WIP Wednesdays

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Older heroes and heroines on WIP Wednesday

Do you enjoy stories with older characters as the main protagonists? If you’ve written one, please share an excerpt in the comments. I’m currently writing the last book in the Paradise Tryptych: the happy ever after for my Duchess of Haverford and the man she loves. It starts something like this.

Eleanor was tired of wearing black; tired of dresses with minimal trim and accessories that repeated the dismal colour. She hated the unspoken rules that restricted the types of activity a widow might enjoy. She missed her friends and her usual social round. She despised the hypocrisy that expected her to make an outward show of mourning a cruel despot who had never shown her a particle of affection or consideration, and who would have consumed every vestige of her will and destroyed all of her happiness if she had not found ways to manage him.

Above all, she was bored, bored, bored. No. That was not her predominant emotion. She would be honest with herself though she dissembled to the rest of the world. The feeling that currently ruled her life was grief, but not for Haverford.

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Brothers on WIP Wednesday

Or sisters. Sisters would be fine. Share an excerpt that features a brother or sister or similar age cousin to your hero or heroine. I’m just finishing my beta draft for the next Bluestocking Belles box set, and I have a rather lovely brother. Awkward, much? Yes, quite a bit. But he means well. In the excerpt below, he decides a family connection will do a better job of presenting his sister than he can.

Chloe changed the subject. “I am visiting Lady Seahaven and the Bigglesworth sisters tomorrow morning. Aunt Swithin, will you come with me? I can go with my maid, if you prefer.”

Martin surprised her. “I will escort you, Chloe. I wish to pay my respects to Lady Seahaven, and I should visit our sisters.”

“They will be thrilled, Martin.” Mama had given her second husband, the Earl of Seahaven, two daughters, Emma and Merry. They had remained with the Earl of Seahaven when Mama died, and Uncle Swithin insisted on Chloe being returned to her brother’s household.

Chloe had kept in touch in the intervening years, but Martin had only met his half-sisters after Uncle Swithin’s death.

“Lady Dorothy was telling me about their ball, Chloe, and I had an idea. What do you think of us asking Lady Seahaven to include you as one of her protégées?”

“She has been very kind about including me in when she and her step-daughters make visits,” Chloe observed. Lady Seahaven and the Bigglesworth sisters had started with some personal connections and a few recommendations from relatives, and had brokered them into introductions to most of York Society.

“Precisely,” Martin agreed. “They know many more people than we do, and their ball will be much better attended than any entertainment I could put on for you. But I would not wish you to be neglected in such a big crowd of sisters.”

Aunt Swithin cackled. “Only three sisters that count, Martin. Lady Seahaven is giving the ball for the Seahaven Diamonds, and quite right, too. Next to them, no one will notice that our Chloe, nor any other female, either.”

“Aunt Swithin,” Martin protested, “Chloe would make a fine match for any gentleman of discernment.”

“Josepha and the twins can only marry one man apiece,” Chloe pointed out, though privately she agreed with Aunt Swithin’s assessment. Short and dumpy as she was, she suffered by comparison to the four Bigglesworth sisters who were her age and older, but the three younger girls would have been reigning beauties even in a London Season.

They had been dubbed the Seahaven Diamonds after their first public appearance in York, and the sooner they selected from among their swarming suitors, the better all the other marriageable ladies in York would like it.

“Besides, Aunt Swithin, it isn’t just about the ball. If Lady Seahaven agrees to sponsor me, hostesses who are inviting the Seahavens will include me in their invitations. I will have many more opportunities to meet eligible gentlemen.” And much good it might do me, for I shall still be unfashionably plump, two years past twenty, and far too opinionated for most gentlemen.

Martin nodded. “That is what I thought. I shall ask Lady Seahaven, then, shall I? I will, of course, offer her the money I planned to spend on a party of some kind. Do you think that would be the right thing to do?”

Chloe nodded. “Absolutely.”

