, perhaps even an elderly woman. Someone with white curly hair, comfortably rounded, grandmotherly. Someone he could look at without wanting to fall at her feet, his tongue hanging out.

“You’re Patrick Finch, aren’t you?” she asked, and when he assured her that he was indeed, she opened her eyes very wide, her eyebrows shooting up. “I thought you would be much older.” She tossed ahead, clucking her tongue. “I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

“Ms Fotheringham–” Patrick began. She interrupted him. “You had better call me Meg.”

He said his own name, managing to manipulate the aforementioned tongue into the familiar syllables. The question he had been about to ask had to drained from his brain, and receded still further when those lovely eyes — brown with flecks of green — stayed focused on him, a question in their depths.

Before he could compose himself sufficiently to continue, she saved him the trouble. “I should explain that I am not my aunt.” She successfully interpreted the rapid blink with which she greeted this mystifying statement. “My Aunt Margaret owns this bakery and the flats upstairs. She was called away quite unexpectedly, and I am looking after the place for her. There wasn’t time to let you know, and I don’t suppose it makes a difference anyway, as far as you are concerned. In a minute I will show you your flat and leave you to get settled. As Aunt Margaret told you, your meals will be served down here in the tea rooms. Your rent includes all three meals, and morning and afternoon tea.”

Patrick sat there nodding, when what he really wanted to do was shake his head. This was a disaster. He had been sent out of town to convalesce — his doctor and his manager both insisting that if he stayed home he would not be able to resist working. Absolutely no stress, the doctor had said. He had been looking forward to a little mothering from the comfortable elderly lady he had expected. Instead, he was confronted by the finest example he had ever seen of that section of humanity that tied his tongue in knots and turned his feet into weapons of self-destruction.

A young woman. A lovely young woman. “I would like to lie down now,” he told her. His errant imagination, functioning with far greater facility than the rest of him, immediately presented a picture of Meg waiting for him in bed. Scarlet sheets set off her lovely complexion.

“Of course.” The real Meg stood immediately. “Aunt said you have been ill, and it is a long trip from Wellington. What do you do there, Patrick?”

“Senior policy analyst,” he said, shortly. She opened her eyes, wide. “Who for? What do you do?”

“It doesn’t matter.” It wasn’t a secret, but his head was both pounding and attempting to drift around the room. She must have sensed his need, because she dropped the questioning.

“Come this way. Here! Let me take one of those.” She picked up the heaviest of his two suitcases and led the way.

Patrick stumbled after her with the second suitcase, hoping his blush would be gone before she looked at him again, or at the very least she did not guess the thoughts that so embarrassed him. Lust is perfectly normal, he assured himself. As long as you don’t dwell on it or insult the young woman, all shall be well. You have several good books. You can go for long walks.

A door at the front of the shop gave on to a small hall and a bank of stairs. Meg led the way up, which put her jeans-clad behind directly at Patrick’s eyelevel.

I wonder if she has a boyfriend? He shook his head. Of course she does. A woman like this? Don’t be more of an idiot than you can help, Patrick.

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Spotlight on The Smuggler’s Escape

Congratulations to Barbara Monajem on the release of The Smuggler’s Escape, a story of spies, smugglers, and second chances.

The Smuggler’s Escape

After escaping the guillotine, Noelle de Vallon takes refuge with her aunt in England. Determined to make her own way, she joins the local smugglers, but when their plans are uncovered, Richard, Lord Boltwood steps out of the shadows to save her. Too bad he’s the last man on earth she ever wanted to see again.

Years ago, Richard Boltwood’s plan to marry Noelle was foiled when his ruthless father shipped him to the Continent to work in espionage. But with the old man at death’s door, Richard returns to England with one final mission: to catch a spy. And Noelle is the prime suspect.

Noelle needs Richard’s help, but how can she ever trust the man who abandoned her? And how can Richard catch the real culprit while protecting the woman who stole his heart and won’t forgive him for breaking hers?

