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Proposals in WIP Wednesday

Proposals are as individual as the people who make them. Here’s one from my next novella for the Bluestocking Belles.

For a moment, he remained still for her explorations, but all too soon, he put his hand on her wrist, not grasping but just halting her movement. “Enough, Gwen. I am holding on to my reason by a thread, but I’ve enough sense to realise that someone could come along at any moment, or your father could wake up.”

He had a point. She reluctantly let go. He gathered her close to him with his good arm and pressed a kiss to her hair. “Believe me, there is nothing I want more than to let you explore my body, and to explore yours in my turn. In private, though, my Gwen. Are you my Gwen?”

 She rested her head on his chest and put her arms around him as far as they would go. Her heart and her desire screamed Yes in unison. But what would become of Da? What of the business? She had kept it going not just so she had a roof over their heads and food to eat, but so that Evan would have something to come home to. Wouldn’t it be selfish to put her own wants and needs ahead of those of her family?

“How would it work, Jack? My home is here. My work is here. My father needs me.”

He kissed her hair again, his hand stroking her nape. “You have a home and a life. I don’t have a home, and I’ve lost the only life I know. If you were willing, Gwen, I would like to share yours. I don’t know exactly how that would work. We would have to decide that for ourselves. Together.”

It sounded too good to be true. “We are courting then?” she asked. 

“If that’s what you need,” he confirmed. “Courting, and then, when you are ready, betrothed.”

“If we can decide,” she cautioned. “If we are both happy to go ahead.”

“I will be happy with whatever makes you happy,” he assured her. “But shall I tell you what I have been thinking our life might be like?”

She nodded. This was probably a dream or a mistake, and tomorrow or the next day it would all fall apart. In the meantime, she would enjoy it.

“I’d like you not to have to work so hard,” he said. “Is it like this all the time, or is it the season? Have you thought of taking on another person?” 

Gwen shrugged. Thought of it over and over, and done her budgets to see if she could make it work. “The trouble is that I am a woman,” she pointed out. “Men do not want to work for a woman, but they might pretend just to get a job. Besides, would a stranger treat my father with respect? And if I choose the wrong person, might they take my customers and set up on their own? The work is there. We used to support three farriers—my father, Evan, and an apprentice, with me helping out when things were busy. We had a cook and a housemaid, too. But Evan left and the farrier across the river stole our apprentice, and Da…” she shrugged helplessly. “On my own and with Da to care for, it is all I can do to earn enough to pay our bills.”

“I can provide money to take a chance on an assistant,” Jack told her. “I’ve won a few prizes and found a bit of abandoned treasure over the years, and most of the money has been invested. We could afford to hire one man to start with and then take on an apprentice when business picks up. You’d have to interview the applicants, but I could sit there and look grim. You would be in charge, Gwen, never doubt it. But I can make sure they respect you and your father.

She twisted so she could look up into his eyes. That could actually work!

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Plot twist in WIP Wednesday

The excerpt is from Chaos Come Again, which I intend for release in June.

The shock came after dinner was over. The earl shook his head at his daughter, who had stood as a signal to the ladies that it was time to leave the room. When she resumed her seat, he tapped a spoon on his glass to demand silence. He let his gaze travel around the table, finishing with Lionel and Dorothea. “I have given much thought to what I wanted to say, and how to say it,” he began.

“I have chosen this occasion because my grandson deserves that the news I am about to share is spread as far as possible, and I shall count on those here at my table to pass on the story I am about to relate.”

The corner of his mouth quirked in a fraction of a smile. “Lion, here, is going to ask why I did not warn him. Well, all I can say in my defence is that when I planned this dinner party, I expected him to have been here well before it. Lion, I accept that your news took priority over mine.”

Lionel inclined his head.

“Nineteen years ago, my grandson arrived from India, with documents that proved he was the son of my deceased eldest son, Anthony Lord Harcourt. One of the documents claimed to prove that my son had married his mother, the daughter of an Indian woman and an Irish sergeant. I did not believe it. Nonetheless, I sent agents to discover the facts.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, and his knuckles were white as he gripped the table.

“All the adults in the story were dead. My son. Sergeant O’Toole. His daughter and her mother. It took time for my agents to uncover witnesses who could speak to the truth of the documents Lionel had brought with him. By the time they returned, two years had passed. My second son was known everywhere as Lord Harcourt, and Lion had been accepted as my illegitimate but recognised grandson.”

