WIP Wednesdays

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Family in WIP Wednesday

Today, I’ve typed THE END in To Tame the Wild Rake, which is the fourth novel in The Return of the Mountain King, and the long-awaited love story for the Marquis of Aldridge. My excerpt is from that novel, and shows Aldridge with his half-brother, David. The two have become easier with one another since their confrontations in Revealed in Mist (four and a half years ago in author time, seven years in book time). But there’s still an edge there.

“I don’t like this unrest in the slums,” Aldridge said to his half-brother, David Wakefield, as they rode side by side to Winshire house to visit their newly discovered nephew.

“It is bad,” Wakefield agreed. “Arson attacks, riots, assaults—all seemingly unrelated, and all against philanthropic organisations.”

“Supported by the Haverfords, the Winshires, or both,” Aldridge pointed out.

“Which is not necessarily a link,” Wakefield cautioned. “The ladies of both families are heavily involved in many different charitable ventures.”

Aldridge raised an incredulous brow. “Are you telling me that you don’t see Wharton’s hand in this?”

Wakefield shrugged. “So far, the incidents appear to trace back to widely disparate sources. Individuals with a grudge, such as the chimney sweep who broke into the orphanage on Fairview Street with ten of his mates, purportedly to find boys to replace those he claims the trustees stole from him, or the brothel keeper with a grudge against Vicar Basingstoke’s mission to offer alternative occupations to sex workers.”

“It’s Wharton,” Aldridge insisted.

“You could be right. But I can’t prove it, Aldridge. It may be a series of coincidences.”

Aldridge shook his head. “I don’t believe in that level of coincidence.”

Wakefield grimaced. “Whether it is a plot or coincidence, those behind the attacks have overstretched. The little people of the slums have been hurt, and my agents can scarcely keep up with all those wishing to slip us bits of information.”

They broke off the conversation as they moved into single file to pass a stopped cart that blocked most of the street, and only resumed once they had turned the corner into a wider avenue.

“A dozen people have been taken into custody, all of them linked to at least one of the crimes, none of them to all of them. And none of them are known to be working for Wharton. I have to follow the evidence. I’d hate to miss something by concentrating on him when something else is going on — or someone else is behind all this turmoil. But if there is a link, I’ll find it.”

“I’ve suggested that Mama and the girls leave early for Christmas with our sister Matilda, but Her Grace insists that they have accepted several invitations for the next week.” Aldridge sighed, then shook his head. “At least she has agreed that none of them will go anywhere without armed footmen in attendance.”

“Your men are well trained,” Wakefield agreed, “and if the ladies will stay out of the slums, they should remain safe. So far all of the attacks have been in areas no lady should visit.”

Aldridge response was a rude noise, which drew a smile from his brother. Like the Winderfield ladies, the Haverford ladies took a hands-on approach to philanthropy, and several of the institutions they supported were based in areas that Aldridge would prefer his ladies to stay away from.

“It could not come at a worse time,” he told Wakefield. “I have to leave in the next couple of days if I am to get to Haverford Castle and back in time to escort the duchess to the Hamners’. I need to see the duke’s condition for myself and make sure the doctors are very clear about what I expect from them. If I don’t go now, while the weather is reasonable, it could be a month or even two before I am able to make the trip.”

“What do the doctors say?” Wakefield asked.

Aldridge snorted again, this sound closer to disgust than laughter. “Three of them, and all of them with a different opinion. One wants to dose him with mercury. One insists on a scalpel to remove the worst of the growths. One counsels leaving him to his well-deserved misery.”

He nudged his horse closer to Wakefield and lowered his voice. “His mind is all but gone, David. This time last year, he was reliving times past, when he was still one of the foremost rakes of the ton and a power in the realm. Now—or so my people say—he’s little more than an animal, and a wounded animal at that. A dangerous, nasty animal driven by constant pain.”

“How long?” Wakefield asked.

