WIP Wednesdays

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Pets and other animals on WIP Wednesday

Today, I’m looking for excerpts with animals. I’ve started my contemporary again — or, at least, I am writing a new beginning about a week before the one I already had. I’m starting with my hero being tripped up by a cat right at the moment he meets the heroine and decides he wants to impress her. So I decided to focus on excerpts with animals today. Meet the cat on my cover, who plays a crucial role in the plot as the bringer of chaos. Meet him briefly, that is. He doesn’t stick around.

“Yes. I am Meg Fotheringham.” The deity behind the counter extended her hand for Patrick to shake. Patrick stepped forward, his eyes locked on hers, determinedly not allowing them to slip to the glories outlined by her apron. Don’t stuff it up, Patrick. Smile. Say something normal. And then he was falling, crashing into the baskets and cake stands clustered on the counter.

Patrick, winded by the sharp blow to the chest, was barely conscious of a large tabby cat that shot out from under his feet and through a cat door at the back of the room.

“Are you all right?” Ms Fotheringham asked, as she hurried around the counter to help him back to his feet. “That dratted cat!”

Patrick was trying to draw in enough air to breathe, while surveying the chaos his fall had made — crushed chocolate cake, scattered buns and cupcakes, broken gingerbread cookies.

“I’m sorry,” he managed.

Ms Fotheringham frowned at the mess. “Not your fault,” she assured him. She was still holding his arm and now she nudged him towards the nearest chair. “Please sit down. I’ll make you a cup of tea or coffee. You were looking for me? No, never mind. Get your breath back first.”

Tea sounded wonderful. The long bus ride, the shock of his new landlady’s youth and loveliness, the fall — combined, they’d left Patrick limp as a dishrag, no better than he’d been when the glandular fever had been raging full force through his system.

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Tension on WIP Wednesday

Tension is an important part of a story. If we’re not on the edge of our seat wondering how it’s all going to turn out, we might as well be painting our nails or watching the grass grow.

This week, I’m inviting you to share a passage where you ratchet up the tension. It might be dramatic tension, romantic tension, suspenseful tension, comedic tension–your choice. Mine is from To Wed a Proper Lady, and is set in the aftermath of a duel between my hero’s brother and his loathsome cousin.

“Good shooting, brother,” James said, clapping Drew on the shoulder.

“Idiot would have been fine if he hadn’t moved,” Drew grumbled. Weasel had shot before the final count and missed. When Drew had taken his turn, he had announced his intention of removing Weasel’s watch fob from the chain that drooped across his waist, and ordered the man to stand still.

At the other end of the field, Weasel was carrying on as if death were imminent. His second, the Marquis of Aldridge, after a brief examination, gave the Winderfield men a thumbs up before leaving Weasel to the ministrations of the doctor. Aldridge was now giving orders to the servants by the carriage that had brought him and Weasel to the duelling grounds.

“Breakfast?” James suggested.

“Good idea,” Drew said. “Let’s collect Yousef and…”

As if his name had conjured him up, their father’s lieutenant appeared from the trees and stalked towards them. Something about his posture brought James to full alert, and Drew sensed it too, stiffening beside him.

“Trouble?” James asked, as soon as Yousef was close enough.

“An assassin in the woods, armed with a pistol like these.” He gestured to the gun that Drew had replaced in its case until he had time to clean it. “You were not meant to walk from this field, Andraos Bey.”

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Someone to talk to on WIP Wednesday

Michael Hauge calls them reflection characters–those people we invent whose role in the story is to listen to the hero or the heroine, and occasionally (by what they do or what they say) point them in the right direction. This saves lots of pages where our protagonists talk to themselves, so the readers can hear what we need them to know while still keeping secrets from their romantic interest. Then the meeting with said romantic interest doesn’t have to devolve into him sitting staring at her thinking about whether to tell her the estate is bankrupt, while she sews studiously away thinking about whether he will turn her out on her ear when he knows that she has been supporting her wicked brother out of the housekeeping. Give them each a reflection character, and they can get these thoughts off their respective chests, and increase the tension when they spend the evening not talking about it.