After dinner, he showed Chloe some books and trinkets he had brought for the little girls, including some for Lady Seahaven’s little Jane, who was only three. “If I am giving gifts to our sisters, I can’t leave the baby out,” he said.

Sometimes, Chloe was quite hopeful that, out from under Uncle Swithin’s shadow, Martin was becoming almost human.

When they saw her the next day, Lady Seahaven was delighted to take Chloe under her wing, “Though it seems silly for me to be your sponsor, Miss Tavistock, when you and I are the same age. At the very least, you must call me Patience, as your step-sisters do. When they are not calling me ‘Mama’ to tease me.”

She objected when Martin offered to help finance the ball, “and any other expenses you incurr by allowing Chloe to join you.”

“But, Lord Tavistock, your sister is part of the family. I cannot think it proper to charge you a fee.”

“The fact is, Lady Seahaven, that I am at a standstill,” Martin explained. “Patience and I were tutored at home, as you know, and our guardian was not a warm man. Nor were those social connections he did maintain at the right social level for a viscount’s sister. Aunt Swithin is as much out of here depth as I am, and besides, grows more peculiar by the day.” As Patience could see for herself, since Aunt Swithin had barely said good morning to her hostess before announcing that she would go and find Bess, who did not have cotton wool between her ears.

Martin leaned forward in his seat, gifting Patience with a winning smile. “If you will treat Chloe as one of your own flock, I am persuaded she will fare much better than my aunt and I could have managed on our own. I would not think of putting a monetary value on the advantage to Chloe of your sponsorship, compared to the poor launch I would have made of it. You are doing me an enormous favour, and all I can say is thank you. But I have budgeted for a season for Chloe, and it is only fair that the money I was going to spend doing a poor job should be given to you to help you do a far better one.”

Chloe was impressed by the speech, and so was Doro, who commented, “That is reasonable, Patience. Lord Tavistock’s money added to ours will allow us to make more of an impression than either of us could manage on our own.”

That settled, Martin was carried off to the schoolroom by an ecstatic pair of schoolgirls. At twelve and ten, and used to a house full of women, Emma and Merry were awed and fascinated by their adult brother.

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Rescues, Fights, and Other Action Scenes

Action scenes make reading interesting, as long as they make sense. I tend to act things out to see if they would work, which must be hilarious to any invisible bystanders. This week’s excerpt is from the novella I have to have done within the next week. My hero notices a woman being accosted and realises that it is someone he knows. If you have an action scene to share, please pop it in the comments.

He broke into a run. He would intervene to help any woman, but he’d seen that redingote before. Some primitive part of him had no doubt of the identification. Mine! it growled, and when one of the insolent tormenters dared to put a hand on Miss Tavistock’s arm, grinning at his companions, Dom had to fight back a red fog of rage.

Fighting eight men might feed the possessive beast, and he was confident they’d all walk away bleeding. But he couldn’t guarantee that they wouldn’t overwhelm him in the end, and then what would happen to Miss Tavistock?

He nudged one of the men out of his way and stepped into the circle, already talking, waving the pin he’d just pulled from his cravat. “I beg your pardon, my lady. I did not think it would take me so long. I found it, though.” He waved the pin with one hand and knocked the offensive hand from Miss Tavistock’s arm with the other, making it look purely incidental to taking her hand inside his elbow.

“When I suggested you stroll ahead, my dear lady, I did not intend you to take the shortcut to your brother’s home. Though I suppose we must hurry. Lord Tavistock will be sending out the servants to find you, and he may never let me escort you again if he finds I allowed you to step ahead of me.”

Several of the men stepped backward when he called Miss Tavistock ‘lady’, which is why he had done it. They fell further back when he mentioned Lord Tavistock. Dom could deal with the rest. Grooms, by the look of them. He raised a single brow as he pretended to notice them for the first time?

“Do you know these persons, my lady?” he asked, allowing his voice to drip doubt as thick as treacle.

