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Tea with Rilla

The scandalous Miss Fernhill was a delightful young lady. Initially, when the duchess’s daughter-in-law and her sister had brought Miss Fernhill into Eleanor’s pleasant parlour, she had been clearly nervous and very formal. But she quickly relaxed as her future sisters-in-law chatted cheerfully with Eleanor, being careful to include her in the conversation.

Last time Sophie and Felicity had been here together, they had been very worried about their brother, the Earl of Hythe. He had a list of what he required in a wife, and his sisters worried that he had not made any allowance for love. “Besides, Aunt Eleanor,” Felicity had said, “a woman who matches every item on the list will never loosen dear Hythe up. He needs someone to make him laugh, someone to tease him a little, someone fun.”

Amaryllis Fernhill might not have checked off every item on Hythe’s list, but his sisters clearly thought she was just perfect. Even if she had jilted her previous groom at the altar and disappeared for three years. Hythe had ignored these facts; definite evidence he was making a love match. And Miss Fernhill, or Rilla, as Hythe’s sisters called her, was totally besotted with Hythe, as was evident in the way her eyes shone whenever she mentioned him, which was often.

Eleanor smiled to herself. A love match. If one wanted to guide Society’s opinion in favour of a couple, a love match was a very good place to start.

The Abduction of Amaryllis Fernhill is one of the stories in Chasing the Tale: Volume II, to be published next month. Hythe and Rilla meet and fall in love over a chessboard in The Husband Gamble, in The Wedding Wager, now on KU.

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Hackneys and Hansom Cabs

It’s amazing what you can find down a rabbit hole! I went looking for public conveyances in 1826 in Paris, and discovered the light two-wheeled carriage, pulled by one horse, called the cabriolet de place. It looked very familiar, so I sent my heroine home in one, and did some more digging.

In the 17th, 18th and early 19th century, the way to get around London (if you had the fare and didn’t have a coach of your own) was a Hackney Coach. These were generally old carriages that had once belonged to private owners. Drawn by a pair of horses, they could carry several passengers. But they were known to be dirty and smelly, since they went everywhere with all sorts of passengers.

The owners of these hackney coaches–there were 300 licences in Central London–had a monopoly on private transport in that area. When a carriage maker called David Davies decided to introduce the French innovation under the shortened name cab, the syndicate of hackney coach owners objected.

However, two gentlemen managed to get nine licenses, and the cabs proved to be very popular. The tarrif was reasonable, and the young and more daring were delighted to give the new, lighter, and more agile form of transportation a go. Apparently the cab drivers delighted in passing their heavier and more cumbersome rivals!

Despite the opposition, 1831 saw 150 licenses for cabbies, and in1832, all restrictions were lifted.

The picture above shows the hansom cab, the first of which was designed in 1834 by Mr Joseph Hansom, with the passengers mounting in front. Later innovators moved the cabbie to the back and added a window in the door, leaving Hansom’s design behind, but his name lingered on.

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The Preface on WIP Wednesday

This is a long one–2,500 words. I’ve written a preface for Perchance to Dream, and I don’t know if it is good, bad, or indifferent. If you can bear to read it, let me know your opinion in the comments.

John Forsythe placed a tender kiss on the cheek of his baby daughter, then passed her to her nursemaid, gently, so as not to wake her. “You have worn her out, my lord,” the nursemaid whispered, smiling.

John returned the smile. His hour and a half outside with his little girl had cemented the decision he’d been coming to for weeks. In a few days, she would reach her first birthday. It was time for John and Tina Jane’s mother to resolve their difficulties. Yes, their marriage had begun in lies and continued in discord, but surely they could build on their joint love for their daughter and build a real marriage? John was going to find his wife and ask her to try.

He had collected Tina Jane from the nursery after her breakfast and carried her with him on his rounds of the stable, the dairy, the barn and the poultry yards. He couldn’t say who enjoyed it more—him or the baby girl, who loved the animals, the bustle, and being with her father.

