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Tea with Caibre MacFearran, a cowboy in a kilt

 

Today, the Duchess of Haverford is having tea with Caibre MacFearann: Hero of A Wish for All Seasons (and by the way he’s a cowboy in a kilt). A Wish for All Seasons is a historical romance novella by Rue Allyn. Eleanor has consented to interview Mr. MacFearann for readers of historical romance everywhere.

I am glad you could join me, Mr. MacFearann! Please tell us about the story your author wrote. Ms. Allyn’s wee story is titled A Wish for All Seasons. I believe you ladies would call the story a historical romance. While adult ladies are Ms. Allyn’s intended audience, any young person, age 13 or above could read the tale without risk of traumatizing their young minds. While I find such doings a tad embarassin’, I know Ms. Allyn would want us to share a thing she calls a blurb with your readers. So here ’tis: The last thing Caibre MacFearann wants is to return to Scotland let alone be forced to stay there. But the chance to rekindle the lost love of his youth is too tempting to resist. However, Aisla MacKai refuses to listen until her clan’s fate and a royal decree force Aisla to give him a chance.

Please tell us about yourself. I am a mon of twenty-eight years. I was born at Castle MacFearann on the northeast coast of Scotland. I’m a ranch owner in Wyoming territory. While I live in and love Wyoming, I’ll fore’re be a Scotsman true.

Will you tell our readers what you look like?  I’m a fair height and lean. I’d guess I weigh about 13 stone. My hair is reddish brown, and I have blue eyes. My face is square. Some say I’ve a determined chin, others have accused me of being made o’ rock.  That picture Ms. Allyn provides is somewhat misleading. It was painted when I was a young mon before I left Scotland. It doesna show anything of what’s happened to me since I left. I dinna wear a kilt verra often now days.

Who is the significant other in your life?  Significant other? ’Tis a bit of an odd term that, but I’m supposin’ you mean Aisla MacKai, the only woman I’ve ever loved.

How do you dress? I wear practical clothes for work and weather—trousers, shirt, chaps, boots, shearling jacket and a Stetson hat. I clean up fairly well. I only wear my tartan and kilt in Scotland and for special occasions.

If we could only hear your voice (but not see you) what characteristic would identify you? Steady.

What is your viewpoint on wealth? Wealth is nae to be sneered at. It is convenient to have. The lack of wealth forced me to leave Scotland and the woman I love. I was too puir a mon to support Aisla when I left. I thought never to return, but fate has seen differently, and I now have the means to keep my love in comfort.

What kinds of things do you always carry (in pockets or purse)? Oiled paper, flint and steel for starting a fire. Kindling is nae always easy to find.

What is your family like? I have one older brother, Eric. He’s laird of clan MacFearann now that our father has been laid to rest. We’re verra close and determined to return honor to the name MacFearann.

How do others perceive you based upon looks, and is this assumption accurate? A great many men think of me as a nancy boy when they first meet me. It’s because I bathe and wear clean clothes every chance I get. Those men discover quickly they are mistaken.

Do you care about what others assume about you? Only two people’s opinion of me matter. My brother Eric’s and my darling Aisla’s. The rest of the world can go hang.

Can you keep a secret? Why or why not? O’ course I can keep a secret. ’Tis only honorable, and I’d nae do anything lacking in honor.

What secrets do you know about people around you that you do NOT share? Well now, if I told you, they’d nae be secrets would they?

What would help you face hardship and meet any challenge? The love of Aisla MacKai and the hope of winning her.

If you could make any one thing happen, what would it be? I’d make Aisla’s life easier. She’s had a rough time of it w’ her brother being declared dead and all. The queen has even threatened to take the MacKai barony back if Aisla doesna marry in six months.

What would you like to tell your writer? I’d tell Ms. Allyn that she should give A Wish for All Seasons more words. Aisla’s story and mine is too important to squeeze into a short novella.

What would you like people who hear your story to know? That happiness will come your way, no matter your difficulties., just Follow Your Star Home.

Is there anything else you’d like us to know? Absolutely. On November 4th of this year, the Bluestocking Belles will hold a party in honor of the release of their boxset, Follow Your Star Home. Everyone is invited. Here is the location where you can get more information. I will attend as escort for both Ms. Allyn and my beloved Aisla. The party will include all the Belles, many guest authors, games and prizes. Attendees are encouraged to come attired in the dress of their favorite time period, since the stories in Follow Your Star Home span more than 1,000 years of history. I hope to see all of you there.

