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Tea at Gunter’s with Kitty

Another excerpt post. This one is from The Flavour of Our Deeds, novel 5 of the Golden Redepennings. Kitty has taken refuge with her godmother, the Duchess of Haverford, and they are out for the afternoon.

Afterwards, Her Grace ordered the open carriage to stop at Gunter’s for ices, sending a footman in to make the order, and eating the delicious confections in the carriage.

It was a sunny afternoon, and many other people had had the same idea. All four ladies were hailed by friends and acquaintances, many of whom came to chat for a time. Not all of them were welcome.

One of younger ladies who persisted in regarding Kitty as a rival to be brought low asked Kitty, “Is it true that your brother’s gamekeeper has been arrested for murder?”

Kitty opened her eyes as widely as she could. “Goodness, Miss Fairburn, who is spreading such a story?”

Miss Fairburn blushed. “I heard it somewhere.” She looked up and past Kitty’s shoulder. “I wondered if it was true.”

Kitty frowned, and shook her head slightly. “It does not sound likely,” she said. “I wonder which gamekeeper, and who he might be supposed to have murdered? And why?”

Lady Juliana Meredith leaned closer. “I heard that you were at the house when the man was arrested, and that the constable tried to arrest you, Lady Catherine.”

Kitty answered that perfectly true statement with a burst of laughter. The Duchess of Haverford broke from her conversation with a couple of matrons to say, “I can assure you that no constables have attempted to arrest a lady staying in my house, Lady Juliana.” She finished with a harrumphing sound that indicated her opinion of any constable foolish enough to try.

One could depend upon Miss Fairburn and her cronies to repeat juicy gossip, and to add speculation to make it more inflammatory. One could hope that the disapproval of the duchess might help to button their lips.

When Aunt Eleanor turned away again, Miss Fairburn changed the subject. “Such a pretty dress, Lady Catherine. Are you hoping to bring back the sleeve style from last Season?” She batted her eyelashes at the rest of the group as if hoping for applause.

Kitty chuckled again. “I am happy to leave the pursuit of fashion to you young ladies, Miss Fairburn. This is a gown from last Season. For some reason, I barely wore it, though I like it very much.” She lifted one arm. “The sleeves are particularly pretty, do you not think?”

“You were very polite to her,” Jessica said, after the group made their farewells and excuses, and moved away. “I wanted to scratch her eyes out, and she wasn’t even addressing her nasty comments to me!”

Kitty smiled again. “My niece’s nanny, Hannah, always said, A soft answer turneth away wrath. In my experience, a soft answer drives one’s would-be persecutors wild with rage. Their barbs have failed to pierce my armour, and yet, I have said nothing to which they can take offence.”

Jessica chuckled. “I shall remember that.” Jessica knew all about barbs from the likes of Miss Fairburn. She and her sisters Matilda and Frances had been raised and luxury and given every advantage, but in the eyes of Society’s high sticklers, nothing could wipe out the stain of their birth. They were all three daughters of the Duke of Haverford by different mistresses.

“Lady Catherine! Lady Catherine!” The voice, a man’s tenor blemished by a shrill nasal whine, could come from only one man. Kitty turned to look, suppressing the inevitable sigh.

Sure enough, Hardwicke-Chalmers came rushing through the crowd, oblivious to the child he nearly stepped on and the waiter whose tray of ices nearly flew up into his face. The waiter performed an aerobatic masterpiece of a maneuver, and continued on his way as Hardwicke-Chalmers skidded to a stop beside the landau and looked up into Kitty’s face with a delighted smile, sure of his welcome.

“You need to tell your brother to dismiss his butler, Lady Catherine. They told me at your house you were not in town.,” he said.

Her Grace answered the man while Kitty was still gasping at his impertinence. “I daresay, Mr Hardwicke-Chalmers, that they said she was not at home. And no more she is. Lady Catherine is my guest at Haverford House.”

Hardwicke-Chalmers gaped at the duchess as if surprised to find her there, then blinked hard and gulped. “That would be it, Your Grace,” he agreed.