“How long can he last? None of the three doctors in attendance is prepared to give an opinion. The disease will kill him, but Bentham says he could survive a long time in this condition. Or his heart might give out tomorrow. You’ll look in on Tony while I’m gone? He should be safe with the Winderfields, and Lady Charlotte says they will take him to Shropshire with them when they leave for Winds’ Gate.”

“The broken arm will slow the boy down for a while, and even someone as crazy as Wharton is not going to make a direct assault on Winshire’s mansion,” Wakefield reminded him.

“True. I take it you’ll be telling Winshire what you’ve told me about the turmoil in the slums?” Aldridge didn’t mind Wakefield working for the Duke of Winshire, but it amused him to let his half-brother know that he knew about it.

Wakefield didn’t rise to the bait. “Of course. And I’ll keep you both informed as I find out more.”

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The marriage mart on WIP Wednesday

The marriage market aspect of London’s Season is a staple of Regency novels. How does our heroine react? In this week’s episode from To Claim the Long-Lost Lover, I have my heroine and her sister discussing her strategy: a list of possibles. If you have a heroine seeking a groom–or refusing to do so, please share an excerpt in the comments.

The twin’s list grew through November. Society was greeting those returning to the capital as Parliament began its sessions after the summer recess. Sarah and Charlotte attended entertainments carefully chosen to meet as many suitable gentlemen as possible. After each event, they added names, though they also crossed some out. They wrote notations against every potential candidate they encountered.

“Hythe is probably not ready to set up his nursery,” Sarah said, after meeting the earl in question at a dinner party. She wrote this next to his name. That done, probably was not certainly. He stayed on the list.

“Aldridge probably is ready to set up his nursery,” Charlotte noted. The cross through Aldridge’s name had been the subject of some debate. The twins agreed that the Duke of Haverford’s terminal illness meant his heir, the Marquis of Aldridge, must be in need of a bride, but otherwise disputed his suitability for Sarah.

Charlotte argued that Sarah was not seeking a love match, and that Aldridge met all her specifications for a husband. “He would be a kind, courteous, and respectful husband, Sarah. He is not out for your money or your social position—he has more than enough of both. You get on well with his mother. And they have so much scandal of their own that they’re hardly likely to cavil at yours.”

Sarah countered with all of the marquis’s well-known character flaws, and then won the argument with a sneak attack. “Besides, while I do not want a husband who loves me, nor do I want one who has been dangling after my sister these past four years. He wants you, Charlotte, not me. Besides, even if I was prepared for the embarrassment of being married to a man who loves my sister, I doubt if Aldridge is going to accept such a substitution.”

Charlotte shook her head. “It is not love. It can’t be. I appear to be a suitable bride for a man of his rank. That is all. But I am not, Sarah. You know I am not.”

“I know nothing of the kind.” Sarah enfolded her sister in an embrace. “I shall not hound you, my love. But neither shall I marry Aldridge.”

Someone would. It should be Charlotte, but Sarah understood the reasons for her sister’s reservations, and would say no more. “What of Lord Colyford?” she asked. “I have no objection to a widower, and I have seen his little girls at the park. They appear delightful.”

“I’ll put him on the list,” Charlotte agreed. “Hurley? He seems pleasant enough.”

“He can go on the list,” Sarah decided, “but I remain to be convinced he has substance to go with his charm.”

They added a couple more names and crossed out that of a man who had over-imbibed at Lady Forrest’s musical evening. Apparently, he was developing a reputation for becoming drunk and assaulting the maids.

 

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Authorly devices in WIP Wednesday

Part of the fun of writing is coming up with solutions for ways to tell the story that keep the reader engrossed while giving them the information they need. My current Work in Progress, To Tame the Wild Rake, depends on the past history of the protagonists, both as a couple and as individuals. Managing this in conversation and reflection proved tedious, and I’m not fond of flashbacks. So I’m adding the occasional interlude, taking the name from music to mean a short scene set in a different place and time to the story in the chapters. Here’s the first. (If you have an authorly device you’d like to share, pop it in the comments.)

