WIP Wednesdays

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Danger and adventure on WIP Wednesday

In The Flavour of Our Deeds, I decided I was tired of the hero rescuing the heroine. Here’s Kitty, hunting for her husband, who has been kidnapped.

“You two stay here with the prisoner,” she told Dixon and Henry. “Millie and I will scout the area.” She adjusted her quiver so she could reach it quickly, took half a dozen arrows, and set one into her small hunting bow.

“I should do that, my lady,” Dixon protested. “You are a lady! I can be trusted. I promise.”

Kitty thought she probably could trust the man not to betray them, but she wasn’t going to risk it. “Stay here,” she repeated. “My husband trained me and Millie in woodcraft. We will not be in danger, and will return when we know whether there are guards.”

There were. Two men, sitting on a ledge part way up the rock outside of a cave that was awash with each wave. They were passing a bottle between them as they took it in turns to toss a pair of dice. 

With all their focus on their game, they didn’t see Millie and Kitty creep towards them. Not until Kitty stood, her arrow nocked and her bow drawn. “Hands up,” she said.

Both men reached for the guns that lay beside them. Two arrows flew, and both flinched back, dropping the guns into the wave. One gun had an arrow in the stock. The other arrow had glanced off the other gun and struck its holder in the face.

“Millie, collect their guns,” Kitty commanded.

Her maid put her own gun down and crept forward, taking care not to get between Kitty and the two smugglers. 

“You won’t shoot,” one of the smugglers ventured. “You’re a girl.”

“She did shoot, you fool,” hissed the other.

“And hit exactly what I aimed at,” Kitty told them. “The next two arrows will go into your black hearts. That will leave me two spare and another six that I can reach and fire in seconds. Don’t move. Don’t speak. Don’t think. Millie, fetch the others.”

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Accidents and mishaps on WIP Wednesday

Nothing like a small hiccup in a character’s travel plans to get a plot going. In this excerpt. Pauline and Vivienne are begging for refuge from the storm, but the servant does not want to let them in.

Thorne shook his head and brandished the rifle. “You cannot come in and you cannot stay here.”

Surely, he would not actually use that thing on them? “You must see that we cannot return down the path in the dark,” she told him. Where was his master? She hoped Peter’s friend would not turn Peter’s sister from his door, much as he might wish Pauline herself to perdition.

Thorne was still shaking his head. “Not my problem. We don’t have visitors.”

Technically not true, since Peter had been here several times since Captain Lord John Forsythe moved so far north, and at least once, he had brought Arial. The man’s brother, the Marquess of Deerhaven, had also visited.

Perhaps Thorne’s objection was to women visitors.

He added some weight to that theory by saying, “You can’t stay here. Unmarried young women with no chaperone? I know what you’re about.”

Pauline was perilously close to losing her temper. She could feel the scalding hot words bubbling up inside her. She breathed deep and forced them down.

Vivienne took her hand. “What are we going to do?” she whispered.

Through the wet gloves they each wore, Pauline could feel Vivienne shivering with the cold. “My sister is wet and cold, and can go no further tonight,” she said. “You will find us a place to sleep out of the rain.”

Thorne sneered. “Or what?”

Beside Pauline, Neil squared his shoulders and opened his mouth, but before he could speak, someone else did. “Or I shall have a word or two of my own to say, Nathaniel Thorne.”

Jane Forsythe scampered back into view, leading the speaker, a woman of about the same age as the man Thorne. “The idea of leaving Lord Stancroft’s sisters on the doorstep in the rain! Or any other Christian out on a night like this. Put that silly gun away and go and light a fire in the blue bedchamber. Come in, you poor dears.” She nudged her husband out of the way, and beckoned them forward.

Pauline kept a wary eye on Thorne as she followed Vivienne into the tower. Neil and Keith, close on her heels, also watched him closely, waiting for him to make a wrong move. He stood there, indecisive, as Betsy dropped the bag she had been carrying.

Mrs. Thorne hovered over Vivienne, helping her remove her coat and bonnet while lamenting their sodden condition. Thorne put the rifle back on a couple of wall hooks and walked off through an interior door, muttering, “It is not as if it was loaded.”

At a nod from Neil, Keith followed the man, and Miss Jane skipped off after them both.

Mrs. Thorne turned her attention to Pauline. “Off with those wet things, Miss Turner. I shall just set the kettle on to boil. And is this your maid?”

“Yes,” Pauline acknowledged. She introduced Betsy and Neil. “Neil’s brother Keith has gone to help your husband with opening up the room.”

Mrs. Thorne looked a bit uncomfortable. “It will just be the one for the two of you,” she said. “And your men will have to share, too. It’s not that we don’t know how to entertain guests, but we are a bit out of practice, and Thorne and I are the only live-in servants, so you see…”

Pauline spoke hastily to reassure her. “Vivienne and I are very happy to share. If you have a pallet, and the room is big enough, Betsy can stay with us as well. We are well able to help with the chores. We are so very grateful you have allowed us to stay.”

