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Who inherits the title and the estate?

The heroine of A Raging Madness is a penniless widow, with no family except her horrible in-laws,  her dead husband’s loathsome half-brother and his even more ghastly wife.

So why was she penniless? She is living in a substantial house on a nice little estate which has been comfortably supporting her, her mother-in-law, and the two villains, as well as a number of students. Who owned it, and why didn’t she?

Down the research rabbit hole I go

In order to know the answer, I had to research inheritance law in the early 19th century. What happened if a man died without a will? What if he had a title? What if his property was entailed. If he left a will; could he leave his wife out of it?

In this post, I’m going to talk about titles and entails. In part 2, I’ll get to wills and widows.

Gervase was a baronet

Ella was married to a baronet who inherited his estate while he was still a boy, and to understand why that matters, you need to know about entails.  Entails were to do with real property (land and buildings), not with titles.

(I’m not a lawyer, and this is all in layperson’s language, so please correct me in the comments if I’ve got anything wrong.)

Your title went to your heir

Who inherited a title was decided by the wording of the document setting up the title in the first place. Mostly, this was ‘heirs male of the body’, which meant the eldest living legitimate male in a direct male line from the most recent of the title holders to have male descendants.

That’s a complicated sentence, so let’s tease it out. If the baronet was married and had living sons (biological—adoption didn’t count), the eldest son would inherit the title. If he had no sons, but grandsons, then the eldest son of the eldest son would be baronet. If he had no male descendants, but his brother had sons, then the heir was the eldest living male descended from the baronet’s father, the most recent of the title holders to have male descendants.

A few titles were set up to go to females if there’s no male heir. If a qualifying heir is thought to exist but can’t be found, the title goes dormant (EDITED I originally said into abeyance, but that’s different. See Nancy’s correction, below). If no heir exists, it becomes extinct. That’s what happened to Gervase’s baronetcy. His son inherited it the moment he was born, since Gervase was already dead, but he died while still a baby.

I’ve posted before about male primogeniture, which was the English system. Primogeniture just means the eldest offspring.

If your land was entailed, it also went to your heir

Most titles, when granted, came with land, villages, and one or more houses or castles. The wealth of the aristocracy was still, in the early nineteenth century, in their land. Not because the real property naturally belonged to the title, but because the aristocracy had figured out a way to stop a careless descendant from getting rid of it all. They could create a agreement that settled the property on the heirs to the title, whether or not those heirs had been born yet. This agreement was called a Deed of Settlement and it meant that the current title-holder had life possession of the property, but that it belonged to the heirs.

This was the fee tail (or entail). By contrast, land owned in fee simple belonged to the current title-holder.

Entails needed to be renewed, generation by generation

In English law, real property was covered by something called the Rule Against Perpetuity. The Rule meant you couldn’t make a will stick if it left your house and land to your own descendants forever and ever. The Deed of Settlement could leave real property to your heir and maybe your heir’s heir.

I’m guessing that Gervase’s grandfather had a conversation with his son (we’ll call him Horace) that went something like this. “Now you’re twenty-one, boy, I need your signature on these documents. It’s the entail. It’ll keep the house and land with the title, so it goes to your son.”

Horace takes a quick look and frowns. How is he to support himself in London if he can’t use the land as a stake in a gambling match or as security for a loan? His father, who had the same conversation with his own father, can see the way the boy’s mind is working.

“Obviously, lad, you’ll need a raise in your allowance, and I’ll pay the lease on your London townhouse.”

Horace looks his father up and down. The old codger is hale and hearty; could live till he was ninety, beyond a doubt. Probably by then Horace will have settled down and will be glad to still have an estate on which to settle his wife and family. He signs the Deed of Settlement, and the land is safe for another generation.

Which is tricky if the heir has only daughters or the title holder dies young

Marry your daughters to someone who could support them

Of course, your heir signs the Deed of Settlement fully confident that he’ll eventually have sons. What if he doesn’t? There he is, with the whole estate tied up in the entail, and five daughters. He’d better find husbands for them all, for the next heir, his second cousin twice removed, won’t want to house them.

Or what if he has a son and then dies before the son is twenty-one? The agreement has to be made between adults. In my story, Horace inherited and then died before Gervase turned twenty-one. The entail meant the property was settled on Gervase by the agreement between Horace and his father, but the entail goes no further than Gervase, the next generation after Horace. Gervase can leave his real property however he likes, or die without a will, in which case the rules of inheritance come into play.

More about that next time.

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Comedy on WIP Wednesday

Who doesn’t enjoy a book full of humour and fun? Even in a story where grim things are happening, humour lightens the moment, whether it is a bit of slapstick or a wry comment. And romances are, by definition, comedic in the original sense of the term. A comedy, as defined by the Greeks, is a story with a happy ending.