He then turned to Kitty and asked what entertainments she was attending, as he wished to reserve as many dances as she would grant him, and if she was planning on taking in a musicale, he wished to claim the great honour of sitting beside her.

Kitty could scarcely believe the affrontery of the man, ignoring the existence of the duchess’s two wards and even the duchess herself. “I must defer to Her Grace,” she said, pointedly, who has been kind enough to chaperone me, along with her wards, Miss Grenford and Miss Jessica Grenford. The choice of invitations is entirely over to Her Grace.”

Hardwicke-Chalmers looked at the two Grenford girls, at the duchess, and then back at Kitty. “Awkward,” he said. “I will have to think about this.”

With that remark, he walked away. Even for Hardwicke-Chalmers, that was extraordinarily bad manners.

“Have you known Mr Hardly-Charming for long?” Jessica asked. The nickname fitted perfectly. Kitty giggled at the apposite mangling of the oaf’s name even as she answered.

“He has been pursuing me all Season. He seems to think that I am too old to be selective. What is awkward? And what does he have to think about?”

“Us,” Matilda provided. “If you are chaperoned by our guardian, he can hardly dance with you and refuse to dance with us.”

Kitty was quick to say, “Surely not. Would he say such a thing in front of you if that is what he meant?” Yes, she answered her own question. He is that crass and dense.

“A foolish and conceited young man, with little justification for either” the duchess said. “I believe him to have sufficient native wit if he cared to apply it, but instead, he depends on his mother to do it for him.”

Kitty was surprised, for the Duchess of Haverford seldom spoke ill of anyone.

“Have a care, dear Kitty,” Her Grace added. “Honoria Hardwicke-Chalmers’ sense of ethics is bound up with her own self-importance. If she has set her sights on your dowry to drag her family out of River Tick, she will not hesitate to be underhanded in her methods.”

“I will not give him the opportunity to stage a compromise,” Kitty promised, adding, “and I would not, in any case, marry a man who tried to force my consent, even if it meant giving up Society. Living without invitations is much preferable to living with a tyrant and a liar.”

She would have caught back the last sentence had she thought them through before she spoke them. The Duke of Haverford was both tyrant and liar, as well as erratic and a rakehell.

However, the duchess merely commented, “Very wise, my dear, but best avoid the need to make such a choice.

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Not enough spoons

I just want to apologise to newsletter subscribers. You will get your newsletter this month, and the different newsletter options I talked about last month shortly after.

I have another thousand or so words to write in your story for this month’s issue, and I’ve not been able to get them done. I have two novels and a novella that need to be finished by mid-December, which means a monthly word count I must meet, and various visitors plus trips away for medical appointments (one for my son and one for my husband) have kept me from my writing much for five of the last sixteen days, and at all for three.

I’ve learned to pace myself. If I veer into spoon deficit*, my chronic illness is going to steal more days.

But I’ve paced myself with a vengeance this month, writing when I can, even if only a few hundred words at a time. Today, I hit the halfway point for the month’s words. The novella is exactly where it should be, at 12,000 words, and I’m just 12,500 off my end of month target on Perchance to Dream, and 13,000 on Flavour of our Deeds. So tomorrow, I’m going to take some time out to finish The White Gown, and by the end of next week, you’ll have it in your hot little hands.

Thank you for your patience. It’ll be rewarded when I have a book out every month from next month until February 2024.

For an explanation of spoon theory, see this story. Or this graphic is a good way of how spoon theory works in practice.

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History shapes us

We were at Whanganui hospital today for a routine procedure. While I waited, I examined the photos on the wall with some interest, for family lore tells me that a failure by the government to pay for the building work my great grandfather did on one of the buildings led to the bankruptcy that, in turn, led to my grandfather returning to live with his parents and to raise his seven children in the family home. The building pictured above are gone, now. Replaced with a more modern hospital–and a very efficient one, too, we found. But the old family story lingers.

In other news today, Charles III appears to have hinted that he’s open to having the remains of children, buried in the royal vaults after being exhumed from the environs of the Tower of London, tested to see if their DNA supports the oft repeated suspicion that they are the Princes in the Tower, the two sons of Edward IV. Shakespeare tells us they were horribly murdered on the command of their uncle, Richard III, because they stood between him and the throne. The story has flaws, since he already had the throne, having convinced Parliament that their father was secretly married to someone else when he wed their mother.