Amazon US
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Excerpt

Setup: Noelle needs Richard’s help, but she doesn’t want him interfering in the smuggling business. She refuses to marry him, and she can’t afford to let him seduce her, either. Richard has other ideas…

Noelle slid off Snowflake’s back, passed her to a surprised groom, and hastened toward the house. The wind ceased its fitful snatching at her bonnet and tore it off good and proper, dancing with it in the sunlight, tossing it around the side of Boltwood Manor.

Noelle picked up her skirts and ran after the hat. The wind teased it away from her grasping fingers and threw it this way and that across the lawn. Noelle followed, cursing, while the wind tugged her hair out of its pins and flapped it into her face. The bonnet flew through the herb garden, lit briefly on the outstretched hand of a stone nymph, and fluttered toward the terrace.

Richard Boltwood stepped through the French doors to the terrace, reached out a long arm, and rescued Noelle’s hat from the wind.

Sacré tonnerre, but he was beautiful. Most improperly, he wore only shirt and breeches. His sleeves couldn’t hide those powerful shoulders and arms, nor his breeches the muscles of his thighs. The open neck of his shirt revealed his firm throat and a few hairs of the masculine chest she had seen and touched only once.

His face was bright with laughter, his bearing confident. Masterful. Irresistible. In spite of herself, Noelle quivered inside.

No. This was no time for quivering. She hurried forward. “Richard, I must speak with you.”

“With pleasure,” Richard said. “Your bonnet, ma’am.” He held it out but made no attempt to touch her.

Noelle closed her fingers around the ribbons, and immediately Richard put his hands behind his back. She moved closer, and he inched away. “In private!” she whispered. She put her hands on her hips and scowled at him. The hat strained away from her hand, and her hair flapped in her face. “Stay here! It’s urgent. I need your help immediately.”

“Ah,” Richard said, “I am of course at your service, my love, but do consider. Your only legitimate excuse for such a precipitate arrival must be desperate love for me, but if there is to be no touching, it won’t look like love, will it?” He danced away like the bonnet on the wind. “You do look delightfully desperate, my sweet.”

“That was your idea,” Noelle fumed. “I never said I wouldn’t touch you, merely that it would be wiser not.”

“It would have been wiser not to involve yourself in the free trade. As to not touching me, do as you please, as long as you understand that if you touch me, I will consider it a clear invitation to touch you in return.” His lips twitched.

“Nom de Dieu.” She must keep her distance, but he was making that impossible. “Oh, very well. You may kiss my hand.”

“Your Majesty is most gracious.” He took her gloved hand in his and tugged at the tip of one finger.

She tried to draw away, but he wouldn’t let go. “What are you doing?”

“Exactly what it looks like. I won’t waste one of my burning kisses on a mere glove.” A few seconds later, the glove was in his breeches pocket. He took her cool hand into his large warm one and brought it within an inch of his lips.

The warmth of his hand, the heat of his breath, traveled all the way to her toes. “Get on with it,” she said, quivering with impatience. Get it over with before it kills me. When he did nothing, she pulled at her hand.

He didn’t let go. “It’s not enough. No woman who gallops to her lover’s door would be content with one little kiss.” He paused. “On her hand.”

Waiting for that kiss was torture, and she had urgent news. She said in French, “Richard, the excisemen are nearby! We don’t have time for playing games.”

“This is no game,” he answered in the same language. “Lives are at stake, and therefore our charade must appear real.”

Charade?

Did that mean he accepted her refusal to marry him? In which case, she should be glad. Or at the very least, relieved.

She didn’t have time for emotions. “Lives are at stake, and therefore we must hurry.”

“But not appear to do so,” he said. “A bargain—both your hands. It’s not dangerous, surely . . . just a little hand kiss or two.”

Before she had a chance to respond, he took the other hand, pried her fingers open, and released the ribbons of her hat.

It fluttered away across the lawn. “My bonnet!”

