WIP Wednesdays

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Reaction to crisis on WIP Wednesday

While Cordelia watched, helpless to prevent it, the two footmen grabbed Spen by the arms and dragged him backwards, easily ignoring his struggles.

Oh Spen. She would cry later. The remaining footmen were moving on her, and she would not put it past them to drag her, too. Perhaps her uncle could do something to help the man she loved. “Gracie,” she said to her maid, “let Aunt Eliza know we are leaving. I want you and her downstairs at the front door with our belongings as quickly as you can make it.”

She fixed one of the footmen with a stare she had seen the Duchess of Haverford use on a gentleman who was in his cups and making a nuisance of himself. “You will go with my maid to carry our bags. You may need someone else to help.” She applied the look to his companion. “You will conduct me to my coachman and other servants so I can order them to have my father’s carriage brought around.”

For a moment, she thought they would be difficult, but they must have concluded her instructions fitted within the commands of their marquess, for they nodded and obeyed.

She had to get Aunt Eliza out of here before that horrid man did something nastier still.

Oh, Spen.

No. She could not let herself break down. That evil monster could not hurt Spen too much. Her beloved was his heir. And in a few short months, Spen would be twenty-one. No wonder he had warned her they might have to marry in defiance of the marquess! She wished they had known the man had misunderstood who Spen planned to marry.

Again,  fear and grief threatened to overwhelm her. Again, she thrust them away.

She could break down after she had safely removed her people from this house.

***

I’m currently going through the wonderful Cynthia’s developmental edits on Weave Me a Rope. It is getting closer! Meanwhile, here’s another excerpt.

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Plot devices on WIP Wednesday

How did my goose girl equivalent come to be looking after sheep in the grounds of the castle of his betrothed? Amnesia seemed unlikely. And the goose girl trope of the thieving maid stealing her identity didn’t make sense to me, in a Regency context. (Though I’ve found a use for it.) So I have influenza, a snowstorm or avalanche, and a young man who doesn’t like fuss. This is how The Sincerest Flattery begins. (Don’t you love the cover?)

“Ride on ahead, Tris,” Percy begged. “Let them know I have been delayed.” At least, that is what he intended to say, though his stuffed up nose and raw throat garbled the words.

His brother apparently understood, for he shook his head. “I shouldn’t leave you, Percy. I won’t leave you, at least until after I’ve spoken with the physician.”

“Can’t keep a lady waiting,” Percy insisted, but he might have saved himself the trouble. Tris might be ten months his junior, and mostly content to go along with his old brother’s plans and schemes, but when he dug his toes in, there was no moving him.

A knock on the door. Perhaps it was the physician? It was the innkeeper’s wife, with a tray. “Some chicken soup for the young lord,” she offered.

Percy didn’t want food, but Tris insisted that he would recover more quickly if he kept up his strength. So he succumbed to having his pillows plumped so that he could sit up, at least enough to have the tray put on the bed.

But his head hurt to much to lift it, and the spoon felt as if it was made of steel and ten times the size. In the end, Tris fed him, a spoonful at a time, until he covered his mouth after the sixth spoonful. “Enough. Let me lie down, Tris. There’s a good chap.”

The innkeeper’s wife, who was hovering, asked, “Did you understand him, my lord?”

“He has had enough, and wants to lie back down,” Tris explained. “I daresay your head hurts, old chap.” He had picked up the tray and handed it the woman, and was supporting Percy with one arm, while rearranging the pillows with the other. “You should let me stay and nurse you, Percy.”

Percy shook his head, a slow and tiny movement from side to side, so as not to burst his pounding head right open.

“Are you twins, my lord?” the innkeeper’s wife asked, as people often did. They were not identical, but they looked very alike. It was an impertinent question, but Tris lacked the arrogance to give her rebuke any of the other Verseys would have offered. It was one of the things they all loved about Tris.

“We are not,” he said.

Another knock on the door, and this time it was the physician. Tris hustled the innkeeper’s wife away and fetched Martin while the doctor did his examination. That was a relief. If he had brought Martin to listen to instructions for Percy’s care, then Tris intended to follow his brother’s instructions.

This was a journey to meet the girl to whom Percy was betrothed. It would be rude to keep Lady Aurelia waiting, and Percy could already tell—was unsurprised to hear the physician telling his brother—that he would be a week or more in bed with this wretched cold.

This ague, rather, which is what the doctor called it. It didn’t seem to matter. Nothing did except for the wretched head, the throat, the blocked nose, the cough that seemed to twist his ribs inside his chest and tear his muscles.

