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Tea with Ella

 

Susan had allowed Ella to refuse most of the invitations that poured in after the shocking incident at Lady Sutton’s soiree. Everyone wanted to meet the new Lady Renshaw, who had been drugged and assaulted in the midst of a party attended by half the ton. Ella had no desire to meet their avid eyes and turn away their eager intrusive questions, and Alex and Susan agreed. However, “You must appear at some of these,” Susan had said, “so that people know you have nothing of which to be ashamed.”

But Ella was ashamed. She had lied, and intended to keep on lying. Every time someone addressed her as ‘Lady Renshaw’ she had to subdue a flinch. But Alex and his father had come up with the fiction of their marriage to protect her, and she could not, would not shame them by exposing the untruth.

Still, the knowledge she was an imposter made her reluctant to face her hostess today. This was one invitation Susan insisted on her accepting, assuring her that the Duchess of Haverford was a kind woman, and one of the most influential of Society’s great ladies.

She stood as the great lady entered the room. “Lady Renshaw, how kind you are to come to see me,” the duchess said, taking Ella’s hand and directing a kiss in towards the general vicinity of Ella’s cheek. “Now. How can I help you and young Alex? He is, you know, one of my favourite godsons, and everyone will tell you I am godmother to half the ton. Take a seat, my dear, and tell me how you have your tea.”

Ella let the duchess’s warmth and evident affection for Alex washed over her and began to relax.

Excerpt from A Raging Madness

Ella, watching Alex treating a crowd of admiring females to his best imitation of a man pleased with his lot, was surprised when Mrs Fullerton spoke at her elbow. “Silly hens. He is being polite, of course, but I dare say our new Lord Renshaw is hating every minute.”

Ella controlled her surge of irritation. She had no place objecting to Mrs Fullerton’s possessive ‘our’, or her implicit claim to understand Alex. Diplomatically, she replied, “I was surprised at how quickly the news had travelled. He only heard this afternoon.”

“I owe you an apology, Lady Melville. I was very rude when we last met. I was jealous, you see. Alex never looked at me the way he looks at you.” Mrs Fullerton gave a deep sigh. “But one must accept reality. He has eyes only for you, and I was quite horrid. I am ashamed of myself, truly.”

She seemed sincere, her eyes meeting Ella’s, a tentative and apologetic smile just touching the corner of her lips. Ella suppressed the urge to ask how Alex looked at her and gave way to the impulse not to correct Mrs Fullerton’s misconception about Ella’s and Alex’s relationship.

“We all do things we later regret, Mrs Fullerton. Think nothing of it.”

“You are very gracious.” Mrs Fullerton lifted her glass to her lips. “Bother!” Somehow, she had managed to spill quite a large splash of the drink on one shoulder of her gown, a red spreading stain against the pastel green. “Lady Melville, I hate to impose, but could you…”

What could Ella say? She accompanied Mrs Fullerton to the ladies’ retiring room, helped her sponge out the liquid, and waited by the door to the large drawing room while Mrs Fullerton went out to the front hall to retrieve a shawl to cover her shoulders.

She returned with a footman in tow. “Have you tried the punch, Lady Melville? It is strongly spiced but hot and quite pleasant.”

She collected two glasses from the footman’s tray and pushed one into Ella’s hand.

“Drink up, Lady Melville, and then we shall go and rescue Lord Renshaw.”

It was over spiced, but Ella did not wish to be rude. She took a large sip and another.

An instant before the drug in the drink hit her, triumph flared in Mrs Fullerton’s eyes, and Ella knew she had made a mistake. She opened her mouth to shout for Alex, but suddenly the footman had a hand over her mouth and another under her elbow and was hustling, half carrying, her through the door Mrs Fullerton held open.

“I will give you a few minutes to make it look good,” she said and whipped out of the room, shutting the door behind her.

Ella was struggling against the footman and the fog trying to close in on her mind, the dizziness that wanted to consume her. She stamped at his foot, kicked back at his shin, but her soft indoor slippers made no impression. She squirmed, trying to jab her free arm as low as possible, and he twisted away with an oath, his footman’s wig falling from his head to disclose hair nearly as white.

He pushed her from him so that she fell face forward onto a sofa and in an instant was on her, tugging her head back by the hair, straddling her torso. “This will do well enough,” he commented, lifting himself enough to push up her skirt and petticoats.

