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Tea with Arial

 

This is an excerpt post from Lady Beast’s Bridegroom, now on preorder on Amazon, and out on 16 February. My heroine Arial has been the victim of a scurrilous caricature campaign. Then our Duchess throws the weight of her approval behind Arial and her husband. (This is not a scene in which they have tea, but I like to imagine that she invited Arial to visit shortly after.) The scene begins with Peter showing Arial the caricatures.

Arial raised her eyebrows at the pictures and blushed at the indecent ones. She was inclined, though, to be optimistic about their likely impact. “They have gone too far, Peter.” She raised one of the worst and put it down again. “Our friends will be as indignant as you are, but even those who are mere acquaintances will recognize these as outrageous rubbish. The viciousness of the lies may work in our favor by garnering us the sympathy of Society’s leaders. After all, if people can be made outcasts on the basis of provable fictions, nobody is safe.”

Peter shook his head, doubtful. However, on the drive through Hyde Park and at the theater that evening, many people approached with invitations, compliments on Arial’s gown or her mask, and even outright statements of support. Even one of the patronesses of hallowed Almack’s sought them out to assure Arial that she would be sent tickets.

Then the Duchess of Winshire, one of society’s most influential matrons, cast the weight of her reputation on their side. She had one of her stepsons escort her to the Ransomes’ theater box, where she reminded Peter that she had known his mother. She further claimed to have kissed Arial when she was a baby. She took a seat next to Arial, in full view of the rest of the theater, chatting for several minutes.

When she stood to leave, she said, “You are doing the right thing, my dear Lady Ransome. Facing down these ridiculous calumnies is your best option. It is unpleasant, I know, and takes courage, but I and my friends have seen that you have plenty of courage and are of good character, besides.”

She held out her hand to Peter. “You have found yourself a treasure, Lord Ransome. Young ladies who are beautiful on the outside are common enough in Society. Young ladies who are brave, wise, and honorable are much rarer—and my friend Cordelia Deerhaven assures me your wife is all three.”

Peter bowed and mimed a kiss above the back of the duchess’s hand. “I am fully sensible of how fortunate I am, Your Grace. My wife is a delight to my eyes as well as a true friend and partner.”

“Good answer,” the duchess replied. “Come along, Drew. Your father will wonder what is keeping us.”

 

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Spotlight on Three Ships and The Beau of Christmas Past in Belles & Beaux

Three Ships: Elizabeth Ellen Carter

Laura Winter lives on a tidal island that is home to a lighthouse. On a late November day, a violent storm brings not only the handsome Lieutenant Michael Renten but also a clutch of pirates bent on wreaking mischief.

My comments: As always, Elizabeth has given us an adventure with heart-stopping danger and great rewards at the end. I love her wry humour, and very much enjoyed Whiskey the cat, but the stars of the show were our heroine Laura and the brave lieutenant. Bravo!

The Beau of Christmas Past: Cerise DeLand

Years ago, Alyssa and Gabriel were caught enjoying a Christmas kiss, which broke Alyssa’s betrothal to another man, and caused the pair to be exiled, far from their families and one another. Home for Christmas, will they find the past something to be overcome? Or fulfilled?

My comments: Cerise has a unique take on a common trope. He feels guilty for the kiss that ruined her life. She has quite a different take on what happens. I thoroughly enjoyed this story about two likeable people separated by interfering family.

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First look at a character on WIP Wednesday

This is an excerpt from Zara’s Locket, my story in Belles & Beaux, which is being published tomorrow. It squeaks in as a work-in-progress on a technicality, being finished but not yet distributed to readers. But meet my heroine, anyway.

Someone had trashed the small windowless room the Strickland household provided for the comfort of their governesses.

At first, Zahrah was inclined to blame her charges. The three children currently consigned to her care were hell-spawn—encouraged in their defiant disobedience by parents who chose to believe them angels, and to ignore any evidence to the contrary.