The doctor droned on, and Percy heard bits and pieces in between bouts of coughing and musings about Lady Aurelia. Her miniature was pretty. His father had met her and said she was a comely chit. She had never had a Season, but then she was only seventeen, just a few months younger than Tris.

Their parents had signed the marriage agreements. The wedding was to be in six months. No one seemed to think it necessary for the two principals to the marriage to actually meet before they gathered in the church to be made man and wife.

Still, when Percy came up with the scheme to ride north and introduce himself to the lady and her family, the duke his father did not object. All he said was, “Comport yourself like a Versey, xxxtitlexxx. And take young Tris with you.”

Of course, that didn’t prevent his father from organising their travel, complete with a train of carriages branded with the crests of the Duke of Dellborough and full of servants. Percy and Tris abandoned them on the first day out from home. So here they were, travelling on horseback with just Martin to attend them, a couple of days behind the letter announcing their visit and at least four days ahead of the carriages with the rest of their servants and luggage.

The doctor had apparently finished, and was turning back to Percy. “Rest, Lord xxx. That’s the best—the only possibly medicine. I have left instructions for various ways to soothe your symptoms, but sleep is what you need more than anything.”

He left, taking the innkeeper’s wife with him. Tris took Percy’s hand and looked into his eyes, worried. “I do not want to leave you,” he said.

Percy squeezed Tris’s hand. “Lady Aurelia,” he said, though it sounded more like “Laay Aweia.”

Tris sighed. “Yes, I know.”

“I will look after Lord xxxtitlexxx,” Martin assured Tris.

Still Tris stayed, supervising the administration of the potion the doctor had ordered, which contained something in it that soothed the throat and sent Percy into the prescribed sleep. Next time he surfaced, Tris wasn’t there, which was a good thing, but Percy could not remember why. It was a woman who spooned stuff down his throat—chicken soup and some more of the potion. He thought she washed his face, too, but he was sinking back into sleep, his last thought as he succumbed, “The innkeeper’s wife!” Yes. That was who she was.

***

Aurrie was the first to see the man as he came up the drive, hunched over his horse’s neck. It was a beautiful piece of bloodstock. That was her first impression, her eyes drawn to the horse ahead of the gentleman.

He was a gentleman, as witnessed by the greatcoat he wore against the cold bearing five capes and the top hat that he retained on his head despite his collapsed position. Was he hurt? She cut across the lawn while the horse followed the curve of the drive, and reached the arch to the stableyard just before the rider.

He had managed to draw himself up. His face was hectic with fever and his eyes looked through her without seeing her.

“Sir,” she called out, and for a moment his eyes focused on hers. “Lady Aurelia,” he said, clearly. “Profound apologies…” And then his eyes rolled back and he slumped again, this time so fully that the top hat finally fell.

NOTE: I don’t appear to have referenced Percy’s heir by title in the books where he has been mentioned, so I’ll have to think of one for the heir to the Dellborough dukedom. My first drafts can be fairly messy

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Villainous actions on WIP Wednesday

Do you intend to deprive me of all comforts?” Spen asked his father, to prolong the conversation and keep his father’s attention from the window.

“I intend to do everything necessary to bend you to my will, you ungrateful scoundrel,” the marquess replied. “Where is your brother?”

“How would I know?” Spen asked. “He was here when I was locked up. He was sent home with a broken arm. Has he gone back to school? Home to Rosewood Towers?” He couldn’t help the scorn that colored his voice

He braced himself as his father swung a hand back for a blow, but one of the servants shouted. “There are ropes my lord. I think it’s a ladder.”

“Haul it up and look, man,” the marquess scolded.

“I cannot, my lord. Someone is on it.”

The marquess strode to the window, his eyes narrowed. “Coming up or going down? But why? Ah! I see.” He grabbed the loose bar and pulled it out, then stuck his head through the gap to look down the tower wall.

Spen managed two paces towards the marquess before men grabbed him and dragged him backwards again.

“It’s a boy,” the marquess was saying, sounding bewildered, then chortling, “No, a girl dressed as a boy.” He pulled his head back and glee in his eyes as he said, “and I think I know her name.” He held out his hand. “Someone. Pass me a knife.”

“No!” Spen shouted as he struggled, but the two men holding him didn’t let go. “No, my lord. Don’t do it!”