So, give me a passage of conversation with a reflection character. My excerpt is from my newest draft, and my reflection character is a little different. He doesn’t exist, except as a memory in my hero’s mind.

“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 Max was heading there now.

“He hasn’t been able to settle since he returned from the wars” she had told Max.

Her husband’s estimation was harsher. “He cannot stick to anything. Some of them 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 that isn’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. “That’s the village.” From this elevation, it and the surrounding fields were spread below like a patchwork made by a thrifty housewife from a hundred different scraps. The church, its steeple foreshortened by his perspective, sat at one end of the cluster of houses, the last building on the village street. At the other end was an inn, strategically placed on the junction with the road he was travelling. He could see glimpses of its curves, snaking down the hill before it straightened, leapt a river, and straightened to run past the village street and on into the distance.

 

 

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Declarations of love on WIP Wednesday

My hero in my current WIP has finally faced up to his feelings, so this week, I’m seeking excerpts where the hero (or, if you prefer, the heroine) declares their love. Mine is from my Fire and Frost novella which is the title of the next Bluestocking Belles’ anthology of new stories.

She invited him to serve himself, while she fixed him the coffee that he asked for. As he filled his plate, he asked, “If we are not to stand on ceremony, I wonder if I might beg you to call me Hamner. Or even, should you wish it, Charles.”

Matilda paused, his cup in her hand, then gathered her scattered wits and passed it to him. “You are very kind, Lo– Hamner.”

He shook his head. “Not kind at all. You called me pompous, Matilda. You had the right of it, but I am trying to amend. May I call you Matilda?”

Matilda cast a glance at the maid, but she had her head bent low over her mending and was did not appear to be taking any notice of them.

“Just when we are alone,” Hamner cajoled. “Or am I being an idiot again? I thought… I hoped that you might be coming to care for me as I do for you.”

“I had no idea.” Matilda lifted her chin, her lips firming as she remembered last year’s tears. “Have we not travelled this path once before, my lord? You made your opinion of me clear at that time, did you not?”

His clear blue eyes met hers. If she did not guard her heart, he would break it all over again, but he sounded sincere. “I was a fool, and worse than a fool. A pompous prig, you said, and that hurt. Because you were right.”

“You kissed me then spurned me and proposed to another woman,” she reminded him.

“Ah.” The colour rose in his face and he looked down at the coffee cup, dwarfed by his large capable hands. “You are Lady Felicity’s friend. Of course, you know about that.”

“What? You hoped to deceive me?”

“Not that!” The cup clattered as his hands shook, and he put it down on the side table. “I hoped I could explain it before you knew what an ass I had been. To burn for one woman and propose to another, as if they were interchangeable? My mother tells me I deserve for you to send me away and never speak to me again, but I hope to convince you that I have learned from my stupidity.”

Almost without her volition, Matilda’s head shook, slowly, more in disbelief than negation. “You despise the circumstances of my birth. You do not believe I would reflect credit to your name. Your words, Lord Hamner.”

Hamner leaned forward as if he would grasp her hands, but stopped short of reaching for them. His voice vibrated with passion. “Do I regret that your birth has barred you from all the respect you deserve? Yes. You are the daughter of a duke, raised by a duchess, and a lady of uncommon intelligence, grace, and ability. You act always with propriety and dignity. You should take precedence with others of your rank, and I am indignant that you cannot. You would grace the name of the highest in the land. I was an ignorant fool to think otherwise, and an uncouth lout to say what I did. Though I hope my actual words were kinder, Matilda.”

“Perhaps.” She pursed her lips. “However, you agree that I took your meaning. As an apology for that kiss—I was humiliated, Charles, and I do not see how you expect me to forget it.”