Ella fought to retain consciousness, the pain of her pulled hair helping to keep her from sinking into the fog. “Scream,” she instructed herself, as her assailant’s free hand fumbled at her buttocks, and she shrieked as loud as she could.

Doors burst open: the one onto the hall and a double set into the drawing room next door, and the room filled with people.

It was her worst nightmare come again: the indrawn breaths of shock, the buzz of excited comments, the avid staring eyes. The last thing Ella heard before she sank into oblivion was the amused drawl of the man on her back. “Oh dear, Lady Melville. It seems we have been caught.”

A Raging Madness is book 2 of The Golden Redepennings. Book 3, The Realm of Silence, will be out this month.

 

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Books to read

One thing about being under the weather is having time to catch up on the TBR pile and in the last month I’ve read a few I’d like to recommend.

The Long Way Home by Jessica Cale: Cale never disappoints. I’ve read books 1, 2, and 4 of the Southwark Saga, and every book is different: different mood, different characters, different emotions in the reader. The Long Way Home is a darling of a book, with a sweet hero and heroine I adored. Jake is still my favourite Cale hero so far, but Alice is my top Cale heroine. Set against a different background than Cale’s other books, The Long Way Home takes the Southwark bargirl into the centre of the corrupt and dissolute French court, beautifully rendered and meticulously researched. As a reader, I trusted Cale would get Alice and Jack safely out, but when I forgot I was reading, I was really worried for them.

The Islands of Chaldea by Diana Wynne Jones, completed by Ursula Jones: I was shocked and dismayed when I heard this great writer had died. Her stories have been enriching my life since my teenage years. I’ve reread my favourites many times, and always eagerly seized on her new releases. But I didn’t expect another one eight years after her death. Thanks to her sister, who pored over the draft looking for the clues that would help her finish the story, I spent one delightful evening following Aileen, her aunt, and other assorted characters on a quest to rescue the son of the High King and reunite the islands. It is a quest story with the typical Wynne Jones down-to-earth fantasy world and quirky, very human, characters. Except for the cat, who is very much a cat. I have no idea where Wynne Jones left off and Jones began. The story is seamless.

Past Crimes, by Ashley Gardner: I’d already bought and read ‘The Necklace Affair’ as a novella, since I love the Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries, but I grabbed this when I found out it had two other novellas from two other series by the same author. ‘A Soupcon of Poison’ introduces the characters in the Victorian series The Below Stairs Mysteries, which the author is writing as Jennifer Ashley. The heroine is a chef. The hero is a mysterious figure who moves between upstairs and downstairs, and whose charming ways both intrigue and worry the heroine. When her employer dies after eating a meal she prepared, be prepared for some interesting twists and turns on the way to discovery of the real murderer. “Blood Debts’ is set in Ancient Rome, and follows the ex-gladiator Leonadis as he tries to clear himself of murder, look after others who might be accused, find the real murderer, and protect Cassia, the capable scribe-slave that some unknown benefactor has sent to look after him.

I read a novella a night when I couldn’t sleep, and I’m glad they weren’t longer or I would not have gone back to bed. Excellent stories, well researched and well written.

The Revenge of the Corsairs by Elizabeth Ellen Carter: I’ve been putting off reading this because I knew from the first Corsair book that when I started I’d be hooked. And I was. And I lost two evenings. Captive of the Corsairs saw the rescue of that book’s heroine and her cousin, Laura. In Revenge, we turn our focus to Laura. Traumatised and pregnant, she is not ready to accept the love of Elias, one of her rescuers. A better hero was never penned. He deserved to win the woman he loved, but Carter didn’t make it easy. Laura’s struggles to recover her equilibrium made total sense, but by the time she makes her choice it might be too late. Rabia, the third wife of Laura’s captor and rapist, has lost her own son and wants Laura’s. You can get this from the blurb, but I’ll say no more. I loved this book, and am impatiently waiting for the next in the series.

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Hey, shortie!

Army and Navy records give us a good idea of height (and nutrition) during the mid years of the 19th century.

Sandhurst students aged 16 to 19 were exceptionally tall compared to international standards and their own poorer compatriots. The high-nobility of Germany, sons of hereditary princes and barons, were as tall as the sons of the British gentry, but no one else was.

