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Tea with a friend in need

 

The child was asleep at last. Unconscious, rather. Much as she hated laudanum, the Duchess of Haverford had seen the wisdom of using it this once. It had been nearly a week since the incident, and her poor god-daughter had not dropped off for more than a few exhausted moments at a time.

The child’s mother hovered over the invalid’s bed, her face haggard. “Will she ever recover from this, Eleanor?” she asked. “Or have I lost my little girl, as well as…” She bit her upper lip, as if to keep it from spilling out the truth of the rest of her bereavement. Even between the two of them, who knew what had happened, the words should not be spoken. If the girl was to be saved, no one could ever know what she had suffered.

“We will help her,” Eleanor promised. “We will be her strength until she finds her own, dear one. We will not let her blame herself or fall into despair.”

A knock at the door had her friend stepping swiftly into the curtained alcove that hid the window. Eleanor waited a moment until she was concealed, then lifted her voice. “Enter!”

It was a maid with the tea. Eleanor bade her set down the tray and leave them, and sat to prepare a cup of tea the way her friend liked it. The lady emerged from her hiding place. “I could kill my husband. The things he said to her, Eleanor.” She took a sip of her tea and sighed.

“Men always blame women for their own failings,” Eleanor reminded her. But how could that insensitive cad think an innocent seventeen year old, walking peacefully in her own garden with a trusted family member, deserved to be so brutally and intimately assaulted? Doubtless, he sought to excuse sins of his own.

“Thank you for keeping her here. Does Haverford…?” The lady shook her head, as if in answer to her own question.

Eleanor put down her own cup to lean forward and take her friend’s hands. “No. He has no interest in what I do, my dear, which is as well in this case. Only the maid who cleans this room and my cousin Miriam know she is here, and no one knows who she is.” Eleanor had sent the faithful cousin to sleep as soon as the invalid had succumbed to the laudanum.

“Miriam has been wonderful.” Her friend’s tears welled up and overflowed, and the lady gave a huff of a bitter laugh. “I cannot even nurse my own daughter, for fear my husband will find out where she is and punish her for the crime of…” she trailed off again, once more avoiding the boggy quagmire concealed in their every conversation.

“Miriam understands,” Eleanor explained, which was as much as she would reveal of the circumstances from which Eleanor had rescued the distant relative who now cared for the injured girl.

The friend put her cup down, and stood. “I must go. I cannot be away too long, or they will become suspicious.”

“You have transport?”

“An unmarked carriage. An anonymous driver. My sister arranged it. I daresay the driver thinks I am here for an assignation.” Her smile was a feeble attempt, but Eleanor admired the courage behind the weak joke.

“The maid will be outside. Let her show you to your carriage, dearest, and tell her to return to me when she is done. Do not worry about the child. I will sit with her until Miriam awakens.”

The mother managed another weak smile, kissed the sleeping girl’s forehead, and hugged Eleanor before lowering her thick mourning veil over her face. Her identity concealed, she stepped into the hall. Eleanor took Miriam’s seat next to the bed, where she could watch over her charge. Whatever would become of the poor girl? Eleanor had once had hopes of a match between her friend’s daughter and Aldridge… But now? Even if the incident could remain concealed; even if Aldridge ever settled down enough to consider marriage; even if the dear child recovered enough to allow a man within touching distance… Those were just the start of the obstacles to such a connection.

Eleanor took a deep breath. Whatever was she doing thinking about her own wistful dreams when this poor darling’s life had been turned into a nightmare?  As the child began to toss and whimper, she leaned forward to murmur soothingly. “You are safe, my darling. You are safe. No one can hurt you here.”

 

 

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Dancing and other moves in WIP Wednesday

The chair of the panel I was on last week writes television scripts. “These people all write full books,” he told the audience in his introduction. “I just write a few words and somebody else makes the pictures happen.” In a novel, we need to describe the action in a way that lets the reader see it. They make the pictures happen, but we provide the raw material in our words. This week, I’m inviting you to post excerpts that describe activities — fighting, riding, dancing or whatever else your characters are involved in. Mine is from To Wed a Proper Lady, and describes a dance.

At last, it was time for their dance; a country dance in the long form, which was fortunate, for they would have time for conversation in the privacy formed by the music and the concentration of the other dancers. First, though, James could take his turn with her in the patterns of the dance, his hand holding his hers, his gaze fixed on her fathomless brown eyes. A pattern of two couples followed, a swapping of partners, and then back to circle with Sophia before they separated once more, each to their own row.

