Here’s another of my resources. I use it for slang, particularly around matters of intimate congress. Do not read if you are offended by profanity! But if you want to know period-appropriate terms for all kinds of rude and inappropriate things, check out Jonathon Green’s Timelines of Slang.
For once, I’m setting a novel largely in Society, with my heroine–at least in the first quarter of the novel–a 17-year-old debutante. (In the second and larger part, she will be a 32-year-old widow.)
So I’ve been exploring a ballroom and social engagements setting through the eyes of a very young woman. And boy, as every Regency reader knows, there were some bad girls in those Regency ballrooms. My excerpt covers an encounter Regina had with three of them. If you’re an author, please share an excerpt in the comments showing how one of your characters gets on when out socialising.
It was good that she had a good memory for faces and names, for every outing introduced her to new acquaintances, and she soon gathered a bevy of regular admirers. Mama was over the moon, but Regina did not believe that any of them were serious in their pursuit. Somehow, admiring Miss Kingsley had become the fashion.
Making friends of the other ladies proved to be more difficult. Here, her looks and her wealth apparently counted against her. The other reigning beauties treated her like an interloper, and less favoured ladies regarded her with the same cautious distance as they applied to the beauties.
That changed one day when she overheard Miss Wharton and her two bosom friends in the ladies retiring room one evening, attempting to cow another girl. Regina was behind the screen when they entered, three of them clearly on the heels of the other.
“Please, leave me alone.” Regina didn’t recognise that voice, but she did recognise Miss Fairchild’s falsely sweet coo.
“Oh, girls, Miss Millgirl wants us to leave her alone.”
Regina had not met Miss Miller, but she recognised the name, even skewed to be an insult. The pretty girl’s mother had come from a middle class family whose considerable fortune was founded on mill ownership. She had secured one of the marital prizes of twenty years ago and some in Society had not forgiven the trespass.
Miss Wharton hissed. “Go home and we shall leave you alone. You stink of the shop, and we do not plan to put up with you. These are our ballrooms, our suitors. Just because your mother was lucky enough to trap a gentleman, doesn’t mean we are going to let you do so.” The horrid cow.
“Is this because I danced with Lord Spenhurst?” asked Miss Miller.
Miss Plumfield screeched, “You will not do so again.” The sound of fabric ripping brought Regina hurrying out from behind the privacy screen.
All three of them were tearing at Miss Miller’s clothing and hair, while she batted at them, begging them to leave her alone.
Regina caught Miss Plumfield’s raised hand. “I cannot abide bullies,” she announced.
“This is none of your business, Miss Kingsley,” Miss Wharton insisted. “If you interfere, you’ll get the same treatment.”
“Yes,” Miss Fairchild agreed. “Get out of here while you still can.”
“What has happened to the maid?” Regina wondered.
A smug twitch of Miss Wharton’s lips gave her the clue.
“You bribed her to leave, did you? You did not want a witness. Unfortunate for you that I was already here. Come, Miss Miller. Let us go and find our hostess. I am sure she will be interested to know how her guests behave when not under the eye of their chaperones.”
Miss Wharton swung her hand to slap Regina’s face. Regina stepped back. “I would not do that if I were you.” Regina’s mother would have stopped her excursions with the village children much earlier had she known they had taught her to swim, to climb trees, and—most relevant in this situation—to fight.
Slapping would have been regarded by her tutors as a girlie thing to do. If Miss Wharton tried it again, Regina would let her, Regina decided. A red mark on her cheek would be her defence after she punched Miss Wharton in the belly.
Some of this calculation must have shown in her eyes, for Miss Wharton did not repeat the attempt.
“How was your trip to York, Cherry?” Eleanor, Her Grace of Winshire asked Charlotte, Her Grace of Haverford, as she handed her daughter-in-law a cup of tea, made just the way she liked it, with a spoonful of cream and a small drizzle of honey.
“Delightful,” Cherry replied. “I understand why Anthony loves spending time on his yacht. The freedom, the sea air, the sense that we might be able to sail anywhere we please.” She laughed. “The knowledge that the door knocker won’t announce unexpected callers, and that a message will not arrive with an urgent summons to Clarence House.”
