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The Rakehell in Fact and Fiction

A Rake’s Progress, Hogarth (1732-33). This progress was a series of eight paintings by William Hogarth showing the decline and fall of a man who wastes his money on luxurious living, sex, and gambling.

In modern historical romantic fiction, the hero is often described as a rake. Frequently, he has the reputation but not the behaviour. He is either misunderstood, or he is deliberately hiding his true nature under a mask, perhaps for reasons of state.

Even the genuine player is not what they would have called a rakehell back in the day. He cats around, sleeping with multiple lovers (either sequentially or concurrently) or keeping a series of mistresses, or both. But when he falls in love with the heroine he puts all of that behind him, and—after undergoing various trials—becomes a faithful husband and devoted family man.

Yesterday’s rakehell was a sexual predator

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester was part of the Merry Gang, the original Restoration rakes who surrounded Charles II. He is known for his lovers, his poetry, his profligate behavior, and an unending stream of scandal. He is said to have been constantly drunk for five years, and died at only 33 years of age.

The Georgian and Regency rakehell was a far less benign figure. Back then, a rakehell was defined as a person who was lewd, debauched, and womanising. Rakes gambled, partied and drank hard, and they pursued their pleasures with cold calculation. To earn the name of rake or rakehell meant doing something outrageous—seducing innocents, conducting orgies in public, waving a public flag of corrupt behaviour under the noses of the keepers of moral outrage. For example, two of those who defined the term back in Restoration England simulated sex with one another while preaching naked to the crowd from an alehouse balcony.

Then, as now, rakes were self-centred narcissists who acknowledged no moral code, and no external restraint either. Their position in Society and their wealth meant they could ignore the law, and they didn’t care about public opinion. What they wanted, they took. A French tourist, writing towards the end of the 19th century said:

“What a character! How very English! . . . Unyielding pride, the desire to subjugate others, the provocative love of battle, the need for ascendency, these are his predominant features. Sensuality is but of secondary importance. . . In France libertines were frivolous fellows, whereas here they were mean brutes. . .”

Real rakehells were sexual predators and morally bankrupt, seducing innocents and partying their estates into debt and themselves into early graves. Not at all befitting a romantic hero!

Most 18th and early 19th century aristocrats (1700 to 1830) would not have called themselves rakes

Francis Dashwood, 11th Baron le Despencer, fount time between his political duties and his promiscuous sexual activities to found and run the Hellfire Club, whose members included some of the most powerful men of the day. They gathered to share their interests: sex, drink, food, dressing up, politics, blasphemy, and the occult.

Historians have commented that we see the long Georgian century through the lens of the Victorian era, and our impressions about moral behaviour are coloured by Victorian attitudes. The Georgians expected men to be sexually active, and where women were concerned, they worked on the philosophy that if no one knew about it, it wasn’t happening. If visiting brothels, taking a lover, or keeping a mistress, was all it took to be defined as a rake, most of the male half of Polite Society would be so called. And a fair percentage of the female half.

Drunkenness certainly didn’t make a man a rake—the consumption of alcohol recorded in diaries of the time is staggering. (Even taking into account that both glasses and bottles were smaller.) Fornication and adultery weren’t enough either, at least when conducted with a modicum of discretion (which meant in private or, if in public, then with other people who were doing the same thing).

In the late 18th and early 19th century, one in five women in London earned their living from the sex trade, guide books to the charms, locations, and prices of various sex workers were best-selling publications, men vied for the attention of the reigning courtesans of the day and of leading actresses, and both men and women chose their spouses for pedigree and social advantage then sought love elsewhere. The number of children born out of wedlock rose from four in 100 to seven (and dropped again in the Victorian). And many women had children who looked suspiciously unlike their husbands.

The more things change, the more they remain the same

Lord Byron. Described as mad, bad, and dangerous to know, Byron was admired for his poetry and derided for his lifestyle. When a series of love affairs turned sour, he married, but within a year his wife could no longer take his drinking, increased debt, and lustful ways (with men and women).

Some of today’s sports and entertainment stars, and spoilt sons of the wealthy, certainly deserve to be called rakehells in the original sense of the word. And just as the posted videos and images of today show how much the serial conquests are about showing off to the rake’s mates, the betting books that are often a feature of historical romances performed the same function back then.