With a sigh, his hands shaking, he faced Lion. His eyes were anguished as he said. “Lionel, I will not ask for your forgiveness, for I do not deserve it. My agents found witnesses to your parents marriage, including the wife of the parson who performed the service. He had also died, but his wife was at the wedding and swore that it was a true and legal union.”

Beside Dorothea, Lionel had frozen in place, and when Dorothea put her hand on his to assure him of her support, the skin beneath her fingers felt cold to the touch.

The earl, his voice anguished, continued, “But to tell Harry that he was not the heir; to tell his wife! You were already speaking of a military career. I decided to say nothing; to leave matters as they were. It was a dreadful thing to do. I knew it at the time. I knew it every time I looked at you from the day I realised I had wronged you.”

Lion’s face had turned as hard as granite and his voice was strained, as he said. “My parent were truly married?”

The earl nodded. “You are the legitimate son of my eldest son, Lord Harcourt by right of birth, and soon to be Earl of Ruthford after me. I have notified the Committee for Privileges.”

Lionel said nothing, but his muscles under Dorothea’s hand tensed still further, which should not have been possible.

Mr Foxton leapt to his feet and hurried around the table, sporting a broad smile. “Lion, that is wonderful. Grandfather, you must be delighted. Lion will be a superlative earl. As one of those under his command, I can assure you of that.” He reached Lionel and gave his shoulder a robust punch. “We must have champagne! I cannot think of anyone who deserves a peerage more! Just think how thrilled the tenants and servants will be not to be subjected to our second cousin and his wife!”

With Mr Foxton, the others at the table stood to offer their own congratulations. Lionel stood to receive them, baring his teeth in a parody of a smile, clinging to Dorothea’s hand as if he feared being swept under by the surge of goodwill.

“I don’t want it,” he hissed out of the corner of his mouth. But Foxton and the earl both pretended they had not heard, and nobody else was listening.

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Congratulations to the Grand Prize winner in my Lady Beast’s Bridegroom giveaway

 

I’ve just added together all the entries in the four weeks of giveaway (160 in total), put that number into a random number generator, and gone to find entry number 124, which was made in week 4 and belonged to Amy M.

I’ve sent Amy an email. I’m excited to know what story elements she comes up with!

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Tea with the Duchess of Haverford

In this excerpt post from The Flavour of Our Deeds, Kitty has been invited not just to tea, but to stay for a few nights until her sister returns to town.

Halfway through the afternoon, the butler announced that the Marquis of Aldridge wondered if Lady Catherine was at home. The gentleman in question was standing at the butler’s shoulder, one sardonic eyebrow raised.

Kitty leapt to her feet, but remembered her manners and greeted him politely. So did Pierrot, with a sniff to his boots and a sharp yap as he sat and offered his paw. Aldridge bent and gravely shook it.

“May I offer you refreshments, my lord?”

“If it pleases you,” he said, amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes, “you may fetch your pelisse and bonnet, and have your maid pack what you might need for several nights’ stay and bring it over to Haverford House. My mother has sent me to invite you for a short stay, for the sake of appearances. She also has another young guest whom I believe you shall be pleased to see.”

Young. So not Luke, who had been at pains on several occasions to point out the decade and a bit that separated their ages. “Paul has been released?” she asked.

“Into my custody,” he confirmed. “And before you ask, Ogilvy has been moved to a private room, where he shall have every comfort and a private guard to see to his safety.”

Kitty felt as if she could breathe freely for the first time since she woke to Thomson’s invasion. “I shall be five minutes,” she said, and hurried up to her room, giving the footman in the hall a message for Millie to meet her there.

Soon, she and Aldridge were on their way in the marquis’s exquisite high-perch phaeton, behind one of the sweetest-going teams she’d ever seen. Millie would follow with her bags.

With her anxiety lifted just a little, Kitty was able to enjoy her journey, especially when the crowds of London dropped behind them, leaving farmland and estates on either side of the road. Haverford House was on the Thames, several miles upriver from the capital.

The great house was in the shape of an H, with an ornate fence barring those without business from the huge front courtyard. Not them, though. The gatekeeper heard the toot of Aldridge’s groom’s horn, and had the gates open before the team swept through without breaking pace.

