WIP Wednesdays

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Arrivals on WIP Wednesday

This week, I’ve picked arrivals for my theme. Your choice. An arrival at a ball or dinner. The end of a long journey. Any kind of arrival, and from anyone’s point of view. Mine is Mia, the captain’s wife from Unkept Promises, meeting her husband again after seven years, when she comes to South Africa to look after his dying mistress. Ever since her own arrival, Mia has been expecting Jules back from his patrol in the seas off southern Africa.

Dear Heavens. The man was gorgeous. In the seven years since Mia had last seen him, she had managed to convince herself her memories had played her false. She had been alone and frightened, trapped by smugglers and locked up in a cave. And then a golden god had wriggled through from the cell next door. He had kept her company in the darkness, comforted her when her father died, fought the smugglers to win her safety, and then married her to save her reputation and give her a home.

Of course she adored him. She very likely would have developed a major crush even if she’d met him socially — she had been fourteen, had grown up largely isolated by her father’s social position as a poverty-stricken scholar of good family.  It was no surprise she fancied herself in love with the first young man she had ever properly talked to.

Handsome is as handsome does, she warned herself as she made her way down to the kitchen. But even in a taking about something, as he clearly was, he was unbelievably handsome. Mia thought she was immune to handsome men. Her brothers-in-law were all good-looking, and Mia had been propositioned at one time or another by most of London’s rakes, who clearly believed that a wife who hadn’t seen her husband in seven years must be in need of their attentions. None of them made her breath catch, her heart beat faster, and her insides melt.

Jules did, destroying all her preconceptions. Mia had assumed that, in the renegotiation of their marriage, she and Jules would be equally dispassionate. So much for that. Even grumpy; even with most of his attention on another woman, even with all that she’d heard about him to his discredit, she wanted him.

In the kitchen another handsome man, this one only twelve, took pride of place in Cook’s own seat, being waited on by his two adoring sisters. Marshanda was shuttling between the table and the chair, refilling the plate from which Adiratna was feeding her brother, who was sampling scones topped with different flavours of jam with the judicious air of a connossieur.

Marshanda saw her first. “Ibu Mia,” she announced, then ducked her head. She was not fond of being noticed, whereas her little sister wanted to be the star of every occasion.

Adiratna patted her brother on the cheek as a means to get his attention. “Ibu Mia is Mami’s sister, and our elder mother, Mami says.”

Perdana narrowed the beautiful eyes all three children had inherited from their mother, examining Mia thoughtfully.  Then he lifted Adiranta from his knee and stood to bow. “You are the Captain’s wife,” he announced. “Has the Captain arrived, Ibu Mia?”

Mia nodded. “He is with your mother, children,” she told them. “Give him a few minutes, my dears, and I am sure he will be down to find you.”

Adiratna was already on her way to the door, but she stopped obediently when Mia said her name. She turned and stamped her foot. “But I want my Papa now,” she whined. “He has been gone for ever so long. I want to show him the doll that you brought me from London, Ibu Mia.”

“And so you shall, darling,” Mia reassured her. “But we cannot properly greet Papa without just a little noise, can we? And noise makes Mami so tired.”

“Yes, Ada,” Marshanda said, her bossy streak overcoming her reticence. “You know you will squeal when Papa gives us presents. You always do.”

Adarinta’s eyes widened and sparkled. “Presents!” In moments, she was back across the room, tugging on Perdana’s hand. “What has Papa brought me, Dan. You know, I know you do.”

“Lumps of coal, like the Black Peter we saw on St Nicolas Day,” Perdana answered, promptly, “And a switch to beat you with, for you have undoubtedly been a great trouble for Mami and Ibu Mia.”

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The real world on WIP Wednesday

Our stories happen in a context, whenever and wherever they are set. And we build our context from our real life experiences. This week, I’m looking for extracts that contain the facts we use as settings for our tales. Please pop them into the comments and let us all enjoy them.

I write historicals, so I do a lot of research, around 10% of which makes its way onto the page. The following excerpt is from Paradise Regained, which is now on preorder in the Belle’s holiday box set, for release on 4 November. My story is set in the mountains north of Iran, in an entirely fictional hidden kingdom, at a time of great turmoil when one Iranian dynasty was giving way to another in bloody confusion. (No, I didn’t swear.) My fictional Mahzad’s grandfather is a relative of the historical old dynasty and has stolen the seal of a fictional saint, but such relics were and are treasured in real life.

Quickly, Mahzad and Gurban told him all that happened, breaking off frequently as yet another group of people came running to check that the arrivals were, indeed, their people and their kagan.

