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You can’t choose your family on WIP Wednesday

Another excerpt from The Secret Word

Chris had asked Harry Satterthwaite and Michael Thurgood to stand up with him. He hadn’t expected Billy to attend, but there the man was, sitting on the groom’s side of the church a few pews back from the front. Tiny was there, too, and at least a dozen of the other men—floor managers from each of the gambling dens, the man who operated the loan business, and managers of Billy’s other shops.

The women, too, for Billy had women managing each of his brothels, as well as a laundry, a pawnbroker, two barefoot schools, and some of Billy’s residential properties.

Chris had worked with them all, and was pleased to have them at his wedding, all dressed in their best clothes and looking as respectable as the other people in the pews on that side. 

The others were strangers, but the resemblance of some of them to either Harry or Michael identified them. They were his Satterthwaite and Thurgood relatives, come to see him married. Chris was touched. 

Would they take exception to the company in which they found themselves? If they did, no matter. He’d lived his life without them up until now. He could continue doing so. Would Wright take exception to their presence? He would not arrive until Clemmie did. It was to be hoped that, by the time he realised that Chris’s family had come out in his support, it would be too late to stop the wedding.

Those on the bride’s side were mostly strangers, except for a few he’d met when in company with Wright. Business magnates and merchant nabobs, and the women with them presumably their wives. 

Here came his godmother, and behind her Clemmie’s maid, Maggie and the companion, Mrs. Bellowes. Aunt Fern  strolled down the aisle to join those on the groom’s side while Mrs. Bellowes settled on the bride’s side. Maggie took a seat at the back, with several other people Chris recognised from Wright’s household.

And if Aunt Fern, Mrs. Bellowes, and Maggie were here, then Clemmie must be close! Chris stood up straighter, his eyes on the door by which she would enter. His cravat suddenly felt tight. He didn’t realise he was running his finger around his neck, trying to give himself room, until Michael Thurgood leaned over and told him, “You’re messing up your cravat. Stop touching it.”

And then suddenly the wait was over and Clemmie was walking toward him. Somewhere, music was playing. Presumably, Wright was escorting her. Chris saw only Clemmie. How lovely she was! What fools those men were who called her plain.

His heart seemed to fill his chest, pressing his lungs so that his breath came short and caught in a suddenly dry throat. He loved Clementine Wright, and in a few minutes, she would be his wife, promised to him for a lifetime. Wright and the minister exchanged a few words, and Wright extended Clemmie’s right hand to the minister who gave it to Chris.

Chris smiled into Clemmie’s eyes, and she smiled back. That smile and her touch anchored him through the rest of the ceremony, when his joy made him feel so light that he thought he might float away. 

He said his responses when prompted, trying to infuse his love, his certainty into his voice. He thrilled to hear the love in her voice and to see the happiness in her eyes when she spoke. 

At last it was time to encircle her finger with the ring he had designed and had made for her. For a moment, it caught on her knuckle, but he pushed firmly and it slid into place. 

The minister prayed, asking for God’s blessing on the marriage. He then took their right hands and indicated they should join hands. 

“Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”

He then spoke to the congregation. But before he could finish explaining that he and Clemmie had proclaimed their consent, made their vows and given and received a ring, there was a commotion—someone shouting from the back of the church. Grandfather, the swine.

“Stop the wedding. Stop this travesty. The boy”

Harry touched Chris’s arm. “I’ll handle it. Carry on, minister.”

Clemmie started to turn to look, but Chris refused to give Grandfather even a look. “It is our wedding, Clemmie,” he said. “Ignore him.” And to the minister, he said, “My grandfather disapproves of my choice of bride, sir, as you can hear. But I am of age, and I have the permission of Clemmie’s father and the blessing of my cousin and my uncle, both earls, who are respectively the heads of the Satterthwaite and the Thurgood families. Carry on with the wedding, please.”

Reassured, the minister raised his voice to be heard over several voices shouting. “I pronounce that they are man and wife together, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.” 

Next came a blessing, and during it, the altercation at the back of the church faded away. Grandfather was, presumably, being dragged off. And a good thing, too.

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A rant about left and right—and circles and straight lines

 

It seems to me that conservatives and liberals are on opposite sides not of a line, but of a circle.