Eleanor nodded and agreed, though she privately thought that the kind of unexpected visitors who might invite themselves aboard at sea were somewhat more troublesome than a garrulous vicar or a gossip-seeking harridan. “I’m glad the weather stayed pleasant for you. And what of the wedding?”
Cherry laughed again. “That was fun, too. Lord Diomedes is a charming man and I found Lady Diomedes clever and delightful. Pretty, too, though not in the common way. The newlyweds are clearly deeply in love, and it was amusing to see Anthony competing with the Marquess of Pevenwood for most supportive half-brother. Apparently the Pevenwood side has only recently learned that it was their father who cut the connection, not Lord Diomedes himself. The two brothers came to York to find him, and then didn’t know how to approach him, so kept wandering in and out of social events for weeks, hoping to bump into him by accident.”
“Men can be duffers,” Eleanor remarked.
Cherry smiled and nodded. “So Pevenwood was anxious to make some magnificent gesture to show how pleased he was to have his brother back again, and Anthony was just as determined to show that the Haverford connection had an equal claim to flamboyant gestures. ”
Eleanor snorted. “Men,” she repeated.
“It all worked out in the end, and the bride and groom are very happy.”
Cherry is reporting on the wedding of Dom Finchley and Chloe Tavistock, from my story Lord Cuckoo Comes Home, out in the anthology Desperate Daughters on 8th May. The anthology has nine stories, all centred around the York Season and the daughters and other family connections of the dowager Countess of Seahaven.
See more about Lord Cuckoo Comes Home
See more about Desperate Daughters
Order Desperate Daughters at the preorder price of only 99c
The lady wants to be good.
Lady Imogen has reformed! She’s witty, from an old Irish family, in pursuit of a fine man to marry—and she swears she’ll never indulge in her little…um…peccadilloes again!
She’s arrived in Brighton with her two sisters and her cousin for the Season—and she’ll ignore anyone who gossips about Grandpapa’s notorious odd talents—or her own tiny scandal. After all, a lady can change.
The gentleman wants revenge.
Returning home after the wars, Lex Rowlandson, the Earl of Martindale, vows to find the cur who sold him and his father into the hell of Napoleon’s dungeons.
With a few clues to the identity of the creature who stole years from his life and caused the death of his father, Lex seeks out suspects at a Brighton ball. But he’s captured by the effervescent woman whose smiles light the dark corners of his heart.
He should not be distracted from his cause. Yet he cannot resist the lure of Imogen’s charm. When he witnesses her plight at the hands of one fellow who threatens her reputation, Lex saves it—and marries her.
Falling in love with her husband, Imogen sees that the best way to thank him for saving her is to commit the very crime she vowed never to repeat.
But can a man whose life was stolen from him love a wife whose skill is taking from others what is not hers?
Release Date: March 8
Order now on: https://amzn.to/3Hfcm0G
“You are a rare woman. And I applaud you.” He brushed the pad of his thumb over her lips. “Will you come see me to the door?”
His sweetness and his sorrow filled her with relief. “If you tell me when I’ll see you again.”
He tossed his head back and forth as if he considered the possibility. Then he threw her a lop-sided grin. “I will if you kiss me goodbye.”
“Now?” She feigned horror, a hand to her throat.
“The best time.”
She threw back her head to laugh. “Such bribery.”
“Larceny with good purpose. To see you laugh is worth every crime.”
She clutched the superfine of his frock coat. Such endearments lifted her to heaven. “Be careful, sir. You turn my head.”
“I mean to.” He caught her against him, mid-chuckle. His body was made of iron, rippling massive heat that zipped through her like shards of desire. “Though I never planned it. I find that you call to me. Irresistible Imogen. I want to make you laugh each day.”
“And each night, too?”
“Do, but give me the chance,” he murmured as he threaded his fingers up into her hair and cupped her throat. He kissed her with a bright hot promise of delight. His lips eager and searching, hard with need. And oh, such delicious madness, pressing her flesh to his.
He broke away with a start and steadied her on her feet. “Oh, Imogen, tonight, any night, I want to kiss you again.” He stepped away, his brown eyes bright, his countenance tight with control. Then he grinned. And winked at her. And spun off down the stairs.