“So,” James said, once he had the gist of it, “the Khan has a secret, which he will tell only to me. Very well. Let us give him the opportunity.”

They did not have to look for the man. As they entered the palace, Garshasp Khan was waiting, wearing a huge smile.

“My son Jakob, you are come home. Welcome. Welcome. Peace be upon you.”

Mahzad crushed her irritation at her father’s arrogance, acting as if this were his own house and not hers and James’s. James took the greeting with equanimity, returning the formal greeting. “Peace be upon you, Excellency. We are blessed that you have chosen to grace our house.”

“You will say so.” Garshasp chortled. “You will say so indeed. I have brought you a treasure, Jakob.”

James said nothing more but led the way into a chamber off the main hall, turning everyone away except Mahzad, Gurban, and Garshasp.

James wasted no time, cutting straight to the point with Western directness. “I took from you a treasure, excellency, and for her sake you are always welcome here, but you have also brought trouble to my gates. I am told you have promised me an explanation.”

“And you shall have it. I took it from its hiding place the moment I knew you were here. Look, my son. Look.”

Mahzad leant forward to see the small gold item her father pulled from his robes. James plucked it from Garshasp’s palm and held it up so that she and Gurban could see.

“A seal stamp?” Gurban asked.

“The inscription reads ‘Abu Rahman ul Hafi,” Mahzad said. She turned to look at her father aghast.

“Abu Rahman ul Hafi?” James closed his fingers over the seal, hiding it from view. “The saint whose shrine is in Asadiyeh?” He whistled low and long. “No wonder the Qajar are at my gates.”

Garshasp smiled broadly. “A treasure, as I told you, and one you can use to buy the safety of my daughter and my grandsons.”

Mahzad rounded on the old fool. “We were safe until you brought them on us.”

The old man looked down his long nose at her. “Think you the Qajar would leave any of my blood alive? No. The purge is underway even as we speak. And you, you ungrateful woman, are the last of my children. Your sons are the only hope of my line.”

She would have retorted, but James cut through with quiet authority. “You will address Mahzad with respect, excellency. She is no longer merely your daughter. She is the katan of this valley, a position her merits won for her. Beyond that, she is, as you have pointed out, my wife and the mother of my sons and daughters.”

“Daughters!” Garshasp growled. “Wait till your own are grown and then talk to me of daughters. Hah! I have given you the seal, Jakob. Use it as you will, and the rest of the goods I brought with me are for you and your sons, though half the value was in the slaves, which this wife of yours declared free. You will excuse me. This old man needs to rest.” He turned and strode out, though his steps faltered as he passed through the doorway.

 

 

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Building empathy on WIP Wednesday

You have a dilemma. Your fellow has some problems, or he’s not at all interesting (and the story is over a few paragraphs after it starts). But you want your audience to like him, or at least to feel empathy for him. He needs to do something selfless, or nice, or just plain sweet. Maybe he gives flowers to old ladies or dances with wallflowers or says nice things to our shy heroine or plays ball with children. How about using the comments to show me an excerpt of an empathy scene? Mine is from Abbie’s wish. Ethan remembers rescuing his cat.

Boss was up for a ride. Like all cats, she was territorial, sticking to the place she loved best. Unlike most, her territory comprised the Triumph and Ethan. Had ever since Ethan had rescued her and her brother, two scrawny kittens tossed into a deep drain and left to die. Ethan took them home inside his jacket and stayed up all night feeding them the goat’s milk preparation he’d found on the Internet. The brother didn’t make it. Boss got her name from the pre-emptory demands she was making when Ethan returned inside after removing the frail body of the dead kitten.

Boss thrived on frequent feeds, graduating from an eye dropper to a baby’s bottle and then to tinned kitten food and biscuits. She lived in Ethan’s pocket, or around Ethan’s shoulders, or in the pannier bags of the Triumph as Ethan moved from job to job, getting experience but never finding a place he wanted to settle. Two years on, Boss was a magnificent beast; at least, Ethan thought so. Tucked inside Ethan’s jacket as they cruised the highway out to Valentine Bay, she mostly slept, but poked her nose out from time to time, her eyes shut and her hair and whiskers streaming back in the wind.

 

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Marriage on WIP Wednesday

 

The goal of a romance is a happy ever after, or at least a happy for now — that is, we leave our readers confident that our pair are right for one another, and that they can navigate the storms and shoals of love together, finding safe harbour in one another. For most romance, this means marriage of some type, either at some point during the book or on the horizon as we finish.