So this week, I’m looking for excerpts with your comedic moments. Give us a belly-laugh, a giggle, or an appreciative smile—or even a raised eyebrow.

Mine is from The Lost Treasure of Lorne, a story I’m writing for the patient Teri, who has forgiven me for falling off the face of the planet since Christmas. I’m finishing it this week, Teri, but this is how it starts.

22nd August 1785

His Grace the Duke of Kendal was digging in the moat again. The unusually dry summer had presented an opportunity he could not resist. With the moat almost empty, even the deepest pools came barely to the hem of his kilt, which, apart from the boots that were out of sight under the murky water, was all that he wore.

At not quite forty years of age, the duke was still a fine figure of a man, broad of shoulder, slim of waist, and well-muscled. Even Caitlin Moffat, that stern moralist his housekeeper, paused at the windows of the long gallery to admire the view before she scolded the maids who were doing the same thing and sent them scurrying back to their tasks. Caitlin stopped for one more glance before resolutely turning away and closing herself in the housekeeper’s pantry with her accounts.

The columns of figures were unlikely to drive the sight of a half-naked duke from her mind, but one could try.

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Tea with Xavier

Her Grace of Haverford smiled at the strangely-dressed young man who has suddenly materialised in her private sitting room.

¿Como? ¿Donde estoy?” he said, staring around himself. “I was just locked in a gaol on a ship, en route to New Zealand, and…???”

Her Grace nodded. Such things often happen on a Monday, and the duchess has learned to take them in her stride. “Then I daresay you would like a cup of tea. Or perhaps coffee?” She repressed the urge to sniff. He didn’t smell too fresh, but undoubtedly the chair cushions could be cleaned.

The young man blinked. “Dios mío, but I would die for a coffee,” he said, grateful tears filling his eyes. “I wondered if I’d ever have any again…or if I’d get out of that gaol stateroom alive”

“I am Eleanor Haverford, and you are temporarily in 1811, in England. I do not know how it works, señor, but you will be here long enough for some refreshments, so please, make the most of the opportunity.”

He stared now, then remembered his manners. “Your Grace,” he bowed over her hand. “My Aleksandra told me of you,” he shook his head, “and of your wondrous mansion, and of ‘taking tea’ with you. I’m so pleased to be here…much better than where I was. So to what do I owe this,” he gazed over the spread on the table before him, “unexpected pleasure?”

“I am always At Home on a Monday, my dear. I seldom know who to expect or where or when they will come from, but someone always arrives. It is most fascinating. And some are even hungrier than you!” (And less fragrant, she thought, and did not say.)

“That is hard to believe,” he said, as he stayed his hand from reaching for the little cakes.

“Please, help yourself,” the duchess pours him a coffee and hands him a place. “I hope and trust the food will remain with you on your return, but even if it does not, you will have had the flavour.”

“I apologise for the state of my clothing, I’ve been on a ship for nearly three months. And I’m sure,” he gave her a twisted grin, “that I smell atrocious.”

“It is of no matter. You are Xavier, of course! How is dear Aleksandra?”

Xavier bit his lip. “I was hoping you could tell me. If you can pull me into the past, can you tell the future? I’ve just left 1863.”

An elegant shrug of one tiny shoulder. “I do not control who visits or how, my dear. I am so sorry. You and she are not together then?”

“If together means being together somewhere in the Pacific on the same barque, headed for New Zealand, yes, we are. Unfortunately, the scoundrel of a first mate has likely killed the captain and locked me in the brig for something I didn’t do. I worry about that madman Brockhurst out there, with my wife.”

“Oh dear! But your wife is a very resourceful woman. I expect she has plans of her own.”

“She is fantastic with her shashka, but even she can be overcome by a stronger man or two…especially if they’re armed with laudanum, as well as whatever else they had to hand.”

“You are now many years in her past, my dear,” the duchess said, topping up her coffee. “If I understand how this works, you will be returned to the time you left. Aleksandra will use her wits, and you must trust her. Tell me, what are you doing on a ship? Have you left California for good?”

“We’re headed for a new life in the peaceful country of New Zealand.” Xavier took another sip, and helped himself to one of the little pies from the plate she put before him, before continuing, “My newspaper friend Gustavus von Tempsky says New Zealand is a wonderful place to start a new life.”

The duchess was fascinated. “I know little of New Zealand, except that a savage chieftain from there visited the Court several years ago.”

“We’re heading to meet von Tempsky in the town of Coromandel, where he’s offered us a share in his gold mine. He says the natives of the place, the Maori, and the settlers live in peace and harmony.”

“A town! Things must have changed in the last fifty years! Are there many towns in New Zealand?”