Cerise DeLand loves to write about dashing heroes and the sassy women they adore.
But I bet you knew that!
Did you know that she’s known for her poetic elegance and accuracy of detail?
That she’s an award-winning author of more than 40 novels and was first published in 1991 by Kensington, then Pocket Books, later by St. Martin’s Press and independent presses?
That her books have been monthly selections of the Doubleday Book Club and the Mystery Guild? Right. And she’s won awards. Lots of them. Need details? Write to her. She’ll send you the list!
https://cerisedeland.com/contact/
As a reader, how do you feel about flashbacks? Do you use them as an author? Please feel free to share them in the comments. I’m going to make quite heavy use of them in one of my current works in progress, when my hero (a former expeditionary officer and current Thames Police Surveyor) and my heroine (a former freedom fighter and current assassin) look back on their joint past. The first flashback is a dream. Afterwards, Matt realises that, when a fellow officer claimed to have been Ellie’s lover (and not the first) before Matt, he lied.
It was a dream, but it was also a memory, complete with sights, scents, sound, touch and taste.
The wind cut through the camp, howling between the tents, so that canvas flapped and poles creaked. The men on watch were out in it, poor buggers, and would likely still be on duty for the storm it presaged. The horses in their picket line would also have to take whatever nature chose to throw at them. Everyone else was hunkered down.
Except Matt. Matt was using the skills he’d learned in the slums and honed as an exploring officer in the motley group known as Lion’s Zoo because their major’s nickname was Lion. He was ghosting through the camp, silent and stealthy despite the lack of observers.
There. His destination. A small tent sheltered in the l-shape formed by the major’s two tents—his quarters and his command station.
Matt’s care increased. He was here by invitation, but didn’t fancy explaining himself to the major. Besides, he needed to be careful of Ellie’s reputation.
Thanks to Major Ruthford’s influence, backed by his and Bear’s muscle and Chameleon’s lethal reputation, she had been accepted as a warrior and off-limits for dalliance. His pulse kicked up at the notion that she had chosen him to be her lover. No one could know, or even Lion’s Zoo could not keep her safe.
From outside her tent flap, he murmured her name, and then he was inside.
In the way of dreams, it skipped forward—past the conversation, the kissing, the cuddling. Past her shy admission that this was her first time. Past his labours to prepare her, efforts that brought her to her climax and over, and that raised his own arousal to a peak he’d never before known.
In the dream, he was entering her for the first time. She was slick with need, but tight and tense, and his control was held by a thread. “Relax,” he told her, and logic told him to get the pain over. Surge inside. Sheath himself fully in her welcoming warmth. Or was it his own self need that drove him?
He didn’t know. Couldn’t think. Could only hold her close, kiss her with all the feelings he was afraid to acknowledge, and thrust through the resistance until he was buried balls deep, shuddering with the effort to hold still while she froze in pain and clenched against the invasion.
Eleanor kept peeking at her lover over the rim of her tea cup. Strictly speaking, she supposed, he was her betrothed. Certainly, he had stated his intention to marry her. It had been thrilling, at the time.
“I want to take you back to the townhouse you have rented, lock all the doors, take you to bed, and show you those young people at the farmhouse had no expertise in what they were doing. And after that, I want to marry you, make you my duchess, and spend the rest of my life loving you.”
She supposed, in accepting his invitation, she had replied, in a way. She would be his wife and his duchess soon. But meanwhile, she had taken a lover for the first time in her life, and she intended to enjoy the naughtiness of it.
“A penny for your thoughts, my love,” James said.
Eleanor felt the heat rise. She must be bright scarlet. She had been thinking about precisely how naughty James had been when he took her to bed not three hours ago.
She had been nervous, and no wonder. Though she had been a wife for thirty-six years and had given birth to two sons, both now adults, she knew next to nothing about bed sports. Just what she had picked up from the gossip of wives who had been more fortunate than she. Since Haverford appeared to have no trouble attracting women of every class, she had always wondered if some sort of a lack in her caused his perfunctory attention to bedding her, as if it was a tedious duty to be completed as quickly as possible.