Applemorn Hall estate, July 1807

“Mathematics is truth,” the girl told Aldridge, her thin face glowing with passion. “It is beauty. The world is patterns of logic and shapes, and the task of mathematicians is to understand those patterns, Lord Aldridge.”

Aldridge was drunk, but not so much that he didn’t know he was in dangerous territory. He should not be trespassing on the wrong side of the pond that marked the boundary of the estate he was visiting. He should not be alone in this quiet folly with a girl who was both younger and better born than he had at first assumed. He should not be listening, enraptured, to her explanation about why she was beguiling her convalescence from an embarrassing childhood illness by solving puzzles.

Richport’s house was hidden from their sight by a small tree-covered hill that rose on the other side of the pond. It was filled, as Richport’s houses tended to be, with willing women, good liquor, wagers of all kinds, and countless inducements to forget the sins and follies that haunted him.

Yet he had been here for nearly an hour, in peaceful conversation—intellectual conversation—with a chit not yet out of the schoolroom, and he was already planning to return tomorrow.

“You know my name, my lady. May I know yours?”

She blushed, then, and cast her eyes around as if a suggestion might be written up in the rafters of the folly. “I am called Charrie.” 

He looked at the basket that held cherry pits, all that was left of the fruit they had been sharing, and raised one eyebrow. 

“Not Cherry,” she told him. “Charrie.” 

“Cherry suits you better,” he told her, though he was by no means drunk enough to explain why. The alcohol must be clearing from his system, though, for an errant memory surfaced. Didn’t Elfingham refer to his twin sisters as Charrie and Sarrie? And didn’t Elfingham’s grandfather have an estate somewhere in this area? 

She was Lady Charlotte Winderfield, then, and the granddaughter of the Duke of Winshire. Highly eligible, then. Still too young, but she would be marriageable in a year or two.

And if he was thinking such foolish thoughts, it was high time he found another drink. He had not been sober for more than a month, and he had no intention of starting now. He stood.

“I must take my leave, Cherry, but I will visit tomorrow, if you will admit me. I shall present my card at the door.” He gestured to the open side of the structure.

She giggled at his fooling, but said, “If we are to be friends, and if you are to call me Cherry,” the blush deepened, “then I shall call you Anthony. That is your name, is it not?”

Hardly. It was one of several names that had been bestowed on him at baptism, but no one had ever addressed him by anything but his title. He was Aldridge even to his closest relatives, and would remain so until his father died and he became Haverford. If she called him Anthony, he would look around to see who was being addressed.

Still, fair was fair. If he insisted on calling her by a name he had selected, she had every right to choose what to call him.

“Then we shall be Anthony and Cherry. Friend.”

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Secrets in WIP Wednesday

Secrets can be a useful device in a plot, adding mystery or providing conflict or both. When I sent To Claim the Long-Lost Lover out to beta reading, one of the readers suggested I’d disclosed the most important secret too soon– in the Preface, in fact. It remained a secret from the hero till half way through the book, and from the ton for longer, but the reader knows it. After some thought, I decided to leave it. The couple have other secrets, from the reader, from each other and from Society. And the focus of the plot is their steadily growing trust in one another. Still, another author would have made a different decision, and it remains to be seen what readers will make of it.

Meanwhile, here’s an excerpt from that Preface.

“I am sorry to take you from your work, Your Grace. Uncle James, I mean.”

The duke shrugged. “The work exists to provide for those who are part of the duchy, Sarah. From you and the rest of my family to the least tenant’s child and the youngest scullery maid. If I cannot make time for the people, and particularly for my own family, there is no point to the work.”

Her grandfather, father, and brother had assumed the duchy and all its dependents existed to provide for them; for their wealth, power and pleasure. Mulling on that, and its costs to her and all she held dear, she barely noticed the aide delivering the tray, and was startled when her uncle handed her a cup of tea he had prepared himself.