The name had been the cause of one of their fights. Augusta had wanted to name her baby Phillippa Augustina, uniting her own name with that of Philip Spindler, the treacherous rat who had impregnated her then abandoned her to marry the bride who was his family’s choice.

John had first been flabbergasted at her sheer effrontery at wanting to name the child born in their marriage after her former lover, then furious. Augusta reacted to his unequivocal ‘no’ with a six-week-long sulk. She had shut herself in her room and had refused to talk to him. She had not even visited the baby.

As he searched the house for his wife, John’s mind continued to revisit the sorrowful memories. The saddest part was that it had been six weeks of bliss. None of her tantrums or weeping jags or other dramatics. Jane could get on with the work of the estate, and spend all his spare time with the baby. He had fallen in love with the wee mite from the moment she had been placed in his arms on the day she was born, and had tumbled more deeply every hour he spent with her.

In the end, he had given Augustina Jane her first name as an overture of peace to his wife.

After all, however it came about, however he and Augusta felt about it, they were married. It had, to a degree, worked. Augusta emerged from her room, resumed her place at the dinner table, accompanied him to social events in the neighbourhood and did her best to behave well in public.

She even began to show an interest in the baby, or at least in having Tina Jane’s nursemaid trail behind Augusta with the little girl dressed in a gown made from scraps of fabric left over from whatever Augusta was wearing. “Do we not make a picture, Lord John?” she would simper.

“Where is Lady John?” he asked each servant that he met, but she must be restless today, for she was not in any of the rooms to which he was sent. Lord and Lady John. She insisted on the ridiculous title rather than his preferred use of the military title he had earned fighting Napoleon’s armies, and retained as a part time soldier in the local militia.

Again, it seemed a small price to pay for a relative degree of marital peace.

“She is very young,” he reminded himself. Only nineteen when he met her, and much younger in her years. Her parents had alternatively ignored her and given in to her many whims. She had always been able to get anything she wanted, merely by having a tantrum.

Even John, though she had not wanted John himself. Only a fool with an estate and noble connections who could be trapped into marrying her without asking too many questions. An older man she could manipulate as she had manipulated her parents.

She had been disappointed to discover that the worn-out soldier she’d conspired to trap had a will stronger than her own, and would not bend to her pleading or her histrionics.

Though he gave way to her in minor things, all the sulking in the world had not convinced him to allow her to redecorate the house that had been fully refurbished eighteen months ago before they moved into it, or to take her to London for the Season where they would inevitably meet Spindler and his wife, or to fire Thorne, his manservant, who had been with him since Salamanca in the Peninsular Wars, because Thorne had come across her beating the nursemaid with a riding crop, and had taken the crop off her.

John, appealed to by both Augusta and his manservant, discovered that the nursemaid’s crime had been to argue that Tina Jane should not go out visiting with Augusta on a cold and blustery day, since the poor little girl had the sniffles.

John had been coldly furious. “Miss Embrow was right to protest, Augusta. Taking our daughter out in this weather when she is already ill would have been foolish.”

“But Lord John,” Augusta protested, “it was not her place to question my instructions.”

“It is her place to put the welfare of the baby first. But even if she was wrong, you should not have beaten her. I will not have any in my household subjected to such violence. You will never raise a hand or any other implement to a servant again.”

She had been cowed by his anger, perhaps, for she slunk away and treated him to a week-long sulk, after which she emerged to demand that Thorne be dismissed for laying hands on her when he took the crop off her.

John’s refusal earned him the silent treatment for a further two weeks.

Still, she had not persisted, so perhaps she was learning. She was, after all, nearly twenty-one and had become a mother. She might be maturing. He’d seen a firm hand and kindness transform many a wild young man into a steady officer.

Indeed, for the last few days, she had been smiling, sometimes even at John. She had even spent an hour in the nursery yesterday, ignoring Miss Embrow as she had since the incident, but playing pat-a-cake and peep-a-boo with the baby.