I’m a #RichardIIIwasframed person myself, but I’ll watch for the results of the testing with interest. Is a long standing historical injustice about to be addressed? If so, which one?

Speaking of Charles III, quite a number of voices have been raised calling for redress from the new King for colonial oppressions. It seems a bit misplaced to me, given that the Kings and Queens of England have had little real power for several hundred years. But that’s the down side of being a walking talking symbol, I suppose.

Which reminds me that it was only in 2015 that the British government finished paying off the debt incurred to compensate British slave owners for freeing their slaves. That’s right, folks. Nearly two centuries of debt to pay people to stop owning other people. I get that it was a political decision, required to get the necessary support to stop an outrage. But how about compensation for the slaves, and their descendants?

All of which goes to today’s point. History matters. Perhaps, with enough time, past injustices become merely something interesting to study, but when the impacts are still echoing in the lives of people alive today, we ignore such injustices at our peril.

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Descriptions on WIP Wednesday

When I write, I want you to see what I see in my mind’s eye, without belabouring the point. In my fourth novel for the A Twist Upon a Regency Tale, I’ve been describing the nursery to which my heroine and her charge are consigned.

The nursery at the Paris townhouse was ruthlessly clean and sparsely furnished with a random collection of unmatched items. Against one wall were two beds, made with fresh sheets, sported a continental style of comforter each. Between the windows stood a table with two chairs. The wall opposite the beds had fitted shelves, which stood empty. A circular rug, the colours faded except where someone had darned a couple of worn places, covered the centre of the wooden floor. And that was all, apart from Pauline’s and Jane’s bags, which a footman had deposited just inside the door.

No pictures or ornaments softened the room, which held no toys or books to read.

“It is not very nice, is it?” Jane murmured to Pauline.

The footman shut the door as he left, and she heard the tumblers of the lock fall as he locked it. Pauline felt the strain go out of her shoulders. She had been afraid they might be separated straight away, or that one of the maids might be assigned to stay with them. She was determined to escape tonight, and to take Jane with her.

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A bird needs two wings to fly

“We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill.”
― Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

The terms ‘right wing’ and ‘left wing’ carry a lot of emotional weight today. They have their origins, though, in a concrete description, and in the National Assembly of early modern France.

It was the government of the revolution, meeting in the aftermath of the storming of the Bastille. Their job was to write a new constitution and one of the important issues they needed to settle was whether the king would have a right of veto over the decisions of the assembly.  Those who thought he should sat on the right of the president of the assembly. Those who thought he should not sat on the left.

The terms were used in the newspapers reporting on the legislature, and swiftly came to represent those who wanted to follow tradition–the right, and those who wanted more change–the left.

Fast forward to today, and a number of people have applied the term in a different way. Billy Graham has been quoted as saying that he’s not for the right wing or the left wing, but for the whole bird. Birds need their wings. The wings allow flight, but both are needed. The far extremes of the wings twist and turn according to the position of the bird, this flexibility providing an aerodynamic advantage. Yet all things in balance. The bird needs both wings for lift, both sets of flight feathers. A bird whose wings have been clipped cannot take flight. And the wing does not exist for itself. It exists for the bird.

As a metaphor for community, it works well. Our community is the whole bird. To thrive, it needs both stability–the function of the right–and an openness to new things–the function of the left. Even the extreme wing tips are important: the extreme right can be a brake on change for change’s sake; the extreme left a goad to try new ideas when tradition does not have the answers to never-before-seen conditions and problems. But, for the most part, in a sensible and logical community, left and right, like the wings of a bird, can work together, exchanging information, and coming up with joint strategies to support flight.

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A storied kingdom

When I began to write Paradise Regained, prequel to my Return of the Mountain King series, I didn’t have much of a clue about the location. The plot required that my hero and heroine live in Central Asia, somewhere along the Silk Roads, but boy, did I need to research.