However, even their most strenuous efforts to chase her away had resulted in nothing worse than frogs in her shoes, mud puddles in her bed, and a bucket of slops balanced on a door. And their behavior had improved since she began telling them stories at bedtime on any day in which they had all three attended their lessons and displayed the manners they had formerly trotted out only with their parents and their older brothers and sisters.

At the moment, with Christmas approaching, she had an extra carrot to offer them. The Strickland family did not decorate for Christmas, but Zahrah had asked and received permission to decorate the nursery and schoolroom, and the children were looking forward to it, and so was Zahrah. It would make up for not being with those she loved for the festival.

Zahrah sorted her way through the mess. Her mirror broken. Ink thrown onto a watercolor she had tacked to the wall. Her clothes not just tossed around, but ripped apart. Worse still, pages torn from her few personal books and other pages defaced with splotches of ink.

This was not the children. They lacked the strength for such destruction. And they didn’t, she was certain, hide this degree of spite.

It could have been a servant, she supposed. They were stand-offish and unpleasant, but none hated her, or had cause to.

The wooden box her brother had made to give her on her last birthday lay in pieces, its contents gone, or hidden in the clutter, perhaps. The bits and pieces were mostly worthless to someone else. Cheap pieces of jeweler suitable for a governess, most of them with happy memories of the person who gave them to her, or the occasion on which she bought them. The latest letter from her mother, set aside for a rereading. A button that she had not yet had time to sew on a cuff.

And her locket. That was the one item she hated to lose. Her father had commissioned it for her sixteenth birthday, and she had worn it daily ever since. She had only taken it off because the catch had been broken in the scuffle with Gerard Strickland.

The oldest Strickland son had been brooding for the past two weeks, ever since his ambush on her had resulted in a threat to his person, backed up by the knife she always carried. Yes, and he had been muttering threats when none of the other Stricklands were around to hear.

She had taken no notice. What could he do, after all?

Well. Now she knew.

For more about the stories in Belles & Beaux, and for preorder links, see the project page on the Bluestocking Belles website.

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Tea with Simon

Simon Marshall was nervous. He had drawn several designs to show the Duke and Duchess of Winshire, and now he was to present them. They were ordering a signet ring to mark the sixteenth birthday of the duke’s nephew, and Simon had made hundreds, perhaps thousands, or rings, many of them signets. The status of the clients, however, made this one of his most important jobs ever.

Not as important as the locket the duke’s dearest friend had commissioned for another sixteenth birthday some eight years ago. That locket, rescued from a thief, had reunited him with Zara, his darling wife of just a few months.

Zara stood somewhat in the relation of a godchild to the duke, and had assured him that the august couple were very nice. He knew that. He had met them at his wedding and again when they summoned him to Winshire House to commission the ring.

She also said his designs were magnificent. She was prejudiced in his favour, and thought everything he made to be beautiful. They were acceptable. Any one of them would work to make both an attractive ring and a clear and identifiable impression in wax—a mark that signified Elias, Lord Bentham, the youth who would receive the ring.

He held the courtesy title of viscount, as heir to the Earl of Lechton, would one day succeed to his father’s title and wear the ring that now graced the earl’s finger. “Long may that day be in coming,” the duchess had said. “In the meanwhile, my husband’s family has formed the habit of gifting their sons a signet ring when they turn sixteen.”

“A tradition,” the duke added, giving his wife a look full of affection, “that we will in future extend to daughters, at my duchess’s behest.”

Simon had asked a few questions about the Lechton coat of arms and the young recipient’s interests.

Dozens of drawings had been narrowed down to three designs. One contained the elements of the Lechton heraldic symbols that came from the Bentham title: a sword and a stylised fish. One was a representation of a star cluster, since Bentham had a passion for astrology. And one combined the two: a star crossed by a sword.

As the butler announced him, he took a deep breath and stepped into a pretty parlour, tastefully furnished, where the duke and duchess greeted him with warm smiles.

The duchess invited him to sit. The duke asked after his wife. The duchess poured him a cup of tea. Simon found himself relaxing.