“I could not turn you out into that storm,” Mrs. Thorne said. “Even the master would not expect that,” she added, but the crease between her eyebrows hinted she was unsure of the last statement.

Another thought wiped the crease away. “He will have nothing to complain of if you just stay clear of him, which will be easy enough, for he seldom comes out of his own tower, and then only to see Miss Jane. If you keep to your rooms, all shall be well.”

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A bouquet of excerpts on WIP Wednesday

I’ve created these tags and pulled out these excerpts for the contest leading up to next month’s launch of Lady Beast’s Bridegroom. I’m planning to do another sharing contest. Share one of my memes on any of your social media, and go in a draw for a great prize. More news about that before the end of next week. Meanwhile, here’s what I will be using for the memes.

A reclusive bride. A reluctant fortune-hunter.

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Could a practical marriage become a love match? Not if their enemies could help it.

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The beauty of a kind heart is the truest kind.

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The mask she wears hides ugly scars, but the true ugliness lies in the hearts of their enemies.

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Peter walked through the London streets, trying to think of some other way out of Arial’s dilemma. He couldn’t reconcile his dignity to the idea of selling himself to a rich wife. On the other hand, leaving Arial to the non-existent mercies of her cousin was impossible. He owed her his help.

***

Marriage was the only quick way to secure safety for his sisters, and the surest.

It helped to further soothe the raw hurt of being a fortune hunter that the lady needed the protection of his name and title. The idea of a convenient marriage had become a lot more palatable in the past hour or so.

She would not have been a beauty even without the scars he could see, and he shuddered to imagine the damage she kept hidden. That was all to the good. His stepmother and her daughter were beauties, and they were shrews.

***

Peter was everything she dreamed of in a husband, but that made it all the more likely she would fall in love with him. Mr. Richards said he was reluctant to marry for money, but she thought he would come to it. He was driven by a strong sense of responsibility, and by love for his two half-sisters.

To marry someone she loved who could never love her. Wouldn’t that be a kind of living hell? Far more comfortable and less immediately dangerous than the one her cousin threatened, but lacerating to the soul, nonetheless.

***

“You look like a fairy princess,” Viv asserted.

Arial thought fairies were frail little creatures, and no-one had ever thought her frail, even before the fire. But when she stepped in front of the mirror, she conceded there was much to be said for Viv’s opinion. It was the gown, of course, and the jewels, and the mask. But she truly did present a gratifying appearance for her wedding. Two impossible things. She’d never thought to have a wedding. She’d never thought to see admiration in the eyes of others.

Would Peter be pleased with how she looked?

***

Peter turned to look. It was Arial, but not the Arial he had left this morning. Dressed in a golden gown with a matching half-mask, her hair dressed high upon her head, his mother’s jewelry catching the light, she was a queen—no, a goddess—beautiful, mysterious, confident, alluring.

***

“I have always thought that ugliness of character, while easier to hide, at least temporarily, must be far more disappointing for a husband than a few physical scars. Far harder to live with, too.”

***

Her voice was steady again. “I think kissing might be pleasant.”

Kissing was pleasant with a temporary lover. Peter feared that kissing Arial was going to be so far beyond pleasant it would shatter his world and remake it. “Kissing can be very pleasant,” he said.

***

In the morning, the half mask was back in place. He expected too much, too soon. She had trusted him enough to give him her body. It would take time before she could bear to be naked with him.

The small bit of distance was to his benefit, too. This marriage was a civil arrangement. He did not intend to spoil it by becoming besotted with his bride.

***

“I imagine people are curious,” Peter said. “Newlyweds,” he added.

Arial very much doubted that was the reason. “Kind of you, Peter. In truth, they want to see the gargoyle with the mask and the man who looks like a fairy prince.”

***

“People judge us both by our looks. I don’t like it, Arial. The way we look is not the sum of us. I don’t see ugliness when I look at you. I see kindness and intelligence. I see the lips that kiss me so sweetly. I see the body that was made to respond to mine.” He leaned across the corner of the table to place a kiss on the corner of her mouth.

“And if all you see of me is an outer shell I did nothing to deserve… I would be very disappointed, lady wife.”

***

Her marriage had turned out exactly as she feared. She had fallen in love with her beautiful, kind, clever husband. That was not part of the bargain, and she could never let him know.

***

Peter saw red. He had no memory of drawing his sword or of crossing the hall, but in seconds, the brute was backing away, whimpering, his hand to a cheek that dripped blood.

And Arial was back in Peter’s arms where she belonged.

He held her close, kissing her hair, her forehead, her ear, anything he could reach while she was plastered to him, saying over and over, “You are alive. Josiah lied. I knew you would come if you could.”

“Nothing and no one could keep me from you, my dearest love,” he told her.