Half a dozen books, scores of academic research papers, and quite a bit of Sufi medieval poetry later, I’d nailed down the place and the time, and become fascinated with the tumultuous and ever intriguing history of Iran.

1794 in the Western calendar was a tumultuous year in Iran, which we in the West persisted in calling Persia, after the practice of the ancient Greeks. The short-lived Zand dynasty took its last gasp that year, to be superseded by a rival clan, the Qajars.

The rivalry for supremacy in Iran was brutal. The founder of the new dynasty was known as the eunuch monarch. Āghā Moḥammad Qajar was castrated when young to prevent him from becoming a political rival to the then reigning Afsharid dynasty.

Instead, what was then seen as disqualifying someone from supreme leadership seemed to inspire Āghā Moḥammad to greater efforts. He was a political hostage for much of his young adulthood, but escaped when Karīm Khan Zand died, and spent ten years fighting his own relatives to unite his clan.  By 1886, he was the head of the tribe that controlled northern Iran.  He spent the next eight years at war with the last of the Zand kings, finally capturing the ruler and having him killed in 1794.

He was crowned as shāhanshāh (king of kings) in 1796, but was assassinated the following year. The story goes that he grew annoyed when two of his servants argued loudly in his hearing. He ordered them executed, but since it was the evening of the holy day, he commanded them back to their duties until the next day.

You can’t say he lacked confidence, but in this case it lead him astray.

During the night, the servants stabbed their master, and took the crown jewels to a powerful prince who offered them his protection.

Nonetheless, the Shah was succeeded by his nephew, and his dynasty ruled Iran until 1929.

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All of this formed the background to a minor plotline in Paradise Regained. The father of my heroine is a minor Zand khan, that is, ruler of what we would now call a province. In the turmoil that followed the death of the king, he flees to his daughter’s mountain kingdom in the Kopet Dag mountains, through which runs the border between Iran and Turkmenistan. He is closely pursued by Qajar troops, who settle outside the gates.

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Mystery on WIP Wednesday

I do like a mystery with my romance. What about you? This is from a made-to-order story tentatively called The Missing Daughter. I’m looking at you, Laura!

Louisa still had no idea what was going on three days later when the three of them reached Mama’s home village. Papa arranged a suite of rooms at the inn for his family, and baths to refresh after the journey. Mama ordered dinner to be served in the suite’s sitting room in one hour.

“I have a note to write before my bath,” she announced.

“To the vicarage?” Papa asked. “Or the house?”

“Vicarage,” Mama said. “I will make an appointment in the morning.”

“What is going on, Mama?” Louisa asked. “Why are we here?”

“Go and see if your bath is ready, dear,” Mama said. “I will come through shortly to undo your buttons and laces.”

Mama would say nothing more. Not then, not over dinner, and not when she came to check that Louisa was safely tucked up in bed, with the door to the outside passage locked and bolted.

Louisa tried again over breakfast. “Are we going to visit your family, Mama?” she asked.

“I don’t have family here anymore, Louisa, and no, I am not telling you anything else just yet. All in good time.”

That again. Louisa cast a pleading glance at her father. His response was unexpected. “I might still have a brother here.”

“A brother? I have an uncle?” Papa had never mentioned his family. And Papa came from the same village as Mama? How had Louisa not known that?

“I assume you still have an uncle,” Papa said. “He might still live here. We lost touch.”

Louisa’s mind whirled, teaming with so many questions that she couldn’t find anything to say.

Mama frowned at Papa, then said to Louisa, “I am going to visit the vicar. Stay in your room while I am gone, Louisa.”

“No need for that,” Papa told her. “I am going to walk your mother to the vicarage, Louisa, and then go and visit my brother, or at least my old home. You can come with me, if you wish.”

“Will!” Mama objected.

Papa raised his eyebrows. “I will take my daughter to meet her uncle, Lissie,” he declared. And that was the end of it. People thought that Papa lived under the cat’s paw; that Mama was head of the family. Louisa knew that Papa seldom countered Mama’s commands and decisions, but when he did, Mama subsided.

“She will be safe now,” he said, reassuringly.

Had Louisa not been safe before? The more she heard, the less she felt she knew!