Where on earth could the woman be? She was not in the house, and she was hardly one to spend hours in the garden. He checked with the stables, and discovered that she’d ridden out, and refused to take a groom with her.

John was worried. Augusta was not the most accomplished of riders. Perhaps she has fallen. He ordered his own horse saddled and rode off in the direction the grooms indicated.

The path split, with one branch entering his woods, and the other joining the lane that led out to the village road. John rode a short way along the lane, but he could not see Augusta or a horse, so he returned to the woods. Perhaps she felt the need of the shade.

The path led to a clearing where the woodcutter had a cottage that he used, but this was not the season for harvesting or planting or clearing undergrowth. So why were two horses tied up at the side of the cottage, and why was smoke rising from the chimney?

John stopped just inside the trees to examine the scene. He couldn’t be sure, as it was in the shade and partly obscured by the larger of the two horses, but he thought the smaller one was Augusta’s mare. He was still processing the implications of that when the cottage door opened and two people came out. One was Augusta. The other he could identify by the man’s white-blonde hair. It was Spindler. The swine bent to give John’s wife a tender kiss.

John nudged his horse into a walk. Spindler looked up at the clop of hooves, started, and ran for his own horse. John resisted the urge to give chase as Splindler threw himself into the saddle and kicked the beast into a gallop. After all, what would he do with the man if he caught him?

Rearranging the dirty dog’s pretty face would be satisfying, but it wouldn’t solve the problem of his marriage.

Augusta looked up at him without a hint of remorse or concern, trying but failing to compose her face into a serious expression. But a beaming smile of absolute delight kept breaking through. “Lord John, don’t be cross. We didn’t do anything, honestly. And he brought such good news.”

He didn’t trust himself to speak to her. He dismounted, tied his horse beside hers, and walked past her into the cottage. Didn’t do anything? The blankets had been thrown from the bed and the room reeked of sex.

Augusta had followed him, to stand in the door. “You must try to understand, Lord John. We have not been together for nearly two years.”

Nor had Augusta and John. Not once since they wed. John had been patient, thinking that she would accept their marriage in time. He had also been celibate, since he had long since promised himself that he would never cheat against his marriage vows, as both his parents had.

And she thought he should understand? “I do not understand, Augusta.” When Captain Forsythe spoke in that tight clipped voice, soldiers knew to stand to attention and keep quiet, for retribution was about to fall. “I don’t understand how you can stand there and expect me to countenance you and your lover meeting in secret, right here on my lands, less than a mile from the nursery where our daughter sleeps.”

Augusta was not one of his soldiers. “My daughter,” she insisted. “Mine and Phillip’s.”

A touch of panic spiked his fury. “Not according to the law,” he reminded himself. “She was born within our marriage. I have claimed her. Spindler has no rights here.”

At that, the smile blossomed again, though her eyes remained wary. “Not Spindler. Lord John, that is what he came to say! Kingston is dead! Phillip is free!”

The Duke of Kingston was Spindler’s grandfather, and in some ways the orchestrator of John’s misery. Spindler had been his pensioner, along with his mother and father. Disliking his grandson’s attachment to Augusta, who had only beauty to recommend her, being of modest family and wealth, he forced Spindler to make a choice. Poverty and Augusta. Riches and a bride of Kingston’s choosing. Either he did not care that the scoundrel had impregnated Augusta, or her condition did not become apparent until after her lover married the selected lady.

Kingston’s death was not a surprise. Even John, who took no notice of Society gossip, knew he had been failing since the apoplexy that followed the tragic deaths, months ago, of his heir and his heir’s son. Which made Spindler’s father the heir presumptive, and now the duke. Spindler’s father, who had never refused his son anything except his attention.

“He is not free,” he told Augusta. “Your lover is married and so are you. You both have a spouse and a child.”