In this week’s post, I’m inviting excerpts on marriage: what the characters think of it, how they approach it, how they live it, if they are wed during the book. My story for the Belles box set is about a couple who married over a decade ago for entirely practical reasons, who have eight children, and who have grown apart. Here they are with their children in a rare moment of peace between them. James has just returned home after months away.

James resented every circumstance that kept him from his wife. Not, perhaps, the children. He was introduced to little Rosemary, who was a perfect miniature of her mother, and became reacquainted with the rest of his offspring as he fished through his pack of surprises for their presents.

“Look, Mama, a sailing boat like in the book!” Andrew ran across the room to show his mother, wildly waving the boat and narrowly missing his sister as he passed.

Mahzad took him up onto her lap and showed him how to hold it safely.

“I have a boat for each of you,” James explained, looking up from showing young Jamie how to set the rudder on his perfect miniature of a jahazi, a broad-hulled trading dhow, “even Rosemary and little Ruth. When they are bigger, they will be able to race with you on your moth­er’s pond.” He met Mahzad’s eyes. Her frown was belied by her dancing eyes. “With your mother’s permission, of course.”

“Mine is a brigantine,” John boasted. “See Mama?”

He leaned on his mother’s shoulder and began a discourse on the difference between gaff-rigged and square-rigged sails, accurate as far as James’s recently-acquired knowledge went. He must have learned it from books, since he’d never seen a sail boat larger than the one in his hands or a body of water bigger than the pond in the valley when it flooded with the spring melt.

Jamie and Matthew abandoned their model boats when he handed over the cases holding their next presents. In moments, they were taking sword craft positions, balancing lightly on the balls of their feet, a scimitar in one hand, a rapier in the other.

“These are not toys, my sons,” James warned. “Your mother and I judge you old enough to treat them with the respect they deserve and to learn how to handle them without danger to yourself or others.”

“Except those who threaten our people, Papa,” Jamie insisted. “There is another case,” Matthew observed.

Mahzad looked in alarm at John, who was too absorbed in his boat to notice.

James was quick to reassure her that he did not mean to set John to sword fighting with an edged weapon. Not yet. “It is for your Mama,” James told Matthew.

He’d received the benison of his fierce warrior queen’s smile when he had given Rebecca and Rachel good English yew bows in miniature and a quiver full of arrows each, but it was nothing to the glow that greeted her own sword case. The children, hugging their own gifts, stopped to watch her. Matthew let out a long sigh of pleasure as Mahzad lifted the sheathed sword in two hands.

“Toledo made,” James said. It was a Western-styled small sword, like the ones he’d taught her with but in the best steel in Europe, perhaps the world.

She slid the blade partway from the scabbard, and when her eyes met his, the heat in them made him wish his much-loved offspring at the other end of the palace. He smiled her a promise for later and turned back to passing out children’s books in English that he’d purchased in Siricusa, in Sicily.

He’d left the Christmas presents outside the valley to be brought in after they’d dealt with the Qajar troops. If Mahzad loved her blade, she would adore the pistols that were still packed in the abandoned luggage.

He was smiling at the thought when the messenger arrived.

 

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The first meeting on WIP Wednesday

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This crucial scene in a romance novel is sometimes called the meet cute. Received wisdom is that it needs to happen early in the book, perhaps on the first page. Myself, I’ve never been good at Rules, so I’ve written books where the meet cute is delayed — in one case, until the middle of the book. (But I did have an alternative hero as a stand-in for the first half.)

This week, I’m inviting authors to give me their meet cute, that first meeting when sparks fly. Mine is from House of Thorns, which is coming out as part of the Scarsdale Publishing Marriages of Inconvenience line, and which I’m currently editing. Does it count as a meet cute if the heroine is unconscious?

The intruder stealing his roses had lovely ankles.

Bear Gavenor paused at the corner of the house, the better to enjoy the sight. The scraping of wood on stone had drawn him from the warmth of the kitchen, where the only fire in this overgrown cottage kept the unseasonable chill at bay. He placed each foot carefully and silently—not from stealth but from long habit. The woman perched precariously on the rickety ladder seemed oblivious to his presence.

Or, his sour experiences in London suggested, she knew full well, and her display was for his benefit. Certainly, the sight was having an effect. Her skirt rose as she stretched, showing worn but neat walking boots. Her inadequate jacket molded to curves that dried his mouth. Wind plastered her skirts to lower curves that had him hardening in an instant, visions of plunder screaming into his mind.

It had been too long since his last willing widow.