The gesture—a man of his stature doing women’s work—reassured her as nothing else had, and she blurted her errand. “Uncle James, I want my dowry. I want to retire to the country so I can raise my son myself.”

The duke’s only reaction was a slight widening of the eyes. He took a sip of his own tea before he responded. “Your son. Are you with child, Sarah? Or has a great nephew been hidden from me these past two years since I arrived in England?”

The phrasing of the last question broke the dam on Sarah’s resentment and it burst out. “He has been hidden from me these past six years, sir. Since the day he was born and taken from me, though I begged to hold him just one time.” She stopped to blink back angry tears.

If one of your characters has a secret you’re willing to share with readers, if not with your other characters, feel free to share an excerpt in the comments.

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Conflict on WIP Wednesday

Writing about twins in a double time line, with a book for each, is having its moments. But at least both heroines have someone to talk to. In the following excerpt, my sisters mention key conflicts they need to resolve to find happiness. I’d love to see an excerpt from you where your hero or heroine discusses their principal conflicts.

“You are up early,” Sarah said, appearing in the doorway. “Shall I send for your hot chocolate?”

“A coffee this morning, I think,” Charlotte told her.

Sarah retreated to speak to one of the footmen who waited in the hall to run messages. Charlotte followed her into their shared sitting room. “Could you not sleep, dearest?” she asked.

“No more than you, I think, and for similar reasons.” Sarah sighed. “Are you sure that you cannot marry Aldridge, Charlotte? One has only to see him watching you to know he cares, and he has been remarkably faithful.”

No point in arguing. Sarah knew her too well. “I have given him no encouragement,” Charlotte pointed out.

Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Which makes it all the more remarkable.”

Charlotte shrugged. “Have you forgotten how I found him when I went for his help?” She had told Sarah the whole story the last night. Charlotte blushed at the memory of Aldridge’s naked body with the two women hovering over it. How was she ever going to look Lady Thirby and her friend in the eyes again? Mind you, at least she had been clothed.

Sarah laughed. “You know as well as I do that the Thirby woman has been chasing him this past two seasons. He is not made of granite, Charlotte. He has been a rake, after all, and you have, as you just said, given him no encouragement.”

“Nor will I,” Charlotte insisted, reining in her errant imagination. “You know I can’t, Sarah.”

“You could tell him why not,” Sarah suggested. “You want him; I know you do. Shouldn’t you let him decide whether what he would lose is more important that what he would gain?”

A knock on the door heralded the maid with their morning beverages. Charlotte contented herself with a glare at her sister. When the door closed behind the maid, Sarah showed she’d understood the message. “I am sorry, Charlotte. It is just that I wish you happy.”

“And am I to wish you happy?” Charlotte asked.

Sarah blushed. “I do not know, sister. Uncle James says that I must listen to what Nate has to say, and I know he is right. I do not dare hope, but I find myself doing so, anyway.”

Whereas Charlotte had no hope at all. Only a yearning that could never be fulfilled, and a grief for the life that should have been hers.

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Inner dialogue, ghosts, and imaginary mentors in WIP Wednesday.

To Claim the Long-Lost Lover has gone to the editor, and I’m about to work on the second half of To Tame the Wild Rake. But first, I’m looking at what comes next. Either Chaos Come Again or The Darkness Within, and I’ve already started The Darkness Within. In The Darkness Within, my hero has an inner dialogue going on with someone called Sebastian. Sebastian harasses, advises, and goads him. Max thinks he is being haunted. It could be a ghost. Or it could be a memory. Or perhaps my hero is unbalanced. I think I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide.

If your protagonist talks to herself or to a dead aunt or to anyone else invisible to all the other characters in the story, please share an excerpt in the comments. Here is mine.

“Stedham was looking for a home; a purpose,” Max told Sebastian. The lieutenant had tried being a steward on an estate, and moved on. He had worked for a while in a lawyer’s office, and a few months more as secretary to a Member of Parliament. The last address the sister had for him was a vicarage, and the last contact a cryptic note from the vicar. Max was heading there now.