Given access to social media, yesterday’s rakehell would be on Tinder.

Lord Byron earned the appellation ‘rake’ with many sexual escapades, including—so rumour had it—an affair with his sister. His drinking and gambling didn’t help, either. But none of these would have been particularly notable if they had not been carried out in public.

The Italian adventurer Giacomo Casanova mixed in the highest circles, and did not become notorious until he wrote the story of his life.

On the other hand, William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire, lived with his wife and his mistress, who was his wife’s best friend. The three did not share the details of their relationship with the wider world, so there was gossip, but not condemnation. Devonshire is also rumoured to have been one of Lady Jersey’s lovers (the mother of the Lady Jersey of Almack fame). He was not, at the time, regarded as a rake.

(This is an update of a post I wrote in 2016, when I published A Baron for Becky, in which an actual rake hires a mistress, falls in love with her, falls out of love with her, and arranges for her to marry his best friend. This year, I’m publishing the book in which he finally is the romantic hero.)

Also see a couple of posts on some of the consequences of the lifestyle:

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Celebrating To Tame the Wild Rake

First contest over. Congratulations to Rhonda, our winner for week one.

See the new post for the week two contest, discount and giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

First week prize is:

Grand prize for the full six weeks

Each entry also gets you a place in the draw for the Grand Prize, to be drawn in six weeks.

  • A $50 gift voucher, provided I can organise for it to be purchased in your country of origin
  • A print copy of To Wed a Proper Lady
  • A personal card signed by me and sent from New Zealand
  • A made to order story — the winner gives me a recipe (one character, a plot trope, and an object). I write the story and the winner gets an ecopy three months before I do anything else with it, and their name in the dedication once I publish.

This week’s discount is 99c for A Baron for Becky

Runs from 24 August to 30th August

Available at this price from Amazon: http://amzn.to/1C3hFNl

or from my SELZ bookshop: https://judeknight.selz.com/item/a-baron-for-becky

This week’s giveaway at my SELZ bookshop is Hearts in the Land of Ferns.

Runs from 24 August to 6th September. Pick up from my bookshop: https://judeknight.selz.com/item/hearts-in-the-land-of-ferns

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Pets on WIP Wednesday

Or perhaps animal companions is a better word, since if you want to share an excerpt in the comments, any animal is welcome. Mine is from the new story I’m writing for the next Bluestocking Belles collection.

The monkey did not want to stay in the basket. Chloe had to hold down the lid while pretending that nothing untoward was happening, and keeping an expression of polite interest on her face to convince those around her that she was listening to the speaker.

She didn’t dare look at Doro. Her friend had her eyes focused forward with a determination belied by her dancing eyes and the occasional tremble of her lips. If they met one another’s eyes, they would collapse into giggles as if they were twelve or thirteen again, and sharing a schoolroom.

Chloe needed to not think about Rosario the monkey or Doro’s amusement. Which meant, of course, that was all she could think about. The lecture might have helped, but the man currently currently droning on about the iniquities of the Habeas Corpus Act was too boring to actually make any sense.

The lid kicked under her hand. She bent over to rap it with her knuckles, just as the audience started clapping. The sudden roar of sound, of course, made Pepper even more desperate to get out of the basket.

Doro leaned closer and hissed out of the side of her mouth, “I did suggest the reform meeting might not be the best place for a monkey.”

“I couldn’t leave him behind,” Chloe protested. “Martin threatened to wring his neck when he caught him.”

Doro’s amusement bubbled out in a gurgle. “Rosario did steal Lord Tavistock’s cravat pin,” she pointed out.

It was true, but not the whole truth. In the two weeks since Chloe rescued Rosario from a mob of villagers, she had stolen several things a day, bringing them all to Chloe with every expectation of approval.

The villagers had told Martin, Chloe’s brother, the Viscount Tavistock, that the original owner was in prison awaiting trial for theft.

A cravat pin, two pair of cuff links, a cross belonging to cook, a pair of Chloe’s earrings, one jewelled buckle from a shoe, and a handful of other small objects witnessed to the thief’s small hairy accomplice.

“He will calm down by the time I am home,” Chloe assured Doro, hoping it was true.