She only realised that she had slipped into calling him by his given name when his eyes lit up, but he did not capitalise on the error. “Not forget. But may I hope for forgiveness? In time? Give me leave to prove my sincerity by my devotion? I mean marriage, Matilda, in case you are in doubt. Yesterday, I saw you in danger, and I knew I could not be happy without you. I spoke to your brother, but he said some of what you have said, and told me that I would need to make my own petition to you. The choice of whether I am permitted to be your friend and your suitor is entirely yours.”

“I do not know how to answer you.” Hamner opened his mouth again, but Matilda held up her hand. “Enough. Lord Hamner, I shall think on what you have said, but we shall not speak of it again today.”

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Combat on WIP Wednesday

In today’s WIP Wednesday, I’m looking at fights and other physical action of that nature. Please post your excerpt in the comments. Mine is from my latest work-in-progress. Driscoll has lured the sister of the lady that Hamner wishes to court away from the group with whom she is skating so he can accost her. Hamner arrives in time.

“Leave Miss Grenford alone, or I’ll rearrange your face for you, and then leave you to Lord Aldridge’s mercies,” Hamner warned Driscoll.

“What business is it of yours” Driscoll snarled. “The bitch was just playing coy, but she wanted me. Why else would she come to meet me?”

Hamner glared. “Good question. How did you inveigle her? She was not welcoming your attentions, that is certain.” He had seen blind panic on Miss Jessica’s face at the moment she realised Driscoll was not taking ‘no’ for an answer.

“She wanted it,” Driscoll insisted, but his eyes shifted away from Hamner’s. “She was pretending to protest. Women do that.”

“Leave her alone,” Hamner repeated.

“Come on!” Driscoll pasted on a smile. “All this fuss over a woman like her?” The smile slipped to a leer. “This is what they’re born to, Hamner, and every one knows it. Even the duchess will have to face facts in time. Aldridge is a man of the world. He indulges his mother, but he certainly doesn’t expect men to leave two such honey-pots alone.”

“You are mistaken, Driscoll. He expects it, and so do I.” Hamner grabbed the stupid man by the capes that adorned the shoulders of his heavy overcoat and pulled him closer, so he could hiss his final warning straight into the man’s face. “Leave. The. Grenford. Ladies. Alone.”

Driscoll struggled ineffectually, his face reddening in his anger. Still, he continued to sneer. “Want both of them, do you? What’s it like, tupping the Ice Princess? Does she freeze your d—”

Hamner dropped the man’s coat and stopped his foul mouth with a punch that sent him reeling backwards. Driscoll landed splayed in a snow bank, flecks of blood spattering the white beside his head. He opened his eyes and glared at Hamner, but made no effort to more.

Itching to haul the villain to his feet and repeat the blow, Hamner forced himself to remember the Grenford sisters. He should make sure they were unharmed. He should escort them home. “Remember what I said,” he ordered, and turned away, allowing himself a wince and a certain satisfaction. The bruising his gloved hand had suffered was a rather nice indication of the damage to Driscoll’s face.

When he looked back before rounding the corner of the path, Driscoll was gone.

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Attraction on Work-in-progress Wednesday

Every romance writer needs to build in enough emotion that readers will believe in the attraction between the main characters. This week, I’m asking you to post excerpts in which that attraction is just beginning. Mine is from the next Bluestocking Belles’ box set, and neither party want to acknowledge it.

Hamner escorted his mother through the rooms until they found her friends.

“Now run along, dear, and find someone to dance with.”

Did he ever used to enjoy this kind of event? It wasn’t fashionable for men to admit to any kind of pleasure in a ballroom, but two years ago, an event like this would have been a treat. He would not have sat out a dance, though nor would he have danced twice with the same female.

He loved the company of women, from the innocent pleasures of dancing and conversation with Society’s maidens to the more robust and earthy delights to be enjoyed savored with discreet widows.

A wealthy earl needed to be cautious. But if he went nowhere alone, and paid attention to them all and none to anyone in particular, he raised no expectations and could simply enjoy himself. He had. Until he had set his sights on Lady Felicity.