Then the duke gestured to the folder Simon had put on the table before him. “Your designs?” His Grace asked. “Would you like to explain them to us, Mr Marshall?”

“No, Your Grace,” Simon said, then blushed at the look of surprise on the duke’s face and explained. “I believe, Your Grace, that if they need to be explained, they are not good enough.”

The duke nodded, and the duchess smiled. “That makes perfect sense, Mr Marshall. My husband and I shall look at what you have brought us, then, while you serve yourself one of Fournier’s little cakes and enjoy it with your tea.”

Simon Marshall is the hero of Zara’s Locket, my story in the new Bluestocking Belles collection, Belles & Beaux. Belles & Beaux is on preorder at the sale price of 99c, and is published next week. Find out more on the Bluestocking Belles website.

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Spotlight on Room at the Inn and Zara’s Locket in Belles & Beaux

Room at the Inn: By Caroline Warfield

A fatherless child requires a village to care for it, provided they have room in their hearts. When a cold-hearted baroness makes it impossible for the tenants of Little Hocking to care for one little boy, the Honorable Declan Alworth steps up to make room in his heart and his home for the little treasure. How can the vicar’s niece, Maera Willis, resist either one of them?

My comments: I certainly couldn’t resist them. I have never read a story by Caroline where I didn’t love both the heroine and the hero. This hero is a particularly lovely one. Caroline has a deft touch with a thoroughly satisfying short story, and Room at the Inn is a gem.

Zara’s Locket: By Jude Knight

A run-in with the adult son of the household leads to dismissal for governess Zahrah ibnit Yousef, or Zara MacLaren as the household knows her. Turned out on a Christmas Eve, her circumstances go from bad to worse when she is robbed and then arrested.

Goldsmith and jeweler Simon Marshall recognizes the locket a young aristocrat tries to sell, and it leads him on a hunt for Zara, the friend of his childhood. He finds her. He finds trouble, too, and joins her in her incarceration.

They need a Christmas miracle. It will take a pair of charitable gaolers, a little Christmas cheer, and the timely intervention of family to bring this story to a happy ending.

No comment on this one. You’ll have to read it and decide for yourself.

Find out more

Read all about the set on the Bluestocking Belles website, and preorder at the special prerelease price.

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The origins of the Rom

I was looking up the name Egyptian, as applied to Romani travellers, and came across some recent research that set my off on a bit of a chase.

Egyptian and its derivative, gypsy, are seen by many Romani as insulting terms. My friend Anna, who is proud of her Rom heritage, tells me it is an outsider’s name, based on a false myth, and used to ‘other’ the Rom people from the time they spread through Europe in the early modern era.

Scientists have assumed India as the Romani place of origin for a while, based on language and a brief look at genetic patterns. In a new study of thirteen different groups from different parts of Europe, full genome sequencing has confirmed the assumption, and told us more.

The original population left northwestern India some 1,500 years ago, moving to the Balkans. They left in a single group from a place in what is today Punjab, and travelled through Central Asian and the middle East, losing close to half their number, and finally settling in what is now Bulgaria. There they stayed, until the early twelfth century, when they were on the move again, this time out into Europe in several directions. They reached Spain in the 15th century and England in the 16th.

The study also found that, while Western genes have entered Romani blood lines wherever the travellers have moved (in fact, they have more European genes than South Asian), such mixing with local populations has happened more in some places, and in some times, than others. The chart below is taken from the research paper, and shows particular shared gene sequences by place of origin and length– a) for Europe and b) for South Asia.

https://bmcgenomdata.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12863-017-0547-x#Fig7

Of course, I then had to look for the story. They left India as the late classical period ended in a series of wars and invasions. They began to leave the Balkans when the Byzantine Empire took over Bulgaria, during a century of disruption and chaos. They reached Spain and Northern Europe at about the time that the Ottomans took over from the Byzantines. So many stories, waiting to be told!