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First meeting on WIP Wednesday

First meeting in the book, that is. They first met a decade earlier, and the picture he formed of her was not positive. When she turns up at his house seeking refuge, he suspects her of ulterior motives, and is certain she must be causing trouble. After fretting about it all morning, he goes to find them, sure they won’t have stayed in their room, as his housekeeper assured him they would.

He heard nothing in the house. No voices, no movement. Down the main central passage he went, from one end of the main wing to the other, and then up the branch passage that led to the other tower.

When he reached the other end of the main wing, he knew he had been right. The visitors had not stayed put. He could hear them downstairs in Mrs. Thorne’s kitchen, laughing and talking. What on earth were ladies like that doing in the kitchen? Making a nuisance of themselves, he’d be bound.

He wasn’t going to be kept out of his own kitchen by a pair of Society ladies. And if they were bothering Mrs. Thorne, they could simply get back to their rooms, and so he would tell them.

He walked down the servants’ stairs to the kitchen, which was in the lowest level of the main wing of the house. It and its associated store rooms were the only part of the main wing in regular use, though Mrs. Thorne had women from the village up several times a year to give the whole place a good clean.

When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he was struck dumb by the sight of a pretty young lady in a simple day gown slicing a loaf of bread, while an older one whom he recognized as Miss Turner was helping Jane to sprinkle powdered sugar over the top of a cake.

That was the most startling part of the scene, though all of those currently in the kitchen were busy. Another strange female, presumably the maid, was buttering the slices as Lady Vivienne cut them, and a large lean man had stopped setting the empty end of the table with crockery and cutlery to eye him suspiciously.

Jane looked up from the cake and flung up her hands, scattering sugar all over Miss Turner. “Papa!”

Mrs. Thorpe twisted her hands in her apron and eyed him warily. “Captain, sir.”

John heard her, but couldn’t tear his eyes off Miss Turner, who was nothing like the besom of his imagination. She wasn’t even much like her former self except in general appearance, somewhat modified by the passage of time. The haughty female who had been bosom friends with his former betrothed wore her discontent on her face and looked down her nose at the world.

This older version of the woman he had met years ago was altogether softer. More rounded, for a start. Eight years ago, she had been slender to the point of gaunt. The extra weight was distributed in all the right places, too, which he shouldn’t be noticing.

Nor was she dressed in the height of fashion. In fact, he was fairly certain he had seen the dress under the capacious apron that had caught most of the sugar. If he was right, and it was one of Mrs. Thorne’s, she certainly didn’t seem to be bothered by it.

She was laughing as she dusted sugar off her nose and cheeks. When she darted out a tongue to taste her own lips, he tore his eyes away, embarrassed by his reaction.

“Papa, did you come to have some of my cake? Miss Turner and I made it our own selves!”

There was only one possible answer. “I would love some cake you made, Jane of mine.” For his darling girl’s sake, and not because he was at all interested, he added, “Will you introduce me to our guests?”

Jane went to jump down from the chair she was standing on and realized two things in swift succession. First, that she was still holding the sieve of powdered sugar. Two, as she turned to hand it to Miss Turner, that the lady was had been soundly dusted.

“Oh dear,” Jane said. “I threw sugar on you.”

“These things happen,” Miss Turner said, with a twinkle in her eye. “You were excited to see your Papa.” She took the sieve and held out the other hand to help Jane jump to the floor.

Jane grabbed John by the hand and pulled him towards the table. “Lady Vivienne and Miss Turner, may I present my Papa, Captain Forsythe?”

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First look at a character on WIP Wednesday

This is an excerpt from Zara’s Locket, my story in Belles & Beaux, which is being published tomorrow. It squeaks in as a work-in-progress on a technicality, being finished but not yet distributed to readers. But meet my heroine, anyway.

Someone had trashed the small windowless room the Strickland household provided for the comfort of their governesses.

At first, Zahrah was inclined to blame her charges. The three children currently consigned to her care were hell-spawn—encouraged in their defiant disobedience by parents who chose to believe them angels, and to ignore any evidence to the contrary.

However, even their most strenuous efforts to chase her away had resulted in nothing worse than frogs in her shoes, mud puddles in her bed, and a bucket of slops balanced on a door. And their behavior had improved since she began telling them stories at bedtime on any day in which they had all three attended their lessons and displayed the manners they had formerly trotted out only with their parents and their older brothers and sisters.

At the moment, with Christmas approaching, she had an extra carrot to offer them. The Strickland family did not decorate for Christmas, but Zahrah had asked and received permission to decorate the nursery and schoolroom, and the children were looking forward to it, and so was Zahrah. It would make up for not being with those she loved for the festival.

Zahrah sorted her way through the mess. Her mirror broken. Ink thrown onto a watercolor she had tacked to the wall. Her clothes not just tossed around, but ripped apart. Worse still, pages torn from her few personal books and other pages defaced with splotches of ink.

This was not the children. They lacked the strength for such destruction. And they didn’t, she was certain, hide this degree of spite.

It could have been a servant, she supposed. They were stand-offish and unpleasant, but none hated her, or had cause to.