“No, Lord Finchley, I do not,” Chloe replied. “I was just declaring my disinterest in any acquaintance.” Clever girl. Dropping his first name to give him a spurious title had several more of the grooms slinking back into their mews.

Dom allowed the other eyebrow to drift upwards as he fixed the ringleader with a glare. “You made a mistake,” he told the man. “Don’t compound it.”

But there’s alway at least one idiot. The man took a swing at him, just as one of the other grooms exclaimed, “Here, that’s Cap’n Cuckoo. Leave ’im be, Ted. That’s Do-or-Die Cuckoo, that is!”

The warning came too late for the idiot, whose blow had missed its target when Dom swayed to one side. The fist came in handy for tugging said idiot away from a collision with Miss Tolliver, which would have been a piece of impertinence too far.

Idiot stumbled a few feet away, propelled by the force of his missed swing, and then roared as he caught himself and turned back towards his tormentor. Oh dear. A bull-brain. The man who had recognised Dom was shouting further warnings at Idiot, who ignored him.

“Would you be kind enough to step to the side of the lane?” Dom murmured to Miss Tavistock, who further showed her intelligence by immediate compliance. She was out of the way just in time. Bull Idiot charged, both fist swinging. Again, Dom shifted out of the way, but this time, he stuck out a booted foot, so Bull Idiot hurtled into the dust of the alley.

He rose again, still roaring. In Dom’s peripheral vision, a few of the remaining bystanders clenched their fists and hunched forward. Those on one side halted at a few words from Miss Tavistock. On the other by the groom who’d called Dom by his old army nickname interposed himself between the would-be assailants and the battle.

Dom was, for a few moments, too busy to pay any more attention to those who were watching, as he allowed Bull Idiot a glancing blow so Dom could get close enough to finish the fight. A kick to the family jewels, a fist to the chin as Bull Idiot bent in half, the side of the hand to the back of the neck as he went down.

Dom stepped over the groaning man and offered his arm to Miss Tavistock. “Shall we continue our walk, my lady?”

 

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Backstory in WIP Wednesday

I write a joined-up Regency world; one in which the families in the Upper Ten Thousand are related in a complex network of kinships, friendships, and other associations. People from different books and even different series went to school together, or use the services of the same private enquiry agent or the same bookshop of restaurant. They attend one another’s wedding and stand as godparents for one another’s children. I didn’t set out to do that, but it is just the way I think. One of my cross-series families is the Haverfords, particularly the Duchess of Haverford and her eldest son, the Marquis of Aldridge. Since Aldridge’s HEA is being published this month, more than six years after he first appeared on the published page, I’m publishing some of the Haverford backstories on a website for the purpose. https://haverfordhouse.judeknightauthor.com/ Go check it out. I’ve also written some descriptions of the houses the family owns, and I’m publishing extracts from all the books that Aldridge appears in. Here’s one of the backstory pieces:

The Haverford family have long believed that their ancestors were once kings in their part of Kent. This may be true, but if so, it was in the dim past before the Saxons. Possibly before even the Romans. Certainly the family were powerful in the region from early times. Baron Chillingham is now the least of the ducal titles, but the earliest holder of that title was descended from Richard of Caen, one of the knights who crossed the Channel with William the Bastard. Richard, or so family historians believe, married the daughter of the man whose lands he had been granted, thus beginning the family practice of making politically astute marriages. A later marriage brought a marquisate into the family. The Scottish Marquis of Aldridge came south with King James VI of Scotland, when that monarch inherited the crown of England. His only child, a daughter, inherited the title. When she was wooed and one by the current Baron Chillingham, her eldest son inherited both titles. (If you have wondered why Aldridge is a marquis and not a marquess, it is because the Haverfords do not hold with changing a perfectly acceptable Scottish word that has been in their family for generations just because the French use the same spelling.) The Aldridges continued the astute political maneuvering so typical of their family, staying in favour with the Stuarts sufficiently to be rewarded with a ducal title on the Restoration of Charles II, but without annoying the Parliamentarians enough to have their castle at Margate levelled or their palace in London confiscated. Now the Haverfords, they continued to enjoy royal favour, with some very deft footwork when James II gave way to William of Orange. The Duke of Haverford shown on the family tree here has continued several family traditions. He is a canny politician, a determined custodian of every treasure ever accumulated by the family, a profligate womaniser, and a terrible husband and father. The Duchess of Haverford is a Grande Dame of Society, a renowned political hostess, and godmother to half the younger generation of the ton. She is also connected by blood or by marriage to a huge number of noble and gentle families.
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Relatives on WIP Wednesday