The marquess managed to get one arm and his head out the window. Spen could see him sawing back and forth as he continued to speak. “Did you think I would not hear Milton has interfered with justice for that trespasser who was spying for your little slut?”

He snorted. “The magistrate had the nerve to tell me I could not have had him hanged or transported for his villainy, and my imprisonment of the man was punishment enough. My illegal imprisonment! Can you believe it? Who does the magistrate think he is? Ah.” A shriek from below, short and sharp, coincided with the marquess’s sigh of satisfaction.

He moved to the second rope, and Spen imagined Cordelia clinging to the rungs as the ladder, collapsed with one of its uprights gone, twisted and turned. “Don’t,” he moaned.

“What do I find when I stopped at the village inn on my way here,” the marquis went on, “but the magistrate with Milton’s solicitor, and both of them demanded to know what I have done with Milton’s niece. I told them I did not know what they were talking about. Now, of course, I do.”

He pulled back again, to grin at Spen. “Three quarters cut through. Let us leave the bitch’s destiny to fate, shall we? If the rope holds, she spins for a while until I feel like sending someone to retrieve her. If the rope breaks, she dies.”

Another scream came as he finished speaking. The marquess looked out of the window again. “Oops,” he said. His grin was wider as he turned back into the room. “Well, my son. It seems your impediment to the marriage I wish is no longer a problem.”

***

This scene comes from my reimagining of Rapanzel, Weave Me a Rope. It’s with the publisher, and I’ll let you know as soon as I have a publication date.

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A bold move in WIP Wednesday

I do like a bold lady–one who decides what she wants and goes for it. That’s Laurel, my heroine in Hook, Lyon and Sinker, which I’m currently writing for publication next year. Not that she has always stood up for herself. She had allowed first her betrothed, then her father, then her mother to talk her into maintaining her betrothal, despite the number of times the man who promised to marry her changes his mind about the date. No more! She has given him the shove and is about to arrange her own marriage.

Mrs Dove Lyon was not as Laurel had imagined her. Laurel had expected someone garishly painted and indiscreetly clad in gaudy colours. After all, she ran a gambling establishment which also offered other sorts of entertainment of the most scandalous kind.

The person who joined Laurel was clothed all in black and veiled. Her garb would not have looked out of place on the most dignified of Society’s fashionable matrons, and was far less revealing than many gowns worn by such august ladies. Her language and carriage too, as she invited Laurel to sit and asked her preference for beverage, were those of a lady.

The knowledge comforted Laurel. Perhaps this desperate scheme might work after all.

Once Laurel had her tea, Mrs Dove Lyon came directly to the point, without any polite roundabation. “Why have you asked to see me, my lady? Do you wish for me to find you a husband?”

Blunt and to the point. Also surprising, for Laurel had agreed to Benjamin’s request that the broken betrothal should not be made public just yet. Laurel thought he wanted to give Tiber time to talk Laurel into reversing her decision, as she had last time, but it suited her to keep the gossips at bay for a week or so.

Her hostess must have guessed at her thoughts, because she said, “Lord Tiberius was here last night, and he is indiscreet when in his cups. Most of the gentlemen present will now be spreading the news that you have jilted him. Mind you, this is to your advantage, for he was bemoaning his own stupidity in putting off the wedding once again. And making it clear that his chiefest regret was losing your dowry.”

She deepened her voice and spoke again in a tone so reminiscent of Tiber’s that Laurel would have guessed she was quoting the dastard even if she hadn’t heard words very like them the previous afternoon.

“It’s not that I’m not fond of the lady. She is pretty enough and good company. I just never wanted to be married. If her dowry wasn’t so attractive, I’d never have proposed, and I’ve never needed her money enough to actually go through with the wedding. If only she was a placid biddable little thing. I could have planted my babe in her belly and then ignored her. But Laurel is too strong-minded for my tastes. Chaste, too. Never would let me steal more than a kiss, dammit. If she had, I could force her to have me. Still. I am going to miss her dowry.”

“Tiber has done me a favour, then,” Laurel realised. “He is wrong that I would marry him under any circumstances whatsoever, but at least he has made it clear that I am not…”

The other lady nodded. “Not used goods? Exactly. So your errand to me may be unnecessary, Lady Laureline. You can take your time and choose a husband in the usual way, since Lord Tiberius had taken all the blame to himself and by the end of the week all of Society will know that the pair of you did not avail yourself of the license usually extended to a betrothed couple.”