Because the thing about circles is that they are round. When the right and the left approach around one side of a circle, they meet in harmony. When they keep going further to the right or further to the left, and they also eventually meet and become the same, and the place they meet is tyranny and the suppression of freedom.

For that reason, I don’t think the terms far right and far left are very useful. And terms like fascist and communist are not much better, carrying as they do so much emotional residue from past experiences. And producing as they do the same effects on their subject populations. 

I propose a different set of terms—ones that represent a line rather than a circle.

At one end, you have elitists. They want power, wealth, and control to reside with a small group that they regards as better qualified and more worthy than the rest of the population. To elitists, the goal is power and wealth. The rest of human kind exists to make the elitists more powerful, more wealthy, and more in control. Anyone who fails to serve the elitists or—worse—opposes the elitists, does not deserve to continue existing.

Think of them, if you like, as Western-style dragons, dragging their bloated bodies over a mountain of gold and sparkly things. Wealth that they can’t use, don’t need, and won’t share. And all the rest of the population as rats and mice—rats who serve the dragon, polishing its scales and bringing it food, and mice hiding in holes, hoping not to be noticed.

To elitists, the world will function more efficiently if only a few people are in charge. And they regard efficiency as a good thing. And for a while, it might work, though it inevitably turns sour, for robber barons cannot avoid stealing things—from one another, if they’ve finished fleecing their subjects. Whether it ends in Game of Thrones or bloody revolution, nobody wins when the knives come out. One mouse cannot kill a dragon, but no dragon can stand against a million mice with nothing to lose.

At the other end, you have idealists. To an idealist, power, wealth and control are at best irrelevant and at worst necessary means to the goal. The goal is community well-being. To an idealist, a community cannot be well unless all in it are well, so those at this end of the line accept people for who they are, and respect the opinions and needs of others. They don’t measure people by their possessions or their power, but by how they relate to others, and how they contribute to the community. 

To idealists, the world will be a happier and kinder place if everyone has a right and opportunity to be heard. This is not very efficient in the short term, but it produces better results in the long term. Besides, efficiency is not a major driver for idealists. Not when compared to fairness.

Think of it as a herd or pack of almost any type of animal. Or, if you will, as the Shires, where hobbits make the land productive and party often.

As a student of history, I know that all societies drift toward elitism over time, and the true idealist society has never existed, though my own country and various Scandinavian countries have had times of moving in that direction.

But I still prefer idealism.

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Bargaining on WIP WEdnesday

Another AI image. It’s not terrible.

In this excerpt from The Duke’s Price, my wicked duke makes his offer–and tells the governess his price. (On preorder for release April 1st.)