The couple leading the line wove in and out of the dancers before promenading back up the middle of the rows, and setting off the patterns again: each couple meeting and circling, two couples, swapped partners, and back to Sophia again before the lead couple danced away down to the other end of the rows and the next couple began the sequence over again.

In their turn, he and Sophia would find themselves odd pair out at the end of the rows, and would stand aside for several minutes. Meanwhile, James enjoyed Sophia’s grace, the fleeting touches of her hand, even the sway of her body against his when they linked elbows in passing. Under the blazing candlelight, he could not tell whether the flecks in her pupils were green or gold, but her hair certainly glinted gold as the well anchored curls in her coiffure bounced with the vigour of the dance.

At last, came their turn to lead the line, and then to circle around to the back, there to stand and rest for a few minutes. James kept his eyes on the other dancers, rather than allowing them to feast on her as he would prefer.

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Tea with Matilda and Jessica

Her Grace of Haverford was wondering why she had thought an afternoon at home with Matilda and Jessica to be a good idea. Her foster-daughters — as she thought of them, though by Haverford’s decree she referred to them as foster-nieces — had not taken kindly to Haverford’s edict that they no longer socialised or even spoke to their dearest friends, the Winderfield twins, and now Matilda was furious because Aldridge had run off yet another suitor.

“Lord Almsley is a baron, Aunt Eleanor.” Matilda in a temper was a glorious sight, colour high, perfect form bristling wit indignation. “Does Aldridge intend us all to be old maids? If he is not glowering at our shoulders scaring all the good gentlemen away, he’s hustling us inside off the terrace when we take a breath of fresh air, and now he has beaten poor Lord Almsley just for asking to wed me.”

“Or Jessica’s,” Eleanor commented. The man had hoped to connect himself to the Haverford family and pay his debts with the dowry Aldridge had settled on each of his half-sisters. According to Aldridge, the idiot preferred Matilda’s exotic beauty, but was prepared to take Jessica if Matilda was already spoken for. “I haven’t punched someone outside of the practice ring in years, Mama,” Aldridge had told her, “but I made an exception for the obnoxious scum who so disrespected my sisters.”

Eleanor’s comment stopped Matilda’s pacing. “Jessica?” She shook her head, setting her dark ringlets swinging. “What does Jessica have to do with it? He was courting me!”

Jessica opened her mouth and then closed it. Eleanor raised an interrogative eyebrow, waiting for her to comment. Matilda looked from Eleanor to Jessica and back. “He was. He was courting me,: she insisted.

“He was,” Eleanor confirmed. “Everyone saw it. However, unless I miss my guess, he was also secretly courting your sister.”

Matilda narrowed her eyes. “Jess?” Jess’s blush confirmed her guilt to both observers. “Jess! How could you! Aunt Eleanor, it isn’t fair!” Matilda insisted.

“Do you want a man who regards you as interchangeable with your sister?” Eleanor asked.

Matilda sat down with a flounce. “I want a husband and a home of my own. If Aldridge has his way, I shall molder into an old maid in the Haverford residences, staying out of the duke’s way and never having children to love.”

Eleanor sat, too, and waved Jessica into a chair. Aldridge had been unwilling to explain to Matilda exactly why he had turned Almsley away, but the girl deserved to know. “Matilda, Almsley’s willingness to take either of you is not the only reason Aldridge punched him. He had already decided to refuse the young man because of his gambling addiction and other personal habits, but when it was Almsley’s answer when Aldridge asked if he would be giving up his mistress that was the final straw.”

Matilda paled but said nothing. “Almsley has a mistress?” Jessica asked.

“One with whom he spends most of his time, and on whom he has lavished much of his personal wealth.” She had their full attention now. She had always thought the practice of keeping girls ignorant was a foolish one, but some truths were hard to hear. “Girls, Almsley told Aldridge that he would not be in need of an heiress were it not for his mistress, who is expensive but well worth it. He further suggested that, given the circumstances of your birth, you could not expect a better match, and would therefore be happy with his title and any pin money that Aldridge insisted on writing into the settlements. He assured Aldridge he would treat you with respect in public, and otherwise wouldn’t bother you.”

“The cur!” Jessica exclaimed, taking her sister’s hand.

“I hope Aldridge made him bleed,” Matilda agreed. “Oh, Aunt Eleanor, will we ever find anyone to marry?”

The girls are half-sisters, born six months apart, the natural daughters of the Duke of Haverford, taken into Eleanor’s nursery as babies. Watch for them in various of my books. 