Not much license. Not when Tiber had been away from London on military duties for much of their betrothal and spent as little time with Laurel as he could when he was in London. Not when her father had insisted on her being as closely chaperoned after the betrothal agreement as she was before. Not, furthermore, when she had had doubts about the relationship for the past three years.

“You are free to go,” Mrs Dove Lyons insisted, “if that is what you wish.”

Laurel shook her head. “No,” she said. “It is not.”

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Torture your characters on WIP Wednesday

A brief excerpt from Weave Me a Rope, which is now with Dragonblade.

They travelled for four days. Spen spent each day chained to a ring that had been bolted to the floor of the carriage. At night, he was released from the ring, but the shackles remained on his ankles. He was escorted to a room in whatever inn the marquess had chosen, then chained to the bed.

No one would tell him where they were going or even the names of the towns they were in. Not that Spen cared. All he could think of was Cordelia. The marquess said she had fallen to her death. The man would tell whatever lies suited him best. Spen didn’t believe him. Couldn’t believe him. Cordelia could not have paid with her life for their glorious afternoon.

Had she been hurt? Had she been taken captive? Was his father, for once in his life, telling the truth?

He kept recalculating how long it would have taken her to climb down the rope. The trouble was, those moments in the tower room when the marquess had been sawing at the rope had stretched out into an eternity. She should have been able to make the descent in a couple of minutes, but had that much time elapsed?

Her scream had been short and cut off. A fall? A small one, perhaps. Or some other shock as she reached the ground.

His mind went round and round, covering the same thoughts again and again. He had asked the guards, but they refused to speak to him. There were four, all unknown to him, two of them with him at all times, day and night. He assumed the two not on duty travelled elsewhere in his father’s retinue or bedded down with the other servants. It didn’t matter. By contrast to his desperate worry for Cordelia, what was happening to him seemed to be unimportant.

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Happenstance in WIP Wednesday

Chance and coincidence play a larger part in real life that we like to admit. And also, of course, in fiction. This segment introduces the heroine in Hook Lyon and Sinker, my little mermaid reinterpretation. Chance has just come to her rescue, though it might not feel like it at the time.

If the kitten had not lost his ball behind the sofa, Lady Laureline Barclay might even now be moving inexorably towards her wedding day.

She was behind the sofa on her hands and knees when her brother and her betrothed entered the room. She stayed there when she realised they were talking about Tiber’s wish to postpone the long-expected event yet again.

“Not if you want Laurel’s dowry, you won’t,” her brother told him. “If she is not married before she turns twenty-five it all goes to a home for indigent gentlewomen. Our father changed the conditions the first time you put off the wedding, when Laurel was nineteen.”

Laurel frowned. She had not been aware of that. She would be twenty-five in a matter of months.

Tiber was surprised, too. He let loose a word that Laurel hadn’t heard before. “But you are joking, Ben, surely. Or making it up to force my hand.”

“Tiber,” said Benjamin, “you are my best friend, but you are a careless ass. Do you mean to tell me that you still haven’t read the marriage agreement? Even after agreeing—and then changing—five wedding dates? Six, now.”

That fetched a deep sigh from Tiber. “For good reason, Ben,” he insisted. “The first time, at least.” His voice brightened. “But you are earl now,” he reminded her brother. “Just change the agreements.”

“Can’t do it,” Ben disclosed. “The money for her dowry is in a trust, and I’m not a trustee. Besides, the trustees are bound by the terms my father set. Anyway, I’m not sure I would if I could. You have messed the poor girl about. Father was right to be suspicious of your motives. And don’t suggest I give her a dowry. My money is all tied up in property.”

That set Tiber off into another string of what Laurel was certain were expletives, accompanied by the sound of boots walking back and forth.

“If you don’t want my sister,” Benjamin added, “just break the betrothal, or ask her to do so. She needs to be married by the time she is twenty-five. I’m sure I could find someone to take her off my hands. She might be old for a bride, but she is comely enough. And she has a whopping dowry.”

The footsteps ceased.

“I esteem her dowry,” Tiber admitted. “I even quite like the lady. She is pretty enough. A bit too strong-minded for my tastes, though. I think she will make the devil of a wife. But I have promised to marry her, and so I will. I don’t dislike the idea of marriage so much that I would leave her to dwindle into a spinster, for I doubt anyone else will have her at this late stage. And at least her dowry will allow me to set up another mistress.”

Laurel was over her first shock, and was in a tearing fury. She bounced to her feet and declared. “However, I shall not have you, Captain Lord Tiberius Seward. Consider our betrothal at an end. Benjamin, I shall find my own husband, thank you very much. One to my taste and not to yours.”