She stared at him as if he was speaking in a foreign language. John didn’t want to look at her. He moved around the room, picking up a chair that had been knocked over, folding the blankets, pulling the underblanket off the mattress and throwing it into a heap by the door to take to the laundrymaid.

“We can be together,” Augusta insisted. “Tenby—he is Earl of Tenby now—does not have to please his grandfather ever again.”

John faced Augusta. She was clenching her fists and jutting her chin, ready to fight. “Augusta, talk sense. You are both married. Tenby lives in London. You live here, with me.” His voice dropped to a growl. “And you can be sure I will not turn a blind eye to you meeting your lover here or in London.”

He took a deep breath. She was not listening to him. Instead, her eyes were fixed on some mythical and impossible future that only she and Tenby could see.

“Augusta, we could make something of our marriage. Wouldn’t life be better if we were comfortable with one another? Would you not like more children?”

That caught her attention. “No!” she declared. “I don’t ever want to go through that again, getting lumpy and ugly. And then the pain! No, my lord, not even for Tenby. But he says he has his heir and that cow is pregnant again, so there might even be a spare. He will not ask it of me.”

John shook his head. It was like arguing with a river. You could talk all you liked, but it wasn’t going to stop flowing in the direction it had chosen. “You and Tenby cannot wed,” he pointed out. “You are both married to other people.”

At that, she crossed the room, laid a hand on his arm, and looked up at him pleadingly. “Yes, but we could live together. Tenby says that if I move in with  him, you can easily sue him for stealing me away (though I was always his, so that part I do not understand), and then petition the church for a legal separation. You get to keep Augustina, and you will not have to pay for clothes and the like for me ever again. And I get Tenby.”

“You will be cast out of Society,” John warned. He would, too. Not so much because he would be blamed, but because he would be laughed at. People might pity a cuckold, but they did not admire him. Still, he could live without Society.

“We can live in Paris, Tenby says,” Augusta said, airily, “where they understand these things. It is the best plan, my lord. Everyone gets what they want.”

“What of Lady Tenby? What does she want?”

If John had hoped to appeal to Augusta’s sympathy for another woman, he would have been disappointed. She shrugged. “She gets to call herself Marchioness and live at Spindler Palace with her sons. I don’t care about her. It is me that Tenby loves.”

“My answer is no. Your plan is foolish, Augusta. You and Tenby owe it to your children to make the best of your marriages. Come. We shall return to the house. I shall write to Tenby and tell him that if he approaches you again, he will regret it.”

That was not the end of it, of course. Augusta was convinced that she was the female half of a romance for the ages: a Helen of Troy, an Isolde, a Guinevere, an Eloise, a Juliet. Nothing would be allowed to stand in the way of her happy ending. She blocked John’s every attempt at a reconciliation, raised the option of a legal separation at every opportunity heedless of who else might be listening, and in the end forced his hand by running away to France with Tenby.

By then, it was almost a relief to see the end of what would have been a total disaster from the beginning, except it had given John his little Jane. When Lady Tenby died shortly after the church courts had granted their legal separation, John barely argued at all about taking a case to the House of Lords for a full divorce.

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Tea with Nia and Tony

The Duchess of Haverford adored all her grandchildren, acknowledged and secret, official and unofficial, those descended from her and those born to her wards, her step-children and others she regarded as her own, though not by blood.

Nia and Tony Wakefield were special, and she was thrilled to have them to herself for the afternoon. With one year between them in age, they had become close since Tony was added to the Wakefield family. Between them, they took care of all the younger ones, sometimes leading them into mischief but always protecting them from danger.

They bickered like brother and sister, too. They were currently arguing about who should have the last strawberry tart, each topping the other with claims about their worthiness for the privilege.

“I read five stories to the littlies last night at bedtime,” Nia said.

Tony scoffed. “Which you thoroughly enjoyed. I took William to the chamber pot ten times this morning.”