“Paul hasn’t been able to settle since he returned from the wars,” the sister had told Max.

Her husband’s estimation was harsher. “He cannot stick to anything. Some of those ex-military men are like that. They need the adventure, the thrills, and they’re no use in ordinary life. He should join up again.”

Max didn’t agree. “Stedham was a good soldier, but he wasn’t made for that life. Not really,” he told the man, but he might as well have talked to the wall.

“You don’t know him like we do,” the brother-in-law said.

“That man wants his wife to himself,” Sebastian commented. “I know jealousy when I see it.”

Max thought the ghost might be right. Sebastian usually was right about the darker emotions. “Stedham needs a place to belong, but his sister’s home wasn’t it.” Stedham could hardly have missed the lack of welcome. Was that why he stopped writing to his sister? But he’d only stayed with the pair for the first two months after arriving home from France in 1814. He’d continued to write faithfully, week after week, until a few months ago.

“No one belongs,” Sebastian argued. “Belonging is an illusion, and the ones you love most are the ones who most hurt you.”

Max ignored the oblique reference to Sebastian’s death.

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Reunited on WIP Wednesday

Morland, George; The Soldier’s Return; Lady Lever Art Gallery; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/the-soldiers-return-102607

A lot of my short stories and novellas use the childhood sweethearts reunited plotline. It’s fun, for one thing. It lets me use more mature characters, for another. And, in shorter fiction, it gives credibility, since the romance can continue from where it left off once they are reunited, rather than needing to develop from first attraction to happy ending in just a few thousand words.

Here’s the opening of my next newsletter short story, due to be sent out in the next few days. If you have a reunion scene, please feel free to share it in the comments.

At first, Magda thought it a prank. There Luke was, stretched out prone across the vegetable garden between the onions and the cabbages, crushing the spring carrots. At any moment, he would leap up laughing, as he had once before, long ago, when they were children.

Perhaps not a prank, then, but a humorous reminder of the years of their friendship, long ago, before the earl’s younger son was sent away to join the army a month from his eighteenth birthday. He’d been gone for fifteen years, until she spied him in the tavern this afternoon, drinking with their old friends from the village, Will from the tavern and Ned from the forge.

After Luke left, Will and Ned had not been able to stand out against their parents and maintain—at least in public—their friendship with the witch’s by-blow granddaughter against the steadfast enmity of the wives of both the squire and the earl.

They were sisters, Luke’s mother Lady Compton, now the Dowager Countess, and Lady Frederick Barlow, widow of the squire who had preferred to ignore Magda’s existence and mother of the squire who, even today, made her life as difficult as he could.

Despite their parents and the two ladies, Will and Ned watched over her from a distance, keeping the squire’s sons from any but the more the subtle forms of persecution. Several times they had risked their own necks, or at least the displeasure of the two most prominent families in the district, to protect her from unpleasant advances and outright assault by nasty friends visiting the young gentlemen of those families.

Old friendship, too, must have been the reason why Will employed her as a cook, once he took over his father’s tavern. A job meant wages so she could look after Gran, and save a nest egg to escape from this place.

Luke was still lying on her carrots. Perhaps he did not realise she was there. “Luke?” Though she supposed, now that she was no longer fifteen nor he eighteen, she should call him Lord Lucas. Or Major De Grenville, perhaps. “Major De Grenville?”

He did not move. Did not spring to his feet, his sea-blue eyes dancing, asking her to share the joke. Now that she was closer, she saw the bruise on his cheek, and a trickle of blood, dried now, that had meandered down his neck from the hair at the back of his head.

She leaned closer; skimmed her fingers over the matted evidence of an assault or fall. Though if a fall, he must have descended from a height head first, for the lump was high up in his hair and had split with the force of the blow.