Disgust at his own weakness as much as irritation at the invasion of his privacy, fueled Bear’s full-throated roar. “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing with my roses?”

She jerked around, then cried out as the rung she stood on snapped free of the upright. Bear lunged toward her as the ladder slid sideways. One upright caught on the tangle of rose branches and the other continued its descent. The woman threw out both hands but the branch she grasped snapped free and — before Bear could throw himself under her — she crashed onto the ground.

If the fall was deliberate — which would not surprise him after some of the things women had done to attract his attention — she had made too good a job of it. She lay still and white in a crumpled heap, her head lying on a corner of a flagstone in the path. He dropped to one knee beside her and slipped a hand into the rich hair. His fingers came away bloody.

As he ran his hands swiftly over the rest of her body, checking for anything that seemed twisted out of shape or that hurt enough to rouse her, a large drop of rain splashed onto his neck, followed by a spattering of more and then a deluge. He cursed as he lifted the woman and ran into the house through the garden doors that opened from the room he’d chosen for his study.

She was a bare handful, lighter than she should have been for her height, though well-endowed in all the right places. He set her on the sofa and straightened. He needed a doctor, but didn’t want to leave her while he fetched one. If the small village nearby even had a doctor.

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Dastardly doings on WIP Wednesday

I do enjoy writing villains, then giving them their comeuppance. And if my antagonists are sometimes melodramatically bad, I always have a backstory to round out their characters. At some point; at some crossroads in their life; they have stepped on a path, and then ignored multiple opportunities to make other choices. Very few of my antagonists think of themselves as villains. Some are just too self-centred to think of others at all. Some consider themselves heroes in the story of their own lives, their choices justified as being in the cause of the greater good.

This week, I’m inviting you to share an excerpt that gives us an insight into a villain of yours. Mine is from Never Kiss a Toad — a preview of a chapter that has not yet been published on Wattpad. (Never Kiss a Toad is the book Mariana Gabrielle and I are co-writing and co-publishing on her Wattpad profile and mine.)

Lady Sarah was avoiding him. 

Penchley intended to use this trip across the Indian Ocean to cement the attachment begun during the trip through Egypt, but how could he when she treated him with the polite indifference owed to a stranger, and refused any overtures? 

She blamed him for her doubts about Harburn’s intentions, though that dirty dog’s purchase of a house load of furniture to send to Italy was hardly Penchley’s fault.  

He had learned his lesson though about disclosing such stories directly to the lady. When he’d won back her trust, he’d be more careful. 

He’d been careful in Cairo. His skilful manipulation of the British Consol made him smile, even all these days later. He really was an excellent diplomat.  

Mr Finlayson, in a dither over his coming interview with His Grace the Duke of Haverford, had been grateful for the background on the duke’s decision to take his daughter to the other side of the world. “The finest of women, I assure you,” he’d said, “and you must decide for yourself what kind of cad has enemies who would attack an innocent lady, and one of such high estate. One of the slanderers was Harburn’s own cousin!” 

Finlayson expressed appropriate horror, and Penchley hastened to disclaim the rumour that Harburn and Lady Athol had once been very close, a circumstance that explained Lady Athol’s hasty marriage. “I have no evidence to confirm that story,” he said, “but I know for a fact that Harburn and the villain who attacked Lady Sarah fought over a woman in Paris. Something to do with irregular … practices, if you know what I mean.” 

“I should mention none of this to His Grace, I suppose,” Finlayson said, and Penchley hastened to assure him that the facts were known all over England. “His Grace will be please to know the truth of Lady Sarah’s innocence has reached as far as Cairo,” he explained. “Especially after the incident in Alexandria.” He explained about the fight. 

“But it hasn’t,” Finlayson protested. “I have heard nothing about any of the parties in this scandal, except from you.” 

“That’s good then. Although… Never mind.” 

Penchley allowed himself to be persuaded to share his concern that — since the rumours had clearly reached Egypt — Finlayson was not as in touch with local sentiment as he should be. “I am sure His Grace will understand,” Penchley said. “Your focus on your family, and your relationship with the local people — that is important to the British Empire too, I am sure.” 

Finlayson, who had married the daughter of an Egyptian notable and been shunted out of all further promotions as a result, chewed at the side of his lower lip, his brow creased. “I suppose I should know what the local British residents are saying,” he agreed. 

“And any travellers passing through. Over to you, sir, but if I might offer a little advice? It can never hurt to keep such a notable happy. You don’t need to mention me at all, and if the duke assumes you collected the information in the streets, using your own sources? All to the good.” 