Even low-fee-paying Sandhurst students had a 10cm advantage over youth in the various US military establishments. Which is all the more startling, given that Americans males were, on average, the tallest men in the world — 5c to 6cm taller than the average British man. However, while the rich of Britain took the average up, the poor brought it down. And there were more poor.

The boys who joined the Marine Society and Sea Cadets, a charitable venture designed to supply men for the navy, were the shortest group in Europe and America. At 16, they averaged less than 1.5 m. The average difference between them and the Sandhurst boys of the same age was 22cm.

As a measure of the gap between rich and poor, that’s telling.

 

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Tea with Fred

“Eleanor Winshire is a tiny wisp of a woman, not a dragon,” the Duke of Murnane told his cousin.  Fred Wheatly looked skeptical. “She may be small, Charles, but she’s terrifying.”

The duke chuckled at his cousin’s shudder. He stood a head shorter, but he made up in coiled strength what he may have lacked in the other man’s bulk. Red haired and blue eyed the both of them, no one who saw them standing side by side on the fashionable street could mistake their family resemblance.

“Remember the time she caught us doing battle in her garden?” Charles asked.

“You and Rand hid under the Wisteria and let me take the all the blame,” Fred remembered with a smile. They had been visiting with Fred’s brother-in-law who was also the duke’s uncle.

“Well it was your idea to have her favorite bushes represent the Lancastrian army,” the duke pointed out with a grin.

“They were red roses weren’t they? They took two years to recover. Will made me muck out her stables for three days over that,” Fred said ruefully. He looked up at the intimidating entrance to the Haverford Townhouse and grimaced.

“You best get it over with,” Charles said sympathetically, “And before you ask, no. I will not go with you to face her. I’m returning to Eversham Hall. Jonny needs me,” he added soberly.

Fred clamped one hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “Then you best get home,” he said, sympathy cracking his voice. Word had come that the boy was ill again. “I’ll face the duchess alone. I wish I knew what she wanted.”

“I suspect it’s what she always wants,” Charles told him. “To manage the well-being of the kingdom by keeping its young men in line.”

Fred watched his cousin walk away, and muttered under his breath. “Easy for him to say. He isn’t a disgraced officer tossed home to make his way.” The duke’s accomplishments had been stellar, and his position in the government no doubt had the woman’s approval.

Half an hour later Fred faced his nemesis, standing with his hands clasped behind his back and head bowed as he had faced his uncle or headmasters a dozen times as a boy. The Duchess of Winshire had that effect on men.

“Oh do sit down Captain Wheatly,” the petite white haired woman snapped.

He raised an eyebrow. “Captain? I was Frederick the last time we met.”

“You were a boy the last time we met,” she pointed out, gesturing for her assistant to move a decanter closer to her table. “But you’re no longer in the army, I hear.”

“Your information is correct, as always, Your Grace.” He accepted a glass of brandy with thanks.

“Good,” the duchess said, pinning him with her piercing eyes.

“Good?” He expected a dressing down, not approval. He took a swallow and let it settle his nerves.

“Good,” she repeated. “Excellent in fact.” His shock must have shown because she went on. “Did you think I would agree with the fools on that court martial board in Calcutta? I saw Colonel Davis’s report. He’s the only one that got it right.” She leaned forward. “You’re needed here, Fred,” she said earnestly. “You must see that. Charles needs you.”

“You mean because his son is ill, and I am next in line? I would make a horrid duke. It isn’t—”

She made a dismissive gesture with one hand as if to wave that away.  “Yes, yes, there is that—and you would do your duty in the unlikely event it should it come to that—but he needs you now.”

“You heard about the sabotage?”

She nodded. “Someone wishes your family ill, Fred, and you are the one best equipped to protect them, especially with Charles so absorbed in the boy’s illness.”

“You have the danger part right. We came down to London in part to hire an enquiry agent,” Fred told her.

“Well done, but your involvement is crucial. It is a family problem, Fred, and family matters most of all.” She studied him carefully. “I don’t think you understood that when you were younger.”

“I’ve always loved my family,” he protested.

“Yes, in a distant kind of way. They need you nearby and involved. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I’m beginning to…” He glanced up to see her studying him. “I just don’t know how.”

“England needs Charles, and he needs your help. Go back to Eversham Hall and stay there. You’ll figure it out.”

When he didn’t answer right away she added, “That brilliant young woman you brought home with you may help.”