“Ah, yes, there are, and the missionaries have apparently been there since the 30’s. Apparently, the Maori have wonderful crops and farms… it is said they even supply most of the wheat for the settlements in Australia, on their own ships!”

Her Grace leaned forward, her eyes shining. “It will be very different to my England or your California. How exciting for you and your family.”

“It will,” Xavier agreed. “It is meant to be so very green!”

The duchess passed the plates of sweet cakes, each individually iced and topped with a candied flower. Xavier took one.

“Take another,” the duchess recommended. “My chef purchases them from M. Fournier’s , and he makes the finest in London.”

Xavier grinned and put too more on his plate. “Oh, thank you! I’ve not seen a petit four since my graduation from high school in San Francisco!”

He took the first tiny cake in a bite and continued, “So our new life will be wonderful. Once we find von Tempsky, we’ll settle in and have the quiet life we’ve both wanted, which seems to have escaped us in the past, and start a family…” silence…”again,” he adds, in a whisper.

The duchess patted his hand. “You will, I am certain, overcome your challenges and find the happiness you seek. You and Aleksandra deserve it.”

“Thank you. I can only hope you are right.” He stared pensively at his hands.

Her Grace broke the silence. “And how will you and Aleksandra support yourselves in New Zealand?”

“We have adequate funds to support ourselves.” Xavier grinned, suddenly, and added “and we will, of course, strike it rich in the Coromandel mine, like every other miner.”

“Of course!” The duchess returned his grin, then added, her eyes twinkly, “My son would say that the best way to become rich in a gold rush is to sell shovels.”

“Ah, an enterprising son you must have. My mother would have said the same.”

At this description of the Marquis of Aldridge, the duchess laughed aloud. “Enterprising. Yes, some might describe him so. Have some more to eat, Xavier. I am delighted to see your excellent appetite.”

Xavier filled his plate again. “Thank you, Your Grace. It’s been a while since I’ve had anything but hardtack and stale water.”

A SEA OF GREEN UNFOLDING, BOOK THREE IN THE LONG TRAILS SERIES, FOLLOWING THE HILLS OF GOLD UNCHANGING.

In the multiply-awarded A Long Trail Rolling, Lizzi Tremayne told the story of Aleksandra Lekarski, a trapper’s daughter who finds herself alone—and running to prevent her father’s killer from discovering their family secret. The tale continues in The Hills of Gold Unchanging

The third story, A Sea of Green Unfolding,picks up Aleksandra and Xavier in the San Francisco Bay Area.

1862, Rancho de las Pulgas, San Francisco Bay Tragedy strikes in Aleksandra and Xavier’s newly-found paradise on their California Rancho. Their friend, von Tempsky, invites them on a journey to adventure and a new life in peaceful New Zealand, but change is in the wind. They reach Aotearoa, only to discover the place is a turbulent wilderness—where the land wars between the European settlers and the local Māori have only just begun.

This is the third novel in the series of historical romantic suspense sagas following Aleksandra and Xavier from the wilderness of 1860 Utah to Colonial New Zealand.

With Book One, A Long Trail Rolling, Lizzi Tremayne was: Finalist 2013 RWNZ Great Beginnings; Winner 2014 RWNZ Pacific Hearts Award; Winner 2015 RWNZ Koru Award for Best First Novel plus third in Koru Long Novel section; and finalist in the 2015 Best Indie Book Award.

In the story, tragedy strikes in Aleksandra and Xavier’s newly-found paradise on their California Rancho de las Pulgas. Von Tempsky invites them on a journey to a new life in peaceful New Zealand, but change is in the wind. When they reach Aotearoa, they disembark into a turbulent wilderness—where the wars between the European settlers and the local Māori have only just begun. It will be released in May 2017 and is available for preorder on the regular sites.

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Sunday Spotlight on The Reluctant Wife

Caroline Warfield writes a superb book, and has had me as a devoted fan since Dangerous Works, the first in her Dangerous series. The Reluctant Wife is her best yet.

The hero, Fred, is one of the boys from Dangerous Nativity, all grown up and following his boyhood dream of being a soldier. But his dreams have turned sour. We meet him in a village in Benghal, drinking his sorrows after the sudden death of the local woman who was his housekeeper and mistress.

No better able to bear injustice and bullying than he was as a child, he has spoken for those without a voice, protected those without power, and been rewarded by demotion and sidelining. In his eyes, he’s a failure; a failure, furthermore, faced with responsibility for his two mixed-race daughters.

The heroine, Clare, bursts in on his life at that moment. She is the sister of his supervising officer, who is a pompous idiot, and bears deep scars of her own. In India only to get her brother’s signature on papers that will give her financial independence, she is still grieving the loss of her only child, and sees herself as a failed wife, and a failed mother.