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Tea with the real Lord Snowden

After their meeting, her husband James escorted Lord Snowden to the Duchess of Winshire’s private sitting room. She already had a pot of coffee sitting on the table before her, having discovered at his last visit that he preferred the beverage. She had also arranged The Teatime Tattler right where he would see it, open to the page that mentioned the excitement at a ball last night. The one where Lord Hungerford-Fox made nasty allegations about Lady Charmain, and Lord Snowden proposed. Although Rosemary, who had been present, said that it was not quite a proposal.

It would need to be, and Eleanor Winshire planned to tell the young man that, if he did not already know it.

“Black, was it not?” she asked him, as he took the seat she offered him, and fixed his gaze on the gossip rag.

“You have seen the article, then.” He took the cup from her hands.

“And, I surmise, so have you, Lord Snowden.” She would give him the opportunity to make up his own mind, having promised her son not to organise other people’s lives for them unless they sought her help. Though it was hard to resist. “My step-daughter tells me that the Tattler exaggerates. You spoke of possibilities. It was not a proposal.”

“That is true, Your Grace, but will not, I think, make difference to Society. May I speak frankly?”

Eleanor inclined her head. “I wish you would.”

“I can think of no greater felicity than to have Marg– Lady Charmain as my wife, but until my cousin is in custody, I fear wedding her will make her a target for his murderous intentions.”

“I see your difficulty,” the duchess said, “but you can surely make certain that Lady Charmain is well guarded from a physical attack.”

Lord Snowden nodded. “I take your meaning. The attacks on her reputation and her character will be far harder to counter if we do not, in fact, become betrothed.”

“Married, I think,” Eleanor said, forgetting her resolution not to interfere. “If you do not marry soon, people will say that you have no intention of doing so; that you are just pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes.”

The young man nodded. “Yes, I think so, too. But I wondered if I was just letting my own wishes guide my thinking. It will be over to Margaret, of course. I will tell her that I want to be married in truth, but she may refuse me.”

The duchess smiled. He really was an estimable young man, even if he was raised in a brothel. That rumour was out in Society, too, but people couldn’t quite believe it, since his manners and dress were just as they should be, and James had made it know that he was a friend and protege of the Duke and Duchess of Winshire and their family. Eleanor, too, had laughed at the rumour when it was repeated to her. “A brothel, my dear? Does he look it?” she had said, and the conversation had moved on to something else.

Lord Snowden had another question. “Should I get a special license, Your Grace? And do you know how one goes about that?”

“An ordinary license will be enough,” Eleanor told him. “You apply to the bishop of your diocese. You will be able to marry without posting the banns. Once you apply, you must wait for seven days, but that is to the good. You are not in desperate haste. But you also do not intend to share your private affairs with the public, by posting the banns. Indeed, most people who can afford it use an ordinary license. It is unexceptional.” She smiled at the young man. “In this case, unexceptional is a good thing.”

***

This is a scene that doesn’t appear in Snowy and the Seven Doves, the third book in A Twist Upon a Regency Tale. I finished the meeting with the duke saying that Eleanor wants a word, then go straight to Margaret, who receives a message from Snowy asking if he can come around. Snowy and the Seven Doves went to the publisher today.

 

 

 

 

 

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Spotlight on The Wedding Wager

15 superb authors, 15 wonderful novellas

The Boast—pride goeth before the fall…

After facilitating the match of the season, Lady Pandora “Pansy” Osbourne, has boasted that she is the best matchmaker The Ton has ever seen. Always willing to bring her cousin down a peg or two, her cousin, Lady Octavia Sewell insists that was no feat of matchmaking at all, as the couple involved were clearly destined for one another despite Pansy’s meddling. A bitter argument ensues and a dreadful challenge is issued. Pansy must do more than say it… she must prove it.

The terms of the wager are set!

Pansy must produce no less than one match per month between people who have been notoriously unmarriageable—spinsters, bluestockings, rakes and fortune hunters, oh my! But there’s more riding on this than simply her pride! If Pansy loses, she will have to give up her most prized possession—a tiara that belonged to their grandmother will be forfeited into Octavia’s grasping hands.