Finlayson fidgeted nervously with his pen. “I couldn’t do that. Could I?” 

“Perhaps you could reassure the duke, father to father? Your eldest daughter is a little younger than Lady Sarah, but still… Yes. That will work nicely, I think.” 

The duke arrived then, interrupting their little tête-à-tête, but it had done the trick. Within minutes, Finlayson was expressing his sympathy for the wronged lady and the distraught father. His Grace enquired, with distant politeness, about the source of Finlayson’s information and Finlayson claimed multiple informants in Cairo, some travellers, others residents. His Grace became colder, stiffer, and more polite still.  

Before long, he rose to his feet. “I regret that I must take my leave, Finlayson.” 

“Of course, Your Grace.” Finlayson was on his feet too, bowing, his face screwed into an anxious frown. 

“We cross the desert tomorrow,” Penchley explained. “I understand we leave early to avoid the worst of the heat.” 

Finlayson bowed them out of his office and then his residence, catching Penchley by the arm to whisper, “I thought that went well, didn’t you?” 

Penchley was able to answer with complete sincerity. “Very well indeed.” 

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Wounds and scars on WIP Wednesday

Authors spend quite a bit of time talking about the emotional wounds that motivate and limit their characters. The Void, Damon Suede called it. The Void is what the characters spend the story trying to a-void. For our protagonists, facing and filling the void is the path to happiness. For the antagonists, the void will eventually suck them in, as their efforts to avoid it drag them into actions with consequences. (Don’t you just love fiction, where bad guys lose and good guys win?)

This week, I’m inviting you to share some scars with me — physical (but the real pain is the emotional impact) or emotional.

I’ve got a couple of pieces. One is from my Valentine story for 2019, The Beast Next Door. Eric’s void stems from his mother’s rejection. He was sent to the country as a baby, to hide the shame of his strawberry birthmark, then sent overseas for medical treatment when he was a boy.

When Eric had been sent to Italy, Nanny had been given a cottage in the village and a pension. “I will write, Nanny,” he had said. “I will write to you and you can tell Charis what the letters say.” They had already reluctantly agreed that Charis would not be able to receive letters from him directly, not just because he was a boy and a flawed one at that, but because no one in the Dalrymple household knew of Charis’s secret excursions and the friendship she and Eric had formed.

“My dear boy,” the old lady told him, fondly. “I never did learn to read, and now it’s too late, for my eyes are not what they used to be.”

Charis gave her a hug. “I shall read them to you,” she promised. And so Eric wrote each letter for the two females who loved him, sending them good news and bad. Philip, the tutor assigned to instruct and care for him, who came to be his closest friend. The repeated operations to remove the strawberry growth that marred the whole left side of his face. The infection that nearly killed him. The new friends he made when he was well again and Philip took him into Italian Society. There, the scars became something of a passport to new friendships as he and Philip vied to make up more and more outrageous stories about their cause. His favourite cast him as a ruthless brawler who had met up with a bandit better than he at knife fighting. In the story, the bandit was so impressed with his courage that Eric stayed with the gang for six weeks, being trained by the bandit.

And then the letters stopped. Six years ago, the village rector wrote, expressing his condolences on the death of Mrs Parker, and enclosing the most recent of Eric’s missives, unopened. And since then, nothing.

Eric had stayed in Italy even after he reached his majority. This village had been his prison, not his home, and the only two people who had ever cared about him were lost, for surely Charis had forgotten about him as she moved into Society and acquired the suitors she richly deserved. Handsome men, men who were accepted by their families, men with their own fortunes.

But here she was, sitting beside him, her lovely eyes shining. “Oh Eric, I am so glad you are home,” she exclaimed.

And he was, he realised. Home for him had always been Nanny and Charis. “I never forgot you,” he told her.

Magnus appears in Magnus and the Christmas Angel (a short story in Lost in the Tale), which I’ve begun rewriting as The Tattooed Earl. His void also stems from family rejection and exile. In his case, it led to imprisonment on a Pacific Island, where he won the right to a warrior’s tattoo. This is from the new draft, and shows the scene mentioned in the short story, where Caroline is rescued from a loathsome marriage as she stands before the altar ready to make her vows.

She kept her back straight, her face calm; stilled the trembling of her hands by sheer force of will. No one would know she was afraid. No one but Lewis, who knew and was pleased.

When she was close enough, Lewis grabbed her hand and squeezed hard enough to leave bruises, digging in his fingers. She hid her wince, but the minister noticed and frowned, and frowned still further with Lewis instructed him to begin.