The wooden box her brother had made to give her on her last birthday lay in pieces, its contents gone, or hidden in the clutter, perhaps. The bits and pieces were mostly worthless to someone else. Cheap pieces of jeweler suitable for a governess, most of them with happy memories of the person who gave them to her, or the occasion on which she bought them. The latest letter from her mother, set aside for a rereading. A button that she had not yet had time to sew on a cuff.

And her locket. That was the one item she hated to lose. Her father had commissioned it for her sixteenth birthday, and she had worn it daily ever since. She had only taken it off because the catch had been broken in the scuffle with Gerard Strickland.

The oldest Strickland son had been brooding for the past two weeks, ever since his ambush on her had resulted in a threat to his person, backed up by the knife she always carried. Yes, and he had been muttering threats when none of the other Stricklands were around to hear.

She had taken no notice. What could he do, after all?

Well. Now she knew.

For more about the stories in Belles & Beaux, and for preorder links, see the project page on the Bluestocking Belles website.

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Stereotyping on WIP Wednesday

This charming English cottage was once the village gaol and police station. It dates from 1859, But I like to think that the Barkers, bless them, had a similarly nice situation.

In Zara’s Locket, my heroine is arrested because she has brown skin and black hair, is bedraggled after being caught in the rain and running away from an assailant, is on foot, and has money.

This is evidence, think the villagers, that she must be a thief.

The village lockup was at least dry, and the constable’s wife brought Zahrah a couple of warm blankets as well as a pot of tea and two large slices of fresh bread with cheese. “For while you are in my husband’s custody, you are his responsibility, and I won’t have you starving to death or shivering your way into an ague,” she insisted.

For all her brisk manner and her practical reasoning, her eyes were kind, and she thawed still further when Zahrah thanked her. “Someone taught you nice manners, even if you are an Egyptian and a thief.”

“My father was born in Egypt, but my mother is as English as you are, Mrs. Barker,” Zahrah said. “And I am no thief. The money was my own, my pay from the position I left this morning, and all that I have left after I was accosted by an actual thief.”

She had told the constable that when he arrested her. She had limped into the village, her gown torn, her hair a bedraggled mess, and attempted to use a silver crown to pay for a room at the inn. The innkeeper refused to believe she had come by it honestly, and the righteous citizens present in the taproom dragged her to the Barkers’ house and insisted that the constable lock her up.

“As to that,” Mrs. Barker replied, “you can tell the magistrate all about it, but not until after Christmas, for he has gone to visit his daughter and her children in Birmingham, bless the dear sprouts. Meanwhile, I will make sure you have a share of our meals, and you will have a warm bed out of the rain. If you would like, we can decorate in here for Christmas! Now don’t you worry, dearie. Sir William—that’s the magistrate—he’ll sort it all out when he returns.”

She bustled off, closing and locking the door between the lockup and the Barkers’ family quarters. The lockup was divided into three spaces. Bars formed two cells for prisoners, and the rest of the room held a table, a chair, a bookshelf, and a fireplace.

The constable was not, at the moment, in the room. He had locked Zahrah into one of the cells, chivvied the jeering onlookers out through the outside door, and disappeared through the inner one.

He had not returned, but Mrs. Barker had lit the fire when she came with her tea tray, blankets, and good advice. The woman was clearly in favor of looking on the bright side, and she was not wrong. Zahrah was grateful for food and shelter.

Grateful, too, that if English justice proved to be unreasonable, at least she would not be hanged out of hand. She would undoubtedly have time to get a message to her family, if she could find a way to pay the postage. Perhaps she could sell her boots? Perhaps Mrs. Barker would help her?

She regretted the loss of her book, though with the storm outside making the sky dark, reading was probably not an option. Not without a good lamp, and she lacked even a candle.

(The term Egyptian–short form, gypsy–is an outsiders’ name for the Romani, and many Rom find it insulting. It is based on the mistaken belief that they were originally from Egypt.)

Zara’s Locket is part of the Belles & Beaux collection, available to order for the special preorder price of 99c.

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Nasty relatives on WIP Wednesday

 

I seem to have a lot of nasty relatives in my stories. A Regency romance trope that can be very useful. Here is my heroine from my Lyon’s Den story, The Talons of a Lyon, which is coming out with Dragonblade next April.

Despite the size of the rooms and the number of facilities, there was a queue for the dressing screens. Mrs Worthington insisted on Seraphina going first, and Seraphina conceded, since she had had a glass of champagne and two of punch in the course of the evening, and the matter was becoming urgent.

When Seraphina came out from behind the dressing screen, Mrs Worthington was nowhere to be seen, so she must have taken her turn.

Seraphina stooped to peer into one of the mirrors, and fiddled with a couple of her pins to fix a lock of hair that had fallen down. Focused as she was on the mirror, the first she knew of the presence of one of her enemies was when the woman’s reflection appeared in her mirror.