Both Tiber and Benjamin tried to change her mind. Tiber promised to be faithful, looking so doubtful about the idea that Laurel laughed.

“You can barely bring yourself to say the word, Tiber. Do not make me and yourself look ridiculous. You know as well as I do that our marriage would be miserable. I would indeed make you a devil of a wife, and you would make me a devil of a husband. Count your blessings, Tiber. Being jilted by me is certainly one of them.”

After Tiber left, Benjamin told Laurel she would be sorry when she realised what she had done, for Laurel had loved Lord Tiberius since she was seventeen. Laurel replied thatshe had been foolishly infatuated with Tiber when she was seventeen, but had lost her respect and even her affection for him over the interceding years. “You must know, Benjamin, that I have been convinced for some time that going ahead with this marriage would be a mistake. We do not suit, Tiber and I.”

Mama, when she was told, said she entered into Laurel’s feelings, but Laurel was foolish to think that Lord Tiberius would be faithful, for men were not. And besides, what would everyone say if she broke the betrothal? “Every one will think there is something wrong with you. You will be sorry when everyone jeers and calls you an old maid,” she said.

The gossips already thought there was something wrong with her. She had been betrothed for five years and the wedding had been postponed five times already. “People can call me what they wish,” Laurel replied. “I will not wed Tiber.” Mama had an attack of the vapours and retired.

Laurel remained adamant. Marry Tiber she would not. She retreated to her bedroom to think of a plan, but only after begging a couple of sardines from the cook to feed to the kitten as a reward.

 

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Meet my “Little Mermaid with a Twist” in WIP Wednesday

Angelico Warrington made his painful way from the parlour of his employer down the stairs to the main hall of the Lyon’s Den, where he was nearly due to play another set with the other musicians. His progress was slow, but with a crutch on each side to take part of the weight off his damaged feet, Angel did make progress.

That was an improvement over those excruciating months after his friends rescued him from the French camp. They had insisted on sending him to London to see the best doctors, but he remembered little of the journey from Spain, and not a great deal of successive failed treatments. Except for the pain. He remembered the pain.

He had been working for Mrs Dove Lyons for a calendar month, completing the trial period she had offered him at the behest of her chief guard. Her wolves, she called them. Titan, their leader had served with some of same officers as Angel, but at different times. Still, at the request of one of his friends, he had put in a word with Mrs Dove Lyons, who had declared herself willing to employ Angel for a month. And after that, she said, they would see.

He had not doubted his ability to prove himself. Angel had always been a capable musician, though he had been a better singer. Once. Before he screamed his throat raw over and over during the month he had been in the hands of the French.

He had been a good dancer, too, once.

No point in repining. He could have been killed when the explosives he’d been setting under a bridge went off early and trapped his feet under piles of rock and his head under the water. He could have died at the hands of the French who rescued him, imprisoned him, and tortured him to find out what he knew about the movements and plans of the British army.

He could have passed away after his friends got him out, since by then the wounds in both feet were infected. Or he could have lost his feet altogether. The surgeons had been keen to cut off the poor mangled objects that remained after his captors had repeatedly rebroken the bones, over and over.

Instead, he was alive, free, and mostly recovered. He was even mobile, sort of. And he now had a permanent job. Mrs Dove Lyons had pronounced herself satisfied with his performances in the post month. She had offered him a contract and an increase in his wages. He could possibly move from the fourth floor room he shared with one of the other musicians, if he could find a cheap enough place on the ground floor somewhere.

He was smiling as he reached the intermediate landing and executed the manouver that allowed him to change directions, but one foot came down more heavily than he intended, and he shut his eyes against the pain that stabbed up from every poorly set bone in the dismal appendage.

As he did so, a warm fragrant body collided with him, and he lurched off balance into the wall, gritting his teeth against the agony, now from both feet as his crutches clattered to the floor.

“Oh, I am so sorry,” said a melodious voice even as a firm hand grasped his upper arm on one side to support him.

“Take a moment, Nereus. My lady, would you fetch my friend’s crutches?” It was Titan, the head wolf. Not that his true name was Titan, any more than Angel’s was Nereus. But Mrs Dove Lyon gave each of her workers a name—a stage name as it were. From Midsummer Dream, most of them, but not Angel. For him, their employer had strayed into Greek mythology. Nereus was the shape-changing god of the sea and particularly of its fish. Titan must have told the lady what Angel had done when he joined the Allied cause in Spain.