I do like writing about relationships within families. One can tell a lot about a character by looking at how they cope with the family they came from. This week’s WIP Wednesday is about relatives, and my excerpt is from the novella I’m writing for the next Bluestocking Belles’ box set.

Martin kept his scold till Doro had exclaimed her relief and left in their carriage, which Martin insisted on having prepared for her. Then Chloe had to listen to a long lecture on irresponsible behaviour, putting herself in danger, disobeying the head of her family whose responsibility it was to protect her, and (for good measure) keeping inappropriate pets.

She found it easy to promise to attend no more reform meetings. The one speaker she had heard had been disappointing, and while the riot had been an adventure, she did not need Martin to point out that she was lucky Lord Robin had been concerned enough to look for her. Indeed, his general and vague description of the harms that may have befallen her were nothing to the gruesome horrors she had imagined on her own.

He was still seething when they met for dinner, when Aunt Swithin distracted Martin’s attention by lamenting that she had missed the meeting. “I was so looking forward to it, dear Martin,” she told him, blissfully oblivious to his shocked horror, “but I suffered an upset to my digestion, so I told the girls to go ahead without me. Did you have an interesting time, Chloe?”

Chloe managed not to laugh, though after one glance at Martin’s face she had to keep her eyes on her plate. “I only heard the one speaker, Aunt Swithin. Mr Thomas, whose articles you liked so much when I read them to you. I’m afraid he writes much better than he speaks. After that the meeting broke up and Doro and I came home.”

Another swift glance at Martin almost overcame her gravity.

“Aunt Swithin? Are you telling me you approve of these revolutionaries? I cannot believe it. What would Uncle say?”

“Not revolutionaries, dear,” Aunt Swithin insisted. “I would never support revolution. Those poor dear children in France! But reform, yes. The government is trying to bully the people instead of listening, and it is not nice, dear. Nobody likes a bully.”

Martin opened his mouth and then closed it again. Chloe waited for him to scold Aunt Swithin as he had her, but instead, he changed the subject. “Chloe is expecting a gentleman caller tomorrow, Aunt Swithin. Lord Robert Finchley escorted Chloe home from the meeting, and asked to call again.”

“Finchley,” Aunt Swithin said, and then repeated it. “Finchley. Ah, yes. The Marquess of Pevenwood’s third son.” Aunt Swithin had taken her responsibilities as the female educator of a young viscount to include a devotion to memorising Debretts. She was also, even under the harsh rule of her husband, addicted to the gossip news sheets, entering into a conspiracy with Cook to read them in the kitchen when Uncle Swithin was out spreading gloom and virtue around the neighbourhood. She showed the fruits of that research in her next remark. “The one they call Lord Cuckoo, because everyone knows the Duke of Haverford laid him Pevenwood’s nest. A soldier, is he not? Does he wear a uniform? A man looks so delightful in a uniform. Does Lord Cuckoo have money, though, Chloe? One cannot imagine that Pevenwood left him any, under the circumstances.”

Poor Lord Robin. Chloe could do nothing about his tragic origins, but she could speak up for his to some degree. “Lord Robin—he prefers to be called Lord Robin, not Lord Robert,” and definitely not Lord Cuckoo, which sounded like a cruel schoolboy joke. “Lord Robin has left the army. I do not know what he plans for his future, nor do I know how much money he has. It is surely none of my business, Aunt Swithin.”