Whenever Kitty came here to visit her godmother, she felt like a princess called to attend a queen.

They swung in a large arc and pulled to a stop before the flight of steps that led up to a pair of doors that Kitty, as a child, had believed to be created for and by giants. The butler was already opening one of them, and standing before it to await the entry of the marquis and his guest.

Another servant stood ready to conduct Kitty to the duchess, but Aldridge waved him off.

He picked up Pierrot, who made no objection. “I shall escort Lady Kitty myself,” he said, and, with the dog in his arms, took her up four flights of stairs to the third level of the building, through the main wing of the house to the family wing, and then along a passage to the rooms that housed the nursery and schoolroom.

“We’ve made young Paul comfortable up here, with my sisters,” he told Kitty. Sure enough, they entered a large comfortable sitting room, where Paul sat on the hearth rug with the duchess’s youngest ward, Frances Grenford. Her Grace of Haverford and her other two wards, Jessica and Matilda, watched as Paul and Frances toasted bread and cheese over the fire.

“Again?” Aldridge asked him. “Good afternoon, Mama, ladies.”

Paul returned Aldridge’s grin. “You hauled me away from the bagwig’s office before I could eat the last lot,” he complained.

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Spotlight on The Raven’s Last Bet and a bonus book

The Raven’s Last Bet
By Cerise DeLand

She won’t be sold into marriage.
He won’t wed her for any amount of money. Only love.
If he can just figure out a way!

Harry Seymour arrives home from years of fighting abroad to learn he must clean up the family mess. His father demands Harry honor a deal he made with his best friend for Harry to marry the man’s daughter…for money.
Harry, who’s loved Sara Fleming since she was four, has no problem marrying her. He never did, even when she was denied him because she was the Whiskey King’s daughter.
But he won’t wed her for money.
Sara cannot accept the bargain her father made. She’s already left two men at the altar because she didn’t love either one. And if she can’t wed Harry for love, she’ll marry no one. But she wagers she’ll walk away a spinster…and happy if Harry will do her the favor of ruining her.
It’s a bet Harry can’t refuse.
Can he?
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Bonus Book!

LORD STANTON’S SHOCKING SEASIDE HONEYMOON

She is so wrong for him.
Miss Josephine Meadows is so young. In love with life. His accountant in his work for Whitehall. Her father’s heir to his trading company—and his espionage network.
Lord Stanton cannot resist marrying her. But to ensure Wellington defeats Napoleon, they must save one of Josephine’s agents.
Far from home, amidst a horrific storm, Stanton discovers that his new bride loves him dearly.
Can he truly be so right for her?
And she for him?

 

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The farrier–an underrated role in history

I am a bit obsessed with  how different travel was before the railways. However, one need hasn’t changed, though the job that arises from it is now completely different.

Imagine, if you will, a world in which all motor mechanics and all their knowledge vanish overnight. How long would it be before we had major problems getting to where we needed to be, growing the crops we needed,  and buying the goods we wanted? Even maintaining the roads would soon be beyond us as the motor-driven bulldozers and ditchdiggers ground to a halt.

Once, most of those needs were met by horse power. In Regency times, when the railway engine was just a local device, still unproven for more than moving materials from mine to barge, and cars and tractors had not been imagined, the invention of mechanical engines to provide power for travel, travel on the roads depended on horses, maintenance of the roads depended on horses, planting and harvesting depended on horses. (By the 18th century, horses had almost entirely replaced oxen in English agriculture.)

In the past, the importance and education of farriers has been seen through the lens of the vetinary specialists who replaced them in treating animal injuries and illnesses. I’ve been reading a thesis that revisits that story, and suggests that farriers were much more important and better educated than previously thought.

The good health of horses, particularly foot health, depended on farriers. When you think that a typical large inn on the Great North Road might own 2,000 horses for hire and that estimates of horse number in England at the turn of the century in 1800 sit somewhere around 1.5 million, you begin to get an idea of how much the farrier’s skill mattered. England would have ground to a halt if they were as useless as has sometimes been suggested. Farriers “cared for the most important animal in English society, attending to its shoeing and caring for its fractures, illnesses and lesions.” [McKay, 2009]

The following excerpt gives some insight into the work of country farriers, such as the one in my new novella for the next Bluestocking Belles collection. McKay looks at the records for an estate regarding the bills paid by the Earl of Egremont to a farrier by the name of Peter Hay, and also at Hay’s accounts to work out what Hay actually did in Egremont’s extensive stables between the 1740s and the 1780s. Over that 40 year period, he visited the Egremont stables on average, 80 times a year.