The Ends Justify the Means… or do they?

Desperate to make these matches, prove her claims of matchmaking prowess to be true and make Octavia eat crow in a very public fashion, Pansy resorts to the greatest weapon in any matchmaker’s arsenal—the house party. Not just one, but a series of them. For two weeks out of every month, she will open her home to an assortment of victims…er, guests. At the end of each party, one couple will emerge either betrothed or wed, by fair means or foul.

Order your copy now: https://books2read.com/weddingwager

Excerpt

The following day was stormy—far too cold, wet, and windy for any further ventures outside.

As Rilla had predicted, Lady Osbourne was keen to marshal her guests into group activities. Thankfully, she left the guests themselves to choose between the pursuits on offer, though any lady or gentleman without an occupation was politely rounded up and channeled into being sociable.

Rilla avoided the room where an excited group were planning a theatrical performance, and also backed quickly from the one that contained a game of charades.

She would have liked to play billiards. She’d learned the game from her best friend, the daughter of the earl whose estate bordered her father’s, and had continued to play on her own after Emma made a runaway marriage. But not after her father died and her uncle moved into her house. He did not approve of females playing billiard. Doubtless, the gentlemen at this house party would agree.

Was Lord Hythe in the billiards room? She had not seen him playing cards and could not imagine him as part of the laughing, flirting parlor games crowd. Perhaps, although he had denied any musical abilities, he formed part of the audience in the music room? She found herself heading in that direction and stopped.

What was she doing? She needed to be somewhere Lord Hythe was not. When he was in the vicinity, she found it impossible to consider any other man. And Lord Hythe was not for her.

She had to move to the side of the passage to make way for several of the guests, ladies and gentlemen, who were hurrying to find hiding places for a game of sardines. Another activity that was not to Rilla’s taste. At the last house party she had attended, she had found herself stuck in a cupboard under the stairs with four other people, one of whom had wandering hands.

In the end, Rilla collected her embroidery from her room, and joined Cousin Felicia in the parlor. Several gentlemen had also joined the ladies. Captain Hudson was whittling, and was happy to explain he was making a set of wooden soldiers for his older brother’s eldest son. “I suggested sailors,” he joked, “but apparently it has to be soldiers.” Rilla joined the others in admiring the skill with which he crafted a detailed little warrior out of a chunk of wood. “They will look more realistic once they are painted,” he told his audience.

Another gentleman was sketching the ladies as they worked. He asked Rilla if he could make a sketch of her hands, as they were particularly elegant. Rilla would have brushed it off as a meaningless compliment, but Mr. Woolard’s gaze at said appendages had a dispassionate quality that hinted his interest was entirely artistic. She granted permission.

Lord Joseph Enright said that he had no skills to craft anything with his hands, but offered to read to the company. Lord Joseph was the second son of a marquis, but seemed to have avoided the arrogance that often went with such elevated rank. He had a very pleasant voice, and read with a dramatic style that suited the Robert Burns poem he had chosen, Tam O’Shanter.

Rilla did not understand some of the Scottish words, but she laughed with the others at the tale of the drunken Scotsman spying on a witches’ gathering, becoming entranced at the dancing of ‘a winsome wench’ and calling out encouragement. Then followed a wild chase until at last his brave horse managed to cross water, just in time to escape the lead witch, though the poor nag paid for its master’s peeping by the loss of its tail.

“What is a cutty sark,” she asked, when everyone had clapped the ending of the piece. “Does anyone know?”

Miss MacRae, one of the chaperones, was able to explain. “A sark is a shirt; in this case, a nightrail. Cutty simply means short, Miss Fernhill.”

“She was dancing in her night attire, then, and it flapped as she danced,” Captain Hudson chuckled. “No wonder naughty Tam was glued to the peephole in the wall.”

Rilla suppressed her smile when several of the ladies called him to account, and poor Lord Joseph, as well, for reading the poem in mixed company. Rilla was pleased to note that neither gentleman seemed much abashed. Certainly, she had heard far more bawdy stories in the world that had been her refuge from her uncle’s machinations.