Of course, every single child was special in his or her own way. But Antonia Wakefield, who had been born Antonia Virtue, was the first child of her elder son, her darling Anthony. Or at least the first she knew about. Long after Eleanor’s wild boy had lost sight of the lover who refused to be his mistress, Eleanor kept an eye on her and her daughter, offering the mother work to help her keep her pride and independence while making ends meet.

Then Nia’s mother Prue married David Wakefield, base-born half brother to Eleanor’s two sons, and one of her favourite protégés. At long last, Eleanor could claim a grandmother’s role in the dear child’s life.

Tony was the first child of her younger son, whose marriage had taken him to the other side of Europe, where he was raising a large family in a tiny grand duchy that his wife ruled. Tony was not only special in his own right. He was the sole representative in England of the offspring of her beloved Jonathan.

“There is a solution, my dears,” she told the pair. “I could send for more strawberry tarts.”

They looked at one another and laughed. “An efficient suggestion, Aunt Eleanor,” Tony agreed. He winked. “If slightly less fun.”

He had a thread of the wicked, had Tony. He had been raised in a country village until his mother died, but he had come to London to find his father with little information to identify the man, and had spent several years on the street until Anthony’s wife found him in a maths class she was teaching in a ragged school.

Recognising that he was the image of his uncle in a portrait of Anthony at the same age, she had made sure to introduce them, and before long Tony had his choice of families: Anthony, his Uncle Haverford; Jonathan, his father; David Wakefield and his wife Prue, mother to Mia.

Tony chose the Wakefields, explaining that he knew nothing about being a prince’s son or a duke’s, but David and Prue were enquiry agents, and he figured that was something he could grow up to do.

“If it is not too much trouble, Your Grace, more strawberry tarts would be delightful,” said Nia, who was sometimes rather too proper for a girl of fourteen. Prue said that Tony was good for her, teasing her into mischief or temper, depending on the occasion.

“For you, my darlings,” Eleanor said, “nothing is too much trouble.”

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Coming soon

I’m sending my newsletter this coming week. I’m just waiting on pre-order links from Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Nook for next month’s publication of short stories, Chasing the Tale: Volume II. It’s up on Amazon now. Read more about Chasing the Tale: Volume II  and the stories in it on my book page.

I’ve finished writing the newsletter short story, The Lady in a White Gown, so that’s already to go. Thank you to the subscriber that sent me a painting to use as a jump off point.

The newsletter will also have news about books from author friends, and early notice of a box set from the Bluestocking Belles for Christmas. So if you’re a subscriber, watch your inbox.

Here’s the intro to The Lady in a White Gown.

Victoria glared at the white gown that hung on the dressing screen, ready for its starring role at tomorrow’s wedding. Her wedding. If, in fact, it happened.

It was not the gown that offended. In truth, she had thought it lovely three weeks ago, when the modiste had sketched it, and it was even more beautiful in reality. She had not chosen the colour. Her mother remembered the story her dear friend Lady Benfield had told about Lord Carney’s demand to be introduced to the lady in the white gown. At a ball where at least thirty of the young ladies wore white, he had seen only Victoria, and Mother found that very sweet.

“This gown shall remind him of that night,” she proclaimed. “It shall be so romantic. Besides, the Queen, for whom you were named, wore white when she was wed, and look what a happy marriage that was, poor dear lady.”

Victoria thought that wearing gowns she had chosen herself would be one of the many benefits of becoming a married woman, but she knew that saying so would merely send her mother into another lecture about behaviour unbecoming in a viscountess.

Mother was delighted that Victoria was marrying a viscount. To Victoria, Lord Carney’s title was a disincentive, but one he had overcome with his attentive charm. Until the betrothal was announced, at which point, he had disappeared entirely, though he’d claimed he would only be gone a day or two.

She sent the gown another scowl. She had argued for a coloured sash and trim. The palest of pale blues, the colour her mother had chosen, did not, in Victoria’s opinion, qualify as a colour. She was wearing a gown she did not choose to please a man she did not know.