First, Hay would simply shoe Egremont’s horses, which involved removing and then nailing the shoes onto the horse’s feet. Second, after shoeing the horses, he would obtain and apply ointments and waxes to the horse’s legs and hoofs. Third, he gave basic medical care to the horses. Aside from one visit, in which Hay sharpened a pitchfork, his visits fell into these three categories. [McKay, 2009]

An important part of Hay’s practice was making the medicines, ointments, and waxes he used in treating the horses.

The thesis also mentioned another farrier, Edward Snape, who was farrier to the King and also to the Horse Guard. He was known as Dr Snape, did his best (twice) to establish a college of equine medicine, and wrote a textbook called A Practical Treatise on Farriery. Not an uneducated man.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, the role of the farrier had been reduced to shoeing horses, and the vetinary surgeon did everything else.

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Setting the scene in WIP Wednesday

This week’s excerpt is the start of Love in Its Season, my novella for this year’s Bluestocking Belles with Friends collection.

The farrier plied his business from a barn on the outskirts of the lower town. It was not a particularly defensable position, Jack noted as he led the two horses through the open gate. Too open, with access not only from the road, but from the lane that ran beside the neat cottage where the farrier presumably lived, and across the fields behind the barn.

But Jack was in peaceful England, not Spain or France or Mauritius or the Indies or any of the other far flung lands to which King George has sent his soldiers. Of which Jack was no longer one, and if he wasn’t Captain Jack Wrath of His Majesties 12th Lancers, who was he?

One of the horses took advantage of Jack’s inattention to pull sharply away to the right, towards a tub planted with peppermint and chamomile. Jack jerked on the lead rein, and received a hurt look from the other beast, Paul Gibson’s patient mount. However, his own recalcitrant gelding fell back into line.

Jack led them past the dusty curricle that stood outside the barn, its shaft empty, then slowed his steps as raised voices in the barn hinted at an altercation. He sped up again when he caught the words.

“I’ll have the constable on him. The man is mad. Locked up, that’s what he should be.” A man’s voice in the crisp accent of the aristocracy, the nasal tones shrill with anger.

“I’ll be giving you locked up!” That voice was deeper and rougher, with hints of a Welsh lilt overlaying the Cheshire vowels.

Jack hesitated. What was he getting himself into?

“Father, no!” A woman’s voice, sharp with fear.

“Keep him back,” the aristocrat sneered, “or I’ll shoot him like the mad dog he is.”

“He was only coming to my aid, my lord,” the woman protested. “You cannot blame a father for defending his daughter.”

Jack reached the open doors as the aristocrat hissed, “You need to learn your place, woman.”

“What is going on here?” Jack demanded, crisping his own pronunciation into a counterfeit of his so called betters.

What he saw had him dropping the reins and moving forward. This part of the barn had been divided off as a farrier’s workshop. The space was occupied by three people and two horses, the latter a pair of bays that Jack immediately characterised as more showy than sound.

The aristocrat was much as expected: tall, but with too much flesh for his height. Overdressed for the occasion, with lace at his neck and cuffs, and a coat the colour of squashed strawberries over a maroon waistcoat heavily embroidered in gold. Gold tassels on his boots, too, and gems glinting from his cravat, his fobs, and his rings.

It was the gun that had Jack moving. It was wavering between the two other people in the barn, and the hand that held it was shaking. The pompous lord was scared out of his mind.

The woman stood at bay, her hands held out palms backward as if to hold back the man behind her. She was nearly as tall as the lordling—nearly as tall as Jack himself. Muscular, too, with powerful shoulders. Her dark hair, curled like a crown on her head, proudly proclaimed she was a woman. He would have known anyway. Even in an old shapeless coat, men’s trousers, and a leather apron was so exquisitely female that Jack’s mouth dried. Her gaze met Jack’s, her dark eyes full of defiance, fear and anger.