Titan’s was the firm hand, but not the melodious voice. Angel had to see who that was.

He managed to open his eyes, but the lady was wearing a bonnet with a thick veil. A pale blue rather than black, as was the fashionable gown that highlighted rather than disguising her figure. So not a widow. Wonderful. He had fallen in front of one of the customers.

“I truly do apologise Mr Nereus,” she insisted, as she handed Angel each crutch and he tucked them under his arms. “I was speaking to Mr Titan over my shoulder, and not looking where I was going. I do hope I have not hurt you. Well. I mean, I can see that I hurt you, but not worse, I mean.”

“Nothing that won’t pass, my lady,” Angel assured her. “As long as I keep my weight off my feet, they will be better soon.” Or as good as they ever were, which was the best that could be expected.

“Mrs Dove Lyons is expecting you, Lady Laureline,” Titan told the lady, and she smiled at Angel. “If you are sure you are unharmed, Mr Nereus,” she said, and continued on up the stairs.

Titan stopped to say “Stay there and I’ll help you down when I’ve seen the lady to Mrs Dove Lyons. He hurried after the lady.

Angel stayed leaning against the wall, it and his crutches doing most of the job of supporting him. He ignored the pain—it was a familiar companion. The thoughts that seethed in his mind took all of his attention. That was Lady Laurel.

Laurel Barclay. The girl he had once adored from afar. The girl he had saved from the sea when the ship they were on sank off the coast of Portugal. Eight years ago, that had been, in 1808. She had returned to her world and he had joined the British army.

Why on earth was Lady Laurel, virtuous sister of an earl, and flower of the English ballrooms, visiting the proprietor of a gambling den? Even such a gambling den as this, popular as it was with men and women alike, was not the place for an unmarried daughter of an aristocratic family.

A thought crossed his mind, but that couldn’t be her errand. Mrs Dove Lyon was a matchmaker for the misfits and the desperate. Laurel is betrothed. And if she does not like Lord Tiberius Seward9, and who could blame her, she can just choose another.

Titan caught him by surprise. “Nereus. You waited. Do we need to call a doctor?”

A fair comment. Usually, Angel refused help. “The lady,” Angel said. “I knew her once, a long time ago. I was curious about why she was here.”

Titan raised a brow. “Her business with Mrs Dove Lyon is her own. When did you have an opportunity to meet Lady Laureline? I thought you had only been in England for eighteen months.”

“It was long ago,” Angel said. “We were both on the same ship coming from Italy.” For part of the trip, anyway. Angel had been taken from his Sicilian home by pirates, and was on his way to the Tunisian slave blocks when the pirate vessel encountered a British naval patrol and came off the worst.

“The commodore was Lady Laureline’s uncle—Lord Somerford’s brother. I can’t say that we met, exactly. She was well chaperoned, and I was working with the crew. Then, off Portugal, a storm struck the fleet. It was scattered and our ship was blown onto rocks and foundered.” Angel shrugged. “Lady Laureline was the first person I rescued.”

“Which means,” Titan observed, “that you went back into the sea. More than once if I was to guess. How many people did you rescue, exactly?”

Angel shrugged again. He had no idea. Just the memory of aching heavy muscles as he forced himself through the waves again and again.

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First Kiss in Four Years on WIP Wednesday

Before she could say anything, he had fallen to his knees before her, and was asking, “May I kiss you, Ellie?”

“You need to ask?” she said, laughing.

He was serious, though. “Yes. You gave yourself to me four years ago and I responded to that gift with distrust and accusations. We parted in ill feeling and have lived apart for four years. I am more grateful and more delighted than I can say that you are considering giving me another chance. I will make no assumptions; assume no rights. It shall be as you wish.”

She parted her knees so he could come closer and put her hands on his shoulders. “The fault was on my side, too,” she reminded him, and pulled him closer for a kiss.

He accepted the invitation. In a split second, his body was pressed against hers and his hands pinned her in place, one on the small of her back and one the nape of her neck. His mouth covered hers, his lips and tongue urgently demanding her response.

Ellie went up in flames at his touch, revelling in the sensations she thought she’d never feel again, cursing the clothing that kept her from getting closer still. She still had to tell him something, but with his tongue in her mouth, the hard length of him rubbing against the place that wept for him, she couldn’t remember what it was.

She clawed at his shirt, and he co-operated, shifting slightly away and moving first one arm and then the other as she dragged the shirt off him, their mouths parting only long enough to slip the material past. 