“Only if you wish to marry him, my dove. Money does not buy happiness, it is true. But one is able to be miserable in some degree of comfort. I always wished that Swithin had more money.”

“Aunt Swithin,” Martin protested. “Uncle Swithin was a very—” his pause for thought was telling. “Upright man,” he concluded.

“He never wore a uniform though,” Aunt Swithin complained. “I do love a man in a uniform.”

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Pets on WIP Wednesday

Or perhaps animal companions is a better word, since if you want to share an excerpt in the comments, any animal is welcome. Mine is from the new story I’m writing for the next Bluestocking Belles collection.

The monkey did not want to stay in the basket. Chloe had to hold down the lid while pretending that nothing untoward was happening, and keeping an expression of polite interest on her face to convince those around her that she was listening to the speaker.

She didn’t dare look at Doro. Her friend had her eyes focused forward with a determination belied by her dancing eyes and the occasional tremble of her lips. If they met one another’s eyes, they would collapse into giggles as if they were twelve or thirteen again, and sharing a schoolroom.

Chloe needed to not think about Rosario the monkey or Doro’s amusement. Which meant, of course, that was all she could think about. The lecture might have helped, but the man currently currently droning on about the iniquities of the Habeas Corpus Act was too boring to actually make any sense.

The lid kicked under her hand. She bent over to rap it with her knuckles, just as the audience started clapping. The sudden roar of sound, of course, made Pepper even more desperate to get out of the basket.

Doro leaned closer and hissed out of the side of her mouth, “I did suggest the reform meeting might not be the best place for a monkey.”

“I couldn’t leave him behind,” Chloe protested. “Martin threatened to wring his neck when he caught him.”

Doro’s amusement bubbled out in a gurgle. “Rosario did steal Lord Tavistock’s cravat pin,” she pointed out.

It was true, but not the whole truth. In the two weeks since Chloe rescued Rosario from a mob of villagers, she had stolen several things a day, bringing them all to Chloe with every expectation of approval.

The villagers had told Martin, Chloe’s brother, the Viscount Tavistock, that the original owner was in prison awaiting trial for theft.

A cravat pin, two pair of cuff links, a cross belonging to cook, a pair of Chloe’s earrings, one jewelled buckle from a shoe, and a handful of other small objects witnessed to the thief’s small hairy accomplice.

“He will calm down by the time I am home,” Chloe assured Doro, hoping it was true.

The next speaker had risen, and someone behind demanded that the ladies be silent. Chloe looked around and winced an apology at the large man glaring from the next row of seats.

Two rows behind him, a fair-haired gentleman caught her gaze and winked one twinkling hazel eye.

The speaker, a little man with a bristling beard and burning eyes, began his oration. Boredom was not going to be an issue. A voice that was surely too large for the man’s body boomed through the room, calling for them to protest the iniquities under which the workers suffered. “I love the King as much as anyone,” he claimed, at full shout, “but his son plays at building pleasure palaces while his government oppresses his people and drives us into the workhouse.”

At the man’s rant, Rosario threw herself against the lid with renewed  determination, so that the basket rocked despite Chloe’s attempt to keep it still.

Behind them, someone booed. The speaker shouted him down, but a jeer came from another corner. Then the first missile flew, straight past Chloe’s head.

Chloe ducked and lost hold of the lid of the basket. Rosario shot out, into the crowd, yabbering her distress.

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Attraction in WIP Wednesday

Charlotte finds the secret of the relationship between her and Aldridge hard to keep in the following excerpt from To Tame the Wild Rake. (Anthony is Aldridge’s given name.) Do you have an excerpt about attraction that you’d like to share?