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Happy endings and other myths

“I write dark because happy endings are boring,” said the young novelist sitting next to me on last Thursday’s panel at the Paraparaumu library.

I’d already had my turn at that question, so all I could do was make faces and shake my head.

I’ve written elsewhere about why endings of any kind are a myth. Nothing in real life truly begins or ends; it simply changes form. As a person and as a writer, I like to choose an upward trajectory as my stopping point for my stories.

As to boring! Leo Tolstoy said, in Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I’m inclined to regard the opposite as true. The path to unhappiness is endlessly predictable; the path to happiness, being strewn with so many more obstacles, is full of twists, turns, and human striving. CS Lewis commented, “How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different the saints.”

Although, to be fair, an unhappy ending for our hero or heroine might be an extremely happy one for the villain! The mermaid failed to win the prince and faded away to sea foam, but the sea witch was up one gorgeous voice.

(Yes, I write dark. But my hero and heroine are guaranteed a hard-won happy ending.)

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Nuns, oaths, and penalties

Daniel O’Connell, campaigner for Catholic Emancipation, stood for parliament and refused to take the Oath of Supremacy.

I’m a purist when it comes to historical fact. Not that I get every single detail right myself, but when I hit something in a story that is factually incorrect, it takes me right out of the story and spoils my enjoyment. Sometimes, as with calling a duchess ‘Lady Surname’ or a duke ‘my lord’, it’s such a fundamental part of the culture of the peerage of historical times that I find it hard to forgive and keep reading. Sometimes, it seems to me that what I’m seeing is leakage from modern assumptions.

Recently, I’ve read a couple of stories that completely ignore the status of Catholics at the time (and nearly everyone that wasn’t Church of England, but in this case, Catholics). Set in the early Regency, one had the heroine sent to a convent (in England) for three years as a punishment and the other had the heroine taking refuge with some nuns who were running an orphanage. Catholic nuns were out, because before the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829, Catholic convents were outlawed, and before the Victorian era, Anglican convents didn’t exist.

Being a Catholic between 1558 and 1829 meant penalties, punishments, and various exclusions. The details varied from monarch to monarch and from year to year, as a succession of statutes tried to keep all but Anglicans from the public life of the nation. Charles Butler, a lawyer who was the first Catholic to be appointed King’s Council after the 1829 Act, wrote that the law meant Catholics:

…were deprived of many of the rights of English subjects, and the common rights of mankind. They were prohibited, under the most severe penalties, from exercising any act of religion, according to their own mode of worship.

They were subject to heavy punishments for keeping schools, for educating their children in their own religious principles at home ; and to punishments still more severe for sending them for education to foreign establishments.

They were incapacitated from acquiring landed property by descent or purchase, from serving in his majesty’s armies and navies, from all offices, civil or military, from practicing the law or physic, and from being guardians and executors.

They were liable to the ignominious and oppressive annual fine of a double land-tax, deprived of the constitutional right of voting for members of parliament, and disqualified from setting in house of commons.

Their peers were deprived of their hereditary seats in the house of lords, and their clergy, for exercising their religious functions, were exposed to the heaviest penalties and punishments and, in some cases, to death.

A popular mechanism for separating the Anglicans from everyone else was a series of tests and oaths that people had to take when joining the armed forces, taking public office, or joining a trade corporation. The Test Acts required people to do something to show they were practicing members of the Church of England: from 1672, this meant submitting a certificate that confirmed they’d taken Holy Communion according to Anglican rites. The oaths of allegiance, supremacy and abjuration required the oath taker to swear allegiance to the monarch as supreme governor of the Church of England. They had, in other words, to say that the monarch was the highest spiritual authority of all.

Sometimes, the oath was part of the process of joining a profession, and refusing to take it meant you couldn’t get into your preferred trade, the army, the navy, parliament, or local government. At other times, a local justice could require anyone over the age of 18 to take the oath, and those who wouldn’t could be punished for high treason, which meant:

  • drawing, hanging and quartering
  • corruption of blood, by which heirs became incapable of inheriting honours and offices, and
  • forfeiture of all property.

So no nuns, then.