She turned to face her. “Virginia,” she said.

“You nasty common little bitch,” her sister-in-law hissed. “How dare you come here, swanning around on the arm of your fancy man, pretending you are fit for the company of your betters.”

“You insult Lord Lancelot Versey,” Seraphina replied, pleased that her voice was steady, though inside she was shaking like a blamange. “He is a perfect gentleman, and you are wrong to speak such untruths.”

Virginia didn’t listen, which came as no surprise. “Marcus and I will see to it that you are put back in the gutter where you belong, and I can promise you that you will never see your children again,” she snarled.

Mrs Worthington had emerged and was standing behind Virginia. “I have a promise for you, Virginia Frogmore.” When she spoke, the woman started, and twisted to see who was there.

“You and your husband,” Mrs Worthington continued, “have lied and cheated to see Lady Frogmore deprived of her place, her fortune, and her children. I promise that your sins have been uncovered, and you will not be allowed to enjoy the fruits of your lies and deception. Now go home before I tell Her Grace of Winshire that you have been threatening another of her guests.”

“You cannot support her!” Virginia whined. “She is not one of us!”

“You are not one of us, Mrs Frogmore,” Mrs Worthington declared. “Ladies do not spread false gossip. They do not cheat widows out of their income. Lady Frogmore has powerful allies. If you are wise, you and your husband will return the children and retire to somewhere you can afford without stealing from the little baron. I believe Italy might be suitable.”

Seraphina realized that everyone else in the room had stopped what they were doing and were listening avidly. Virginia must have noticed the same thing, because she suddenly put both hands over her face and rushed from the room.

The starch went out of Seraphina’s knees and she sank onto the stool in front of the mirror. Her breath, as she released it, was ragged.

Mrs Worthington sat beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. “What a horrid woman,” she commented.

Seraphina’s laugh was as shaky as she felt. “You do not know the half of it,” she said.

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Weddings on WIP Wednesday

I’ve somehow managed to find myself writing three weddings in three different works-in-progress all in the same month. Here’s the first one.

Pauline had never believed this day would come. The morning had passed in a flurry of excitement, with Tante Marie, the modiste, and two of the maids fussing over her, and Jane and Mrs Thorne providing a running commentary.

Pauline kept expecting someone to stop her, and tell her it was all a mistake. But here she was, walking towards John and the altar on Noncle Pierre’s arm, in a gown of the softest silk in a warm buttery cream, carrying a huge golden yellow bunch of Noncle Pierre’s prize roses, and wearing John’s gifts around her neck, in her ears, and on her wrist.

It was real. There he was, smiling at her, his eyes warm and welcoming. She fought against submitting to the fantasy. This was not a love match. He had been very clear. He liked her. He desired her. He wanted her as a mother for Jane. She should not expect anything more.

As she moved towards him down the aisle, she balled up those sensible thoughts and locked them away in the deepest recesses of her brain. Today was a dream. She was wedding the man she loved, and she was going to enjoy every moment. When she reached his side and Noncle Pierre released her into his hands she gave herself over to the fantasy.

She was determined to memorise every moment, but afterwards, she mostly remembered John’s voice, strong and confident, vowing to love her above all others, placing a ring on her finger and then not releasing her hand, John sneaking glances at her throughout the ceremony, glances that hinted at his own wonder and delight as they bound themselves to one another for life.

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The virgin hero on WIP Wednesday

This is an excerpt from The Flavour of Our Deeds (Book 5 in The Golden Redepennings). My hero has been resisting the heroine for six years. She is a lady born, daughter and sister of an earl, wealthy and beautiful, with the world at her feet. He is base born, a commoner, a working man, too old for her, and in danger. She has finally got him to concede that he loves her, and wants to marry her. Some time. When the danger is over. In this scene, she demands that he thinks again.

In the next moment she was in his arms, and he was kissing her. “You will be the death of me, stubborn female,” he muttered against her lips, before covering her mouth again, one hand on her lower back pressing her against him, the other gently cradling the back of her head as he ravaged her with his lips and his tongue. This time, he was the one to draw back. “We have to stop.” His body belied his words. He was flushed and trembling, and the thin layers of their robes had not in the least disguised his arousal.

“Must we?” Kitty wondered, “If we are to marry within the week?” She had a theoretical knowledge of what came next. His kisses left her eager to put theory into practice.

She thought he would deny them both because she was young and innocent, and he would be taking advantage of her. What he said instead was unexpected.

“I am a bastard, Kitty. Got by my father on the pretty daughter of his gamekeeper. My only memory of my mother—or memories, because I think it happened many times—is of her crying after one of his visits.”

Kitty didn’t see the relevance. “You are not your father, Luke. And I am not your mother.”

He shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. I made a promise to my grandfather, Kitty. When he lay dying, he begged me not to be like my father—careless with women and ruled by my pri— my lust.”

Still not relevant, Kitty thought, but Luke hadn’t finished.