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Militia, volunteers, and regular army in Regency Britain

A Review of the London Volunteer Cavalry and Flying Artillery in Hyde Park in 1804, unknown artist.

When including a soldier or a military unit in a Regency romance, an author has to ask who was in the area at the time, and what sort of military unit was it. At the time, the regular army was heavily committed overseas, in Portugal and Spain, in India, in the Americas–though, depending on the year, there were regiments who were not on active duty, or who were on home defense duty. The two other options were the militia and the volunteers. Think of the militia as a sort of army reserve, and the volunteers as the home guard. Not quite, but sort of.

The regular army and the milita had long been a feature of Britain. The army was relatively small before the Napoleonic threat–just 45,000 men, two thirds of whom were stationed abroad. They had recruiting issues, and the rank and file were notoriously those who had few other choices–the poor, the unskilled, those who didn’t fit in.

Militia on parade

The militia in Georgian Britain, by contrast, were part-time soldiers serving one month a year in peacetime. There had been a militia since 871, so they were an older establishment than the army itself. By the mid 18th century, every county had to supply, and pay for, a certain number of militia. They were chosen by ballot, though they had the option to pay someone else to serve in their place. They had to serve for four years and did one week’s training four times a year. They served in their home county, and could be called out to deal with an emergency.

With the rising threat from France, the government first passed a law to increase the militia by a further 60,000 men. The innovators didn’t provide any money, so the spaces were filled by those who could afford to pay for their own uniforms and weapons. In other words, the upper and middle classes. Then, after a major military defeat in 1797, the government called for each county to find out how many men were within their borders, and how many would volunteer to defend Britain.

They were stunned by the response. By 1803, 380,000 men had volunteered. The officers tended to be from the upper classes, and the ranks from the lower middle class. Volunteers were exempt from military service and from taxes. They committed themselves to local defense in case of invasion or insurrection, but otherwise remained civilians.

The volunteer forces proved to be a problem. The State couldn’t afford to outfit and train them, and the small local volunteer forces operated outside of military rule, and often refused to serve outside of their own area. There were also manpower problems in the other military units, since men would rather be volunteers than militia, and militia than regular army.

The government went down the compulsory service line, and between 1806 and 1815, volunteer units were disbanded. In many cases their members were taken into militia units. However, this was not the last time Britain raised volunteer forces to its defence.

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Week 4 of Lady Beast’s Bridegroom launch giveaway

Enter as many times as you can this week. This is your last chance at a weekly prize and the major prize, drawn after week 4 closes.

To celebrate the launch of the first book in my new series, A Twist in a Regency Tale, I’m running a four-week giveaway, with a free book each week plus great weekly prizes and a grand prize at the end.

Week 4 runs from 16 February to 22 February.

Here’s how it works

You can enter the giveaway, and go in the draw, by helping me share the good news about Lady Beast’s Bridegroom.

  1. Just download any or all of the memes and the video on my Lady Beast Bridegroom gallery page
  2. Share them on your social media–Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest, anything at all you use. Use the hashtag #LadyBeast
  3. Share this post (the one you’re reading now). Use the hashtag #LadyBeast
  4. Leave a comment on this post–the Rafflecopter entry form says what I’d like you to comment on
  5. Enter the week 4 Lady Beast Rafflecopter,  which will give you space to note what you’ve done
  6. Keep sharing and enter many times every week!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Week 4 prize

Every entry in the rafflecopter will go in the draw. This means you could have multiple chances to win a prize.

The first 10 names drawn will each be sent a set of book-shaped earrings with the cover of Perchance to Dream (book 4 in the series).

Those 10 names will go back in the draw and one will win a $10 gift card. (USD value)

Grand prize

All entries from every week go into the grand prize draw, and the grand winner will be announced between 24 February and 28th February.

The grand winner receives:

  • the full set of four pairs of earrings, one for each novel being published in 2023
  • a $50 gift card (USD value)
  • a made-to-order story, written to include the winner’s ingredients.

Week 4 giveaway

This week, I’m giving away Revealed in Mist, a Regency adventure-romance with my detective hero and his beloved spy heroine.

Download from my shop–just go through check out and the price is free:  https://shop.judeknightauthor.com/index.php/product/revealed-in-mist/

Or download from BookFunnel: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/3mosso62it