The next speaker had risen, and someone behind demanded that the ladies be silent. Chloe looked around and winced an apology at the large man glaring from the next row of seats.

Two rows behind him, a fair-haired gentleman caught her gaze and winked one twinkling hazel eye.

The speaker, a little man with a bristling beard and burning eyes, began his oration. Boredom was not going to be an issue. A voice that was surely too large for the man’s body boomed through the room, calling for them to protest the iniquities under which the workers suffered. “I love the King as much as anyone,” he claimed, at full shout, “but his son plays at building pleasure palaces while his government oppresses his people and drives us into the workhouse.”

At the man’s rant, Rosario threw herself against the lid with renewed  determination, so that the basket rocked despite Chloe’s attempt to keep it still.

Behind them, someone booed. The speaker shouted him down, but a jeer came from another corner. Then the first missile flew, straight past Chloe’s head.

Chloe ducked and lost hold of the lid of the basket. Rosario shot out, into the crowd, yabbering her distress.

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Tea with Eleanor: Paradise Lost Episode 16

Eleanor turned. Behind her, a lady as exotic as her garden stood on the steps of a pavilion, raised to give a sheltered place from which to enjoy a view over the garden. “I am asleep and dreaming, I think,” the lady said, “for it is afternoon by the sun, and at such a time my garden is full of my children and my ladies.” She waved to indicate the deserted space, her lips gently curved and her face alight. “We should enjoy the peace while it lasts. Will you join me for coffee, or perhaps tea?”

Eleanor nodded and mounted the stairs to join her, following her into a space as alien as the garden, the stone-paved floor almost invisible under brightly coloured rugs and cushions. “Is it your dream or mine? For when I went to sleep, I was in Haverford House, in London. And this is not England.”

The lady raised both brows, and then let them drop, her face suddenly bland. “You are, perhaps, the Duchess of Haverford?”

“Forgive me, I should have introduced myself. Yes, I am Eleanor Haverford.”

If Eleanor had any doubts that this was a dream they were dispelled in the next instant, when a small table appeared from thin air, laden with a tea pot, a long full-bellied coffee pot, two cups, and plates of small delicacies.

The lady gave a brief huff of amusement. “The dream reminds me of my manners. Please be seated, duchess. Your Grace, is it not? I am Mahzad.”

Now it was Eleanor’s turn to wipe all expression from her face as she inclined her head. “Your majesty. Is that the correct form of address? Cecily McInnes spoke of you when she returned to England.”

“Please call me Mahzad. After all, we have a lot in common, you and I. Tea? Or coffee?”

“Coffee, and please call me Eleanor. Cecily said he was well, and very much in love with his wife.” And Eleanor was happy for the man she had once loved with a maiden’s ardent passion. Of course, she was.

Mahzad smiled and placed a protective hand over her belly, where a slight rounding indicated yet another child on the way to join the already large family. “You have a generous heart, Eleanor. You have not been as fortunate as James and I; I think.”

Eleanor waved away the sympathy. “I have my children and my work. I am content. But tell me about your family. Who knows how long the dream might last, and I wish to know all about them.”

Haverford House, London, July 1812

It was her imagination, of course, building on the stories that Cecily had told, and Grace and Georgie before her. But the following morning, Eleanor had found a newly unfurled rose in the castle gardens that was the precise shade of the roses in one part of Mahzad’s garden.

Now, it was fragile, dried and faded, adorned with yet another tear to join all the others she had wept on it in the past eighteen years. James had loved his wife, but he had loved her first. He had assured her that he had fully intended to come home and claim her, but that his father denied to pay his ransom, despite his captor’s threat to execute him without it.

To add insult to injury, Winshire had told James that Eleanor was already married to Haverford. It was true, but only because Winshire and Eleanor’s father had assured her that James was dead.

Eleanor gently laid the flower back into the box. Once, she had loved and been loved. That, at least, would never change.

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The Tiffany effect: strong-minded women, medical hygiene, and other ways truth is stranger than fiction

I read the reviews of my books, though most pundits advise authors never to do that. A good review can give me a lift for days. I’m grateful for the ones that pick up a mistake (such as the fact that To Wed a Proper Lady still has chapter 22 and 23 transposed even though I loaded a new file for it months ago–will fix again! And check afterwards to see if it is right.) And people who just don’t like the kind of books I write don’t bother me. There’s stuff I don’t like, too, and I can only wish them happy reading.