That was better. Skin under her hands. His clever hands had inched up her hem and were now raising her night rail. In moments, she would be naked, and her body ached for the fulfillment he could give her. 

(An excerpt from One Hour in Freedom, which is out for beta reading and will be published next month.

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Starting the story on WIP Wednesday

Here’s the start of The Darkness Within, my current WIP.

Max paused in front of the elegant townhouse. What did the Earl of Ruthford want? There was never any question about Max obeying the summons. Even an occasional and remote member of Lion’s Zoo like himself would never ignore a message from their former colonel.

Still, he didn’t want to be here. He’d seen Lion a number of times since returning to England, mostly here in London, but he was never comfortable in the man’s home. Years of training and experience meant he could walk the stately halls of the wealthy and wellborn without displaying his discomfort , but all the same, he’d not breathe easy until he was back in the shadows where he belonged.

Besides, he was retired. If Lion wanted him for his old skills, he would have to disappoint the man.

He set his jaw, and climbed the short flight of steps to rap the knocker. A year ago, he would have found his way inside unnoticed—did, on several occasions. Lion had asked him to train the servants to see those who knew how to remain concealed, and they had proved good pupils.

The butler who opened the door wasn’t Blythe, who was in some sort a former colleague, as Lion’s soldier servant during the war. This one was the sort of superior creature he’d enjoy tweaking in a more cheerful mood, but today he just wanted to get the meeting over with. His facsimile of what the butler would undoubtedly call his betters was perfect. For most of his life, his survival had depended on his ability to imitate others, choosing as his model whomever would best achieve his goals, in this case, an upper class younger son.

The butler did not smile, but he at least gave a small bow, the depth precisely calculated, and marched off towards the rear of the house with Max’s card on a silver platter. In short order, Lion followed the butler back out into the entrance hall, hurrying towards Max with his hand stretched before him in greeting.

“Chameleon! Welcome. Thank you for coming.”

Max shook the extended hand. “I am always happy to see you, Colonel.”

“I’m not in the army any more. Lion will do fine,” the earl insisted, as he always did. “Come on through to my library. Would you like a brandy?” He led the way, still talking. “How have you been keeping, Chameleon?”

The library was a spacious room lined with book shelves, with a large desk in the bay window where the light was best. “Max. I prefer Max.”

Lion knew that. What was the man up to? Lion waved him to a chair by the fireplace; unlit on this warm day in May. Next to the matching chair, a small table held a book and half a glass of brandy. Lion poured another glass from a decanter, and brought it over before reoccupying that seat.

“Not Zebediah, or Zeb?” he asked.

Max raised a brow. The name by which the army had enrolled him. Curiouser and curiouser. “Max.”

“As you wish, Max.” Lion took a sip from his glass. “How have you been keeping?” he asked again.

Social chit chat? Even if Lion really wanted to know, did Max want to tell him? He gave a non-commital answer and returned the conversational serve by asking after Lion’s wife and children. The earl’s eyes lit up but he answered briefly.

“Both well, but Dorrie prefers not to bring the baby up to town in this heat.”

Clearly, Lion was still as besotted with his countess as he’d been nearly a year ago, last time Max’s path had crossed his. “I daresay you are missing them,” he ventured, inviting Lion to stay on that topic rather than Max’s own activities.

Not that he had anything to hide. Indeed, since he’d given up his profession, he’d not found anything to occupy himself. He’d toyed with buying an estate, but he knew nothing about farming and the idea of living in the country made him shudder. His only experiences with country living had been in Spain, Portugal, and France, where the landscape often hid snipers or troops of enemies in ambush.

He’d investigated various business interests to buy, and even invested in a couple—a canal they were building in Wales, a company to produce gas to light the streets of York. Investing his ill-gotten wealth was fun of a sort, but it wasn’t enough to fill his days.

He listened to Lion talk about his family, offering a remark or a question whenever needed to keep the conversation going. He could manage his part with just a small fraction of his mind, while another part catalogued the contents of the room, the available exits, the likely obstacles on each route out of the house. The rest wondered if he would spend the rest of his life living on the edge of a hair, ready for battle and calculating the odds. Even here, in the private home of a man he loved like a brother and for whom he would cheerfully give his life, he could not relax.

“Of course, you are battle-ready,” said that inner part of him that spoke with Sebastian’s voice. Sebastian was eight years dead, and his voice only a memory, but sparring with that memory had become a comfort in all the years alone, skulking behind enemy lines, as uncomfortable with the army he served as with the one he hunted.