“What’s a mere bonnet when one is deep in love?” Richard removed the second glove and stowed it in his pocket. He pulled her close and pressed his hot lips to the back of one tingling hand.

Something inside Noelle pulsed in response. Yes.

His lips settled hotly on the other hand.

Oh, yes.

“Enough?” Richard whispered. “We have demonstrated love, but what about passion?”

Noelle couldn’t bring herself to move. Her breathing quickened, and her knees felt abominably weak.

“Only a passionate woman would ride ventre à terre to the man she loves.” He turned her hands over and cupped them in his large ones. “You, my sweet, are the essence of passion.”

He pressed his lips into one palm and then the other. The pulsing inside her deepened to a throb.

She couldn’t help it. She whimpered, staring at his lips and her hand.

His tongue reached out and gently, devastatingly, licked her palm.

Dieu du ciel. His arms surrounded her and his heady aroma overwhelmed her senses. She drank it in through her very pores. I love you. Oh, how I love you. She pressed her face into the hollow at his throat.

No.

She made a small despairing sound, and immediately his arms loosened. He pushed up her chin and deposited a swift kiss on her lips. “You do love me, and you know it.”

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Where viscounts came from

John Lord Beaumont, the first English viscount.

If you’ve been following this series, you’ll have realised that land is the fundamental building block of European nobility: particularly the province or county. The pivot point for understanding titles is what England calls an earl, whether they’re called some variation of ‘count’ or ‘jarl’ or ‘graf’ or some other term. Counts (or earls) ruled counties on behalf of the monarch. Marcher lords or marquises or margrafs ruled counties on the kingdom’s borders. Dukes ruled several counties.

When we get to viscount, we’re going the other way. The key part of the word is ‘vis’, from late Latin ‘vice’ meaning a deputy or substitute. Vicar comes from the same root word. In Carolingian times (in the empire of Charlemagne and his descendants), the vicecomites were officials appointed to exercise the powers of the comites (counts) who had delegated them to act. The man was a official who worked for the count (or higher official), just as the count was an official who worked for the king.

Vicecomes wasn’t, initially, a hereditary title, just a job title, as — for that matter — were the higher titles. Just as count became a hereditary title, in time, so did viscount.

France had hereditary viscounts  when it first began to differentiate itself from the Holy Roman Empire. The duchy of Normandy was divided into vicecomtes, ruled by vicecomes as deputies to the duke.

In England, the term vicecomes was applied to those who held the role of sherif, but the first hereditary title wasn’t applied until 1440, when John Lord Beaumont was created the first English viscount.

Other European countries retain equivalent titles. In Portugal and Spain, the rank is visconde, in France, vicomte, in Germany, the rank is burggraf.

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Tea with Becky

 

This is another excerpt post. The Duchess of Haverford has come to help Becky recover from the deep depression she fell into after the birth of her child. Find out more in A Baron for Becky.

Her Grace descended to the kitchen, and her visit inspired the cook to new heights in preparing small, tasty meals for a flagging appetite. Becky was served something tempting to eat every couple of hours. Hugh took her walking in the snow when the sun shone, and up and down the stairs and the halls when the weather closed in. And, on the advice of the duchess, he moved back into their bedchamber.

“She thinks you have moved out because you no longer want her,” Her Grace said bluntly. “And if you continue to treat her like a plaster saint, Overton, you are a great fool. She is a woman, and if her needs are blunted at the moment by her sadness, that will not last.”

So, Hugh slept spoon-fashion against his wife, but he continued wearing a nightshirt and made no attempt to make love to her.

Aldridge took over the work of the estate and the factories Hugh owned, so Hugh could spend most of his time with Becky, and Aldridge and Sarah reached an understanding to restore him to ‘Uncle’ status, a privilege Sarah’s sisters also deigned to confer.

These activities kept him mostly away from Becky, and he treated her with cautious courtesy when they could not avoid being in the same room, as if she might explode if he ventured any familiarity. “I do not understand, Overton,” he said once. “Was it so bad, being with me?”