From the first, Clare understands that what the girls need is their father.  Fred takes some more convincing: across the Indian Ocean and the Egyptian desert, and on into England, where he and Clare must confront their doubts and fears, as well as facing down a bully from Fred’s past in India; a bully who means murder.

Fred’s cousin Charles, Duke of Murnane, has an important role to play in this book, and we see some more healing from the damage his wife did years before to the relationship between Fred, Charles, and Fred’s brother Rand (hero of The Renegade Wife). Charles stars in The Unexpected Wife, due out later this year, and I can hardly wait.

Find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Reluctant-Wife-Children-Empire-Book-ebook/dp/B06Y4BGMX1/

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Research and The Reluctant Wife

My guest for Footnotes on Friday is Caroline Warfield, who will talk to us about the different types of research that inform her wonderful books. And continue scrolling for a giveaway and an excerpt of her next release.

Research represents one of the vital tools of a historical novelist. We’re frequently asked to share our research when we discuss our books. I’m always bemused by that. Which research?

Early in the process, academic research is important. I need to understand the era, the setting, the historical figures, the circumstances and a general picture of people’s lives.  A stack of books glares at me from across the room as I type this.  East Asia the Modern Transformation, my Fairbank-Reicshauer survey text from college is buried under two works on the East India Company.  The Reluctant Wife is set in India, but that one is finished. The work-in-progress, The Unexpected Wife (due next October) takes the hero to Canton, China where he will encounter—surprise—the East India Company. Again. This kind of research mostly sets the mood and enlightens the setting. It isn’t terribly helpful on a daily basis.

Some details are tough to get at. Tomes on the company, and even forays into the internet, weren’t much help with details of daily life. I got stuck on uniforms and military life on the edges of the Bengal Presidency. A friend connected me to her father-in-law who provided pages of wonderful detail. I may have only used bits and pieces but those bits make the story much more alive and, I can only hope, more authentic.

Once writing is underway, the questions we didn’t anticipate crop up left and right. What is the punishment for counterfeiting coins in 1832?  (severe, possibly capital) How would the heroine treat burns in 1835? (with honey) How could the hero tell if a dead assassin was hindu or muslim? (circumcision) When was foxglove found to be useful for heart failure? (before 1800) For those, I scurry to the Internet, usually successfully.

There is another sort of research that enlivens my work, however. Fiction, regardless of historical era or setting, is about people, and romantic fiction is about relationships. My books are all embedded in family—the families of origin of the hero and heroine, and the family they form when they finally come together. For that, my research is all around me. Family is the great school of life. Families mold us for better or for worse. They lie under our character, conflicts, and motivation good and bad. They  provoke the strongest of all human emotions, both negative and positive. Reasearch? I’d say so—if we’re paying attention.

What do you think?  How much real information do you look for in what is, after all, a novel? Is the human more or less important?

The Reluctant Wife

Children of Empire, Book 2

Genre: Pre Victorian, Historical Romance  *  Heat rating: 3 of 5 (two brief -mild- sexual encounters)

ISBN:  978-1-61935-349-9 * ASIN:  B06Y4BGMX1 * Page count: 275 pages

Pub date: April 26, 2017

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. She certainly doesn’t need 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?

Find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Reluctant-Wife-Children-Empire-Book-ebook/dp/B06Y4BGMX1/

About Caroline Warfield

Traveler, poet, librarian, technology manager—award winning author Caroline Warfield has been many things (even a nun), but above all she is a romantic. Having retired to the urban wilds of eastern Pennsylvania, she reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows while she lets her characters lead her to adventures in England and the far-flung corners of the British Empire. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart.

Caroline is a RONE award winner with five star reviews from Readers’ Favorite, Night Owl Reviews, and InD’Tale. She is also a member of the writers’ co-operative, the Bluestocking Belles. With partners she manages and regularly writes for both The Teatime Tattler and History Imagined.

Website http://www.carolinewarfield.com/

Amazon Author http://www.amazon.com/Caroline-Warfield/e/B00N9PZZZS/

Good Reads http://bit.ly/1C5blTm

Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/carolinewarfield7

Twitter @CaroWarfield

Email warfieldcaro@gmail.com

Children of Empire

Three cousins, torn apart by lies and deceit and driven to the far reaches of the empire, struggle to find their way home.

Giveaway

Caroline will give a kindle copy of The Renegade Wife, first book in the series, to one randomly selected person who comments. She is also sponsoring a grand prize in celebration of her release. You can enter it here: http://www.carolinewarfield.com/2017blogtourpackage/

The prequel to this book, A Dangerous Nativity, is always **FREE**. You can get a copy here: http://www.carolinewarfield.com/bookshelf/a-dangerous-nativity-1815/

Excerpt

Clare briefly explained what she had learned about the inaugural run of a mail steamer to the Suez.

“What is the advantage?” he asked.