Modern names that aren’t

Every now and then, though, there’s a review I steam over. The only ones that upset me are examples of what has been called the Tiffany Effect. The Tiffany Effect is named after the idea that Tiffany is a modern name, when it was common in the thirteenth century and achieved the modern spelling in the seventeenth. Here’s more about the Tiffany Effect and other names that seem modern but have actually been around for a while.

Strong-minded and independent women

Lady Hester Stanhope was a famous woman explorer.

Another idea I hear quite a bit is that my women are too strong-minded for the Regency era. Really? It is, of course, true that the dominant (male) opinion of women in Regency times saw them as adjuncts to their husbands; meek creatures who needed to be protected from the harsh realities of life, and who did not have a thought their husbands didn’t put there. Women lacked the physical strength or mental capacity, so such men said, to understand anything outside of the domestic sphere. Some women undoubtedly accepted their assigned role. Some did not.

Here’s an article about Regency business women, including the owners of two highly successful banks. And here’s another about Georgian and early Victorian women who didn’t so much as break the mould as refuse to even get into it. And yes, a woman — or at least a lady — who refused to conform faced consequences. How serious those were depended on how much power she held. If she was wealthy and single or a widow, or if her marriage settlement gave her control of her own finances, people might gossip behind her back, but that would be it.

Those further down the social scale faced less of a barrier to independence, at least in terms of income-earning. Women still commonly worked alongside their men in the family trade, though this would change in more successful merchant families in the Victorian era. And women, since they were cheaper than men, filled many positions that required deftness rather than strength in industries as diverse as cotton mills, mines, and china painting.

Marriage as a bad life-choice

Many people believe that, in the past, marriage was the only option for women, and that unmarried women were to be pitied. Certainly, men wrote this way during the Regency era, and especially in the Victorian era that followed. I write romance, so marriage tends to be on the table as reasonable choice. But research suggests one third of all women never married. Shortage of men during the Napoleonic Wars might be one reason. Loss of independence and the risks of childbirth were right up there, too, as I’ve written in an earlier post. And the frequent incidence of two close female friends who set up house together and are fond companions may well include many platonic relationships, but we have some rather frank diaries that witness to what today would be same-sex marriages.

Women warriors

Kyz Saikal, a woman warrior from Turkish history, as featured on a Turkish stamp

The Victorian era, was also responsible for removing the glamour of woman as warrior.

Women played an important role in the British military, performing a wide range of services until the mid-nineteenth century. In the eighteenth-century stories, songs and ballads about female soldiers — women who in real life dressed as their male counterparts to go to war or sea — enjoyed an enormous popularity and serve to challenge our contemporary notion that Florence Nightingale was the first woman to work in a modern combat situation. The Amazons’ stories, however, changed over time and by the nineteenth century had to be sanitized to conform to a more genteel and fixed concept of femininity. Gender had increasingly become identified as a biological entity rather than a social and external construction. Thus the female soldiers came to be regarded as aberrations of nature rather than slightly risqué heroines and military historians rewrote earlier armies into all-male institutions. [Julia Wheelwright. “Amazons and Military Maids” in Women’s Studies International Forum: Volume 10, Issue 5, 1987, Pages 489-502]

As for military sports, archery was popular with both genders, and we have evidence of women fencers in the Georgian and the Victorian eras, so presumably in the Regency too. The participants were ladies, who had the leisure for such sports. Women boxers were of the lower sort, but a popular drawcard. My own women warriors are outliers, being foreign-born, in an imaginary Central Asian kingdom headed by a non-traditional woman and her supportive husband. Iran and Central Asia have an ancient tradition of female warriors, which certainly would have been legendary by the end of the eighteenth century, when my Mahzad was kagana in Para-Daisa Vada, east of the Caspian Sea. But Mahzad had the stories there to build on as she raised her own daughters and their female bodyguards.

Healers and hygiene

Dr James Barry trained in Edinburgh, performed the first Caesarian in which both woman and child lived in around 1820, and was discovered to be a woman after his/her death in 1860.