The conversation turned to inconsequential things, and soon enough he found himself on his way feeling oddly better. He had expected one more recounting of his failures, and yet he walked away buoyed up. Life, Fred thought, continued to surprise him. He went on his way with jaunty step.

About the Book

When all else fails, love succeeds…

Captain Fred Wheatly’s comfortable life on the fringes of Bengal comes crashing down around him when his mistress dies, leaving him with two children he never expected to have to raise. When he chooses justice over army regulations, he’s forced to resign his position, leaving him with no way to support his unexpected family. He’s already had enough failures in his life. The last thing he needs is an attractive, interfering woman bedeviling his steps, reminding him of his duties.

All widowed Clare Armbruster needs is her brother’s signature on a legal document to be free of her past. After a failed marriage, and still mourning the loss of a child, she’s had it up to her ears with the assumptions she doesn’t know how to take care of herself, that what she needs is a husband, and with a great lout of a captain who can’t figure out what to do with his daughters. If only the frightened little girls didn’t need her help so badly.

Clare has made mistakes in the past. Can she trust Fred now? Can she trust herself? Captain Wheatly isn’t ashamed of his aristocratic heritage, but he doesn’t need his family and they’ve certainly never needed him. But with no more military career and two half-caste daughters to support, Fred must turn once more—as a failure—to the family he let down so often in the past. Can two hearts rise above past failures to forge a future together?

It is available in Kindle format free with Kindle Unlimited or for purchase as ebook or in print:

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

BooksAMillion

The Reluctant Wife is Book 2 in Caroline Warfield’s Children of Empire Series.

Three cousins, who grew up together in the English countryside, have been driven apart by deceit and lies. (You may guess a woman was involved!) Though they all escape to the outposts of The British Empire, they all make their way home to England, facing their demons and finding love and the support of women of character and backbone. They are:

  • Randolph Baldwin Wheatly who has become a recluse, and lives in isolation in frontier Canada intent on becoming a timber baron, until a desperate woman invades his peace. (The Renegade Wife)
  • Captain Frederick Arthur Wheatly, an officer in the Bengal army, who enjoys his comfortable life on the fringes until his mistress dies, and he’s forced to choose between honor and the army. (The Reluctant Wife)
  • Charles, Duke of Murnane, tied to a miserable marriage, throws himself into government work to escape bad memories. He accepts a commission from the Queen that takes him to Canton and Macau, only to face his past there. (The Unexpected Wife)

Who are their ladies?

  • Meggy Campeau, the daughter of a French trapper and Ojibwe mother who has made mistakes, but is fierce in protecting her children. (The Renegade Wife)
  • Clare Armbruster, fiercely independent woman of means, who is determined to make her own way in life, but can’t resist helping a foolish captain sort out his responsibilities. (The Reluctant Wife)
  • Zambak Hayden, eldest child of the Duke of Sudbury, knows she’d make a better heir than her feckless younger brother, but can’t help protecting the boy to the point of following him to China. She may just try to sort out the Empire’s entangled tea trade–and its ugly underpinning, opium, while she’s there. (The Unexpected Wife)

Book 3, The Unexpected Wife, will be released on July 25.

Here’s a short video about it:

https://www.facebook.com/carolinewarfield7/videos/924791187669849/

For more about the series and all of Caroline’s books, look here:

https://www.carolinewarfield.com/bookshelf/

About the Author

Caroline Warfield grew up in a peripatetic army family and had a varied career (largely around libraries and technology) before retiring to the urban wilds of Eastern Pennsylvania, where divides her time between writing Regency and Victorian Romance, and seeking adventures with her grandson and the prince among men she married.

 

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Ch-ch-ch-changes

Expect some changes in the way I sell my books in the coming months. I’ve been thinking and reading and collecting ideas. I’ve been planning and preparing. And I’m just about ready to start implementing.

Buy from the Jude Knight shop

First up, I’m going to open my own shop on this site, with print and ebooks available in formats to suit any reader, and direct-to-customer benefits.

  1. I’m planning to have new books available in my shop before you can get them anywhere else — and I hope to start with The Realm of Silence (publication date 22 May, so 15 May here).
  2. I’ll be adding extras such as deleted and background scenes to the books sold through my shop that you won’t get at any of the major e-retailers.
  3. Over time, I’ll have books here that aren’t available anywhere else.