There she was now, in conversation with the duchess’s two wards. For the last two seasons, Miss Grenford, Miss Jessica, and Lady Felicity had been close friends. Before last season, her older sister had married and almost immediately gone into mourning for a relative of her husband’s. Rather than miss the Season, Lady Felicity had been taken under the wing of the duchess; the three young ladies clearly intended to spend this Season together, as they had the last.

It was intolerable that he wanted to yearn after Lady Felicity, who would have made him a perfectly unobjectionable wife: an ornament to the Hamner name. Instead, he could barely look at her. Not when she stood next to Miss Grenford.

As he continued around the room, he fought to control his reaction to the pernicious female’s presence.

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Animal friends on WIP Wednesday

 

Animal companions can be useful in a book. They show our character’s empathy and kindness (or lack thereof). They can be comic relief. They might, if the character doesn’t have anyone else to talk to, be an ideal recipient of the kind of information we want the reader to know and need the character to talk about.

So give me an excerpt with an animal. Mine is from To Wed a Proper Lady, the rewrite of The Bluestocking and the Barbarian. My hero is gate crashing a house party with the help of his horse.

Limp,” James said to Seistan. “Limp, my lovely, my treasure, my Jewel of the Mountains.”

The horse obeyed his master’s hand signals and limped heavily as they turned through the gates of the manor, beginning the long trek along the dyke that led between extensive water gardens to where Lady Sophia Belvoir was attending a house party.

In his mind, James was measuring his reasons for being here against his reasons for staying away.

His grandfather faded fast, and the end of the year – and his reprieve – was fast approaching. Lady Sophia was the other half of his soul, and only she could fill the place in his heart and at his side. Every meeting since the first had merely confirmed the connection in his mind. Was it only his imagination that had him believing she felt it too?

Surely her eyes spoke for her, finding him as soon as he entered a room and following him until he left, blue-gray eyes that veiled themselves when he caught them watching, in the longest soft brown lashes he had ever seen. She was not, as these English measured things, a beauty: her arched nose and firm chin too definite for their pale standards, her frame too long and too robust. They preferred dolls, like her sister, and Sophia was no doll.

On the other hand, there was Hythe’s threat and Lady Sophia’s rejection to consider. Beyond that, his father’s greatest enemy owned the house he approached. The party would be full of aristocrats and their hangers on, ignoring him until they found out whether he was a future duke or merely the half-breed bastard of one.

The family needed him to marry a strong woman, one with family ties to half the peerage of this land to which they somehow belonged, though he had only first seen it eight months ago. His foreign blood and upbringing meant he needed a wife who was English beyond question, and English nobility to her fingertips.

James needed to marry Sophia; had needed to since he first saw her in a village street. And then he found she had all the connections his family could desire. Surely their love was fated?

The house came into view—a great brick edifice rising four stories above the gardens and glittering with windows. Nothing could be less like the mountain eerie in which he had been raised, but he squared his shoulders and kept walking, soothing Seistan who reacted to his master’s nerves with a nervous sideways shuffle.

“Hush, my Wind from the North. We belong here, now. What can they do, after all?”

Beat him and cast him out, but from what he knew of the Duchess of Haverford, that was unlikely to happen.

“It is, after all,” he reminded his horse with a brief laugh, “the season of goodwill.”

The stables were off to one side, on a separate island to the main house. At the fork in the carriageway, James hesitated, tempted to take Seistan and see him cared for before chancing his luck at the house. If they invited him in, he would need to hand his horse over to grooms who were strangers while he consolidated his position.

But if they turned him away, he might need to remove himself at speed, Seistan’s convenient limp disappearing as fast as it appeared. Besides, in the mountains between Turkmenistan and Persia, as in England, one did not treat a private home as a caravanserai. He must be sure of his welcome before he took advantage of their stables.

The carriageway crossed the moat surrounding the house and ended in a generous forecourt. James left Seistan at the foot of the long flight of steps leading up to the front door, giving him the command to stay. Seistan stood, weight on three legs and ears pricked with interest as he watched his master climb the steps. Nothing short of outright panic would move the horse from his silent watch before James gave the counter command.