Perhaps Lord Carney would not arrive back in London in time for the ceremony. Perhaps he had been in London all along, and had only pretended to have business at his estate. Perhaps she would be left at the altar!

Perhaps, if she was, it was for the best.

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Terrorism and democracy

Edward I was nearly killed by an Assassin during Lord Edward’s Crusade, most likely sent by the Mamluk Sultan Baibars, in order to remove his opposition to a 10-year truce with the Christian states at Jerusalem. He narrowly survived poisoning from the blade of the Assassin. – Gustave Doré, 19th Century

I’ve noticed an unsettling trend recently in democratic societies around the world. People who are unable to convince the majority to support them are turning to disruption to make their point. Tipping out milk in supermarkets to object to the farming of animals for food. Stopping traffic during the rush hour to make a case for trains, or the removal of mask mandates, or preferential treatment for a particular occupation, or any of a dozen causes.

In a tyranny, when free speech is suppressed and people cannot assemble to make their case, such reactions may be the route to social change. In a democracy, where peaceful protest is permitted and those of like mind can organise to convince others, there are more productive ways to change society. And if your efforts are not succeeding, perhaps it is because the majority do not agree with you. That’s democracy, too.

Protest marches and the like often cause some disruption as a byproduct. But those I’ve detailed above seem to have been organised and intended to cause maximum inconvenience. The fact that so many organisers are clear that they’re going to repeat their actions over and over until they get what they want borders on standover tactics and blackmail. They have three fundamental things in common with terrorism. First, they want to bring about change by coersion or intimidation. Second, they seek to achieve this by inconveniencing (in the case of activism) or attacking (in case of terrorism) the wider public–ordinary people who are merely going about their business. Third, they claim that their actions are required to protect or advance a moral principle, whether religious or secular.

Let’s define terrorism as the systematic threat or use of violence against innocent people to intimidate a political group into accepting the demands of the terrorist. Pouring milk on a supermarket floor is a long way from bombing a kindergarten. But it feels to me as if it is on the continuum.

Historian trace terrorism back a long way, to the terrorist campaigns of the Zealots against the Romans in Judea, and to those of the Shi-ite Muslim sect, the hashashin, against Sunni Muslims and medieval Christendom. More recently the Reign of Terror was an example of the use of terror to achieve governmental ends–Robespierre and his colleagues used it after revolutionaries seized power in the French Revolution to maintain power and supress political rivals.

And so we come to more modern times, when terrorism is practiced by authoritarian governments against their citizens and against the citizens of territories they invade, as well as by pressure groups who want to force political, social, religious and economic change.

Alexander Ulyanov, who tried assassinate Czar Alexander III in the 1880s, summed it up as: “is the only form of defense to which a minority, strong only in terms
of its spiritual strength and in its knowledge of the rightness of its beliefs, can resort against the physical strength of the majority.” Admittedly, that wasn’t a democracy by any means. But taking the words at their face value, they are plain wrong. In a democracy, where everyone has a right to a voice and a vote, a minority who do not agree with the beliefs of the majority has no place trying to intimidate the government into giving the minority beliefs preference over those of the majority.

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Dialogue on WIP Wednesday

Dialogue should tell us about character, move along the plot, feed us bits of backstory, or all three. I shared this bit in a Facebook chat the other day. What do you think? It’s from The Flavour of Our Deeds, novel 5 in The Golden Redepennings.

My lord, if the case goes against me, would you take Paul and protect him? I know it’s a lot to ask, but—”

“Consider it done,” Chirbury interrupted. “If things go badly, I will take him into my family. But we shall endeavour to ensure that they don’t, for my sister will be upset if they hang you by the neck until dead, Lucian Ogilvy. Speaking of which, what are your intentions towards my sister?”

Typical Chirbury. A soothing remark then a sneak attack. Two, in fact. Luke forced back the visceral reaction at the thought of his hanging, and tried to deflect the second jab. “Your sister?”