Miss Henwood was leaving. Was Mort going to do it or wasn’t he? It was unlike him to vacillate. “Miss Henwood,” he said, just as she was about to step through the door into the tower behind him. “I have another proposition for you.”
“Yes?” Her voice was cautious. Wise woman! Beware wicked dukes bearing gifts.
“I have a yacht moored in Collioure, just across the border from Spain in France. I will escort you and the princess to Collioure, and then transport you to England.”
“You will?” The hope in her voice tugged at the dried-up shrivelled vestiges of his conscience. Ridiculous. He was a villain. A villain with some gentlemanly standards, but a villain, nonetheless. If he was going to betray his friend and go to the trouble of a no-doubt uncomfortable dash through the mountains and countryside, then someone had to pay.
“I have a price,” he said.
Miss Henwood did not flinch. “Which is?”
“We will travel as a family—husband, wife and daughter. Or, given she looks like neither of us, step daughter, perhaps.”
Miss Henwood took the few steps back to his side before commenting. “That seems sensible.”
“We shall travel as husband and wife in every way except the church blessing on the arrangement, which shall be temporary, Miss Henwood. Until we arrive in England.” By which time, no doubt, he would have tired of her, as he had of all others.
“I see.”
That was it. Neither yes nor no. Mort began laying out plans as if she had already agreed. It was a strategy that had worked for him time out of mind, both in amorous and business negotiations. “If you can get her excellency out of the town, it is probably best if I appear to leave Las Estrellas. For Barcelona, perhaps. That way, they will be looking for a woman and girl, not a family. Tell me where to meet you and when, and I shall be waiting.”
Her frown deepened as she thought.
“I shall get the pair of you away safely, Miss Henwood, and protect you with all my considerable resources until you are in the hands of your friend and her family,” he said. It was a vow, he realized. Was he in his dotage or suffering a second childhood? He was becoming a knight errant!
“You will protect me from everyone except you,” said Miss Henwood, the sarcasm heavy in her voice.
She was being coy. He was far too experienced not to know she found him attractive, and surely she must be in her mid-thirties. She could not be so innocent that she regarded the perfectly natural acts he had in mind as dangerous.
However, it was not in his interests to point out her duplicity
“I shall tell Carlos in the morning that I have a mind to move on,” he said. “Once my people and I are out of Las Estrellas, I’ll send most of them along the road to Barcelona. From there, they can cross the border for Collioure. I’ll write a note for them to deliver to my yacht. My valet and I will circle the country and wait for you—where?”
“Camino del Lobo,” she said. “Bella and I will be there in… six days. Or I will send a messenger.”
He had her! Did she realise she had just agreed to be his lover? To test her, he said, “A kiss. To seal our bargain and as a deposit in your account.”
Miss Henwood sighed, very much as if he was an annoying child who must be tolerated. However, unless the shadows mislead him, she also blushed.
He said nothing, but waited for her to initiate their embrace. She waited, too. Was she playing games with him? That was not what he expected of her, but then women were unaccountable creatures, in many ways.
After a long moment, she said, “Well? Are you going to kiss me?”
“No,” Mort said. “I don’t owe you a kiss. You owe me one. I am waiting for you to kiss me.”
Instead of pouting, frowning, arguing, or laughing at his nonsense and giving him a kiss, Miss Henwood looked worried, but leaned forward and gave him a peck which would have fallen on his cheek if he had not turned his face to allow their lips to meet.
It lasted less than a second, and was over. Miss Henwood looked relieved. “I will say good night then, your grace.”
“Death,” he insisted, “and the toll required was a lover’s kiss. That was not a lover’s kiss, Miss Henwood.”
He almost laughed at her huff of annoyance. “De-Ath, then,” she said, the stubborn woman. “What am I supposed to know of lover’s kisses, De-Ath? I have been a governess since I was seventeen.”
Her irritation had him adjusting his assumptions about her experience. “You have never shared a kiss? No randy fathers or adult sons? No sweethearts on your day off?”
She frowned again. His guess that she was thinking about what to tell him was confirmed when she said. “I suppose, if we are to be intimate, you ought to know. I have never shared a lover’s kiss. I have had lust’s kisses forced on me, but have managed to avoid anything more than rude slobbering and even ruder fumbling.”
Her disgust dripped from the words. Mort was suddenly very pleased that he had demanded she take the lead in this first encounter. She would soften to him all the sooner if he behaved differently to those who had offended her.
What fools those slobberers and fumblers were! He had never forced an unwilling woman, though he had seduced more than a few into willingness. As he would Miss Henwood.

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Tea with her messengers

Her grace poured coffee for the three men, and tea for herself. James and two of her sons had joined her today, and she was impatient to hear what Drew and Thomas had to say about their recent errand. They had travelled north to witness a wedding, both as Eleanor’s representative–the groom was the grandson of an old friend–and because they had become friends with the young man themselves.

She did not, of course, show her impatience, and the young men, who had excellent manners, did not keep her waiting. As soon as she had poured her tea, Drew said, “The wedding went off very well, Aunt Eleanor. The bride looked lovely, the groom was happy, and the entire village turned out to cheer.” It was a very good summary and made pleasant hearing, but Eleanor had questions.

“Tell me about Jackie’s gown,” she asked.

Jackie’s gown was a rose pink figured silk, simply but elegantly cut. It was embellished a richly embroidered silk ribbon—one row at cuffs and neckline, and three rows at her hem. Maman had wound the same ribbon through her hair, taking over from Jackie’s new maid.

The bridal flowers Jackie had chosen had prompted something of a disagreement between her and her mother. Maman thought the flowers were common. “They are vegetable flowers, Jacqueline,” she kept saying. “Why would you want to carry the flower of a vegetable?”

When Maman and Jackie had taken Papa to see the cottage where they had lived, the beans that Maman had thrown out the window had grown, and smothered one side of the house, spreading even up part of the roof. The flowers waved petals of the palest pink on long stems, and a few of the stems already sprouted rows of baby bean pods.