Can you think of anything else you’d like to see me doing? I can’t discount ebooks over the Amazon price, because of authors agree, as a condition of using KDP, that they will not sell at a lower price elsewhere, but everything else is up for discussion.

Enjoy changes to my newsletter

I’m keeping the story, but I’m cutting back on content and putting most of it in links to stop cluttering your box. If you want to read more, click through. And I’m planning to feature more on other authors — their new releases, books I’ve been reading, interesting things happening in the world of historical romance.

How does that sound? Good? No? Please tell me what you’d like. My newsletter subscribers are my go-to-people, my strongest supporters and advocates. I care what you think, and I want to entertain you.

Watch me try to reduce my dependence on the megaliths

I have always tried to diversify: going wide instead of exclusive to Amazon, using Twitter and Goodreads and Wattpad instead of relying on Facebook. I’m more and more convinced this is the right approach, but I need to be more strategic about it. So here are some of the things I’m planning.

  • Making my website is up-to-date
    • giving the book pages a new look so they’re easier to explore now I have so many books
    • adding 1st chapters and excerpts for all my books
    • updating book information where it’s needed in the book pages
  • Rebalancing my sales through eretailers:
    • joining Kobo directly (I currently publish to them through Smashwords) so I can use their author marketing tools
    • exploring options for marketing specifically to Apple and Barnes & Noble customers
    • fixing the gaps in my sales information, such as editorial reviews on Amazon
  • Optimising print distribution:
    • looking again at Ingram publishing, and other options for reaching bookstores and libraries
  •  Finding new ways of getting excerpts (and full stories) in front of readers
    • revisiting Books + Main and getting ‘bites’ of all my books up there, then figuring out how to get readers to go looking
    • starting to post excerpts on FaceBook again
    • continuing to post on Wattpad
    • exploring ways to use Instagram with taglines
    • reopening the YouTube channel I started, maybe for book teasers, maybe for discussions with friends — what would you watch?
  • Being strategic about advertising, by keeping data on what works and what doesn’t
    • trying more Facebook ads
    • making some video book teasers
    • learning more about Amazon ads and trying them out
    • investing in advertising through e-newsletters.

And, of course, the big unspoken. Continuing to write and publish.

Do you have any suggestions? I’d love to hear them.

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Beginnings on WIP Wednesday

I’ve started my contemporary again, so I figured today was a good day to have beginnings as my WIP theme. Book beginnings, chapter beginnings — you choose. Mine is the (new) first scene in Beached, which I’m writing for the Authors of Main Street boxed set.

The road home wound through the hills until the sudden last corner before the coast. Nik had known the way by heart since she was a small girl, returning from a shopping expedition or a sports event.

In recent years, the little fishing settlement was discovered by weekenders. Land Transport New Zealand had been hard at work during Nik’s decade overseas, widening and straightening, cutting through slopes and filling hollows. The first time she’d driven out here a few months ago, the alterations made it unfamiliar.

But she’d been twice more, to check on the beach house for Gran and Poppa, and the landmarks beyond the road remained the same. A clump of native bush still screened Murphy’s Pond, a favourite summer swimming hole. They’d built a lookout with a picnic spot over Pleasant Valley, but the view of farmland, bush, river, and hills remained as beautiful as ever, and the hill known as Two Heads was still as impressive as ever, even if some aesthetically challenged cretin had somehow obtained permission to quarry on one side.

The road dropped down again from the hillside into the river flats. This time, the long row of massive willows at the river’s edge signalled the difference, growing steadily smaller as they approached the tidal reaches. No more hills, and in a moment she would have her first sight of the sea.

“There, Nikki,” Poppa used to say as they rounded that last corner, “the sea. Nothing else between us and South America.”

The numbness behind which she had hidden her grief lifted for a moment, pierced by a shaft of pure joy. Not allowing herself to feel had helped her survive the second funeral a mere week after the first, and the long days that followed. Coming home had been the right move. She could mourn them properly in the landscapes of her childhood: not the diminished frail couple she had nursed and cared for these past few months, but the Gran and Poppa of twenty and thirty years ago; the only parents she had known or needed.