Where to buy Follow Your Star Home the boxset containing A Wish for All Seasons.

The book is available on pre-order until it is released November 4, 2018.

Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Belles-Christmas-Title-Still-Under-ebook/dp/B07H4ZY517/

Smashwords:  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/894110

Kobo:  https://www.kobo.com/nz/en/ebook/belles-christmas-2018-box-set-title-still-under-wraps/

About Ms. Allyn

Rue Allyn is the award-winning author of heart melting historical and contemporary romances. A USN veteran with a Ph.D. in medieval literature, Rue has retired south of the US border where she enjoys sunny days and heated inspiration. She continues to enjoy professional relationships in the Romance Writers of America, The Maumee Valley Romance Authors Inc. and the (in)famous Bluestocking Belles. She can be reached at any of the following locations.

*This interview format adapted with permission from that used on Romance Lives Forever.

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Why Georgian England partied at the full moon

I’ve been studying sunrise and sunset, moon rise and moon set, and moon phases charts for December 1814 and January and February 1815. My characters in my latest work in progress live in a quiet corner of the country within an hour’s carriage ride of Bath, and want to attend the assemblies there. Dreadful roads and poor lighting are an accident waiting to happen, which the Georgians knew even better than we do, living in a world where street lighting hadn’t spread beyond the wealthier parts of the bigger towns.

If you lived in a large country house and wanted to hold a party, you’d probably arrange it for a time when the moon would give your local guests sufficient light to see their way, perhaps with a bit of assistance from a pair of carriage lamps (fueled by oil). According to some research done by the US army, your driver would be able to pick out sufficient detail for safe driving at a distance of 400 metres on a cloudless night under a full moon that is high enough in the sky to light the road you’re using. This could drop as low as 20 metres at the quarter moon, making for a very slow trip.

In town, those out for the evening would send footmen or hired link boys to go ahead of the carriage with links (bundles of rush dipped in pitch and set alight to make a torch) or oil lamps. I guess close neighbours might have done that in the country, too. But not my characters — they have too far to go, so are stuck with partying only on a fine and moonlit night.

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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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Tea with Cecily

 

Cecily was older. Of course she was. More than fifteen years had passed since the season they shared; the season that ended with Eleanor’s broken heart and Cecily’s marriage. She and her husband Alec had taken a long wedding trip, to see the Orient, they said. And then… nothing. Until she appeared again in England, just a few weeks ago.

Through the ritual of greeting, of inviting her guest to be seated, of preparing a cup of tea for each of them, Eleanor kept shooting glances, comparing the composed and still lovely woman before her with the gangling clumsy teen Eleanor had taken under her wing at first meeting. She glowed with happiness, but the lines barely visible on her brow and around her eyes spoke of suffering and pain. What had happened in all those years away?

They spoke of nothings: the weather, the fashions, who was and who wasn’t in Town, until all of the maids had left the room and they were alone. Then they both spoke at once.

“Did you wish to hear of…?” Cecily began.

“Lady Sutton and Lady Grace Winderfield tell me…” said Eleanor, stopping herself and waving her hand for Cecily to carry on.

Cecily nodded, as if Eleanor had confirmed what Cecily had been about to ask. “I met with Lord James Winderfield late last year. That is what you wished to know, is it not, Your Grace? Where I saw him, and how?”

“It is,” Eleanor agreed, grateful that decades of training and practice allowed her to keep her face and posture from reflecting her inner turmoil. “His sisters told me he was alive, but little more.” Married. To an Eastern princess. With children. Happy, or so Cecily had told them. It was silly to feel hurt. Did she expect him to wear the willow for her for a lifetime? She did for him, but look at the alternative! She had never been given the least incentive to fall in love with the tyrant she had been forced to marry. She was glad James was happy. Of course she was. Or would be, given time.

Cecily had kept on talking while she scolded herself, asking her something. Ah. Yes. Was she certain she wished to know the details?

“You loved him, once,” Cecily said, her voice kind.