A recent review assured the world that my female healer in To Mend the Broken-Hearted was anachronistic in her insistence on cleanliness in her sick room. The reviewer claimed special knowledge because of her profession, and pointed out that the relationship between hygiene and patient health depended on developing a germ theory of health, and even after that, was established only with great difficulty between the end of the nineteenth century and first part of the twentieth century. Which is true, as far as received wisdom passed on in the medical training of Western physicians. It is an incomplete truth, however. Established medicine fought vigorously to resist the idea that doctors were killing their patients by refusing to wash their hands.

But as early as the mid eighteenth century, James Lind (the same man who introduced citrus fruit to naval vessels to reduce scurvy) observed that patients in clean sickrooms were more likely to get well than patients in dirty conditions. He later practiced as a physician in Edinburgh, and Edinburgh-trained doctors have been prominent in the history of medical hygiene. I’ve mentioned Alexander Graham, another Edinburg man, in my article on hand-washing and puerperal fever. Doctors continued to resist the idea that they carried disease from sick people to the birthing chamber for a long time after Graham proposed it.

Meanwhile, though, the navy continued Lind’s prescription of clean sickrooms, and a number of others practiced cleanliness as part of the more general idea of disinfection, a custom that goes back to at least the Greeks, if not earlier. Without a proper theory of the causes of illness, our ancestors could still see that cleanliness and disinfection made a difference.

The practice of keeping women sequestered in their own quarters made medical practice by women essential in the Eastern world.

Add to this, my female healer was trained in Persian and Arabic medical practice. Persian treatises on cleanliness in the sickroom go back into ancient history. The holy texts of both Islam and Judaism command hygiene as a response to illness.

Islamic medicine developed further through many translations from the East and West in the Abbasid Period. Muslim and non-Muslim physicians combined early Indian and Greek medicine and systemised it further. Some works during this period are devoted to hygiene (hifz al-sihha), while the maintenance of health is included in general medical books as well. For example, Ibn Sīnā (or Avicenna; d. 1037) discussed hygiene in his Canon of Medicine (Al-Qānûn fi’t-tıb). In his system of medicine, medical practice was combined with physical and psychological factors, drugs and diets — or “holistic” medicine. [Hakan Coruh, Theology, Health, and Hygiene]

My reviewer’s knowledge of the history of her profession is undoubtedly excellent, but only as far as it relates to main-stream Western medical training in the past 150 years.

Another reviewer was scathing about my villainous vicar’s misappropriation of funds in Lord Calne’s Christmas Ruby. The bishop gets the tithe, not the rector, she said. In the Regency era, the tithes went straight to the rector, and there was such abuse of the system that it led to legislation a few years later. I’ve written about the regency system here.

Sucking it up

Ah well. If I’m going to continue resisting the whole author’s note idea, I suppose I’m going to see more reviews where I’m wrongly accused of poor research. And I’m still not intending to have a character called Tiffany, because truth is stranger than fiction.

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Attraction in WIP Wednesday

Charlotte finds the secret of the relationship between her and Aldridge hard to keep in the following excerpt from To Tame the Wild Rake. (Anthony is Aldridge’s given name.) Do you have an excerpt about attraction that you’d like to share?

Seeing Anthony in company proved to be more difficult that Charlotte expected. To keep their secret, she had to behave as if nothing had changed since yesterday. She wanted to smile at him, spend the whole evening at his side, touch him, bask in the warmth of his eyes.

He seemed unaffected, nodding to her gravely from the other side of the room when she looked his way, then continuing his conversation with his mother and Jessica as if Charlotte was merely an acquaintance of no particular importance.

She sat with Sarah and Nate, and Anthony took a place a couple of rows behind her. Charlotte exercised all the willpower she had at her command and managed not to turn around, but to give at least the appearance of listening to the music. Her mind kept slipping to the events of the previous night and to wondering whether Anthony was thinking about them too.

When the musicians stopped for a rest and their hostess announced that supper was served in the next room, he made his move, bringing his ladies over to greet her party, then offering Charlotte his arm and holding her back to allow the others to lead the way.

He bent his head close to her ear and whispered, “There’s a door two down from the room set aside for women to retire. Meet me inside that room? In ten minutes?”

She turned her head to meet his eyes, meaning to refuse. What came off her tongue was a breathy, “Yes.”