The car, Poppa’s little hybrid, seemed as eager as she to eat up the last five miles, gaining speed on the gentler curves around the little coves and over the small prominatories between her and Paradise Bay. Gran and Poppa had left most of their estate to be split between their three grandchildren — her and the half-siblings she barely knew. But the beach house at Paradise Bay was left to her alone, and the decision to keep it had never needed to be made. She had been born there; had spent her early years in that community; had left only for high school and later for university. It was home.

Beks, her dearest friend from school and a faithful correspondent in all the years away, had promised to air the place and make up a bed with fresh sheets. She would undoubtedly stock the cupboards, too, though she’d insisted that Nik join her and her family for a meal tonight. Nik found she was looking forward to it. Beks had married her high-school sweetheart, and she and Dave had both known Gran and Poppa.

She began to hum the song Gran always sang as they finished this last stretch of the coast. “Our house, is a very, very, very fine house…”

Soon. Soon she would be home.

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Authors in Bloom, and zucchini fritters

Dianne Venetta_AIB Logo_2015

PROMOTION IS OVER: CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNERS

My ebook special edition has been won by ELF. Thank you to all who entered.

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Welcome to my blog. I’m delighted to be an author in bloom, though down here in New Zealand, we’re sliding into Winter while you Northern hemispherites are busy preparing your Spring gardens.

But it is never too early to plan what to do with the harvest, and prizes are don’t have to wait for any particular season. Am I right?

 Zucchinis, courgettes, or as we call them when I fail to pick every day, marrows

There cannot be an easier or more prolific crop on the face of the planet. Plant, feed (they love manure and compost), and — whatever you do — don’t forget. Once they start to produce, you’ll need to pick daily, or one day you’ll come out and find a marrow the size of Africa smothering everything else in the garden.

We usually plant several different types: green torpedoes, yellow torpedoes, and both green and yellow patty-pan shaped. Picked little, they slice into salads. I also liked them fried with a breakfast of eggs and bacon, or cut into small cubes in a salsa. You can grate them for fritters whatever the size, but bigger is faster.

This year’s marvelous discovery was that grated zucchini freezes really well. Most of the liquid drains out of the zucchini while it is defrosting, making even better fritters than the fresh stuff. Yum!

Zucchini fritters — Paleo and auto-immune system friendly

Tips: weigh your zucchini before grating. It’s easier. Get out as much water from the zucchinis as you can. This is really important. If you don’t freeze the grated zucchini, salt it to draw the moisture, then twist it in a cloth. If you have time, leave it overnight in paper towel. Really squeeze the last drop out of it.

1 pound of zucchini, grated and drained (about 2 of medium size)
2 green onions, thinly sliced
/4 cup almond flour (or arrowroot or coconut if nuts are a problem)
1/4 cup of freshly grated parmesan (if you can take dairy)
2 eggs (if you can’t take eggs, try this gelatin substitute)
salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp lemon juice

Put everything in a bowl and mix.

Heat two tablespoons of your choice of cooking oil in a pan and wait for the pan to get super hot. When the oil is shimmering, add spoonfuls of the mixture and fry until golden brown, about two to three minutes each side.

Serve with sour cream and extra green onions. Or with eggs, mushrooms, and homemade hollandaise sauce. Or with spinach and salmon. Or with applesauce. Or any way you like, really. We make up huge bowls of these and use them often.

GIVEAWAY

Comment on this blog post and note in the Rafflecopter that you’ve done so. That’s all you need to do to be in the draw to win your choice of my prizewinner special edition ebooks, and answer the extra questions to be in the draw for an advance reader copy of The Realm of Silence, to be sent early in May.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

GRAND PRIZE

We are giving away a Kindle Fire or Nook (winner’s choice) along with a 2nd prize of $25 gift card to those who participate in the whole hop by visiting each and every spot and leaving a comment or email through the blog post or the giveaway.

Where to find out if you have won.

Winners will be posted on the first and last websites in the hop (Dianne Venetta and BloominThyme). I’ll also post my own winners here.

 

Hop along for more great tips, recipes, and giveaways



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Tea with the Countess of Chirbury and Selby

“My dear Anne,” the Duchess of Haverford said, crossing the room to greet her goddaughter with a kiss, “how lovely to see you. Come. Take a seat, and let us have a comfortable coze.”

While the maids bustled about setting up the tea table, Her Grace asked after each of the children in the burgeoning Chirbury nursery.