She could answer that. “He was a dear friend, Mrs McInnes, and I have grieved him as dead these many years. I would dearly love to know how he survived, and how he now lives. And he has children, his sisters say. Many children. Please. Start at the beginning and tell me all about him.”

James Winderfield is hero of Paradise Regained, in which Cecily McInnes is the other woman. Paradise Regained can be found in Follow Your Star Home, the Bluestocking Belles’ 2019 holiday anthology, now on pre-release. See the link for more information and preorder links.

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On the move

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No time to sit still at the moment. We’re preparing the house for sale, and this weekend I stained more than 100 square meters of deck (over a thousand square feet for those of you who haven’t gone metric). One more weekend of hard push, and we’re ready to go.

In addition, I finished writing an application for the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship, which provides a grant for New Zealand writers to live in Menton, France, for a few months, and work in a room in the villa where our famous writer Katherine Mansfield lived in 1920, Villa Isola Bella. Who knows how that will go? But gathering all the material together has been a useful exercise, and the letters of support I received from those I asked were very good for my ego.

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Carriages, horses, boats, and Shank’s pony

I’ve read a few novels recently where the protagonists make amazingly fast journeys, leaving London in the morning and arriving in York for afternoon tea, or zipping across the Mediterranean in what must be a jet powered sailing ship. It always throws me out of the story. So, in the interests of the pleasure I get from well-researched books, here’s my rule of thumb for early 19th century travel. Times don’t allow for rest, changing horses, storms or other adverse conditions, or particularly fast journeys over a short distance.

Walking: ten miles in 3.5 hours

Carriage or horse: ten miles in 1 hour

Ship: four knots (four nautical miles in 1 hour)

Try these resources as a starting place for further research:

Sarah Waldock on speed of travel in Jane Austen’s England

Teach us history on Travelling in the early 19th century

Royal Museums Greenwich on sailing times in the 18th century

And posts of my own:

All at sea — travelling the Mediterranean

Three roading heroes

 

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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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Tea with Lord Overton

 

Today, a couple of excerpts from A Baron for Becky. The first is when the Duchess of Haverford arrives in response to Hugh’s letter, asking her son for help.

Aldridge must have been closer than Hugh expected. Three days after he sent his letters, a train of elegant sleighs coasted up the drive. Carriages, really, but with skids rather than wheels, each pulled by a pair of sturdy horses. The children, taking advantage of a break in the weather to play in the snow, stopped in their tracks and watched.

From the study window, Hugh could see three of the ornately carved and painted sleighs turn away towards the stable yard, and the remaining two continue to the front steps. He was not surprised all five sported the Haverford crest.

He excused himself to Becky, who didn’t look up from the fire she was examining so intently, and sent a maid to sit with her while he went down to greet his guest. He pasted on a smile. Hugh had sent for the arrogant, self-centred, wife-stealing son-of-a-bitch. And if Becky wanted to go with him, then that was the price Hugh would pay for Becky to be well again. Even if it meant losing Belle.

Smile. He needed to smile.

One carriage was disgorging an enormous number of retainers. How had they all fit? Sitting on one another’s knees? Aldridge stood at the door of the other, handing down a lady. Surely even Aldridge wouldn’t bring one of his paramours here!

Then the lady lifted her head. The face under the bonnet brought his smile out in truth.

He hurried down the steps to greet her. “Your Grace. I am so glad you have come.”

And in the second excerpt, she carts Hugh off to his study and proceeds to instruct him in how to bring his wife back to health.

He could be hopeful, but shouldn’t expect the current rally to last, the Duchess of Haverford instructed him. She had sent her son to play cards with her companion, and demanded that Hugh escort her into his study, where she asked him incisive questions about Becky’s illness and her treatment.

“The doctor said her humours were out of balance, and he bled her, but…”

“Stupid,” Her Grace said. “Very stupid. She had just had a baby and lost who knows how much blood, and the man bled her?”

“He bled her for the fever, too,” Hugh admitted. “But the second time, she was so weak. I was afraid she was dying. I wouldn’t let him do it again.”

“Good.” The duchess nodded. “You have some sense, then. I had my doubts. Very well, Overton. You shall place yourself in my hands, and I shall tell you what you must do.”