“They are bridal flowers,” Jackie had said. “And they go perfectly with my gown.” Not only were they lovely, but carrying them in her bouquet was a sort of poetic justice. Louella’s accusation that she—Jackie—had made up to Oscar to climb from seamstress to the rank of mistress had always been ridiculous, but had smarted a little, nonetheless.

No one she had met since the betrothal was announced had repeated the slur, at least not to Jackie’s face. Human nature being what it was, people were surely thinking it.

So, she carried the bean flowers as a symbol of her climb, and to thumb her nose at her detractors, even if they never knew it.

Only a keen gardener would know, she realized, as she looked at herself in the mirror. And even they may question it. She had been right about them complimenting her gown.

“Jacqueline, ma fifille, said Maman. “Tres belle. Tres, tres belle.” Clearly too overcome for words, she hugged Jackie instead, being careful not to crush the gown or the flowers.

Gran was next in line. “Your mother is right, dear one,” she murmured. “Very, very beautiful.”

Maman was trying to recover her usual brisk self. “Now, cherie, the carriage awaits to take us to the church, Clara and I.” She brushed a tear from the corner of her eye. “Go down to Papa after we have gone,” she instructed, her tone scolding. The arrangements had been in place for days, but if it helped Maman to scold, then Jackie would not challenge her. Not today.

“I will, Maman,” she said.

And if she rolled her eyes at Maman’s back, no one saw except Bella Whitely, who giggled, but only after Maman shut the door.

“Me own Ma be the same,” Bella confided. “More like to growl than to hug, but loves us summat fierce. You do look right purty, Miss Haricot.”

“Are you coming in the carriage with us to the church, Bella?” Jackie asked. She’d hired the eldest Whitely daughter as a favor to Pete. The girl had the makings of an excellent maid, and the housekeeper had already taken her under her wing, to teach her what was expected of a maid in a peer’s household. Jackie hoped she’d not entirely lose her habit of blurting out her thoughts in Jackie’s presence.

“Nay, Miss,” she said. “It’s nobbut a hop, skip and a jump, and it ain’t—” she caught herself and tried again. “It is not proper.” She even sounded a little like the housekeeper as she repeated what she had obviously been told. Then she, her voice, and her accent relaxed, and she added, “Not today nonewise. Just ye and yer Da, and I’ll be waitin’ for ye at the church, as will ‘’bout everyone.” She sighed her satisfaction. “And I saw ye first.”

They walked downstairs together and Papa’s reaction was as satisfying as Ma’s. “Ma petite Jacqueline,” he kept saying, with a shake of his head as if he could not reconcile the tomboy he had left behind him and the bride beside him in the carriage. “Ma petite jeune fille.”

What would Pol think? She would find out in a moment, for here they were at the gates of the church. The people standing around in the road and in the church grounds gave a cheer. Papa handed her down, and Bella was there to tidy her slight train before hurrying into the church ahead of them. She must have run through the woods like a hare!

She put her hand on her father’s arm, and the men who were waiting by the double doors flung them open. The church was filled to capacity, with the gentry in the pews and every standing place taken by somebody.

Every soul in the neighborhood must be either in the church or outside. But all of them faded from her mind as she looked down the aisle, where Pol waited for her, with his heart in his eyes.

The excerpt is from Jackie’s Climb. I hope to have preorder details soon.

 

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Preview Spotlight on Hearts At Home

Coming May 1st.

Hearts At Home

Three warriors find their forever home in the heart of a loved one in this collection of stories about veterans of the Napoleonic wars.

The cavalry captain: Lord Cuckoo Comes Home

After ten years at war, Dom Finchley wants only to build the home he’s never had. A place to call his own. Then he meets Chloe.

Chloe Tavistock is past the age for the marriage market, and unfashionable in her shape, her opinions, and her enthusiasms. She is not going to find a husband in York, whatever her fond brother might think. And then she meets Dom.Two people who have never fitted in just might be a perfect fit.

The freedom-fighter: The Beast Next Door

Eric Lord Wayford would rather face the surgeons of Naples and Napoleon’s armies than the tongues of the ton. He retreats to his estate of Eastwood. Beastwood, as the neighbours called it, for the child he had been—a child whose birthmarks made him an exile.