“I promised that I would wait until marriage to experience physical intimacy with a woman, and would be faithful to my wedding vows once I’d made them. I swore it on the family bible.”

She couldn’t argue with that. Wait. Did that mean he had never...?

Luke was looking into some mental landscape—the past perhaps? “I’ve never found it hard to keep that promise, because I have seen so much misery arising from the behaviour my grandfather decried. My mother, and so many other woman. Even the ones who were eager risked being left broken hearted. Or they gave themselves to a man who died before he could put a ring on their finger, and his good intentions didn’t protect them or their baby from the consequences.”

He was right, of course. Kitty had seen it herself. Indeed, if not for Anne’s masquerade as a widow, she would have lived it, at least by association.

“Then along came you, Kitty. I have always struggled to resist you, and with each kiss it becomes harder and harder.” He chuckled suddenly, and his voice dropped to a low growl that vibrated in the places that ached for him most. “In more ways than one.” She caught the salacious reference, and her face heated. She licked her lips, which had gone suddenly dry.

Luke gulped and looked away. “Help me keep my promise, Kitty,” he begged.

Botheration. An appeal to her honour. “Yes, of course.” She turned her back on him to straighten the robe he had brushed aside during their kiss, drawing it closed high up her chest and belting it firmly. “Thank you for explaining.”

Luke had tidied himself while she was rearranging her robe. He offered her another brandy, but she refused. “If I must be good, another would be a bad idea,” she said. She returned to her chair, more determined than ever. “Luke, will you marry me and take me to Cumberland with you?” A special license was sounding more and more appealing.

Luke sat, too, smiling at her. “Are you going to argue with me for the rest of our lives together, heart of my heart?” His tone was one of enquiry rather than criticism.

“Only when you are wrong,” she retorted, then amended the statement. “No, for sometimes I might be wrong, but believe myself to be right, as when I saw no reason why you should not bed me, tonight. When you explained, I changed my mind. I would hope, Luke, that we can disagree in a civilized manner, discuss things, and reach agreement.”

“I beg you not to speak of bedding, my love,” he groaned.

“A special license?” she suggested, hopefully.

“A common license. In the morning, I shall speak with Rede, and with Uncle Baldwin about waiting a few days longer. Now go to bed, Kitty. You have won.”

Kitty widened her eyes. “I have won? That is not reaching agreement, Luke.”

“I misspoke. We have both won. You are correct that it is not my right to decide to keep you from my life in order to protect you from a threat that might not even exist. But Kitty, if you are in immediate peril and we do not have time for a discussion, I want your promise that you will obey me in that moment. We can talk it over when we are safe.”

That was fair, and quite a large concession. “I promise, Luke, unless you are the one in danger and I can do something to save you.”

Luke heaved a sigh. “I imagine that we will have many more vigorous discussions in our future, my love.”

Kitty blew him a kiss as she made her way to the door. “But imagine the fun we will have making up!” she told him, then slipped out the door, closing it behind her, delighted with her exit line.

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The Preface on WIP Wednesday

This is a long one–2,500 words. I’ve written a preface for Perchance to Dream, and I don’t know if it is good, bad, or indifferent. If you can bear to read it, let me know your opinion in the comments.

John Forsythe placed a tender kiss on the cheek of his baby daughter, then passed her to her nursemaid, gently, so as not to wake her. “You have worn her out, my lord,” the nursemaid whispered, smiling.

John returned the smile. His hour and a half outside with his little girl had cemented the decision he’d been coming to for weeks. In a few days, she would reach her first birthday. It was time for John and Tina Jane’s mother to resolve their difficulties. Yes, their marriage had begun in lies and continued in discord, but surely they could build on their joint love for their daughter and build a real marriage? John was going to find his wife and ask her to try.

He had collected Tina Jane from the nursery after her breakfast and carried her with him on his rounds of the stable, the dairy, the barn and the poultry yards. He couldn’t say who enjoyed it more—him or the baby girl, who loved the animals, the bustle, and being with her father.

The name had been the cause of one of their fights. Augusta had wanted to name her baby Phillippa Augustina, uniting her own name with that of Philip Spindler, the treacherous rat who had impregnated her then abandoned her to marry the bride who was his family’s choice.

John had first been flabbergasted at her sheer effrontery at wanting to name the child born in their marriage after her former lover, then furious. Augusta reacted to his unequivocal ‘no’ with a six-week-long sulk. She had shut herself in her room and had refused to talk to him. She had not even visited the baby.

As he searched the house for his wife, John’s mind continued to revisit the sorrowful memories. The saddest part was that it had been six weeks of bliss. None of her tantrums or weeping jags or other dramatics. Jane could get on with the work of the estate, and spend all his spare time with the baby. He had fallen in love with the wee mite from the moment she had been placed in his arms on the day she was born, and had tumbled more deeply every hour he spent with her.

In the end, he had given Augustina Jane her first name as an overture of peace to his wife.