“It cuts four months off the time we would spend cooped up on a ship,” Clare answered.

“Camels,” Meghal declared. Her eyes widened as a new idea struck. “And crocodiles.”

“The disadvantage?” he asked, barely controlling his laughter.

“Goodness, Fred. I would have to disembark with two children, travel overland to Cairo, travel by river barge down the Nile and the Mahmoudiyah Canal to Alexandria before embarking on yet another steamer for Falmouth or Southampton while managing luggage and keeping your daughter from wandering off with the first interesting band of Bedouins she encountered.”

“But Papa can help with the luggage, and I promise not to follow any—what are Bead-oh-ans?”

Clare’s face registered the shock he felt. Neither one of them had mentioned his plans to his daughters. Clare raised a brow and shrugged, obviously unwilling to rescue him.

You’re on your own, Wheatly, he thought as he tried to put words together while Meghal smiled hopefully at him.

“I thought you knew, Meghal. I’m not going with you. You will have to take care of Miss Armbruster for me.” She will like the idea of caring for everyone, he thought, pleased with himself for coming up with that.

His daughter’s instant response disabused him of that notion. “Why?” she demanded, the universal challenge of children everywhere. Before he could think, she stabbed him in the heart and twisted the knife. “Don’t you care for us?”

“Of course, I do! Never think that.”

“Where will we go? Who will take care of us? Do we have to live with Miss Armbruster?” Meghal colored and turned to Clare. “I’m sorry, Miss Armbruster. Ananya and I like you, but you aren’t family,” she said. “We need family.”

Fred seized on her words. “That’s just it. I’m sending you to family. Your Aunt Catherine and your cousins will be happy to have you come and stay with them while I”—he clenched his teeth—“while I find work so I can send her money for your care.”

Meghal sank back in the chair, outrage still rampant on her face.

“Meghal, I can’t care for you if I can’t work.”

In lieu of an answer, she jumped down from her chair and hurried to the bedroom, returning with her beloved box. Fred groaned. I should never have read them to her. She dug down under her cousins’ missives and pulled up ones she knew were from his sister.

“My aunt wants you to write to her. She would be dee-lighted to see you if you come to England. She would help us, and the earl who is a farmer would too,” Meghal announced, folding her arms across her chest and thrusting out her lower lip. “We can come back after we see them. You must come.” She leaned forward when another notion flitted across her expressive face. “We could go by Egypt if you come. Please come,” she wheedled.

 

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Uncertain love on WIP Wednesday

Unrequited love.

He loves me, he loves me not. It’s not just a rhyme to chant while picking petals off a daisy or counting cherry stones; it’s an essential tool of the romance writer’s arsenal. We love to give our hero or heroine a bit of uncertainty to raise the stakes, and if each doubts the feelings of the other, all the better.

Do you have an extract to share in the comments where your hero or heroine thinks about or expresses their uncertainty? Or perhaps another character loves the hero or the heroine, and is doomed to disappointment? My expert is from A Raging Madness.

He was very tempted to kiss her but feared to change their relationship. Change it more. They were friends again, as they hadn’t been since she was a young girl and he a cheeky subaltern missing his home and his family.

But she loved him. One should not treat those one loves. That’s what she’d said. Those one loves. Loved how, though? As a friend? As a—Heaven forfend—as a brother?

Even if her love included the large measure of lust that coloured his for her, she had never been available for dalliance. If he tried a kiss, he would be lucky to get away with a slapped face. At worst, she would assume he was courting her. How he wished he could! For the first time in his life, he was experiencing the joys of that happy state, all but the physical intimacies, and he wanted them to go on forever.

But he had no place asking Ella to wed him. All he could offer was a broken crock of a man, made ugly with scars, subject to nightmares, prone to shedding splinters and lumps of metal from his leg.

A bored and useless man, at that. He had been a career officer. What was he now? He had investigated the Chirbury estates as a favour to his cousin, removing the land agents in two of them and buttressing the third with an assistant. But for all it proved to be necessary, the task had started as make-work, and his pride would not let him accept more.

He had no idea what to do with himself, and he certainly would not inflict himself on someone he was fast coming to love.

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Tea with Sarahjane and Felix

When Sarahjane Collias and Felix Gryffith step through the door from the late nineteenth century, they are not completely surprised to find themselves greeted by a mature lady dressed in the height of Regency fashion. After all, the invitation that requested their company for tea was dated 1810, and bore the crest and signature of Eleanor, Duchess of Haverford.

Eleanor Haverford: Welcome, my dears! Won’t you come in? The tea is ready and I’ve been so looking forward to seeing you!

Felix: You’re too kind, Madame.

Sarahjane: We’ve looked forward to this afternoon for a while.