“She’s here. Get on with it man. Splice me to the damn chit. I have other engagements this afternoon, and a wife’s maidenhead to breach before I can get to them.”

“Sir!” The minister was horrified. “Your rudeness is not to be tolerated in this sacred place, and in the presence of a lady. Miss Thrushnet, such lack of respect does not bode well. It does not indeed. I urge you to consider carefully before you proceed.”

Callie shook her head. “I have no choice. Do it quickly, please.”

The minister  shook his head, but he began the words of the service. Callie barely listened, until he reached the point that he spoke to the congregation, almost, it seemed, begged the congregation. “If any of you know cause or just impediment why these two persons should not be joined together in Holy Matrimony, ye are to declare it.”

He fell silent and waited. If only someone would speak up! They would not, of course, but even so Callie turned to look at those witnessing this travesty of a wedding, ignoring Lewis’s foul words as the minister ignored his commands to proceed.

The door to the church crashed back, and a large angry man shouldered his way past Lewis’s footmen, beating them off with his walking stick and shouting, “Stop the wedding!”

His face. Callie knew that face. This was a man, and not a stripling boy, and barbaric black whorls and dots disfigured all of one side—forehead, cheek, chin, and half the nose. But she would have known him had the tattoos covered all, by his resemblance to his father and by the leap of her heart as he fought his way furiously up the nave of the church.

Magnus. It was Magnus returned from the dead to save her.

Her head felt light, and then the world spun around her and went black.

*****

The minister caught Callie as she fell, fainting at the horror his face had become. He would have to explain. The men on the ship that rescued him grew used to his tattoos during the long voyage home. Could Callie?

But no time for that now, with Lewis shaking his fist in Magnus’s face and demanding he be removed, not that anyone seemed anxious to oblige him. Lewis’s lackeys were unconscious on the ground at the back of the church; the onlookers eyed Magnus’s stick warily, and his grin with even more caution.

Magnus looked Lewis up and down and his grin broadened. The monster who had made his youth a torment was now six inches shorter than him, and showing signs of dissipation in his broadening girth, his soft jowls. While he indulged every vice in London, Magnus had survived shipwreck, fought to earn his entrance into the elite of a warrior culture, and worked his way home from the other side of the world on a naval vessel.

Lewis turned his shoulder, ostentatiously. “Get on with it,” he told the minister. “This madman has nothing to do with us.”

The minister had lowered Callie to the ground and now stood protectively over her. His words were addressed to Magnus. “Who are you, sir? And what cause or impediment do you bring?”

Lewis argued. “He is mad, I tell you. Will no one rid us of this violent lunatic?”

Magnus ignored his cousin, but raised his voice for the benefit of the onlookers. “I am Magnus Colbrooke, Earl of Fenchurch, and this lady is my betrothed.”

 

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Family traditions on WIP WEdnesday

I love to build a bit of family history into my characters by giving them a seasonal traditional that brings back fond memories. It could be jam-making, or a special recipe for a feast, or an activity that only happens occasionally. Do you do that? Show me yours, and I’ll show you mine! As always, just post your excerpt into the comments.

Claudia began the run up to Christmas on the first of December, when she put up the Jesse Tree, a painted tree branch, fastened to a stand, that Grandma had made the year after Abbie was born. Grandma had made the felt ornaments, too, one for each day until Christmas. Each ornament had a story from the Bible, for the Jesse Tree was an old traditional way of tracking the salvation story from the creation of the universe to the birth of Jesus.

“But I don’t believe what you believe,” Claudia had explained, her father’s rigid form of Christianity having put her off religion of all kinds. But Grandma said the stories were part of her cultural heritage, and she — and Abbie too, as she grew older — could enjoy them without putting any more weight on them than on tales of King Arthur and his Round Table or Maui fishing up the North Island of New Zealand.

When Grandma died and Claudia moved to the city, she’d packed the branch and the ornaments away, but they’d come out again to decorate Abbie’s hospital room after the accident. Claudia had whiled away the days and nights spent waiting for Abbie to recover consciousness, by looking up the story to go with the ornament of the day, telling it in simpler words to the child lying still and white in the clean bed, writing it down, and illustrating the page. The pages, now bound, still recalled to her mind the long hours in the hospital, and the joy when, a few days before Christmas, a nurse had interrupted the story of Gabriel’s visit to Mary to take Abbie’s pulse, and Abbie had wrenched her hand away and demanded that the story continue.