“I will not put her away,” Hugh said, firmly. “Even if her mind is weak…”

“Put her away? Why would you put her away? She will recover fully, and I will help. I have seen this before, Overton. Women, after giving birth to a child, often suffer a disorder of the humours. It passes. Your wife has had a worse time of it than many, perhaps because she also had childbed fever. I sometimes think that we gentry are more prone than cottagers, because others will do our tasks if we turn our faces to the wall.

“Several of my goddaughters have had this melancholy, and I, myself, after the birth of my dear Jonathan. Also, Overton, I think there has been some cause for estrangement between you. You will tell me whether I am right, for I do not suggest it to be a busybody, but because you need to mend it for your wife’s sake. A misunderstanding, of course, because she cannot bear to be parted from you. And you, it seems, love her dearly, about which I am delighted, since I hold myself in some sort responsible for the marriage.

“Whatever the cause, she has roused now, and we shall keep her with us, but be prepared to work hard and be patient.”

And so they began a strict regimen designed to build up Becky’s body. “Her mind will heal itself, Overton,” the duchess lectured, “but she needs good food, exercise, and sleep. And you must reassure her often. You will do that, will you not?”

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Deformity and disability in Georgian England

Georgian England was a dangerous place for children; even children of the wealthy. In 1800, one in three children died before they turned five. The risk was similar for infants of all social classes, except for the very poor, though class differences favouring the wealthy showed up at later ages.

But what of those born with a congenital impairment, or who survived illness or accident with a permanent disability? Some felt that such afflictions were the ‘will of God’, and ‘it was a religious virtue to accept patiently what God had willed’. [Turner & Withey] On the other hand, people were uneasy with deformity, and those who could afford to do so tried to avoid sights that offended their sense of aesthetic perfection. Improvements in prosthetics, surgery, and assistive technologies allowed parents to improve their children’s chances of future social success.

Suppliers appealed to their customers in terms of their ‘gentility’, promoting the idea that visible deformity or disability could be socially limiting as well as hindering economic productivity. [Turner & Withey]

A huge number of tortuous devices came onto the market to straighten backs and legs, and improve posture.

Devices to improve posture and keep an individual ‘straight’ were as varied as the manufacturers who made them. Large pieces of metal called backirons were hidden at the back of clothing and prevented slouching. Steel collars forced wearers to obey mothers’ and governesses’ injunctions to keep heads up, sometimes assisted by shoulder braces which pulled shoulders back. Neck swings stretched the spine by suspending the ‘patient’ in a block and tackle type device so that only their toes touched the ground. [Grace]

Not everything could be fixed, and even if a child’s impairment was minimised by one of the treatments on offer, the very idea that their body was defective and to be shuffled out of sight could not have made the children’s lives easier. The practice of casting blame can’t have helped.

Congenital deformities in infants were often blamed on something the mother did or experienced during pregnancy. A cleft palate might be the consequence of seeing a hare. A strawberry birthmark (infantile hemangioma) is so called because of the myth it results from eating strawberries in pregnancy.

Or perhaps the mother was deep dyed in sin. If God has afflicted this child, the reasoning went, it cannot be a punishment for the child’s sins, so it must be someone else’s fault, and who else but the mother? Or perhaps the devil had afflicted the child, and therefore the family. Where the belief in evil magic still prevailed, the family might conclude they had been cursed, and that was the cause of the deformity.

Shakespeare’s Richard III has quite a few passages exploring the reasons for the protagonist’s deformity, touching on all of these possible causes.

Such beliefs must have made for interesting family dynamics.

In the story I’m writing at the moment, I gave my hero an infantile hemangioma, which has shaped his life. Sent away to be hidden in the country as a small baby, he spent his early childhood years isolated by the growing tumour on his face. Then his family sent him for surgery in Naples two years before it was conquered by Napoleon, ironically at about the time the hemangioma was shrinking naturally. Now that the imprisonment of Napoleon has made travel easy, he has come back to England, his face scarred where the hemangioma was removed.

Black, J, Boulton, JP & Davenport, RJ., Infant mortality by social status in Georgian London

Grace, M., The Shape of Georgian Beauty

Roser, M. Child Mortality

Turner, D. & Withey, A., Technologies of the Body: Polite Consumption and the Correction of Deformity in Eighteenth-Century England, History, The Journal of the Historical Association

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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.