He smiled, more with his eyes than his mouth, then left her at the door of the room, taking a couple of steps forward to say to the duchess, “I trust you will excuse me, Mama. I have seen someone I wish to speak with.” He was gone before Aunt Eleanor could reply.

Was it always this easy to keep an assignation? When she excused herself a few minutes later, no one in her party made any comment. Perhaps it was her reputation. No one would think anything of Saint Charlotte heading down the passage that led to the ladies retiring room.

Everyone else must be focused on their supper, because she had the passage to herself. She counted doors, opened the right one, and slipped into a room dimly lit with a single candle. She sensed Anthony’s presence a bare second before she found herself seized and ruthlessly kissed.

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Tea with Eleanor: Paradise Lost Episode 15

Chapter Seven

Haverford House, London, October 1812

Despite hundreds of servants, the house seemed quiet. Haverford was in Kent with his own attendants, though his condition appeared to be improving. Aldridge was touring the ducal estates, keeping a tight hand on the reins of the vast lands that underpinned the Haverford wealth.

She was used to their absence. But for once, she had no one else. Her current companion was off with friends, finishing the initial planning for this year’s Christmas house party and New Year’s Eve Ball, and the girls were visiting friends in the country.

She had seen James again, today. This time, it had been planned. She had sent him a note to tell him she would be at the bookshop, and giving the time her meeting ended. Afterwards, she had been sure he wouldn’t come, and if he did, he would think she was chasing after him.

She pushed away the tea tray; she didn’t want it. What she wanted was in the secret compartment; a memory she could not quite believe and could never forget. She found the little box, and extracted a crumbling faded rose. She had plucked it from her garden at Haverford Castle after a memorable dream, as a reminder that James had given his heart elsewhere.

Haverford Castle, near Margate, July 1795

Cecily was older. Of course, she was. More than fifteen years had passed since the season they shared; the season that ended with Eleanor’s broken heart and Cecily’s marriage. She and her husband Alec had taken a long wedding trip, to see the Orient, they said. And then… nothing. Until she appeared again in England, just a few weeks ago.

Through the ritual of greeting, of inviting her guest to be seated, of preparing a cup of tea for each of them, Eleanor kept shooting glances, comparing the composed and still lovely woman before her with the gangling clumsy teen Eleanor had taken under her wing at first meeting. She glowed with happiness, but the lines barely visible on her brow and around her eyes spoke of suffering and pain. What had happened in all those years away?

They spoke of nothings: the weather, the fashions, who was and who wasn’t in Town, until all of the maids had left the room and they were alone. Then they both spoke at once.

“Did you wish to hear of…?” Cecily began.

“Lady Sutton and Lady Grace Winderfield tell me…” said Eleanor, stopping herself and waving her hand for Cecily to carry on.

Cecily nodded, as if Eleanor had confirmed what Cecily had been about to ask. “I met with Lord James Winderfield late last year. That is what you wished to know, is it not, Your Grace? Where I saw him, and how?”

“It is,” Eleanor agreed, grateful that decades of training and practice allowed her to keep her face and posture from reflecting her inner turmoil. “His sisters told me he was alive, but little more.” Married. To an Eastern princess. With children. Happy, or so Cecily had told them. It was silly to feel hurt. Did she expect him to wear the willow for her for a lifetime? She did for him, but look at the alternative! She had never been given the least incentive to fall in love with the tyrant she had been forced to marry. She was glad James was happy. Of course, she was. Or would be, given time.

Cecily had kept on talking while she scolded herself, asking her something. Ah. Yes. Was she certain she wished to know the details?

“You loved him, once,” Cecily said, her voice kind.

She could answer that. “He was a dear friend, Mrs McInnes, and I have grieved him as dead these many years. I would dearly love to know how he survived, and how he now lives. And he has children, his sisters say. Many children. Please. Start at the beginning and tell me all about him.”

That night, Eleanor had a very vivid dream.

She found herself in a beautiful garden. It was a long rectangle, walled on three sides and on the fourth bounded by steps up to a house. Or perhaps a castle, though unlike any castle Eleanor had ever seen. A fort of some kind, its arches and domes giving it an exotic air entirely in keeping with the garden.