“I don’t know what to do,” she had told James, shyly, as he helped her out of her clothing. He was kissing her back, going lower with each button opened, and there were a lot of buttons. But at her comment, he stopped. “Anything you wish, Eleanor,” he said.
“But I don’t know what to wish,” she objected, annoyed at herself for her own ignorance. She should have asked more questions when the conversation turned risque, instead of reminding those present that they were ladies by introducing another topic of conversation.
James turned her in his arms so that she was facing him. He had removed his outer clothing, and his shirt gaped at the neck. She stared at a patch of dark chest hair, wondering if it would be soft or wiry to the touch.
“Tell me what troubles you, my love. If you wish, we can wait until we are wed.”
For pique at his obtuseness, and to distract him, she almost reminded him that he had not proposed and she had not accepted. But that was hardly relevant to her dilemma. “I want us to be lovers, James. Now. Today, that is. But I have never done this before. Haverford never…” She took a deep breath and shut her eyes so that she did not have to seem him. That made it easier to explain. “In my marriage, I waited in bed. He visited. He pulled back the sheets, climbed on top, pushed himself into me, heaved a few times until he was done, and then left. I know there is more, and I trust you to show me, but James!” Her voice rose into a wail. “You have to tell me what to do!”
His voice was strained when he replied. “Give me a minute, beloved. I am fighting the urge to mount horse immediately, ride to Kent, fetch your husband out of his tomb, and kill him again.”
Her eyes flew open. Her lover’s face looked as if it had been hewn from granite, and his eyes blazed. His anger reassured her. James didn’t believe that her dismal experience of marital relations had been her fault. “A better revenge, I suspect, would be to thoroughly tup his wife.”
He laughed at that. “True. And show her the many ways that our bodies can give one another pleasure. Let me take you to Heaven, Eleanor. You don’t need to do a thing, but anything that occurs to you is good, too. Do whatever pleases you. And if anything I do does not please you, then tell me, and I will stop.”
It had worked. And it proved to be true that a man of his age had stamina and staying power. She smiled at her lover as she recalled her three occasions of pure bliss before he found his own completion. “I was thinking that we should finish our tea then go back to bed and do it all again,” she said.
The proposition above is what James, the Duke of Winshire, said to Eleanor, the Duchess of Haverford, towards the end of Paradise At Last. Come on! It’s hardly a spoiler. You knew they were going to end up together, but what a journey they had to get there! Between the end of the last chapter of that book and the Epilogue that follows (a letter to her son who is on holiday in Europe), they clearly followed through on James’s suggestion, but I don’t show that in the book. So here is part of that scene. I left the bedroom door shut for the crucial part, because Eleanor is, after all, a lady and little shy about such things. Except, as it turns out, with James.
Paradise At Last is being published on March 15th, as part of Paradise Triptych, and is available on preorder. Order now on https://books2read.com/Triptych
Long ago, when they were young, James and Eleanor were deeply in love. But their families tore them apart and they went on to marry other people.
James Winderfield yearns to end a long journey in the arms of his loving family. But his father’s agents offer the exiled prodigal forgiveness and a place in Society — if he abandons his foreign-born wife and children to return to England.
With her husband away, Mahzad faces revolt, invasion and betrayal in the mountain kingdom they built together. A queen without her king, she will not allow their dream and their family to be destroyed.
But the greatest threats to their marriage and their lives together is the widening distance between them. To win Paradise, they must face the truths in their hearts.
In 1812, the suitor Eleanor’s father rejected in favour of the Duke of Haverford has returned to England. He has been away for thirty-two years, and has returned a widower, and the father of ten children.
As the year passes, various events prompt Eleanor to turn to her box of keepsakes, which recall the momentous events of her life.
Paradise Lost is a series of vignettes grounded in 1812, in which Eleanor relives those memories.
Now Haverford is deceased nothing stands between the Duchess of Haverford and the Duke of Winshire. Except that James has not forgiven Eleanor for putting the dynasty of the Haverfords ahead of his niece’s happiness.
Can two star-crossed lovers find their happiness at last? Or will their own pride or the villain who wants to destroy the Haverfords stand in their way?