After all, however it came about, however he and Augusta felt about it, they were married. It had, to a degree, worked. Augusta emerged from her room, resumed her place at the dinner table, accompanied him to social events in the neighbourhood and did her best to behave well in public.

She even began to show an interest in the baby, or at least in having Tina Jane’s nursemaid trail behind Augusta with the little girl dressed in a gown made from scraps of fabric left over from whatever Augusta was wearing. “Do we not make a picture, Lord John?” she would simper.

“Where is Lady John?” he asked each servant that he met, but she must be restless today, for she was not in any of the rooms to which he was sent. Lord and Lady John. She insisted on the ridiculous title rather than his preferred use of the military title he had earned fighting Napoleon’s armies, and retained as a part time soldier in the local militia.

Again, it seemed a small price to pay for a relative degree of marital peace.

“She is very young,” he reminded himself. Only nineteen when he met her, and much younger in her years. Her parents had alternatively ignored her and given in to her many whims. She had always been able to get anything she wanted, merely by having a tantrum.

Even John, though she had not wanted John himself. Only a fool with an estate and noble connections who could be trapped into marrying her without asking too many questions. An older man she could manipulate as she had manipulated her parents.

She had been disappointed to discover that the worn-out soldier she’d conspired to trap had a will stronger than her own, and would not bend to her pleading or her histrionics.

Though he gave way to her in minor things, all the sulking in the world had not convinced him to allow her to redecorate the house that had been fully refurbished eighteen months ago before they moved into it, or to take her to London for the Season where they would inevitably meet Spindler and his wife, or to fire Thorne, his manservant, who had been with him since Salamanca in the Peninsular Wars, because Thorne had come across her beating the nursemaid with a riding crop, and had taken the crop off her.

John, appealed to by both Augusta and his manservant, discovered that the nursemaid’s crime had been to argue that Tina Jane should not go out visiting with Augusta on a cold and blustery day, since the poor little girl had the sniffles.

John had been coldly furious. “Miss Embrow was right to protest, Augusta. Taking our daughter out in this weather when she is already ill would have been foolish.”

“But Lord John,” Augusta protested, “it was not her place to question my instructions.”

“It is her place to put the welfare of the baby first. But even if she was wrong, you should not have beaten her. I will not have any in my household subjected to such violence. You will never raise a hand or any other implement to a servant again.”

She had been cowed by his anger, perhaps, for she slunk away and treated him to a week-long sulk, after which she emerged to demand that Thorne be dismissed for laying hands on her when he took the crop off her.

John’s refusal earned him the silent treatment for a further two weeks.

Still, she had not persisted, so perhaps she was learning. She was, after all, nearly twenty-one and had become a mother. She might be maturing. He’d seen a firm hand and kindness transform many a wild young man into a steady officer.

Indeed, for the last few days, she had been smiling, sometimes even at John. She had even spent an hour in the nursery yesterday, ignoring Miss Embrow as she had since the incident, but playing pat-a-cake and peep-a-boo with the baby.

Where on earth could the woman be? She was not in the house, and she was hardly one to spend hours in the garden. He checked with the stables, and discovered that she’d ridden out, and refused to take a groom with her.

John was worried. Augusta was not the most accomplished of riders. Perhaps she has fallen. He ordered his own horse saddled and rode off in the direction the grooms indicated.

The path split, with one branch entering his woods, and the other joining the lane that led out to the village road. John rode a short way along the lane, but he could not see Augusta or a horse, so he returned to the woods. Perhaps she felt the need of the shade.

The path led to a clearing where the woodcutter had a cottage that he used, but this was not the season for harvesting or planting or clearing undergrowth. So why were two horses tied up at the side of the cottage, and why was smoke rising from the chimney?

John stopped just inside the trees to examine the scene. He couldn’t be sure, as it was in the shade and partly obscured by the larger of the two horses, but he thought the smaller one was Augusta’s mare. He was still processing the implications of that when the cottage door opened and two people came out. One was Augusta. The other he could identify by the man’s white-blonde hair. It was Spindler. The swine bent to give John’s wife a tender kiss.

John nudged his horse into a walk. Spindler looked up at the clop of hooves, started, and ran for his own horse. John resisted the urge to give chase as Splindler threw himself into the saddle and kicked the beast into a gallop. After all, what would he do with the man if he caught him?

Rearranging the dirty dog’s pretty face would be satisfying, but it wouldn’t solve the problem of his marriage.

Augusta looked up at him without a hint of remorse or concern, trying but failing to compose her face into a serious expression. But a beaming smile of absolute delight kept breaking through. “Lord John, don’t be cross. We didn’t do anything, honestly. And he brought such good news.”

He didn’t trust himself to speak to her. He dismounted, tied his horse beside hers, and walked past her into the cottage. Didn’t do anything? The blankets had been thrown from the bed and the room reeked of sex.

Augusta had followed him, to stand in the door. “You must try to understand, Lord John. We have not been together for nearly two years.”