The Jesse Tree had been part of their Christmas last year, too, as part of keeping things normal for Abbie while Claudia worried about what her former lover might do, now that the police had been convinced he was not responsible for what happened to Abbie. He was not stupid enough to attack either of them while he was under investigation, but now he was free to carry out his threats.

But as the year drew to an end, Abbie finished the intensive courses of physio, occupational, speech and psychotherapy prescribed by the hospital. Claudia was free to go anywhere she wished. So the day after Christmas, she loaded everything they owned into the back of her old station wagon, and they drove south, meandering through the country, stopping when they felt like it, until they reached Fairburn.

It had been a refuge when she’d flown into New Zealand, pregnant with Abbie, fleeing an angry boyfriend and a controlling father. It became a refuge again. They were welcomed back into the community, and not just by those who remembered them from the three years they lived here with Grandma.

Carly had found them this little studio, on the back of the property belonging to her parents, who were warmly welcoming. It was very private, hidden behind hedges and overlooked only by the main house — currently unoccupied, since Carly’s parents were on an extended overseas holiday.

Claudia wished they were home. Since the note three days ago, she had been very conscious of how isolated the building was. There had been nothing more, though. It must have been someone’s idea of a joke.

She shook off her sense of impending disaster, repeating one of the sayings taught to her by the counsellor she’d seen while Abbie was recovering. “I am in charge of how I feel and today I choose happiness.”

“Abbie,” she called. “I have the tree up. Are you ready for your story?”

Tonight, the story was just about the tree and its name. Abbie listened intently to the explanation.  A tree would grow from the root of Jesse. “Jessie,” Abbie commented.  “Jessie is at my riding.  Differen’ Jessie. Not Jesus’s granddad.” She began laying out the decorations from the shoebox that held them. “Which one comes next, Mummy?”

Claudia was picking through looking for the star that would go at the top of the tree to symbolise creation when a flicker of red caught her eye, and she leapt up to rush to the window.

“Edward!” The rabbit hutch stood in the corner of the paved patio, in its own little caged enclosure.

Abbie pressed her nose up against the glass. “It’s burning,” she observed. Flames licked all the way along the bottom and shot from the interior.

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Consequences on WIP Wednesday

In Greek tragedy, the terrible events that unfold have their source in some wrongful action of the protagonist. The sense that ‘if only I had taken this action or avoided that one’ haunts literature still, perhaps because it haunts our lives.

Today, I’m thinking about consequences in romance. To me, the suffering is even more tragic if they in some way could have avoided it by being more careful or more kind. Do you have such a moment in your stories? A thoughtless, impulsive, or even cruel action that results in some learning experience for your hero or heroine? Share either the mistake or the consequences in the comments.

Mine is from Unkept Promises. Captain Julius Redepenning has been a careless man, and is about to meet an ex-lover in the presence of his wife and his children by his mistress. The meeting is both a consequence of previous actions and a trigger for further consequences.

Jules and Dan retreated to one corner of the room to stand over their packages, sending Fortune back to the house for the buggy.

It was there Gerta van Klief found Jules, mincing over using her parasol as a walking stick, and standing far too close. When had he discovered a preference for small slender ladies, who kept their charms discreetly covered, thus letting his imagination supply what his senses could not provide? He had been celibate for far too long, but Gerta did not set his pulse pounding the way it did at one glance from his wife.

“Why, Captain,” Gerta hummed, the musical tones that had once intrigued him now sounding forced and artificial. “I did not expect to see you here. Are you planning presents, perhaps?”

She tipped her head coyly to one side and smiled sweetly, an expression at odds with her calculating eyes. What had he ever seen in her?

“Mrs van Klief. I was not aware you intended to travel to Cape Town.”

She laughed, another practiced and false sound. “That doesn’t sound at all welcoming, dear Captain.” She walked her fingers up his chest and dropped her voice half an octave. “Let us find somewhere more private to… chat, Captain.” Her whole demeanour changed as she half turned to address a glowering Dan. “Boy! Watch your master’s packages. And be sure not to lose anything.” She dropped her voice to a purr again. “You must count your packages before we leave, dear Captain, so the boy here doesn’t sell some of them.”

Jules’s distaste turned to active dislike. They’d had an off again—on again affair for three years, and the woman still didn’t know the first thing about him. Mia’s disgust at his fornicating was well deserved.

“Good day, Mrs Van Klief. I am not free for a… chat. My son and I are attending our ladies.”

Before she could voice the spite he could see forming in her eyes, they were interrupted by his daughters, converging to take a hand each. Hannah and Mia then passed the widow, one on each side, turning to flank the girls.