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Where to start on WIP Wednesday

At last, Unkept Promises has gone to the proofreader, and I’m two chapters in to the novella for the next Bluestocking Belles project. Where to start is always a question — I often cast around for a while, and I don’t always get it right.

This week, I’m inviting you to post the first few paragraphs from your work-in-progress. Here’s mine.

If the two of them made it out of the near-invisible city streets alive, Matilda Grenford was going to kill her sister Jessica, and even their honorary aunt, the Duchess of Haverford, wouldn’t blame her. Angry as Matilda was, and panicked, too, as she tried to find a known landmark in the enveloping fog, she couldn’t resist a wry smile at the thought. Aunt Eleanor was the kindest person in the world, and expected everyone else to be as forgiving and kind as she was herself. Matilda could just imagine the conversation.

“Now, my dear, I want you to think about what other choices you might have made.” The duchess had said precisely those words uncounted times in the more than twenty years Matilda had been her ward.

When she was younger, she would burst out in an impassioned defence of whatever action had brought her before Her Grace for a reprimand. “Jessica is not just destroying her own reputation, Aunt Eleanor. Meeting men in the garden at balls; going out riding without her groom; dancing too close.”

Was that the lamppost by the corner of the square? No; a few steps more showed yet another paved street with houses looming in the fog on both sides. Matilda stopped while she tried to decide if any of them were in any way familiar.

Meanwhile, she continued her imaginary rant to the duchess. “Even in company, she takes flirtation beyond what is proper. This latest start — sneaking out of the house without a chaperone or even her maid — if it becomes known, she’ll go down in ruin, and take me and Frances with her.”

Matilda had gone after her, of course, taking her maid, but she’d lost the poor girl several mistaken turns back. Matilda had been hurrying ahead, ignoring the maid’s complaints, thinking only about bringing Jessica back before she got into worse trouble than ever before. Now Matilda was just as much at risk, and she’d settle for managing to bring her own self home, or even to the house of a friend, if she could find one.

Haverford House, for preference. Turning up anywhere else, unaccompanied, would start the very scandal Matilda had left home to avoid. If Jessica managed to make it home unscathed, it would have to be murder.

In her imagination, she could hear Aunt Eleanor, calm as ever. “Murder is so final, Matilda. Surely it would have been better to try something else, first. What could you have done?”

Matilda startled herself with a bark of laughter that echoed oddly in the fog.

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Quarrels on WIP Wednesday

The course of true love can’t possibly run smooth, or we wouldn’t have a story. Quarrels between the lovers are a standard part of most romances, and if not outright quarrels, as least misunderstandings.

This week, I’d love to see an expert where one protagonist is offended by or suspicious of the other. Maybe it isn’t an outright quarrel, yet. But we can sense one coming!

Mine is from Unkept Promises. Jules has returned home to find that the wife he hasn’t seen in seven years has moved in while he was away.

His little wife had grown. Not ‘up’ exactly. She was still a tiny creature, her head no higher than his chest, but no-one would take her for a schoolgirl now! Was it the modern fashions that gave her curves he’d not seen seven years ago—not a lush endowment but decidedly female?

Annoyed with her though he was, he could not deny that his body responded to hers, as if something primitive within him rejoiced in the link formed by their long-ago wedding and yearned to set seal to his claim. A physical lust. That was all. It could be ignored.

But the change in her was not only physical. She had been an endearing mix of child and adult. Her isolated life as the only child of a reclusive scholar had given her a wisdom and maturity beyond her years and the innocence of a much younger girl. Now she was a woman. Confident and in charge.

Which was extremely irritating, since she had placed herself in charge of his house! As he allowed his two daughters to drag him back upstairs and show him and Dan around their domain, he had to concede she was competent. No. More than competent.

He couldn’t complain about the changes in the nursery—new paint, shelves instead of trunks for books and toys, new furniture—sturdy painted furniture that would withstand much more activity than the rejects from the rest of the house that had been there before.