Daisy, at eleven, was taking lessons in painting from her Aunt Kitty, in music, writing, arithmetic, and manners from her Aunt Ruth, and in science, particularly the study of nature, from the local curate.

The twins, eldest children of Anne’s marriage to the Earl of Chirbury, had recently celebrated their fourth birthday, and Anne was happy to expound for several minutes on their virtues, escapades, and differing characters.

By the time the last maid left the room, she had moved on to the two youngest children. “Little Lord Joseph is happiest when he is high up, and — after rescuing him from the top of the nursery’s doll house, dresser, and wardrobe, Rede had the happy notion of building him a tower with ladders and stairs so he could climb safely and to his heart’s content. And Baby is a darling — such a sunny nature, and so good. I left the others at Longford Court, since we only came up to London to see Mia safely on her way to Cape Town. But Baby is with me, of course.”

“I long to see her, Anne,” the duchess said. “I was so sorry I was unable to come for her christening.”

Anne smiled. “I was sure you would say so. Rede said that taking a baby when visiting was hardly proper, but she is sleeping in the next room, Aunt Eleanor, and the nurse will bring her through when she wakes.”

If the countess had any lingering doubts about the propriety of visiting with an infant in tow, Her Grace’s delight in the coming treat dispelled them, and several more minutes were taken in discussing and dismissing the ton’s habit of ignoring the occupants of the nursery and schoolroom until they were of age to join in adult pursuits.

“But before Baby wakes,” Anne said at last, “I had a particular goal in visiting today, Aunt Eleanor. How well do you know Rede’s friend Lord Rutledge?”

“Gil Rutledge. He has been to various of my entertainments over the years, and of course he was one of lads who used to visit Haverford Castle in the summer, when Rede brought his friends. I have heard very good reports of his record as a soldier, too.”

Anne nodded. “From Uncle Henry.”

“Among others. What do you wish to know, Anne? And why?”

Anne turned her empty cup on its saucer, and then put it down and looked up at the duchess. “I have hidden his brother’s widow and children from his mother, and he wants to know where they are. I need to decide what to tell him.”

The duchess pursed her lips. “I see. You fear that Lord Rutledge may prove to be a bully and a tyrant like his brother.”

“Yes, or susceptible to his mother’s bullying, for she swears she will have those two dear little girls off poor Chloe.”

“The woman is a horror, and I would not give her a dog to raise, let alone Lady Rutledge’s little daughters. Does Lord Rutledge say why he wants to know the whereabouts of his sister-in-law and nieces?”

Anne nodded. “Yes, and his reason is fair. He is responsible for their welfare, he says, and needs to reassure himself that they have everything they need. Rede says he is to be trusted, and that he would never put them at risk, but will he allow himself to be persuaded by his mother?”

Her Grace was silent for a long moment, considering her answer. At last she said, “I believe not. He has a deep sense of duty and honour, and little affection for the dowager. Indeed, I suspect he considered Henry and Susana, your husband’s aunt and uncle, more his parents than his own. As to his susceptibility to bullying, you do know, do you not, that his nickname is Rock Ledge?”

“So my husband tells me,” Anne said. “Nothing shifts him once he has made up his mind.”

The duchess continued, “If I might advise you, Anne, tell him your concerns and ask him for his word that he will not allow his mother to discover the widow’s whereabouts.”

Gil Rutledge is the hero of The Realm of Silence. His sister-in-law and horrid mother also appear. Click on the title for blurb and preorder links. The Realm of Silence is the third novel in The Golden Redepenning series, and will be released on 22 May.

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Back to the future

I’ve been in a slump since I sent The Realm of Silence off to the editor. I’ve written little, and what I have written, I haven’t liked.

In part, because life

I’ve been distracted by my health, a busy day job, tax accounts time, and preparation to sell our house.

I’ve a complicated mix of health issues most of which were responding nicely to treatment — but in the past month, not so much. We’re still trying to find the source of some of them, but each specialist my GP sends me to finds and fixes something in his speciality and passes over everything else. Clearly, I’m in possession of Douglas Adams’ ‘Somebody Else’s Problem’ field, at least when it comes to medical specialists.

I love my day job, which is solving problems for organisations who want to communicate, proposing and then implementing plain English solutions. But 72 hours a fortnight plus 15 hours a fortnight commute eats into my days, especially when I arrive home too tired to do anything but sleep.