Hugh could afford to be generous. “Not so bad. She said you were kind, Aldridge, and she will always be grateful.”

Aldridge shook his head as if emerging from water, his mouth twisted in disgust. “Grateful! I did not want her to be grateful!” He never mentioned it again, but his puzzled gaze followed Becky when she was not watching.

Twice a day, Hugh and Her Grace took Becky to spend time with the children, and once a day Mrs Goodfellow brought them to her. And not just to be in the same room. “She needs to do things with them,” the duchess insisted. “Read them a story, teach them a sewing stitch, or help them on the pianoforte.”

Becky resisted only the duchess’s last change.

“Did you intend to hire a wet nurse?” Her Grace asked.

Becky paused before she answered, as if she had to come a great distance to hear the question. “No,” Hugh answered for her. “She said she would feed our baby herself.”

The duchess narrowed her eyes, thinking, then nodded decisively. “It has been not quite two months, and you have fed before.”

Becky shook her head. The duchess said nothing more then, but must have spoken to Becky later. Hugh came back from signing correspondence to find the duchess watching benignly, and the wet nurse anxiously, as Belle suckled at Becky’s breast.

At first, Belle was as angry at the change as Becky, but the duchess persisted, and Belle was put to each of Becky’s breasts every two or three hours for four days.

“It is no use,” Becky said. “I have no milk.”

But that very afternoon, a delighted Belle came away too replete to suckle from her wet nurse, and an equally delighted duchess reported success.

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Cholera would have been a neat plot device

Some years ago, I read The Ghost Map, the story of John Snow’s careful plotting of the Cholera Outbreak of 1854, which led to the discovery that cholera is a waterbourne disease. The book I’ve just started was going to use cholera as a plot device. My hero is a recluse. My heroine is asked to bring his female dependents to him to escape a cholera epidemic at their school, but by the time she arrives at the house she realises that they’ve bought the disease with them. Sadly, the book is set in 1812, and a bit of research showed that the first outbreak in England didn’t start until 1831. In the video clip below, they talk about the 1832 outbreak, in which 55,000 people died, most of them poor and hungry.

 

I guess I’ll have to save cholera for another time. Meanwhile, there’s always typhus or smallpox. Or measles, come to that. Measles might work well!

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Join the library! (Regency-style)

My heroine Charis didn’t like much about the social rounds in Bath. Had her mother been prepared to pay the subscription she would have enjoyed the circulating library.

By 1814, many towns and most cities had at least one circulating library, perhaps run by a bookstore or printer, but often a stand-alone business. Books were expensive. A 3-volume novel cost the equivalent of 100 dollars in today’s money. Paying a yearly subscription to a library meant you could borrow books that would otherwise be out of your reach.

Rules for a Subscription Library

Circulating libraries became social places, where ladies could meet and be seen. The reading rooms often offered games, and the libraries might also sell other merchandise.

As a member, you could purchase a copy of the library’s catalogue (for about sixpence). You could choose your book from the catalogue, and take a couple home, then another couple when you’d finished those ones. (The number you could borrow at a time varied from library to library.)

What would they think of my library, which I ‘visit’ over the Internet, and which allows me to download 15 ebooks at a time? Or, for that matter, my personal ebook collection, which numbers in the 1000s, many of which have cost me less than five dollars?

(Charis appears in The Beast Next Door, a novella in Valentines from Bath.)

Also see:

The Circulating Library in Regency Times: https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/the-circulating-library-in-regency-times/

The Circulating Library:

https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/the-circulating-library-in-regency-times/
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Tea with Mrs Hackett

Why on earth, Eleanor wondered, had the duke her husband asked her to have this unlikable pair to afternoon tea? She knew he did business with the man, who continued to claim his naval ranking, though he had retired to run a large import export business.