Charis Fishingham has been escaping to the gardens of Eastwood since she was a child. There, she can escape her mother’s expectations, her sisters’ chatter, and her own worries about her future.

But now her childhood friend, the Beast of Beastwood, has returned, and their future looks to be full of hope. But someone does not wish Charis to wed the Beast of Beastwood, and will stop at nothing to keep them apart.

The Career Soldier (retired): Love in Its Season

The Battle of Waterloo lost Jack Wrath the use of one arm and ended his career in the army. With nothing better to do and nowhere else to go, he sees his doctor home to Reabridge—and stays because of Gwen, the female farrier he rescues from a lustful lord.

Gwen Hughes is taller and stronger than many men, and runs her own business. Perhaps she intimidates the men of the town, but that is fine with her. She doesn’t have time for courtship.

Under the harvest moon, two people who believe romance has passed them finally reach their season for love.

Order now on your preferred retailer: https://books2read.com/u/mgnKyq

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First meeting on WIP Wednesday

In Pol’s dream, he was chasing the gambler from the night before—Le Gume. Jack Le Gume, to be precise. Pol had asked a few questions and discovered that the man was well known in the area. And liked, too. He was remembered as a graceful winner and a cheerful loser. He won more than he lost, apparently. But not huge amounts, and those who had met the man swore to Pol that he was honest.

She was honest. Pol was certain of his impression from the night before, but now, in the dream, he tackled her to stop her from running away, and as she fell, the beard tore from half her face. Pol looked down into a face he knew. Jackie Bean, the stable boy from Squire Pershing’s.

Was he wrong, then? And yet his body insisted that the lithe shape underneath him was female and desirable.

At that point, Pol woke up. He was in the study, lying on the sofa under a rug, half aroused. Suddenly, he realized what his dream had been trying to tell him. He should have guessed sooner, for she had done little to disguise her name. Jack Le Gume. Legume. A bean was a sort of legume. Jackie Bean. Yes, and Jacqueline Haricot, too. Haricot was French for bean, and the French born Miss Haricot, the dressmaker’s apprentice and daughter, was very definitely a woman.

A lovely woman. Slender, but beautifully curved, with light brown hair that she usually wore tightly confined. But he had seen it loose, once, falling in soft waves to her shoulders. He had been riding past the field where she and her mother kept their cow, and she had not seen him, but the horse had stopped at a signal he did not know he had sent, and he had sat for a minute, staring at her with a dry mouth and an odd ache in his chest.

No wonder he had not guessed. The seamstress might be small, but she was all woman. However, now that he’d noticed it was obvious. She was was also the stable boy, and the gambler.

A soft click came from the door, which he had locked before he went to sleep. A similar sound had reached through the mists of sleep to wake him, he realized. Someone was tapping metal upon metal outside the study door.

No. Inside the door lock, for the light from the embers in the fireplace was enough to see the door open, and he had locked it himself, before he had settled on the sofa.

He watched as a slender figure slipped through the opening and closed the door. Not Oscar, then. His cousin was the only person with a right to pick the lock, though it was not likely he’d try. In the unlikely event he even wanted to enter the study and found the door locked, his style would be to hammer on it and demand to be let in.

This person was twelve inches too short and more than a hundred pounds lighter. For the same reasons, it couldn’t be the viscountess. Amanda, perhaps? But Pol already knew who it was. Perhaps it was the faint scent of violets, so vague he might have been imagining it. Perhaps it was the tightening of his body, already primed by the dream. She is safe, said a part of his mind, rejoicing far more than made sense, given they had not had even a single conversation.

Why was Jackie Haricot or Bean, or whatever her surname might be, breaking into Oscar’s study?

She had made her way to the desk and was crouching down by the drawers on one side. He shifted the rug from his legs and swung his legs to the floor to sit up, watching her the whole time. Her focus was on the drawers, and she didn’t notice him. The scratching sound suggested she was once again picking a lock.

He did not speak until he was ready, his weight balanced forward so he could make a spring for the door if she attempted to escape.

“Are you looking for anything specific?” he asked. “If it is the money Oscar cheated you out of, I’m afraid it isn’t here. Probably Oscar took it with him. He has ridden over to Civerton, I daresay for gaming and… um… other things.”