Paradise Triptych contains two novella and a set of memoirs: Paradise Regained (already published), Paradise Lost (distributed to my newsletter subscribers) and Paradise At Last (new for this collection).
Preorder now for 15th March: https://books2read.com/Triptych
I was trying to work out the length of a sea journey from the borderlands with Scotland on the east coast to near Bristol in the west, and I came across a modern sailing distance calculator, which was just the thing. It allows you to plot your course, and then tells you the nautical miles. From there, it’s a simple (hah!) matter of working out the likely speed of your craft, taking into account the season (and therefore the weather and the prevailing winds and currents), the likelihood of pirates and storms, and any time in port along the way. And there you have it.
You’re welcome.
https://plainsailing.com/sailing-distance-calculator
See also my other posts on this perennial topic:
Average travelling times in the Regency
Travel times from port to port in the Mediterranean in the Regency
Characters can’t be perfect, or there isn’t any story, but the flaws and idiosyncrasies that make them human need to be believable, and possibly endearing. This week, I’m sharing a piece from one of my current works in progress, called either Catch the Wind or One Hour in Freedom, in which my hero and heroine are trying to enter a building without being seen. If you have a passage to share that shows a character’s flaws, please include it in the comments.
Matt’s eye caught movement on a rooftop overlooking the street they were on. “Stop!” he commanded, drawing her under the awning of a shop. She followed his gaze, then turned worried eyes to him.
“The building opposite is the one that belongs to my cousin.”
“Then we had better find out who those people are and what they are looking for,” Matt replied. “First, though, is there a back way into the warehouse?”
He knew she would know. Ellie would never have left her daughter in a place she had not thoroughly scouted. Undoubtedly, she knew every path in and out of all the buildings for streets around.
Her mischievous smile confirmed his assessment, though it didn’t touch the worry in her eyes. “Not exactly. Are you still uneasy about heights?”
She tugged on his hand, and he followed her back the way they had come, but only until they could no longer see the observers on the roof.
Across the road and down a little alley between buildings, so narrow that the top levels cut out the daylight. When someone came towards them, Matt had to drop back so they could pass single file, and even then, both they and the other person had to press themselves against the buildings.
Ellie stopped a few yards further on and watched the passerby. He was outlined against the light at the mouth of the alley and then gone. He hadn’t looked back.
As soon as he was out of sight, Ellie opened a door onto a narrow stairwell. Matt followed her inside with a sinking feeling. They were several buildings from Ellie’s cousin’s warehouse, and there were at least two alleys between them and their destination.
Sure enough, they came out on the roof, several floors higher than the observers across the road.
“I am not afraid of heights,” Matt declared. Heights scared him witless.
Ellie had pulled out a plank half buried in rubbish just behind the parapet. Oh, God.
“Help me with this?” she asked.
He took one end of the plank, then helped her push it out until it sat across the alley to the next building.
He thought he was maintaining a stolid expression, but perhaps not, for Ellie took a good look at him and said, “If you want to meet me in the street in thirty minutes, I can do this.”
“I’m coming with you,” Matt insisted, as his gut urged him to let her go on her own.
She didn’t argue, but leapt up on the parapet and ran lightly across the plank to the next roof.
Matt climbed up a little more slowly. Don’t look down. Don’t look down. It’s only two or three paces. You can do this.
Five steps, to be precise, though none of them were long enough to be called a pace. His feet felt like lead and his hips and knees didn’t want to bend. He reached the other roof and jumped from the parapet, his legs nearly buckling as they suddenly loosened. Sweat rolled from his brow and he was shaking all over. He braced himself. There was at least one more alley to cross.
“Next?” He asked, with a fair assumption of calm.
“Two more crosses,” Ellie told him. “The next building is lower, so we need to go down several floors.” She led the way into another stairwell, and then along a hall and through a huge echoing storage place that was currently empty. On the far side of the room, she stopped at a window that was just a rectangular hole in the wall, the glass and frame long gone.
“The alley is much narrower, so it is just a step from one window to another,” she said, and she took that step and dropped before his eyes. He darted forward in a futile effort to catch her, but she halted before he reached the hole.