Magda felt for the pulse in Luke’s neck, and released a breath she had not been aware of holding when it throbbed, strong and even, under her fingers. She pressed his left shoulder with her hand and spoke to him again. “Major De Grenville?”

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Relatives on WIP Wednesday

I am always tempted to commit family saga. I really have to rein myself in during short stories, but in the rest of my books, especially my regencies, I have plenty of room, since my characters wander back and forth between books and even series. I have relatives. Lots of relatives. And the number is growing now that quite a few of them are married.

I particularly like women relatives. Some of them are villains, some of them silly, but many of them are my heroine’s best friends and greatest supports. At the very least, they give her someone to talk to, someone to encourage her to follow her dreams, as the best female friends do. Give us an excerpt, if you’d like, with relatives of the hero or heroine in your work in progress. Mine is from To Claim the Long Lost Lover.

Within the hour, Sarah came looking for Nate. “My mother and my aunts wish to meet you, Nate.” He took her hand, feeling unaccountably nervous. Lady Sutton had every reason to despise the man who had run off with her daughter and then abandoned her, even if he had reasons, good reasons, for both actions.

He felt no better when he arrived in the drawing room, where three great ladies of Society sat side by side like justices in a courtroom, though they were seating on a long sofa behind a low table. Around them a number of other richly dressed ladies occupied chairs and coaches. In his fancy, they would be the jury in the coming trial.

Sarah bobbed a curtsy. “Aunt Eleanor? Mama? Aunt Georgie? May I make known to you my husband, Lord Bentham?”

Nate bowed to each of them. He had seen the duchess at various entertainments this season; Lady Sutton, he recognised from years ago, when she’d attended church from Applemorn, which made the third Lady Georgiana, the duke’s sister.

Sarah continued around the room. Charlotte, he knew, and Ruth. He also recognised the duchess’s ward, Miss Grenford, with whom he had danced on the night he first waltzed with Sarah, who sat side by side with her sister, Lady Hamner.

The lady with the infant on her knee was the younger Lady Sutton. She was married to the duke’s eldest son, who had arrived this afternoon with his wife and daughter, and immediately taken command of a large segment of the battle planning that continued in the study.

Nate was also presented to Lady Georgiana’s friend, Miss Chalmers, and Lady Rosemary, another daughter of the duke.

Once he had been conducted around the room, he was instructed to sit. “There, Lord Bentham, if you please,” said the dowager Lady Sutton. She pointed to a chair that had been placed a few feet away from and facing the long sofa. Again, he was uncomfortable reminded of a trial, an impression that was reinforced when Lady Sutton and Lady Georgiana nodded at the duchess, and she spoke.

“We are Sarah’s godmother, mother, and aunt, Lord Bentham. We have stood beside her and suffered with her since you persuaded her to cast propriety to the wind and abscond with you and then disappeared.”

She put up a hand when Nate opened his mouth, and he closed it again. She waited for a moment, as if to see whether he intended to continue his interruption, then nodded to Lady Sutton, who continued, “We understand that you were not responsible for your own abduction, but we wish to hear your explanation for the rest. Why did you elope with Sarah? Why did you not write to her? Why did you not return as soon as you were able?”

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Caring on WIP Wednesday


I do love a strong masculine hero who shows his caring side. One of the scenes in Farewell to Kindness, where the hero tenderly washes his beloved’s wounds, is based on an experience in my own life. I’d been in a car accident, and had been through the windscreen. My betrothed came to me at my mother’s house, and gently washed all the blood and glass out of my hair.

Today’s theme is caring for one’s beloved, and I have a piece from To Claim the Long-Lost Lover. Please feel free to share an excerpt in the comments.

Nate fussed over the scrapes and cuts on Sarah’s wrists, the bruises she’d accumulated when she was being manhandled. Wilson had ordered up a hot bath, and he insisted on staying while she undressed so that he could inspect all of her wounds.