“Sit in Ibu Mia’s chair, Papa,” Ada commanded.

Marsha scoffed. “Not Ibu Mia’s. Papa is too big. Sit in Hannah’s chair, Papa.”

“Is Hannah looking after you while she is visiting?” Jules was not above finding out his wife’s intentions from his children, if he could.

“Hannah is not visiting. Hannah is our new nurse,” Ada explained. She was dragging his duffel bag from where Dan had dropped it by the door.

Marsha offered her morsel of information. “Hannah used to be nurse to our cousin Daisy, but Daisy has a governess now, so Hannah came to be our nurse.”

“And to look after Ibu Mia,” Ada corrected. “Hannah said Lord Henry said Ibu Mia could not travel all this way on her own. Is Lord Henry our grandfather, Papa? Hannah says he is.”

“Yes, sweetheart,” Jules confirmed. “Lord Henry is my father, so your grandfather.” Father had approved this trip, had he? He had never been happy about Jules’s irregular living arrangements, Jules was sure of that, though his letters were devoid of any criticism. Susan, Jules’s sister, was more direct in her letters, castigating him for leaving his wife for so long. They probably sent Mia to bring Jules to heel.

But he wouldn’t be leashed by her or anyone else, either.

 

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Inspiration on WIP Wednesday

Writers are commonly asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” I might be asked that more often than many, since my brain teams with characters and plots. So this week, I want you to share your inspiration for a character, a plot, a scene, or something else for your story, and an excerpt from the story.

The scene below is near the end of my next newsletter subscriber story, Look Into My Eyes. Every two months, I give away a story with my newsletter. The subscriber only page now has links to eleven stories, and this one will make twelve. To subscribe, please fill in the form on the newsletter tab or in the right menu bar.

My inspiration was the song by Peter Sarstead, Where do you go to (my lovely), released 1969. My version is around 3,500 words long, and is set against the glittering world of the English ton just after the end of the Napoleonic war.

The end-of-season ball thrown by the Duchess of Fambrough — the current duchess, though one does not doubt the dowager assisted — will be the talk of Society long after the Season ends. Not for its appointments, or the excellence of the supper or the musicians, though these were fine, indeed. Not for the quality of the assembly, though the invitations had gone out to everyone of significance, and many who merely hoped they were.

No, the defining moments of the Fambrough ball came shortly before the supper waltz, when Lord Charming, arriving late but impeccably dressed with his usual elegant flair, strolled down the stairs into the ballroom, his arms full of roses, and marched straight across the floor, his eyes fixed on the Paragon herself.

Some say he had hailed the duke when that gentleman was riding in Hyde Park that morning, and that the two of them had spoken earnestly for close to half an hour, their horses pacing side by side. Others report he visited during the time for calls, carrying even more roses and attended by two footmen similarly burdened. The ducal house was not receiving, being consumed with preparations for the ball, but he left the roses behind when he departed.

So tonight was Lord Charming’s third encounter with the ducal household, and the assembled onlookers held their collective breath in order not to miss a moment of the drama that played out before them. The duke was between the viscount and his stepmother. His Grace moved to one side as she stood. The scandalous gentleman approached close enough to touch, and those close enough heard him say, “I promised you roses, Marie.”

Those who murmured at his familiar address were shushed by those around them. His lordship ignored them all as he handed her his roses. “These are from the rose garden at Welling. The plums are ripening on the trees. I had hoped to bring you cherries, but my gardener says they will be next week.”

These were not the loverlike words we expect from Lord Charming, and his expression was unexpectedly open. Serious, too, as was the lady’s.

“What of the conservatory, Rick?” she asked. Another murmur at the intimacy of first names, again subdued by ferocious gestures.

“We are owed clement weather, are we not? But it stands ready, Your Grace, to protect us through storms.”

The duchess looked up from her roses and their eyes met. Lord Charming moved to take Her Grace in his arms. “Will you honour me with a waltz, Marie?”