But that did not require socialising with the man and his wife. The duke must owe Captain Hackett a large favour. He had even stayed to exchange a few pleasantries, before carrying Hackett off with him for a game of billiards, leaving the ladies, as he said, to get to know one another.

Mrs Hackett, a quiet faded woman who had said little in the past half hour looked alarmed at her husband’s desertion.

“Another cup of tea?” The duchess asked her. Mrs Hackett bobbed her head and pushed her cup forward. Eleanor prepared the cup with cream into sugars while she contemplated how to draw the woman out.

In the end, she decided on bluntness. “It seems our husbands mean me to be of some assistance to you, Mrs Hackett. Perhaps if you can tell me what it is you need?”

Mrs Hackett blushed. “I am so embarrassed, your grace. I hardly know how to ask. Is it true what they say? Does your husband expect you to acknowledge his by-blows?”

Eleanor had seldom been asked a more impertinent question. “I hardly think, Mrs Hackett,” but the woman compounded her rudeness by interrupting.

“I know I am being very impolite and forward, but indeed the captain assured me that such was quite acceptable in the best families, and that you were a lady who took such circumstances in your stride. That is why he asked the duke if I might meet you. I know it is most presumptuous of me, but, your grace, I have no one else to advise me.”

Despite herself, Eleanor found her sympathies were engaged. “You had better tell me the whole story.”

Mrs Hackett’s words tumbled over themselves as she explained her failure to bear her husband a son, and his determination to have a boy of his own blood to inherit his business.” The captain, it seemed, had such a son — a boy born to his mistress after he had dismissed the girl.

“He plans to claim the lad, and give him his name, and bring him up with our daughters. Tell me, your grace, is he mad?”

Captain Hackett is one of the villains in Unkept Promises, the fourth novel in the Golden Redepenning series, which I’m currently writing. The boy in question and his half-sisters, whose father is Jules Redepenning, are currently on their way to England with Mia Redepenning, who has adopted them after their mother died of consumption.

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Tea with Cecily

 

Cecily was older. Of course she was. More than fifteen years had passed since the season they shared; the season that ended with Eleanor’s broken heart and Cecily’s marriage. She and her husband Alec had taken a long wedding trip, to see the Orient, they said. And then… nothing. Until she appeared again in England, just a few weeks ago.

Through the ritual of greeting, of inviting her guest to be seated, of preparing a cup of tea for each of them, Eleanor kept shooting glances, comparing the composed and still lovely woman before her with the gangling clumsy teen Eleanor had taken under her wing at first meeting. She glowed with happiness, but the lines barely visible on her brow and around her eyes spoke of suffering and pain. What had happened in all those years away?

They spoke of nothings: the weather, the fashions, who was and who wasn’t in Town, until all of the maids had left the room and they were alone. Then they both spoke at once.

“Did you wish to hear of…?” Cecily began.

“Lady Sutton and Lady Grace Winderfield tell me…” said Eleanor, stopping herself and waving her hand for Cecily to carry on.

Cecily nodded, as if Eleanor had confirmed what Cecily had been about to ask. “I met with Lord James Winderfield late last year. That is what you wished to know, is it not, Your Grace? Where I saw him, and how?”

“It is,” Eleanor agreed, grateful that decades of training and practice allowed her to keep her face and posture from reflecting her inner turmoil. “His sisters told me he was alive, but little more.” Married. To an Eastern princess. With children. Happy, or so Cecily had told them. It was silly to feel hurt. Did she expect him to wear the willow for her for a lifetime? She did for him, but look at the alternative! She had never been given the least incentive to fall in love with the tyrant she had been forced to marry. She was glad James was happy. Of course she was. Or would be, given time.

Cecily had kept on talking while she scolded herself, asking her something. Ah. Yes. Was she certain she wished to know the details?

“You loved him, once,” Cecily said, her voice kind.

She could answer that. “He was a dear friend, Mrs McInnes, and I have grieved him as dead these many years. I would dearly love to know how he survived, and how he now lives. And he has children, his sisters say. Many children. Please. Start at the beginning and tell me all about him.”