Since she was a small girl, Sarah had only ever been unclothed in front of two other people—and that rarely—her maid, when in her bath, and her husband, in the dark and under the sheets on the three nights—four now—she had spent in bed with him. Stripping in front of him in full daylight had her blushing like a young maiden, which she had not been for eight years.

He set her at ease with his manner: crisp and matter of fact, focused on checking that her injuries were no worse than she said. He finished by taking her gently in his arms and pressing a tender kiss to her forehead. “Now have a long soak, my love.” He stepped back and held out his hand to help her into the water. The scrapes stung as she lowered herself, but once she was immersed, the heat felt wonderful.

Nate knelt beside the tub, so his head was close to hers. “Wilson is bringing you a soothing herbal tea. If you will permit, dearest heart, I shall go up to see Elias. I daresay some of today’s doings might have reached the nursery, though I hope his nursemaid will have had enough sense to keep it from him. If not, I will be able to reassure him that you are home and well.”

A swift knock at the door was followed by Wilson’s entrance, with a tea tray. She could smell some of Cook’s delicious drop scones, and suddenly realised that she was hungry.

“Go, of course, she told him. “Tell him I shall be up to see him later.”

“After you have had a sleep,” Nate told her, firmly. “I shall be back by the time the water cools, and shall dress those cuts, then tuck you into bed. Wilson, stay with your mistress and make sure she doesn’t go to sleep in her bath.”

It had always annoyed Sarah when other people made decisions for her, but it was very nice, she decided, when the person doing the deciding loved her to distraction, had suffered when she was taken, and needed her to let him take care of her. Her hero.

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Action heroes on Work-in-Progress Wednesday

I do like a story with action–where something happens of more consequence that who asks whom to dance or what trim is purchased for a hat or gown. So my poor characters are kidnapped, chased, beaten, battled with, stolen from, abandoned, operated on, shipwrecked…

As always, I invite you to post an excerpt from your current work-in-progress; this week, an action scene.

Mine is from To Claim the Long-Lost Lover.

Nate held on as Aldridge raced his phaeton towards the address Lady Charlotte had given them, weaving close to buildings, feathering past carriages, missing pedestrians by inches, turning corners on a single wheel.

Nate, Drew, and the duke had been about to go upstairs to the nursery when Aldridge arrived, asking anxiously for Charlotte. He had word of a trap set in Clerkenwell; someone who planned to compromise and marry Sarah’s sister. What would the kidnappers do when they found out they had the wrong sister, and a married woman, at that?

If they arrived in time, it would be thanks to Aldridge’s driving skill. On any other day, Nate would be demanding that he slow down, take care. But with Sarah in trouble, he couldn’t go fast enough. He just gripped the side rail of the seat and gritted his teeth, and prayed as he had never prayed before.

How would he tell Elias if anything had happened to her? How would he survive losing her again?

Aldridge hauled the horses to a halt beside a carriage with the Winshire coat of arms. “You’re Lady Sarah’s driver?” he asked the man who sat nervously atop the carriage, a musket across his knees.

“Aye, sir.” The coachman looked towards a narrow gap between the buildings. “I’m waiting for Lady Bentham.”

Nate leapt to the ground, the pistol Uncle James had given him in one hand and his dagger in the other. “How long since my wife went in there, driver?”

“Perhaps fifteen minutes, sir?” the driver answered. “Is there something wrong?”

Aldridge shouted at a man who was lounging against a wall. “You there?!” The man spat a stream of yellow bile into the street and sneered. A coin appeared between Aldridge’s fingers and disappeared as quickly.

“I am the Marquis of Aldridge and I am giving you two options. You make sure no one touches my carriage or my horses or those of Lady Bentham, and you get a crown. Anything happens to either team or rig, and I find you and extract your brains through your nostrils, burn them, and sell them as pie filling. Your choice.” He held up the coin. “A shilling now, the rest when I come back.”

The man straightened. “Done.” He held out a hand and caught the coin that Aldridge tossed even as Nate ran past him into the alley.