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Stereotyping on WIP Wednesday

This charming English cottage was once the village gaol and police station. It dates from 1859, But I like to think that the Barkers, bless them, had a similarly nice situation.

In Zara’s Locket, my heroine is arrested because she has brown skin and black hair, is bedraggled after being caught in the rain and running away from an assailant, is on foot, and has money.

This is evidence, think the villagers, that she must be a thief.

The village lockup was at least dry, and the constable’s wife brought Zahrah a couple of warm blankets as well as a pot of tea and two large slices of fresh bread with cheese. “For while you are in my husband’s custody, you are his responsibility, and I won’t have you starving to death or shivering your way into an ague,” she insisted.

For all her brisk manner and her practical reasoning, her eyes were kind, and she thawed still further when Zahrah thanked her. “Someone taught you nice manners, even if you are an Egyptian and a thief.”

“My father was born in Egypt, but my mother is as English as you are, Mrs. Barker,” Zahrah said. “And I am no thief. The money was my own, my pay from the position I left this morning, and all that I have left after I was accosted by an actual thief.”

She had told the constable that when he arrested her. She had limped into the village, her gown torn, her hair a bedraggled mess, and attempted to use a silver crown to pay for a room at the inn. The innkeeper refused to believe she had come by it honestly, and the righteous citizens present in the taproom dragged her to the Barkers’ house and insisted that the constable lock her up.

“As to that,” Mrs. Barker replied, “you can tell the magistrate all about it, but not until after Christmas, for he has gone to visit his daughter and her children in Birmingham, bless the dear sprouts. Meanwhile, I will make sure you have a share of our meals, and you will have a warm bed out of the rain. If you would like, we can decorate in here for Christmas! Now don’t you worry, dearie. Sir William—that’s the magistrate—he’ll sort it all out when he returns.”

She bustled off, closing and locking the door between the lockup and the Barkers’ family quarters. The lockup was divided into three spaces. Bars formed two cells for prisoners, and the rest of the room held a table, a chair, a bookshelf, and a fireplace.

The constable was not, at the moment, in the room. He had locked Zahrah into one of the cells, chivvied the jeering onlookers out through the outside door, and disappeared through the inner one.

He had not returned, but Mrs. Barker had lit the fire when she came with her tea tray, blankets, and good advice. The woman was clearly in favor of looking on the bright side, and she was not wrong. Zahrah was grateful for food and shelter.

Grateful, too, that if English justice proved to be unreasonable, at least she would not be hanged out of hand. She would undoubtedly have time to get a message to her family, if she could find a way to pay the postage. Perhaps she could sell her boots? Perhaps Mrs. Barker would help her?

She regretted the loss of her book, though with the storm outside making the sky dark, reading was probably not an option. Not without a good lamp, and she lacked even a candle.

(The term Egyptian–short form, gypsy–is an outsiders’ name for the Romani, and many Rom find it insulting. It is based on the mistaken belief that they were originally from Egypt.)

Zara’s Locket is part of the Belles & Beaux collection, available to order for the special preorder price of 99c.

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Tea with Seraphina

The Duchess of Winshire’s personal butler ushered the pretty young woman into Her Grace’s presence. “Lady Lancelot Versey, Your Grace,” he announced. “Also Miss Frogmore, Miss Helena Frogmore, and Lord Frogmore.”

Lord Frogmore was carried by his nursemaid, and the two little girls each held a hand of their governess, though Eleanor had seen Lady Lance out walking with the children and her new husband with him carrying the little heir to her first husband, and her hand in hand with the children. Today, clearly, they were all on their best behaviour. All of them curtseyed, the little girls very prettily.

“You are all very welcome,” Eleanor told them. “Girls, I have had a table set for you in the window. There is a chair for little Harry, and a tea party just for the three of you and your attendants. Lady Lance, do take a seat and tell me how my godson fares. I do not need to ask if he makes you happy. You shine with it.”