James Winderfield is hero of Paradise Regained, in which Cecily McInnes is the other woman. Paradise Regained can be found in Follow Your Star Home, the Bluestocking Belles’ 2019 holiday anthology, now on pre-release. See the link for more information and preorder links.

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Tea with Lady Avery

“Such a nuisance, Perkins,” Her Grace the Duchess of Haverford consoled her coachman. “But I know you will have it repaired as soon as you may.”

She was sitting on a blanket spread over a grassy bank, perfectly comfortable, and had been hardly at all bruised when the coach lost its wheel, as she assured her companion, Adeline.

“I’ve sent to the nearest village, ma’am, but they don’t have a wheelwright, seems like, and Chipping Sodbury is a good fifteen minutes ride, if these coach horses of Lord Aldridge’s will let us ride them. I don’t like to leave you out here in the open, and that’s a fact.”

The duchess looked up at the clear blue sky, and around at the four strong outriders who stood ready to guard her. What Perkins thought might happen to her in this quiet country lane while he and the two footmen attended to the coach, she had no idea. But the coachman refused to send one of the outriders to the market town, and the outriders would not leave her side nor their horses, so Perkins must be on his way or she would be sitting on this bank until nightfall.

“I shall be perfectly comfortable,” she soothed.

At that moment, a man came hurrying into view; a tall young gentleman with a flaming thatch of red hair displayed when his tricorne hat tumbled off in his haste. The gentleman looked familiar, and in moments the duchess had placed him. “Lord Avery,” she called. “How pleasant to see you.”

Lord Avery reached them, after a quick glance that took in the broken wheel and the hovering attendants.

“Your Grace,” he said, bowing. “I am sorry for your troubles. May I offer you the comfort of Avery Hall and the company of my mother while your men see to the coach?”

The duchess accepted with pleasure, and soon she and Adeline had washed, taken advantage of the conveniences, and been escorted down to where the dowager Lady Avery waited in a pleasant sitting room on the ground floor.

“My apologies for not rising to greet you, Your Grace,” the lady said. Ah. Yes. Eleanor had heard that Lady Avery had been injured in the accident that had killed the previous Lord Avery. Eleanor rather thought that the viscountcy was now in better hands, but it would not be polite to say so.

“My condolences on the death of your husband,” she murmured. “Is that a Merlin chair? How clever.”

Lady Avery showed off the attributes of her chair with every sign of delight. “And I am to have one for outside, as well,” she said. “Like the ones they use in Bath, designed for rough paths. The chair designer was here last weekend, and I had the most wonderful time. Oh, but I do run on. Will you and Miss Grenford take tea, Your Grace.”

The duchess accepted on behalf of her and Adeline, but her mind was carefully sorting through the little bits of news and gossip that came to her attention in her copious correspondence. Yes. That was it. “Tell me more about the chair designer, Lady Avery,” she said. “A carriage maker’s daughter, and a talented designer of chairs, I have heard.” And, according to Lady Cresthover, who was in some way related to one of her aunts, the next Lady Avery, however unlikely such a marriage might be.

Minerva Bradshaw, the chair designer mentioned above, is the heroine of Candle’s Christmas Chair, in which Lord Randal Avery does not allow the difference in their social classes to prevent him from courting the lovely woman from whom he is buying his mother’s Christmas present. Click on the book link for more.

I first met Min and her viscount in Farewell to Kindness (which is Rede’s, the Earl of Chirbury’s, story). Min provided the invalid chair that Rede’s cousin, Alex Redepenning, has collapse under him during a vigorous chair based rendition of a line dance. I wondered how a carriage-maker’s daughter with a business making invalid chairs came to marry a viscount, and next thing I knew, a tall skinny viscount with bright red hair turned up at her carriage-maker’s shop to order a chair as a Christmas present for his mother.

More about the history of wheel chairs

Tea with Min