There she was, perched on a narrow ledge, busy pushing up a sash window. She was right. Once the window was up, all he had to do was step across. It wasn’t even a long step, but every particle of his body was conscious of the drop below.
He took a deep breath and let it out, then took the step.
Two alleys crossed, and he had not shamed himself in front of Ellie. She knew, of course, that he had some difficulty. He hoped she had no idea how much. He hoped he could nerve himself to make the last cross.
(Or brandy, to be precise. This is another excerpt post from Paradise at Last, which will be published as part of Paradise Triptych. It’s on preorder now and out in three weeks. In the excerpt, Eleanor has been sitting by Cherry’s bedside.)
When the clock struck the hour—three bongs—Ruth yawned and stood. “Go to bed, Your Grace. Get some sleep. Please send someone to sit with these two, and I will go to bed myself.”
Eleanor found a footman in the hall, waiting to take messages. She told him to find someone to replace Lady Asbury, and he said Lady Rosemary had asked to be fetched. He set off to knock on the lady’s door.
When he was out of sight, Eleanor realised that she had no idea which bedchamber she had been assigned. She set off for the guest wing on the other side of the stairwell, hoping a footman might be awake there to direct her. But as she crossed the upper landing, she saw light spilling from a doorway downstairs. Someone was in the drawing room.
Perhaps it was Rosemary. Eleanor should check, and if so, send her up to Ruth.
But when she entered the room, she found James sitting, staring into the embers, deep in thought. He must’ve heard her in the doorway, for he turned, stood, and took a step towards her. Whatever he saw on her face, he held out his arms and Eleanor ran into them and burst into tears.
***
James had no idea what kind of nonsense he spouted as he held Eleanor tenderly, supporting her weight with his arms around her, patting her back, letting the long hours of iron control loose in an abandonment of grief.
He had heard the reports, how she had taken charge at the scene of the accident. She did everything that needed to be done, except, perhaps, she could have thought to send someone after the assailant. All the reports he had received so far said the same thing—no one had a single clue that led anywhere.
He was thinking as a military commander. Eleanor’s focus was on Cherry, as it should have been—on getting her to help as quickly as possible. Then she spent fifteen hours supporting Cherry and Haverford through their ordeal—always calm, always encouraging, Ruth had said when he had met her on her way to bed.
The respect she had won from him since his return to England four years ago, that he thought lost, had returned full force.
Eventually, the stormy tears settled to a quieter weeping. He coaxed her to the chair by the fire and sat, settling her on his knee. He wiped her eyes with his handkerchief. She rested against him, totally spent, occasionally hiccupping another sob. “I have made your shoulder all wet,” she murmured.
“Not for the first time,” James assured her. “I have four daughters, remember.” Although it had been years since his had been their favoured shoulder when life was too cruel to bear. He had not held a woman in his arms for a long time, and this one was not his daughter. Tired as he was, his body reminded him that he desired her.
He shifted her slightly away from the evidence of his inappropriate response. “Would you like a port or a brandy? Something to help you sleep?”
She chuckled. “I will sleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. But I don’t know which room my things are in. I saw the light and came to see if it was someone who could direct me.” She reached and cupped his face with her hand, and he had to exert an iron control not to turn his mouth into her palm and kiss it. He would not seduce her while she was so emotionally raw.
And his mind raced on to a future time, when she was not so vulnerable. For he would seduce her. Yes, and marry her, too, if she would have him.
She was speaking again, and he must pay attention. “I did not intend to weep all over you. I apologise, James.”
“It was my privilege. You have carried your family today; I am proud to be the person you did not have to be strong for. I think, perhaps, you do not realise how amazing you are, for it is what you always do. It is I who should apologise to you, for my cruel words and my coldness after your mistake with Cherry and your son. I hope you will forgive me for being such a self-righteous idiot. My female relatives have pointed out that I am not so perfect myself that I have a right to demand perfection from my friends. Can we be friends again, Eleanor? Will you forgive me?”
The tears welled again but she smiled as she dashed at them with his handkerchief. “I am not usually such a watering pot,” she complained. “James, if you can forgive me, I can forgive you.