The girl froze when she heard his voice. As he kept speaking, she slowly moved, her head coming up so she was looking at him over the desk. “Is it you, Mr. Allegro?” she asked, only a small tremble in her voice indicating what was probably a turmoil of emotions.

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Tea with a granddaughter and friends

As she held her first gathering for debutantes in 1818, Eleanor reflected that it would be a red-letter Season, though only a few people knew that it was special, and why. Her smile was wistful, as she watched the chattering groups of very young ladies gathered in her parlour. She had been holding such gatherings for many years–social occasions for debutantes in the weeks before the Season got underway. The young ladies under her patronage had an opportunity to make friends, and she learned a little more about them, the better to help them to navigate the pitfalls and discover the delights of the London social scene.

This year’s crop of hopeful maidens included sixwho were family connections, and who had been friends since they were little girls. Daisy Redepenning was circling the room arm in arm with her friend and cousin by marriage, Chrissie Cunningham. They were stopping to talk to the shyest girls, those who were on their own and who knew nobody here. Daisy was the stepdaughter of Eleanor’s nephew, the Earl of Chirbury and Chrissie was granddaughter to Eleanor’s dear friend Henry Redepenning.

Sarah Overton had a special place in Eleanor’s heart, though she was technically not a relative, and nor was her sister, Sophrania Overton. Sarah and Sophrania were part of a laughing group that were leafing through fashion magazines. Eleanor had known the sister’s stepfather, Hugh Baron Overton, since her son the current Duke of Haverford, who had then been Marquis of Aldridge, first brought him home when the pair of them were not quite old enough to shave. But the connection was closer than that, for Sarah’s mother, Lady Overton, had once been known as the Rose of Frampton, and had been Aldridge’s mistress. As to Belle, Sarah’s youngest sister, even in her thoughts she would not consider how much closer a relative that child was.

Closer than Frances Grenford, Eleanor’s foster-daughter and ward, whose conversation with Antonia Wakefield appeared to be intense. As close as the relationship with Antonia, and even more secret. Frances, the whole world believed, was the by-blow of one of the Haverford males. Eleanor knew the man to be her deceased husband, the previous Duke of Haverford. Everyone looked at Antonia and knew she was a relative, too. It was in the distinctive hazel eyes, which she shared with the Haverford men and with two of Eleanor’s wards. But since her father was David Wakefield, another of her husband’s by-blows, no-one guessed the truth. Antonia was Eleanor’s granddaughter.

Yes, this Season would be special.

 

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Backlist Spotlight on A Baron for Becky

I was reading an excerpt of this today, and thought it was a while since I last shared it.