Chirbury raised a single eyebrow. “You thought I might possibly mean my sister Meg or my sister Lady Bexley?”

Luke stopped jousting. “I cannot have intentions towards Lady Catherine.”

The other eyebrow lifted. “Cannot. Not will not, or do not.” The earl’s tone was contemplative. “Perhaps you mean should not? My question is why not? You travelled for a week introducing her as your wife. Some would say you owe her a proposal.” He pulled out one of the chairs at the table, turned it around, and straddled it so he could rest his forearms on the back. “Take a seat, man.”

Who knew that words could knife a man in the chest and, at the same time, lift him to the stars? Luke sat in the other chair without thinking about what he was doing. “Chirbury, with due respect, I am the bastard son of an earl and a gamekeeper, I’m twelve years older than her, and to cap it all off, I’ve been arrested for murder. What do I have to offer her?”

Chirbury shrugged with his eyebrows. “What she wants, apparently. So Kitty says, and my countess agrees, so it must be true.”

Luke gaped at Chirbury. “Lady Chirbury thinks Kitty and I should marry?” He had forgotten to call her Lady Catherine.

“Not what I said,” Chirbury pointed out. “My lady thinks that Kitty wants to be your wife, and that she—that Kitty doesn’t care about your birth, your age, or the false accusations against you.”

Kitty cared. Luke knew that. But Chirbury would never let her make such a mistake, and if Chirbury would, Luke wouldn’t. “She is too young to know her own mind,” he said, arguing with himself even as he said the words. She was twenty-three, almost twenty-four. Her family’s trials had matured her early, and—except for her feelings about him—he would trust her judgement and her instincts ahead of those of most people he knew. The earl in front of him included.

Chirbury shrugged. “She was young six years ago when she set her heart on you. Anne and I told her that it was an infatuation. That she was reacting to the trauma of Selby’s assault and then the kidnapping. That she fixed on you because you helped to rescue her, and because she knew so few other unmarried men.”

“All true,” Luke agreed, though reluctantly.

Chirbury shook his head. “Demonstrably not. She has been courted by a broad selection of English gentlemen, Luke. I’ve no wish to dwell on the number of suitors I’ve turned away. I passed on to her anyone I thought she had even the slightest interest in, if they were honest and respectable. More than a score over the years, and she refused them all.”

Luke, was it? They’d never been on first name terms, though that was more on Luke’s side than Chirbury’s. The earl had asked him years ago to call him by his nickname, Rede. Given that he lusted for the man’s sister-in-law, Luke thought such familiarity a mistake. He had to remember that he was not a fit mate for Kitty. But Chirbury apparently thought differently.

“Are you telling me that you would permit Kitty to marry me?” he asked, though it came out as more of a challenge.

“It is Kitty’s decision. And yours, of course. My countess and I would not oppose the match, and she could still marry you if we did. She is three years past the age of needing our consent. You are twelve years older than her, and that age difference mattered when she was not quite eighteen. To us, at least, though even larger age gaps are common. Now? She is an adult, and to my mind, uncommonly mature for her age. You are base born, you tell me, but you are the acknowledged son of a baron and the guardian of another.”

He shrugged. “Yes, some will believe she has married down, but not people whose opinion she cares for. Which leaves us with your current situation. That, of course, needs to be resolved. However, we are ahead of ourselves, my friend. I still need to hear what your intentions are towards my sister.”

Luke groaned. Heaven was his for the grasping, except a hangman’s noose dangled between him and it. “I cannot deny that I love her, Rede. Marrying her would be the greatest privilege I can imagine. Also, if I win my freedom and prove my innocence, I have my own estate. It is not much compared to Longford, but I can afford to take a wife. If I can prove my innocent. My uncle is determined to see me hang.”

“Whereas I am determined that you shall not,” Rede replied.

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Tea at Gunter’s with Kitty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Not enough spoons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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History shapes us

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

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

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

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

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

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