In New Zealand, most people have a 31 March financial year end, inherited from the English system of settling the year’s accounts on Lady’s Day. (Link to blog). I have until end of May to report, but I’m getting my bits and pieces together. With multiple sources of author income, superannuation, and a salary, it gets complicated.

And we’re readying our house for the market. Nearly two acres with a five-bedroom, two-bathroom dwelling that includes two living areas and a double garage, plus a sleep-out. And in a popular commuter town. We have a number of little jobs to do, but we’re tackling them a bit at a time and expect to be ready to sell in the New Zealand spring.

Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines

I was a freelance journalist a long long time ago. I learnt why the word ‘dead’ is in deadline. If your article doesn’t cross the line by the time the editor says, it’s dead. The publication will go ahead without it. Do it too often, and that editor won’t buy from you again. Before you know where you are, your career is dead.

I cannot help but apply the discipline I learnt then to my current fiction career.

I currently have three looming deadlines for stories that are not yet written, including the contemporary I started — but more about that soon.

  • Short story of 3,000 words by 24 April.
  • Contemporary of 30,000 words by 15 May
  • Historical of 20,000 words by 4 June.

It is easy to counsel other people to slow down, renegotiate deadlines, withdraw from commitments, prioritise the people who are important to you and your own health. It’s much harder to apply that sage advice to myself. For one thing, keeping up a regular timetable of new releases is part of my strategy to achieve the longer-term goal of giving up the day job and writing fiction full time.

I can meet the goals on these three, and further goals over the year, if I write 1,500 to 2,000 words a day, six days a week. That’s not impossible. As long as a fair number of them are words I want to keep.

Let’s start at the very beginning

But I’m not writing, and I’ve finally figured out why. I started the contemporary in the wrong place, and I let the heroine know too much about the hero in the first pages of the story.

She’s a smart girl. She has him figured out straight up, and sympathises with his position.

No conflict, no tension, no drama, no story.

So to get them to their future through a story that will be fun to read, I need to go back to the beginning and start over.

Phew. I’m glad we’ve got that sorted!

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Please, please, Mr Postmaster

I’ve written before about the Penny Post in the context of Christmas Cards, but I find the whole development of mail and postage in the United Kingdom interesting. For various reasons, I’ve been researching foreign mail – letters sent from the United Kingdom to overseas countries or vice versa.

In the beginning, such mail was very haphazard and unpredictable, sent by whatever ship happened to be available. We’re talking sailing ships, so too much wind and your letter could end up at the bottom of the sea; too little and it isn’t going anywhere. Other hazards included pirates and enemy ships.

Even under the best of conditions, transport was slow, relying on navigation techniques that only slowly improved over the years before the invention of the chronometer, as well as prevailing winds and ocean currents.

Sending letters overseas

A letter from England to Australia in the early years of British settlement might take eight months or a year to reach its destination, and if it required an answer, the original request is going to be at least 18 months in the past before the response arrived.

By the nineteenth century, when most of my stories are set, you had several options for sending letters from England to places overseas.

  1. You could deliver it to a post office, pay their fee, and leave it to them.
  2. You could ask a private business with overseas links to send your letter through their system.
  3. If you lived in a seaport, and if a ship in that port was heading in the right direction, you could ask the captain to take your letter for you.
  4. If you lived in London, you could go to coffee houses where ship captains met with merchants to bargain for cargoes, and — for a small fee — add your letter to a mail sack going to the right place. The coffee house would bargain with the appropriate captain.

Sending a letter from overseas

In many parts of England’s far flung empire, there was no postal system, but any ship’s captain would accept mail for ports along his route. With no regular service, the length of time before a letter arrived could not be known.

Say you were travelling to Cape Town, like the heroine of my next Redepenning novel. Mia might write a letter to her English relatives from the Canary Islands, and leave it to be sent back to England. But the next ship might be going to England via the Caribbean and then Canada, and her letter would therefore take the long way home.

From early in the 18th century, the Royal Mail had its own ships, called Packet Boats, to cover the route between England and Ireland, and England and Europe. The Royal Mail could also send mail on private ships, under the Ship Letter Act of 1799. The captains of such ships had a legal obligation to hand letters to the Postmaster at their first port of arrival in England, and were paid a small sum for doing so.

It’s a far cry from the instant gratification of email and direct messaging, but be patient, and it worked. Mostly. Eventually.