“ But Jules, darling, you are here with your family,” Gerta crowed with every evidence of delight. “Aren’t they charming?” She narrowed her eyes at Mia, elegant in London fashions that made every other lady in the room appear poorly dressed. “But you didn’t tell me you had an English daughter, Jules. Do introduce us.”

Mia’s smile managed to be both gracious and feral. “Yes. Do present your acquaintance, dear Captain.” In the last two words, she reproduced Gerta’s tone and accent precisely, showing she had heard more of the conversation than was comfortable.

“The woman is of no account, Mrs Redepenning,” Jules replied. “Have you finished your shopping?”

Gerta flushed scarlet at the rude dismissal.

After one swift look of compassion, Mia answered Jules. “Not quite, Captain. Our daughters need your arbitration. They both want the same ribbons, and they insist only you can make the decision.”

“Please, Papa,” Ada begged, and on the other side, Marsha echoed the plea.

“How dare you?” Gerta’s loud voice silenced the room, as people craned to see what was going on. “After all we have been to one another? How can you treat me like this, Jules. I have given you…”

Mia interrupted before Jules could blister the infernal woman. “A word of advice, Mrs van Klief. In British society — and the Cape colony has become British — a woman of breeding does not confront her lover in public, and certainly not in front of his wife and children.” Her own voice was pitched to reach the avid onlookers. At some level beyond his anger and his embarrassment, he admired her strategy.

“It is a matter of self-protection,” she explained, kindly. “However unfair it might be, going public with revelations about irregular relationships always leads to more censure for the woman than for the man.” She dropped her voice, but not enough to prevent the audience from hearing every crisp word. “Believe me, I understand why you feel bereaved, but you must have known your lover was a married man, Mrs van Klief. Your arrangement was never going to last.”

Was Gerta bereaved? Jules looked at her sharply. It had just been about the physical encounter, had it not? For both of them? And, for Gerta, the value of his gifts, of course. Her husband had left her with little, and the presents of her lovers made up the shortfall between gentile poverty and comfortable living.

But the widow met his eyes, her own bleak.

“Goodbye, Mrs van Klief,” he said firmly, unwilling to give her any reason to think he might soften.

She looked from him to Mia and back again, and seemed to wilt. Without another word, she turned and walked away, beckoning as she left to a coloured maid who had been standing by the door and who hurried to followed.

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Suspense on WIP Wednesday

Sweets to the Sweet by Edmund Blair Leighton  

I am currently working on a romantic suspense. It’s a contemporary, and a novella, for the Authors of Main Street Christmas Wishes volume, due out in November.

Abbie’s Wish has a woman who has retreated to a country town to keep her daughter safe, and three men who’d like to change her mind about letting a man into her life. The tag line says: Abbie’s Christmas wish draws three men to her mother. One is a monster.

How do you create suspense in your story? Give us an example in the comments.

Here’s the second scene from Abbie’s Wish. (The first has Abbie at the fair, making her wish.)

He followed the seller into the garage, which was as filthy, cluttered and disorganised as he’d feared. But the man owned a matching piece to the genuine part he had come to see, and the pair together were worth four times the asking price. Not that he’d let on. Far from it. He had every intention of beating the price down, if only because he was inside this disgusting hole risking septicaemia or worse.

He cast a disgusted look at the sink bench, where car parts, tools, greasy rags, and other bits and pieces lay scattered among plates with congealed food scraps, dirty cups half-filled with cold liquid substances, and a tottering stack of fast-food boxes. He curled his lip at the pinups above the bench — little girls, none of them over ten, the pictures home printed and ornamented with hearts and comments.

Where was the man? He craned to see over a pile of boxes of parts, some labelled, most anonymous but as he did, something about the disturbing montage registered in his mind, and in two short strides he was next to the bench, peering at the little girl with the dark curly hair and the delighted smile.

The same girl was on the next clipping, which had been pinned up first, and half covered so he could see there was someone else in the picture, but not who it was. He checked again to make sure the owner couldn’t see him, then unpinned the top photo. He would have to scrub his hands, but it was worth it. “So that’s where you are,” he murmured to the woman, quickly scanning the paragraph or two of text that went with the image.  He slipped both clippings into his pocket and was back by the doorway by the time the seller had emerged from his search, triumphantly waving the part.

He returned the smile with one of his own. Genuine, indeed. Just what he needed to complete the restoration of his classic motor cycle. A couple of weeks of evenings, and he’d be ready for a road trip. And — he patted the pocket that held the stolen pictures — he now knew just where he wanted to go.