1807, West Gloucestershire
Aldridge never did find out how he came to be naked, alone, and sleeping in the small summerhouse in the garden of a country cottage. His last memory of the night before had him twenty miles away, and—although not dressed—in a comfortable bed, and in company.
The first time he woke, he had no idea how far he’d come, but the moonlight was bright enough to show him half-trellised window openings, and an archway leading down a short flight of steps into a garden. A house loomed a few hundred feet distant, a dark shape against the star-bright sky. But getting up was too much trouble, particularly with a headache that hung inches above him, threatening to split his head if he moved. The cushioned bench on which he lay invited him to shut his eyes and go back to sleep. Time enough to find out where he was in the morning.
When he woke again, he was facing away from the archway entrance, and someone was behind him. Silence now, but in his memory, the sound of light footsteps shifting the stones on the path outside, followed by twin intakes of breath as the walkers saw him.
One of them spoke; a woman’s voice, but low—almost husky. “Sarah, go back to the first rosebush and watch the house.”
“Yes, Mama.” High and light. A child’s voice.
Aldridge waited until he heard the child dance lightly down the steps and away along the path, then shifted his weight slightly letting his body roll over till he was lying on his back.
He waited for the exclamation of shock, but none came. Carefully—he wanted to observe her before he let her know he was awake, and anyway, any sudden movement might start up the hammers above his eye sockets—he cracked open his lids, masking his eyes with his lashes.
He could see more than he expected. The woman was using a shuttered lantern to examine him, starting at his feet. She paused for a long time when she reached his morning salute and it grew even prouder. Then she swept her light up his torso so quickly he barely had time to slam his lids shut before the light reached and lingered over his face.
She was just a vague shadow behind the light. He held himself still while she completed her examination, which she did with a snort of disgust. Not the reaction to which he was accustomed.
“Now what do we do?” she muttered. “Perhaps if Sarah and I…? I will have to cover him. What on earth is he doing here? And like that? Not that it matters. Unless he has something to do with Perry? Or the men he said would come?” Incipient panic showed in the rising pitch and volume, until she rebuked herself. “Stop it.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Stay calm. You must think.”
Aldridge risked opening his eyes a mere slit, and was rewarded by a better look at the woman as she paced up and down the summerhouse, in the light of the lantern she’d placed on one of the window ledges.
Spectacular. That was the only appropriate word. Hair that looked black in the poor light, but was probably dark brown, porcelain skin currently flushed with agitation, a heart-shaped face and a perfect cupid’s bow of a mouth, the lower lip—which she was currently chewing—larger than the upper.
The redingote she wore fit closely to a shape of amazing promise, obscured, then disclosed, as the shawl over her shoulders swung with her movements. Even more blood surged to his ever-hopeful member. “Down, boy,” he told it, silently.
“Mama?” That was the little girl, returning down the path. “Mama, I can hear horses.”
The woman froze, every line of her screaming alarm.
Aldridge could hear them too, coming closer through the rustling noises of the night. The quiet clop of walking horses, the riders exchanging a word or two, then nothing. They must have stopped on the other side of the house.
“Sarah.” The woman’s voice, pitched to carry only as far as her daughter’s ears, retreated as she crossed the summerhouse. “Sarah, we must go quickly.”
“But, Mama! The escape baskets!” the girl protested.
“I dare not wake the man, my love. He might stop us.”
Aldridge responded to the fear in her voice. “I won’t stop you. I am not a danger to you.” The woman turned to a statue at his voice, her hand on the framework of the arched entrance, as if she would fall without support. He swung himself upright, wincing as the headache closed its vice around his skull. Though he slitted his eyes against the pain, he kept them open just enough.
“Mama?” The girl’s fearful voice released the woman from her freeze, and she moved to block the child’s sight of him. “Sarah. Watch the house. Do not turn around until I say.”
Eyes open, he could confirm his initial assessment as she spun to face him. Spectacular. Then she shone the lantern straight on him, and he flinched from the light. “Not in my eyes, please. I have such a head.”
She made that same disgusted sound again, then stripped the shawl from her shoulders and tossed it to him, taking care to stay out of arms’ reach.
“Please cover yourself, Sir.”
Aldridge stood warily, and made a kilt of the shawl—a long rectangle that wrapped his waist several times and covered him from waist to thigh. “I beg your pardon for my attire, Mrs…” he invited.
But she was ignoring him. While he’d been tucking in the soft wool of the shawl, so it would hold securely, she’d crossed the summerhouse again and lifted the lid of the bench, tipping the cushions onto the floor, pulling various bundles, baskets, and packages from the recess.
“Mama!” The child sounded panicked. “They are in the house.”

A Baron for Becky, the world’s introduction to the Marquis of Aldridge, who is not, despite appearances, the hero. Though Rose, or rather Becky, is the heroine.

by

Interviewing a suitor on WIP Wednesday

The clothing is out of period, but I love the determined look on the model’s face. AI generated, and the sneakers made me giggle.

(An excerpt from The Secret Word, my current novel-in-progress)

Soon, they had covered the short distance to Leicester Square. Billy had suggested the destination and provided a key to one of the gates so they could walk in the private garden that filled the center of the square.

Apart from a sharp look when Chris pulled out the key, Clemmie did not react to him claiming resident’s privileges. As soon as Martha had lagged far enough behind them, he answered the question she hadn’t asked. “Ramping Billy gave me the key. I didn’t ask where he got it.”

The answer was not to her taste, Chris could tell, but he had no other, so he changed the subject. “Shall we talk about the choices each of us has before us?”

“Do I have a choice?” Clemmie asked. “Father has already said that the decision is his, and that if I refuse the groom he offers me, I will be—and I quote—‘out in the street in your shift, my girl.’”

Nasty old man. “Then your choice is whether you cooperate with me to convince your father I am the preferred suitor, or make common cause with another suitor, or simply sit back and let come what may.”