A pool divided the garden in half; no, in quarters, for it had two straight branches stretching almost to the walls from the centre point of the walled enclosure. Eleanor had woken to find herself in one quadrant of the garden, surrounded by flowers in a myriad of colours, some familiar and some unknown. Not woken. She could not possibly be awake. Nowhere in England had the mountains she could see over the walls, and nor was this an English garden.

She must have spoken the last thought, because a voice behind her said, “Not English, no. Persian, originally, though I am told they are found from Morocco to Benghal. It is a chahar bāgh; a Paradise garden.”

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Happy Sixth Birthday to A Baron for Becky

A Baron for Becky was first published on 5th August 2015. It introduced one of my most popular characters, but didn’t give him a happy ending.

Now, finally, the Marquis of Aldridge is hero of his own book. To Tame the Wild Rake will be published on 17th September, and is currently on preorder.

Presents for you

Free and discounted

To celebrate my book birthday, I’m giving away A Baron for Becky on Bookfunnel. It’s free for two days.

It’s also free on my SELZ bookshop.

I’m reducing it to 99c on Amazon as soon as their system gets over a glitch and lets me into the pricing field.

Haverford House website

I’ve set up a new website, a subsite of this one, to give you biographies, background information, images, a family tree, and excerpts. Lots of excerpts.

So far, I have a family tree and a couple of introductions, but I plan to post something new every day between now and the publication of the new book. Keep checking. I’ll also have contests and giveaways.

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Family men on WIP Wednesday

I love showing  how my hero reacts to children. You can tell a lot about a man in such circumstances, especially in a time when single men of rank and fortune had little to do with children, even if they had much younger siblings.  Often, too, even fathers–even mothers–saw their children only when they were neat, tidy, and being presented for inspection. So the image above, of a wife feeding her baby while the rest of her children play and their father looks on, is rather sweet. I love the cushion under Mama’s feet!

My excerpt shows a father who doesn’t follow the usual custom, and my hero’s reaction to his host’s clear affection for his daughters.

When Aldridge was announced, he found Ashbury sitting cross-legged on the drawing room hearthrug, a little girl leaning on each knee, his single hand busy with charcoal over paper. The earl glanced up and smiled. “I’ll just be a moment, Aldridge. Help yourself to a seat.”

Aldridge felt one eyebrow rise. He had seen fathers who enjoyed their children’s company —his half-brother David Wakefield, for one. But he’d not before been in a home where children were permitted to make themselves at home in the drawing room, let alone where attention to them took priority over guests, even unexpected ones. Watching the vignette on the hearthrug left him charmed and wistful.

A short time later, Ashbury folded the sketch he had been working on as if it was a fan and handed it to one girl child, and picked up another folded paper from between his knees to give to the other. “There, my sweets. Make your courtesy to Lord Aldridge before you begin, if you please. Aldridge, my daughters, Mirabelle and Genevieve.”

Both girls stood to curtsey. “Good morning, Lord Aldridge,” they chorused, as their father clambered to his feet.

Aldridge bowed. “Lady Mirabelle, Lady Genevieve. May I enquire what your father has been drawing for you?”

The smaller of the two girls approached, holding out the paper. “Paper dolls, Lord Aldridge. Look. We cut out around the lines and then we can paint and dress the line of dollies.”

Ashbury had a talent. The front fold of the fan showed half a fine lady, her hand and skirt remaining uncut on the fold on one side, the rest of which had been cut away, one dainty toe stretched to the bottom of the page, the tip of her half bonnet touching the top. The details of the lady were lightly sketched in, a row of ringlets, one fine eye with lush lashes, half a Cupid’s bow in a sweet smile, the neckline of a morning gown and its high waist, a hint of lace at cuff and hem.

Aldridge smiled at the child and handed her back her paper. “Your father makes a fine sketch,” he commented.

“Now up to the desk with you, ladies,” said Ashbury. “I’ll come and admire your work after I’ve talked to Lord Aldridge. Aldridge, can I offer refreshments? An ale, perhaps?”

Aldridge demurred. “I did not mean to interrupt your day, Ashbury. I was just seeking direction to the clinic your wife supports. I’m hoping to find Bentham there.”

Ashbury had crossed to the door to speak to someone in the hall. “Possibly,” he said, as he came back into the room. “It is clinic day, and several of the doctors attend, including my wife, as it happens.”