“You were at war with the rest of the world when I found you,” Sebastian jeered, “and you were then only ten, as best as we could figure it. One of the many life-lessons I taught you was that letting your guard down exacts a terrible price. You’ll never trust anyone fully, ever again.”

“Enough about me,” Lion said, silencing the old ghost as the rest of Max’s mind came to attention. “You don’t want to talk about you, so let me explain why I asked you to visit. Remember Squirrel?”

Lieutenant Stedham had been dubbed Squirrel for his ability to scavenge whatever was needed by the motley band of exploring officers who served under Colonel O’Toole, now the Earl of Ruthford. With their commander already known as Lion and a Fox, a Bull, and a Bear in the line-up, they all soon gained animal nicknames. Lion’s Pride, one wag dubbed them, but another claimed they were more Zoo than Pride, and the name stuck.

“I remember Squirrel,” Max admitted. Young, eager, and with an optimistic outlook that even five years of a brutal war could not suppress.

“He has gone missing. He has not written to his sister for more than five months, and her most recent letters to him have been returned as undeliverable.”

Max lifted his brows. “You want me to find him?”

“If you are not too busy. It is not like him, Max.”

That was true. Max could see the boy in his mind’s eye, sitting close to the flickering light of yet another campfire in yet another godforsaken hollow of yet another bleak mountain, penning yet another letter to the much older sister who had raised him. He didn’t bother to protest that hunting men was no longer his job, and England not his hunting ground. He would do this for Lion. He would do it for Squirrel, whose cheerful outlook had intrigued as much as annoyed him. Above all, he would do it because a hunt might stave off boredom for the few days or weeks it took, and it was unlikely to involve killing someone. Max didn’t do that anymore.

“What can you tell me, Lion? Where do I start?

by

Mysteries in WIP Wednesday

In my latest made-to-order story, I explore a reunion between a husband and wife who were separated by lies and malice many years earlier. There’s a mystery about the whole thing, and hence the headline for this post. The following scene features the brother and sister who are meeting for the first time.

“Hello,” he called, as he approached.

“Hello,” she responded. He was somewhere near her own age. Or, at least, he was as tall as Lillian. Slender and with dark hair and eyes, he reminded her of someone, though she could not think who. Could he be the company she longed for, perhaps? She held out her hand. “I am Lillian,” she said.

He took her hand and bowed over it. “Thomas,” he introduced himself. “I live over there.” He pointed to a house, or more of a large cottage, beyond the field.

Lillian pointed to the door into her aunt’s garden. “I am staying with my aunt,” she explained. “Am I trespassing, Thomas?”

He waved his arms in an expansive gesture. “I invite you to visit any time you like,” he said. “Have you met Belinda?”

“The horse?” Lillian realised. “She is sweet, is she not? Is she yours?”

“Yes, or my mother’s rather. We have owned her since before I was born. Come on.” He led the way to the horse, who lifted her head to sniff at his pockets.

The pockets proved to contain apples, and Thomas gave one of them to Lillian to feed ot the horse. Belinda accepted the offering with gentle lips and tolerantly carried them in turn around the field, one riding, the other walking. They picked wildflowers and Lillian made them into necklaces and crowns. They hunted for berries in the tangle by the brook.

Thomas suggested that another day, they could fish. He swore the brook had trout, but all Lillian saw were a few darting minnows.

And all the time, they talked, sharing stories, ideas, and opinions. Lillian had never made a friend so easily. Something about Thomas felt familiar, as if she had known him all her life.

But she could not have met him before. He had been coming to this town since he was a babe in arms, he and his mother. He brushed off questions about his father by saying, “We lost him before I was born.”

It wasn’t until later that afternoon, as she sat at the modiste’s watching Aunt Alice be fitted for yet another gown, that Lillian had time to explore the idea hovering at the edges of her mind. It was ridiculous, of course. Surely such a coincidence only happened in stories. But it could be true. Thomas had something of the look of her father, even more if she considered the portrait in the long gallery of Father as a boy. He was also the right age, for she had asked him. He had just turned thirteen, he had told Lillian, and Lillian celebrated her fourteenth birthday six weeks ago.

Two years ago, Lillian had demanded that her father tell her the truth of the scandalous rumours she’d been overhearing for as long as she remembered. She had a living mother, and possibly a living brother or sister. Her mother had been with child when she disappeared shortly after Lillian’s first birthday.