Clemmie bowed her head so all he could see of her was her bonnet. A pretty confection, but he’d have preferred it back in her wardrobe so her face was visible. She had not mastered the art of keeping her thoughts to herself, which was probably what her father meant by saying she needed to be more ladylike.

Personally, Chris preferred her openness.

“But if you are at risk of being thrown out, Clemmie, send for me, and I will meet you with a cloak and take you some place safe.”

She turned her head up at that and searched his face. Let her. He meant every word. Some of the women who had raised him took to their way of life because they’d been thrown penniless into the street—by a lover, a father, even a husband. For their sakes, he’d come to the rescue of anyone in such need.

Perhaps she did not believe what he saw. Certainly, her harrumph sounded dismissive. “What choices do you face, Chris?” she asked.

That was a victory! She had called him by his preferred name. He hoped his exultation did not show on his face. “Two, but each has options and both benefits and costs. Do I accept your father’s challenge or do I walk away? If I accept, can we manage your father’s expectations or will we end up paying his price? I think we can avoid being his puppets, and I know Billy will help, but what will Billy’s price be?” He paused for her comment, but she said nothing. That pestiferous bonnet was back in the way again.

“If I walk away, what will your father do to force my hand? Or can I convince him that I would be too much trouble, so that he dismisses me. And what of Billy? He is taking an interest in this match. If I refuse it, what will it cost me?”

She had a tart comment about that. “My, Mr. O’Hara is taking an interest in my affairs. I wonder that you let him push you around. I know that you owe him, but does he own you?”

“In much the same way as your father owns you, Clemmie. And I daresay Billy has been as much a father to me as my own was. More, in fact, for he…” He trailed off, not sure if he was ready to share that particular piece of dirty laundry.

He expected her to demand that he finish his sentence, but instead she asked a question that got to almost to the heart of his discomfort with her knowing his past. “Why do they call you Fingers? The people at Mr. O’Hara’s.”
They turned a corner and walked along the next side of the square. She didn’t press the question except by her silence.

Well, and why not? If she rejected him once she knew his story, so be it. If they were to decide to marry, he wanted a relationship based on honesty and trust. “When I was nine, my mother died,” he said, eventually. “My father had not been home for some time. I found out later that he was dead, too, which I suppose is why his debts were called in. The debt collectors took everything and left me homeless and alone.”

Out in the streets, in fact. In more than his undershirt, but that didn’t last. A gang of boys beat him up for his clothes, which were still sturdy though not new. Fortunately, they were impressed at how well he fought and how many of them it took to subdue him, so they took him back to the den they’d made in the cellar of a burnt out building.

“I was lucky. I found a place to live with some people who taught me a skill with which I could pay my share of food and board.” For nearly a year, he worked in a team lifting purses and watches, swiftly graduating from decoy to pick pocket as his skill grew. “They taught me to be a pickpocket, Clemmie.”

An indrawn gasp was her only comment. After a pause, he picked up the story. “Then I was caught. Ramping Billy had me, and not only that, he recognised me, because he was one of the men who had collected money from my father in the past, though not one of those who stripped my mother’s rooms. He took me back to Fortune’s Fool—at that time, it was his only establishment. He handed me over to the ladies who worked there.”

Chris could remember exactly what he said to them. “Wash him, delouse him, dress him in something that isn’t rags, and put him to work. We’re keeping him.”

“He told them to watch me, because I was light fingered. So they called me Fingers, and they still do. I never stole again, though.”

He shuddered at the memory of the hungry, terrifying year from which Billy had saved him. He’d been well aware of his fate if he were caught, and scared every time he lifted something.

And it had been made clear that if he was caught stealing from Billy or any of his employees or customers, he’d be out on his ear again. By that time, he’d been a street rat for long enough to know how lucky he had been the first time. Being beaten and stripped was far from the worst fate to befall a handsome boy alone in the stews of London.

“So that is why they call me Fingers, and that is why, between your father and Billy, I’ll take Billy every time. He is a villain, Clemmie, I’ll grant you that. But he’s an honest villain.”

“Whereas my father is a dishonest upright citizen. I accept your point, Chris.”

She was not yelling for her maid and stalking off in outraged disgust. That was a bonus. Instead, she seemed to have decided on an interrogation. “Do you gamble?”