Nor had Augusta and John. Not once since they wed. John had been patient, thinking that she would accept their marriage in time. He had also been celibate, since he had long since promised himself that he would never cheat against his marriage vows, as both his parents had.

And she thought he should understand? “I do not understand, Augusta.” When Captain Forsythe spoke in that tight clipped voice, soldiers knew to stand to attention and keep quiet, for retribution was about to fall. “I don’t understand how you can stand there and expect me to countenance you and your lover meeting in secret, right here on my lands, less than a mile from the nursery where our daughter sleeps.”

Augusta was not one of his soldiers. “My daughter,” she insisted. “Mine and Phillip’s.”

A touch of panic spiked his fury. “Not according to the law,” he reminded himself. “She was born within our marriage. I have claimed her. Spindler has no rights here.”

At that, the smile blossomed again, though her eyes remained wary. “Not Spindler. Lord John, that is what he came to say! Kingston is dead! Phillip is free!”

The Duke of Kingston was Spindler’s grandfather, and in some ways the orchestrator of John’s misery. Spindler had been his pensioner, along with his mother and father. Disliking his grandson’s attachment to Augusta, who had only beauty to recommend her, being of modest family and wealth, he forced Spindler to make a choice. Poverty and Augusta. Riches and a bride of Kingston’s choosing. Either he did not care that the scoundrel had impregnated Augusta, or her condition did not become apparent until after her lover married the selected lady.

Kingston’s death was not a surprise. Even John, who took no notice of Society gossip, knew he had been failing since the apoplexy that followed the tragic deaths, months ago, of his heir and his heir’s son. Which made Spindler’s father the heir presumptive, and now the duke. Spindler’s father, who had never refused his son anything except his attention.

“He is not free,” he told Augusta. “Your lover is married and so are you. You both have a spouse and a child.”

She stared at him as if he was speaking in a foreign language. John didn’t want to look at her. He moved around the room, picking up a chair that had been knocked over, folding the blankets, pulling the underblanket off the mattress and throwing it into a heap by the door to take to the laundrymaid.

“We can be together,” Augusta insisted. “Tenby—he is Earl of Tenby now—does not have to please his grandfather ever again.”

John faced Augusta. She was clenching her fists and jutting her chin, ready to fight. “Augusta, talk sense. You are both married. Tenby lives in London. You live here, with me.” His voice dropped to a growl. “And you can be sure I will not turn a blind eye to you meeting your lover here or in London.”

He took a deep breath. She was not listening to him. Instead, her eyes were fixed on some mythical and impossible future that only she and Tenby could see.

“Augusta, we could make something of our marriage. Wouldn’t life be better if we were comfortable with one another? Would you not like more children?”

That caught her attention. “No!” she declared. “I don’t ever want to go through that again, getting lumpy and ugly. And then the pain! No, my lord, not even for Tenby. But he says he has his heir and that cow is pregnant again, so there might even be a spare. He will not ask it of me.”

John shook his head. It was like arguing with a river. You could talk all you liked, but it wasn’t going to stop flowing in the direction it had chosen. “You and Tenby cannot wed,” he pointed out. “You are both married to other people.”

At that, she crossed the room, laid a hand on his arm, and looked up at him pleadingly. “Yes, but we could live together. Tenby says that if I move in with  him, you can easily sue him for stealing me away (though I was always his, so that part I do not understand), and then petition the church for a legal separation. You get to keep Augustina, and you will not have to pay for clothes and the like for me ever again. And I get Tenby.”

“You will be cast out of Society,” John warned. He would, too. Not so much because he would be blamed, but because he would be laughed at. People might pity a cuckold, but they did not admire him. Still, he could live without Society.

“We can live in Paris, Tenby says,” Augusta said, airily, “where they understand these things. It is the best plan, my lord. Everyone gets what they want.”

“What of Lady Tenby? What does she want?”

If John had hoped to appeal to Augusta’s sympathy for another woman, he would have been disappointed. She shrugged. “She gets to call herself Marchioness and live at Spindler Palace with her sons. I don’t care about her. It is me that Tenby loves.”

“My answer is no. Your plan is foolish, Augusta. You and Tenby owe it to your children to make the best of your marriages. Come. We shall return to the house. I shall write to Tenby and tell him that if he approaches you again, he will regret it.”

That was not the end of it, of course. Augusta was convinced that she was the female half of a romance for the ages: a Helen of Troy, an Isolde, a Guinevere, an Eloise, a Juliet. Nothing would be allowed to stand in the way of her happy ending. She blocked John’s every attempt at a reconciliation, raised the option of a legal separation at every opportunity heedless of who else might be listening, and in the end forced his hand by running away to France with Tenby.

By then, it was almost a relief to see the end of what would have been a total disaster from the beginning, except it had given John his little Jane. When Lady Tenby died shortly after the church courts had granted their legal separation, John barely argued at all about taking a case to the House of Lords for a full divorce.