Eleanor Haverford: Now then, I hear you two have some interesting pastimes. Sarahjane Collias is a—now what was the word? Photographer, I believe.

Sarahjane: Painter. Although, I must admit, the new technology does intrigue me.

Eleanor Haverford: Ah yes, painter. My apologies, Miss Collias. And you, Mr. Gryffith?

Felix: Felix, please.

Eleanor Haverford: Yes, Felix. You are… involved with the steam power?

Felix: Electrical lights, yes.

Eleanor Haverford: Not steam power?

Felix: No, not exactly. Electrical power is the wave of the future, madame.

Eleanor Haverford: Future… Oh, yes. You come from far in my future, do you not? And you have a queen? One not born yet, I am told.

Sarahjane: 1888, yes. And Queen  [Sarahjane sniffs] Dear, don’t make our hostess’s head explode so soon with your technical jargon. She won’t be hearing about such things for another 60 years or so.

Felix [blinking]: How else should I answer her question?

Sarahjane [laying a hand on his]: Succinctly, Your Grace, he works with technology too. Much more deeply than I, I must admit.

Eleanor Haverford: I see… Well maybe we will bring that up a little later. Tell me something that won’t ‘make my head explode’. Where did you two meet? The late nineteenth century! I must say, I can’t begin to imagine. Did your father arrange your marriage?

Felix: Sarahjane’s? By God, no. He’d rather roast me.

Sarahjane: We were friends long ago, Felix and I. But we had a bit of a falling out.

Felix: That’s putting it nicely.

Eleanor Haverford: Oh?

Felix: We had such a “falling out” that she left not only London, but Britain altogether.

Eleanor Haverford: Did you?

[Sarahjane nods]

Sarahjane: Felix, really! Did you have to bring that up?

Felix [frowning]:  Sarahjane spent the time studying in Italy, you see.

Eleanor Haverford: My goodness!

Sarahjane [returning the frown]: While he went off to god knows where.

Felix: Russia. I had a job offer there, you see.

Eleanor Haverford: A long way away from her. Did you court her via post, then?

Sarahjane: No. We met up again, last year.

Felix: Via Lady Morville.

Eleanor Haverford: Ah, yes, I’ve heard of her. Quite the philanthropist. Fine woman.

Felix: She is.

Sarahjane [blushing]: I daresay. Stubborn too. I’d say she threw us together on purpose, if I didn’t know better. Felix was working for her, at the time. How was I to know she’d send him to York on business? Right to Mr. Keane’s house. My then-tutor.

Eleanor Haverford [covering a laugh with her hand]: She didn’t!

Sarahjane: Alas, it’s true.

Felix: Good thing, too. Where would you be if she hadn’t?

Sarahjane [picking up her tea]: I shudder to think. Do you know Keane, my lady?

Eleanor Haverford: No, my dear, I do not.

Felix: Believe me, you’re better off not knowing him.

Sarahjane: Felix is right, though I still think his paintings are divine.

Felix: Never mind, that. He’s a devil, who tried to force you to marry into his family.

Eleanor Haverford: Oh my! He didn’t!

Eleanor Haverford: Yes, marry his brother, to be more precise. The Keane brothers turned out to be dreadful. If it wasn’t for Felix, I don’t know where I’d be.

Eleanor Haverford: Dear me. That is just the sort of incident our gossip columnists delight in. I hope you did not suffer unfortunate coverage in the paper.

Felix [patting Sarahjane’s hand]: Doesn’t matter. We’re heading back to North Carolina tonight.

Sarahjane: He has work to do. He has to figure out how to keep storms from blowing out his mechanisms.

Eleanor Haverford: Sounds intriguing!

Felix [picking up his tea]: Damnable things, is what they are.

Sarahjane: Don’t listen to him. He already onto an idea to help that, I daresay.

Felix: [stares]

Sarahjane: Don’t play innocent, dear.

Eleanor Haverford: You don’t think you’ll succeed?

Felix: Oh, I will. One day the whole earth will be lit by electricity.

Duchess: Sounds exciting! And I understand you married in the summer, so there was a bright side to all your trouble. I must say, it has been a pleasure to meet with you both. Thank you so much for accepting my invitation to tea. Before you go, I hear a talented young lady wrote your story down…in a book that’s currently available at a bookshop called Amazon. Can you tell me something about it?

Sarahjane [huffs]: Oh, that’s right. Ms. Juli D. Revezzo wouldn’t be happy with me if I forgot to mention that. She named it…some dreadful thing. What was it, dear?

Felix: I think it was House of Dark Envy. Appropriate, since Keane was….

Sarahjane: Yes, I know. The story, House of Dark Envy, goes a bit like this:

Surely, lightning can’t strike twice…

1888: When Sarahjane attends Lady Morville’s costume party, she never expects to learn her old beau Felix Gryffith is under the illustrious woman’s patronage and stands on the cusp of making a world-changing discovery. Felix, whose lies disgraced her in the eyes of the London elite by labeling her a flirt.