The duchess had had little to do with Lady Lance’s vindication in the eyes of Society, beyond giving her own approval, but her son and daughter-in-law had been involved, and Eleanor had certainly approved of the poor young lady’s reinstatement and the downfall of the villains who had maligned her. “Tea, my dear?” she asked.

What follows is an excerpt from The Talons of a Lyon, finished today with THE END on the last scene, and being published in April by Dragonblade.

“Lance shall be waiting for us at the ball,” Elaine said. “I daresay he shall be most impressed with how lovely you are in that color, Seraphina.”

Sure enough, Lord Lancelot was waiting on the steps of the grand house when their carriage drove in. Seraphina guessed that Elaine was right, given that his jaw dropped and his eyes widened when he saw her.

He recovered quickly, and hurried down the steps to offer her one arm and Mrs Worthington the other. “I shall be the envy of every man here,” he declared. “Two such lovely ladies on my arms! I shall probably be cashiered from my club for greed.”

Mrs Worthington rapped his arm with her fan and told him he was a cheeky boy.

They passed through the receiving line, being greeted by the duchess herself and several other ladies who were on the board of the charity for whom the ball was raising funds. The duchess greeted Mrs Worthington and the Barkers as friends, and Lord Barker introduced Seraphina.

Around them, other conversations stopped. While the Verseys’ support had won Seraphina a conditional acceptance in Society, the influence of the Duchess of Winshire was enormous. What she said next could mean total success or abject failure.

“Lady Frogmore, I am charmed to meet you at last. I have been hearing about your sufferings, and I am so sorry I was not aware earlier. You may be certain of my support, my dear. Indeed, we are all agreed, ladies, are we not?”

The other ladies on the board nodded, and all had something pleasant to say to Seraphina as her party passed along the line.

The ballroom was enormous, magnificent, and very full. “Anyone who can afford the price of a ticket can come,” Elaine told Seraphina. “Despite that, even people who generally prefer more exclusive entertainments still want to be seen here, for the duchess is much admired. Though there are people like Percy and Aurelia who would rather give her a donation for her cause and stay home.”

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Spotlight on Flowers for His Lady and An Angel’s Promise in Belles & Beaux

Flowers for His Lady: By Alina K. Field

Shamed into spinsterhood by a fall from grace years earlier, Eleanor Gurnwood has found a home for herself in the tiny village of Upper Upton, and a quirky, sometimes annoying family in the villagers she’s been serving as her vicar-brother’s minion. Now, with his rising career, she’s faced with a choice: succumb to his pressure to keep house for him elsewhere or stay on in genteel poverty with her new “family”.

For now, she has only one goal in sight: to make this year’s Christmas service beautiful for the parishioners of St. Tancred’s. Until the Christmas eve when a man from her past rides in on a white horse.

Major Sir Bramwell Huxley, late of his Majesty’s 95th Foot, has ventured on one last mission, a quest for a Christmas miracle: finding the lady he abandoned before leaving for Waterloo.

My comments:

I love second-chance love stories, and Alina has given us a delightful one. The device of an interfering family member who secretly intercepts messages is managed here with a deft hand. No long drawn-out disbelief once the machinations are disclosed. And the romantic gesture that Bram makes to win his loved one warmed my heart. I’m sure it will warm yours.

An Angel’s Promise: By Rue Allyn

Artis MacKai might be only a little girl, but she is not going to let a blizzard, wolves, or a deadly enemy stop her from rescuing the stolen mare and foal who are the hope of her family. It will take the spirits of her parents, a determined boy, and her desperate brother to save her.

My comments:

True love never dies in this little story by Rue Allyn. The love story of Artis’s parents doesn’t end when they are foully murdered. Nor does their love for their children. Artis and the boy she finds in the blizzard engaged my sympathy from the first. This story was unexpected, since the heroine was only eight, but it truly deserves its place in this set. It is a heartwarming tale of love, courage, and determination. And just long enough to read with a cup of coffee and a piece of Christmas cake.

Find out more

Read all about the set on the Bluestocking Belles website, and preorder at the special prerelease price.