UPDATE: On the Historical Novel Society FaceBook page, one commenter has pointed out that the Discalced Carmelites, an order of contemplative nuns, arrived back in England in 1794. They kept a very low profile, wore secular clothes, and lived in hired houses supported by local benefactors. But nuns were in England before the date I gave, even if they were outlawed. They were hiding and living the Carmelite life of prayer, silence, and solitude. They weren’t running orphanages or providing secure prisons for recalcitrant aristocratic daughters. I stand by my assumption that the plot lines I read were ridiculous, but I have to concede that there were at least three tiny communities of nuns in England during the Regency. I just love the way history never fails to surprise!

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Random thoughts on WIP Wednesday

I often have random scenes playing themselves out in my head, not just from the books I’m currently writing but from books I’m not going to write for a while. Do you do that? Share an excerpt in the comments from a scene that’s in your head and not yet on paper.

Mine is from the Redepenning book after next, and it might be the beginning. Or I might begin with a scene from Valeria.

Harry sat drinking a coffee and pretending to read a book while the abyss hovered, a seething mass of black memories, with tendrils of despair ever reaching, and ever having to be beaten back so he could pretend that all was normal.

The abyss, rather than the lingering weakness from his wounds, was the true reason he was still staying at his father’s townhouse instead of finding rooms nearer to the barracks. The need to mimic a well man before Brigadier General Lord Redepenning dragged him from bed every morning, and gave him a motive to keep the darkness at bay for another day.

Lord Henry was on the other side of the library study reading the files and letters sent over from the horse guard. He pretended, too. He and Harry both knew that he worked here rather than his office at the Horse Guard for fear of leaving his eldest son to his own devices, rather than because of the encroachments of age. If neither spoke of it, it did not have to be faced.

”Harry.” An odd note in Father’s voice sparked a thread of interest. Father was holding out to him the letter in his hand. “Tell me what you think of this.”

Harry set down the book and his cup and crossed the room, standing beside the desk to scan the two pages.

He’d not completed the first paragraph before he collapsed into the nearest chair. “A widow? She thinks I’m dead?” A few lines more and he lifted his head, meeting his father’s eyes. “I have a son? Father! I have a son.”

”And, it seems, a wife you acquired in Spain five years ago and never mentioned,” Father replied.

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Tea with Gil

The invitation had been for the new Viscount Rutledge, but Her Grace of Haverford was unsurprised to find his mother had accompanied him. The duchess had never warmed to Lady Rutledge, but the woman must be tolerated for the sake of her son, who deserved her support. Lord Rutledge, or Gil as his friends called him, faced an uphill battle to reinstate the wealth and reputation of the title he had just inherited after the excesses of his disgraceful rakehell of a brother.

“Of course, Rutledge is nothing like his brother,” Lady Rutledge complained. “My dear Gideon knew what he owed the title. Why, he would never have missed the Season. As for involving himself in estate business like some kind of peasant! Gideon would have no more demeaned his whole family in such a manner than he would have appeared in public in last year’s fashions.”

Eleanor was well aware of how the former Lord Rutledge spent the Season when he and his mother came up to Town, leaving the man’s poor little wife at home in the country. Gideon Rutledge seldom appeared in a gathering for polite Society, and would have been evicted from most had he tried. He was, however, to be found throwing money like water wherever vice and debauchery reigned. Hence the challenge facing his successor.

The duchess entered the lists on the side of the new viscount. “I am always delighted to see a peer who values the welfare of his people and his estate above his own pleasures,” she said. “Lord Rutledge, your many years of successful leadership in the service of the King will undoubtedly stand you in good stead as you face these new challenges.”

“Rutledge’s only challenge,” Lady Rutledge insisted, “is finding a wealthy bride willing to accept such a barbarian.” She shrugged. “The title covers a multitude of sins.”

Eleanor only just avoided showing her astonishment. To call one’s son a barbarian before a mere acquaintance! Was the woman mad? “It certainly did,” she countered. “How glad you must be that your second son is so much more responsible and civilised than your first.”

It was Lady Rutledge’s turn to gape. “Gideon? Are you calling Gideon uncivilised? Why, he always dressed in the first stare of fashion, and he knew all the on dits. He was even invited to Carlton House and the Duke of Richport was an intimate friend.”  She sat back proudly, clearly confident that she had rousted the opposition with the final argument.

Gil Rutledge caught Eleanor’s eye. He gave a slight shake of the head, before asking, “The landscape over the fireplace, Your Grace, is that one of the ducal estates? I do not recognise the house, but the painting is truly lovely.”

Eleanor accepted the change of subject, and followed his lead in ruthlessly keeping conversation during the remainder of the call on innocuous topics. Lady Rutledge followed the footman out after the requisite half hour. Gil remained long enough to say, “Thank you, Your Grace. It does no good to talk sense to my mother, but I appreciate you making the effort.”