Felix’s love for Sarahjane has never wavered, despite the scandal that forced them apart. He’s desperate to tell her the truth, if he can convince her to listen.

Fate lurked in the shadows that night, years ago. Has it returned to grant Sarahjane and Felix their wishes, or terrorize them?

House of Dark Envy is available in ebook and paperback at: https://www.amazon.com/House-Dark-Envy-Juli-Revezzo-ebook/dp/B06WWM8T8R/

Sarahjane: So that’s our story. Thanks for inviting us here, Your Grace.

Felix: Yes, indeed. It’s been a pleasure, dear lady. *kisses Duchess’ hand* And if you or your friends would like to find out more about fr—er, author, you’re welcome to visit her lovely home websites:

Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Juli-D.-Revezzo/e/B008AHVTLO/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1

Homepage: https://www.julidrevezzo.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/julidrevezzo

Good Reads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5782712.Juli_D_Revezzo

Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/111476709039805267272/posts

Instagram: http://instagram.com/julidrevezzo

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/jewelsraven/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/julidrevezzo

Sign up for her newsletter at: http://bit.ly/SNI5K6

Duchess: Before I go, dear readers, if you’re curious about Juli, here’s what Sarahjane told me about her:

Juli D. Revezzo loves fantasy and Celtic mythology and writing stories with all kinds of fantastical elements. She is the author of the historical romances, House of Dark Envy, Watchmaker’s Heart, and Lady of the Tarot, the Antique Magic paranormal series and Celtic Stewards Chronicles series and more. She is also a member of the Independent Author Network and the Magic Appreciation Tour.

 

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Book tour for A Raging Madness

A Raging Madness went live three weeks ago, and is still in the Hot New Regency Release list on Amazon.

It’s the second in The Golden Redepennings series, and stars Alex who waltzed in a wheelchair in the first. He’s recovering from a crippling injury that nearly cost him a leg. Ella, the heroine, is escaping in-laws who have been keeping her drugged and imprisoned. Together, they search for answers and a future.

Follow the book link for buy links and the blurb, and I’ll keep adding links as they go up.

I’ve been on a virtual tour to promote the book. Check it out here. There are prizes!

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Antisepsis pre-Lister

According to a quick Google search, antisepsis was invented by Joseph Lister. A number of study sites make this claim, so it must be right. True? No, false. Lister pioneered the widespread use of carbolic acid for surgical instruments and operation theatres. That’s true. But the history of antisepsis is older and much more interesting.

Antisepsis is the use of special cleaning practice for cleaning a sick, delivery, or operating room and any wound. Anti=against and sepsis=the presence of harmful bacteria and their toxins in human tissue (or, in other words, infection).

And human beings have been fighting infection by various means since the dawn of time.

A little of what you fancy

Observation gave our ancestors lots of information about what happened when a person had an open wound, how likely the patient was to sicken and die, and what the carers could use to improve the odds.

The Ancient Greeks, the Egyptians, the Chinese, and the doctors of the Muslim World all wrote about and practiced antiseptic techniques. They used various substances to clean rooms, clothes, equipment, and people. They covered wounds with dressings coated in other substances. And all long before Lister. Wine or vinegar or alcoholic spirits. Honey. Certain muds. Mouldy bread. Distillations of sulphur, silver, or mercury. Herbs and mushrooms. Green tea. Lime and iodine. Even fire, to cauterise a wound or burn away a corpse or a patient’s clothing and dressings.

Something in the air

They were disadvantaged by not knowing the enemy they fought.

From the time of the Ancient Greeks, western medicine believed that wound infection was caused by air; that wounds became inflamed and then full of pus and eventually gangrenous because they were exposed to air.

It made sense. A person with a simple fracture healed with no infection. A compound fracture that broke the skin frequently led to infection. Similarly the difference between an internal wound and an exterior one. A person might die of some internal ailment, but their chances of infection were hugely increased by surgery to fix it.

So what was it about the air? Our medical pioneers had a couple of theories.

One was that cold was the precipitating factor. The inside of the body is a nice warm place. If the person has an injury or surgery, cold air gets into the wrong place and makes the person sick. So get the wound covered as quickly as possible with something that will keep the air out.

The other was to do with smells. Everyone could see for themselves that more people got sick in bad smelling places. And fewer of those who were sick survived. Moving a soldier out of the hospital where everything smelt awful and into a tent or barracks increased his chances of survival.

Hence the plethora of techniques to counter the smells of disease and corruption.