Aldridge had heard that the lady still worked as a doctor, though he hadn’t been sure whether to believe it. He certainly didn’t know of any other peer who would allow his wife to do such a scandalous thing as provide medical services to slum dwellers.

Ashbury went on, “But do join me for an ale, if you have time. Ah!” He turned back to look at the door, as a pair of maids came in with trays. “Thank you, Sally, Maud.”

He sent the maids away and again broke protocol by serving his daughters with a drink each from one jug and two slices of seed cake, before pouring the sparkling amber contents of the other jug into two tall tumblers and passing one to Aldridge along with another slice of seed cake.

 

by

Tea with Eleanor: Paradise Lost Episode 14

Haverford House, London, 1794

The two ladies having tea with Eleanor clearly had something on their minds. They kept exchanging glances, and frowning at the servants who bustled in and out. Eleanor was entertaining two dear friends on this lovely day in 1794; Lady Sutton, daughter-in-law to the Duke of Winshire, and Lady Georgiana Winderfield, his daughter.

As the servants wheeled in the refreshments Eleanor had ordered, and made sure that the ladies had everything they required, the three friends spoke of the fashions of the current season, the worrying events in France, the reopening of the Drury Theatre, and their children.

As the last of the servants left, Eleanor spoke to her companion-secretary, a poor relation of her husband whom she was enjoying more than she expected. Largely because she had decided to find the girl a match, and was gaining great entertainment from the exercise. Eleanor could hit two birds with a single stone if she sent dear Margaret to her husband’s office, where his secretaries currently beavered away over the endless paperwork of the duchy. “Margaret, Lady Sutton and Lady Georgiana have a wish to be private with me. I trust you do not mind, my dear, if I send you on an errand? Would you please ask that nice Mr Hammond to find the accounts for Holystone Hall? I wish to go over the coal bills.” Margaret blushed at the mention of Theseus Hammond, and left eagerly. Very good.

Grace was diverted. “Matchmaking, Eleanor?”

“A little. He is as poor as a church mouse, of course. We shall have to see if we can find a position in which he could support a wife. But what is it you wanted to tell me?”

Grace and Georgie exchanged glances, then Georgie leaned forward and took Eleanor’s hand between two of hers. “We thought you should hear it from us, first. Word will undoubtedly be all over Town in no time.”

Georgie’s unexpected touch alarmed Eleanor. Embracing — even touching — was Not Done. A kiss in the air beside a perfumed cheek, but nothing more. Except for her son Jonathan, who was fond of cuddles, no one had held Eleanor’s hand since Aldridge crept from the schoolroom to sit all night with her after her last miscarriage. “What can possibly be wrong? Not something Haverford has done?” But what could such a powerful duke do to give rise to the concern she saw in the eyes of her friends.

“Not Haverford.” Georgie again exchanged glances with her sister-in-law. “His Grace our father received a letter of condolence on the death of my brother Edward.” Another of those glances.

“Out with it, Georgie,” Eleanor commanded. “I am not a frail ninny who faints at nothing. Tell me what you think I need to know.”

Georgie sighed, and firmed her grip on Eleanor’s hand. “Eleanor, the letter was from James.”

Who was James? Not Georgie’s brother, the one love of Eleanor’s life. James was dead, killed by bandits nearly fifteen years ago. They got the letter. The Duke of Winshire himself told her. She was shaking her head, shifting herself backwards on the sofa away from Georgie, whose warm compassionate eyes were so much like those of her missing brother. Missing?

“Not dead?” Her voice came out in an embarrassing squeak, as emotions flooded her. Joy. Anger. A desperate sadness for so many years lost to grieving.

“Alive,” Georgie said. “James is alive, Eleanor.”

The room spun and turned grey, and Eleanor knew no more.

***

Haverford House, London, July 1812

After that, from time to time, her friends had shared smuggled letters with her. Not often. A year or more might pass before another message made its way across the vast distance between James’s mountain kingdom north of Persia and his sister in England. Often enough, though, that Eleanor shared in the delight of two more children, the grief of his wife’s death, weddings for four of his children and the birth of grandchildren.

She hadn’t told him that she knew much of what he told her today.  Hearing the stories in his own dear voice was such a pleasure. She smiled again. Yes. Surely, one day they could be friends?