“Hurry up, Rutledge,” Lady Rutledge’s voice called, but the duchess put a hand on the viscount’s sleeve to detain him.

“Lord Rutledge, I have heard many good things about you. You have the respect of much of Society; certainly of those who count. My nephew stands your friend, I know, and my son and I are pleased to know you. Remember that, when your mother’s insults become burdensome.”

The young man’s sombre mood lifted a little and he smiled. “Thank you, Your Grace,” he said again.

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Gil Rutledge is the hero of The Realm of Silence. Check it out for more about the burdens he faces and how a love he believes he does not deserve finds him anyway.

 

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Danger in WIP Wednesday

Continuing my plot development principle of ‘what could possibly go wrong’, I’ve just dropped a heroine through a hole in the attic floor. Take a moment and share in the comments — any passage where a character in your work in progress is in danger, and any type of danger (physical, mental, social, or spiritual).

A slight sound behind him or perhaps just a change in air set him spinning; instincts honed during years with the rebels in the Lattari Mountains south east of Naples propelled him across the open space towards the intruder, his right hand itching for the knife he no longer wore hidden up his sleeve.

He managed to pull himself up short before he took Miss Duncastle by the throat, but not before he shocked her into panicked flight. She took two quick steps backwards, then scurried sideways through a narrow gap into a part of the attic he had not yet explored.

“Don’t be frightened!” he called out. “Miss Duncastle, it is quite safe. I was startled. I would not hurt you.” His calls of reassurance were drowned by crashing sounds in the direction of Miss Duncastle’s footsteps.

A woman’s scream — her scream — had him squeezing through the gap in pursuit. “Miss Duncastle!” he shouted again.

“Be careful! The floor!” Her voice was strained, and as he emerged into a cleared area under a dormer he could see why. The floor had given way, taking Miss Duncastle with it. She clung to a beam that still remained, her knuckles white with the strain. Below — some 16 feet below — he could see a room, empty but for items that must have fallen through the hole. The beam was frail. He could see at a glance that it was slowly giving under the weight of the lady. It would certainly not take his.

Even with most of his attention on Miss Duncastle and her peril, he deduced what must’ve happened. A towering stack of furniture and wooden boxes had slammed down on floorboards softened by damp rot. Some of them had scattered across the open space. Most had crashed through the hole to create a dangerous landing place for the lady hovering above.

“Hold on,” he told her.

Her eyes wide in her white face, she nodded. “I’ll try.”

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Tea with heroes and heroines from the Land of Ferns

Rosa held tight to Thomas’s arm, peeking around him at the other couples who waited in the Duchess’s parlour. They had all introduced themselves, and all expressed wonder at how they had arrived, concluding that somehow it was all a dream.

That must be true, for how else could people from different centuries be here together? Yet she could have sworn she had been wide awake, the gentle quiet pony Thomas had purchased so she could learn to ride following his along the trail that led beside the river to the next mining camp they planned to visit. Of a sudden, without warning, the scene changed to a street in a bustling city, and the ornate gates of a mansion larger than any building she had ever seen.

Another couple on horseback arrived at the same time, and appeared just as startled. The bemusement and the horses were all they had in common; the clothes they wore — especially the trousers that hugged the lady’s thighs and calves — beyond shocking. Kirilee and Trevor came from the 21st century, or so they claimed, where such clothes were proper for ladies.

She supposed she believed them, for the other two couples from the 21st century were also scandalously clothed, and their means of transportation left no doubt in her mind that they had stepped her from another time. Nikki and Zee arrived in a horseless carriage: a monstrous machine that nonetheless purred like a large cat and gleamed the red of a priceless ruby. Claudia and Ethan’s steed was far louder and somehow more shocking. With only two wheels, it resembled nothing she had ever seen.

The conveyance carrying the fifth couple really was a carriage; a one-horse buggy similar to that used for travelling around town or to near neighbours in town. If she understood them correctly, they came here from a New Zealand twenty years or more later than her own time. Perhaps her children would meet them in that future — they would be a similar age. She choked back a laugh.

At that moment, the door opened, and they all stood as their hostess arrived.

“Good morning,” said the Duchess of Haverford. “I am so pleased to meet you all.”

Meet the heroes and heroines of my new story collection, Hearts in the Land of Ferns: Love Stories from New Zealand. It’s available on 23 April for only 99c.