The techniques worked. Sort of. Some of the time

It was all very hit and miss, and how could it not be when germ theory had not yet been imagined, let alone proven? But mouldy bread, if it is the right kind of mould, will help to prevent infection in wounds, as will honey, and washing instruments in alcohol or boiling water or even simple soap will also help, as will thoroughly washing hands, changing bed sheets, and wearing clean clothes (rather than, for example, going straight to an operation from changing a dressing on a patient whose wound is infected).

The eighteenth century was a time of codification and discovery, laying the groundwork for the great advances of the nineteenth. The word ‘antisepsis’ appears in print for what was probably the first time in 1721, and both British and French doctors explored a variety of ways to prevent wounds from going bad.

My personal hero is Dr Alexander Gordon, a naval surgeon on half pay who became a general practitioner at Aberdeen Hospital, specialising in obstetrics. He wrote compellingly of the connection between contagion and puerperal fever 50 years before the pioneer Semnelweiss, and who even suggested parallels with the type of fever that appeared in wounds or after operations. His Treatise on the Epidemic Puerperal Fever of Aberdeen said:

By observation, I plainly perceived the channel by which it was propagated and I arrived at that certainty in the matter that I could venture to foretell what women would be affected with the disease, upon hearing by what midwife they were to be delivered, or by what nurse they were to be attended during their lying-in; and in almost every instance my prediction was verified.”

Touchingly, he admitted:

It is a disagreeable declaration for me to mention, that I myself was the means of carrying the infection to a great number of women …

What a guy. Clear headed, not so stuck on doing things by the book as to miss what was happening in front of his eyes, and ready to take responsibility when he realised that women only suffered from the illness if they were attended by nurses, midwives, or doctors who had attended a previous sufferer.

Not long after he published his theory, Gordon was called back to sea, where he contracted tuberculosis. He died in 1799.

Link with A Raging Madness

In A Raging Madness, my heroine was the daughter of an army doctor. As a girl and young woman, she had worked alongside her father, and she uses the skills she learned to operate on an abscess to save the hero.

She mentions her father’s agreement with Gordon’s theories to explain why she insists on cleanliness while operating. How did she and her father hear about them, since they were away overseas at the time? Ella’s father died in 1797, and the Treatise was not widely known.

Fortunately for me (but not for Aberdeen), the second of two epidemics of puerperal fever in Aberdeen was in 1792. I’m assuming that Gordon and Ella’s father were friends; perhaps they served together at the same hospital when they were training. And perhaps they corresponded after Gordon joined the navy and Ella’s father the army. It’s all possible, right?

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Beginnings on WIP Wednesday

A Raging Madness is in the Pending Review queue on Smashwords, and I’m celebrating by writing a short story for next week’s newsletter.

So this week, I’m thinking about beginnings. Use the comments to show us an excerpt of a beginning (of your book or of a chapter). Here’s mine from the as yet unnamed story I’m currently writing. Subscribe to my newsletter if you want to know what happens next.

“It’s too dangerous,” Wakefield reported as he approached, shouting to be heard above the wind and the sound of the brook. Not a brook today; twenty yards of seething roiling water stretched bank to bank, branches and entire trees rolling and colliding in their frantic race to the distant sea.

Blade had waited with the horses while the other two checked whether the bridge was safe to cross. He frowned across at the far bank, just visible between gusts of rain. So close! Natching Brook marked one boundary of the Collingwood lands; another twenty minutes would have seen them at the manor.

But the twenty yards might as well be miles. They’d not end their journey today. Even from here, he could see the bridge shuddering as its piles were battered: by the water, the trees, bits of fence post or building or boat, the occasional pathetic corpse of an animal swept away by the flood. And more. That constant grumbling rumble was boulders washed from the banks and rolled by the force of the brook, a giant watery hand playing at bowls.

The third member of their party joined them. “The bridge at Stenforth may still be passable. The river is wider there.”

“Stenforth has a decent inn,” Blade remembered. “Stop there and carry on in the morning?” He made a question of it, and added a belated “my lord.” Baron Collingwood was eager to return to the ancestral estate that had ejected him so violently ten years ago, but it would be rank foolishness to carry on in this weather at this time of day. He and Col had not survived so much and for so long just too lose all on the last hand.

Col nodded, and within minutes the three of them were mounted and heading back up the river. Col led the way, Wakefield next, and Blade brought up the rear, his eyes scanning constantly for threats, though what villain would be out in this storm was more than he could say.

Here came another corpse, washing towards him on a flat section of planks; a sheep perhaps. No; a white dog, sheep-sized and woolly. It was almost level with him when it lifted its head. Alive? Not for long, in this torrent.

Blade did not stop to think. In moments, he had his horse wrenched around and galloping back to the bridge. He hurled himself onto the rickety structure, stretched full length to distribute his weight, and reached down into the current just in time to grasp the poor beast by handfuls of fur.