Seeing Anthony in company proved to be more difficult that Charlotte expected. To keep their secret, she had to behave as if nothing had changed since yesterday. She wanted to smile at him, spend the whole evening at his side, touch him, bask in the warmth of his eyes.

He seemed unaffected, nodding to her gravely from the other side of the room when she looked his way, then continuing his conversation with his mother and Jessica as if Charlotte was merely an acquaintance of no particular importance.

She sat with Sarah and Nate, and Anthony took a place a couple of rows behind her. Charlotte exercised all the willpower she had at her command and managed not to turn around, but to give at least the appearance of listening to the music. Her mind kept slipping to the events of the previous night and to wondering whether Anthony was thinking about them too.

When the musicians stopped for a rest and their hostess announced that supper was served in the next room, he made his move, bringing his ladies over to greet her party, then offering Charlotte his arm and holding her back to allow the others to lead the way.

He bent his head close to her ear and whispered, “There’s a door two down from the room set aside for women to retire. Meet me inside that room? In ten minutes?”

She turned her head to meet his eyes, meaning to refuse. What came off her tongue was a breathy, “Yes.”

He smiled, more with his eyes than his mouth, then left her at the door of the room, taking a couple of steps forward to say to the duchess, “I trust you will excuse me, Mama. I have seen someone I wish to speak with.” He was gone before Aunt Eleanor could reply.

Was it always this easy to keep an assignation? When she excused herself a few minutes later, no one in her party made any comment. Perhaps it was her reputation. No one would think anything of Saint Charlotte heading down the passage that led to the ladies retiring room.

Everyone else must be focused on their supper, because she had the passage to herself. She counted doors, opened the right one, and slipped into a room dimly lit with a single candle. She sensed Anthony’s presence a bare second before she found herself seized and ruthlessly kissed.

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Fathers and sons in WIP Wednesday

My last chance for a WIP Wednesday quote from To Claim the Long-Lost Lover. On Friday, it will no longer be a work in progress. So here’s a piece about the relationship between the hero and his father. If you’ve written a father and son piece you’d like to share, please feel free to drop an excerpt in the comments.

“You must at least go up to London and look over the current crop,” Nate’s father said, for perhaps the third time during this interminable dinner alone.

His father had been delivering instructions and advice since Nate took up residence at Three Oaks, the estate of the Earls of Lechton. Nate had found that the technique he developed during the early years of his enforced naval service worked just as well on the pompous fool who had sired him. He made pleasant noises, while failing to offer any commitment, and listened just enough to ensure he didn’t trip over his own cleverness.

Most people, and his father was certainly among their number, were so convinced of their own superiority that it never occurred to them a subordinate might be quietly disagreeing with everything they said. They required only that said subordinate smiled agreeably and gave a vague nod from time to time.

“You need a wife, Bentham. Three sons, m’ brothers had between them and all of them single.” Nod. Nate could agree that his cousins had been single.

“You need to marry some well-behaved girl with wide hips,” Nate’s father insisted, “and bed her till you get a son on her.”

It didn’t work for you, Nate refrained from saying. His father had inherited the earldom thanks to the marital dereliction and deaths of his three nephews. He was determined that the Lechton line would continue through what he insisted on calling ‘the fruit of my loins’. The well-behaved girl he’d taken to wife once he inherited had produced three sickly daughters at twelve-month intervals, birthing the third with such difficulty she was unlikely to ever get with child again.

That left Nate, the banished son of his first marriage. Perhaps, as Lord Lechton claimed, he really did believe that Nate had died at sea. “I had only the frailest of hopes when I contacted the navy, my dear Bentham,” he had explained. “Imagine my delight to discover you were not only alive, but in Edinburgh.”

He had set the hospital where Nate worked into turmoil by writing to reclaim him under Nate’s honorary title as heir. To be fair, being called Bentham was better than ‘fruit of my loins’, as if Nate existed only by reference to his father.

Mind you, that was certainly Lord Lechton’s view. His world had revolved around himself when he was merely the Reverend Miles Beauclair, third son of an earl and vicar of three little villages on the ducal estate of one of the earl’s friends. His world view had not expanded when he came into his unexpected inheritance.

Nate smiled agreeably, masking his thoughts. You doomed your own hopes when you betrayed me seven years ago. And then the earl dropped a name Nate had never expected to hear again.

“I hope you’re not thinking about taking up with Sarah Winderfield again. It just won’t do. No. I cannot like the connection for you. She’s too old now, and a bloody reformer. Anyway, her uncle, the new duke, is not precisely the thing. A seventeen-year-old fresh on the market. That’s what you want. We’ll be able to train her up the way she should go.” He grimaced. “It will be a nuisance to have an unschooled female around the house again, but I suppose I can always go up to London.”

Nate sat stunned speechless, his mind blank of everything except the sound of Sarah’s name, echoing inside his head. His father kept talking, totally unaware that Nate had stopped listening.

‘Sarah Winderfield’, his father had said. Nate had been so certain she had long since been married off to someone else. Married, and out of his reach, with—no doubt—a parcel of children in her nursery, and a doting husband. Of course, her husband would be doting. Even a man chosen by that unthinkably arrogant sod, Sutton, and the cruel monster who sired him could not help but dote on a woman as lovely in her nature as she was in appearance.

Sarah Winderfield. All these years he’d been striving to forget her and she had never married? It had been almost the last thing he heard as her father’s thugs kicked him into unconsciousness under the supervision of her brother. “My sister is not for the likes of you. Forget her. She will be married within a month to a man of her station.”

He had wondered who it was. The sailors he served with were not the sort to collect London Society gossip, and even once he returned to the British Isles, to Edinburgh, he’d made no effort to find out. All that made life bearable was imagining Sarah was happy and well, even if some other man was giving her that happiness in his place.

He would stay out of Society, he had decided—avoid any place where he might see her. His continued existence put her well-being and that of her family at risk, and he wouldn’t see her hurt for the world.

And all the time, she had remained unwed. They did not marry her to someone else. His mind caught up with another useful pearl mixed in with the pig swill his father had been spouting—Her father must be dead. ‘Her uncle, the new Duke.’ And not just her father, Lord Sutton, but his father, the Duke of Winshire. They must both be dead. And her brother, thrice-damned Elfingham, whose riding crop had slashed his face that dreadful day, leaving a cut that became infected so he still bore the scar.

His father had asked a question. The sound of his voice was fresh enough in Nate’s memory that he could replay it. “So, when will you leave? What’s keeping you here? Not your stupid ‘medical clinic’, I hope. An earl’s heir playing at doctor.”

Nate ignored the usual slur on his profession, and on the clinic he had set up in the local village. Leave for where? “I beg your pardon?”

“Are you listening to me, boy? I’m telling you, best go now. Parliament has been called for the eighth of November, and if you’re at the starting gates you’ll have a chance to look the fillies over before anyone else can scoop them up.”

Would Sarah Winderfield be in London? Even if not, London was the best place to find out where she was. “You’ll be going up for Parliament, my lord?” And what kind of an ass thought being addressed as ‘my lord’ by his only son was a compliment?

Lord Lechton waved a pudgy hand. “I think not. Bad weather for travelling. No, I’ll go up in the Spring. Not much to the House, now the war is over.”

Over in Europe, at least. There was still fighting in America. And from what Nate had seen as he had travelled here from Scotland, the next job facing Parliament would be winning the peace. The number of crippled men in tattered uniforms begging on the streets is a scandal and a crime. They weren’t the only signs that the poor had paid the costs of repeated wars with France over the past thirty years. Come to that, London might be an even better place to practice medicine than here in Lechford.

“When will you leave?” his father repeated.

Even without his new quest to find Sarah, the opportunity to escape his father’s company was too good to miss. “Tomorrow morning, my lord,” Nate said.

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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.”

by

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.