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Travelogues on WIP Wednesday

 

I write by seeing the scene in front of me and recording what I see, so the descriptions in my books are informed by the scenes and scenery that I’ve stored in my memory over a lifetime. Do you have sections of description in your work in progress that you’ve lifted from real life? Share it in the comments.

Mine is the ferry crossing that begins the novella I’m currently writing. My regency protagonists are on a scow — a flat-bottomed coastal sailing boat — on their way to an island off the coast of Wales. I sailed as a teenager. I’ve also had the vicarious experience of sailing in historical movies and video trips. But disembarking from the boat on the beach at the other end? That part of the journey was loosely based on a trip I took a couple of weeks ago, when my beloved and I took a water taxi along the coast of the Abel Tasman National Park. Above is one of the photos I took, and below is what I made of it in the story.

A speck in the distance grew as the minutes passed. The scow tacked, and tacked again, but each oblique passage brought a clearer view – a rock resolving into a mountain that, as they approached still closer, developed a flat plain that spread out from one side.

The other passengers crowded back on deck to watch, mostly in silence, as the three-man crew scurried from one task to another, speaking to one another in unintelligible trills and verses. Philip’s manservant was watching them rather than the island, frowning a little.

“We are nearly there, Rene,” Philip told him.

“A long walk from the harbour to the house, Mr Taverton,” Rene countered. “If you can call this a harbour.” The boat glided along a small u-shaped indent in the coast, craggy rocks either side and a tiny beach at the head of the bay that sloped up to the rough grassy fields.

Turning at the sound of a rattling chain, Philip saw the anchor winch turning rapidly, chain and then rope uncoiling under the supervision of a seaman.

“Why has he let down an anchor?” The speaker was a small lady, whose fashionable redingote did not hide delectable curves. “Are we to wade to shore?”

“We are continuing towards the beach,” Philip pointed out. In the village, while he waited, he and the other two men had exchanged names and speculated on what might be ahead of them, but the three ladies had kept to the little parlour set aside for their use. Still, the little lady had spoken first. Should he introduce himself?

“If I may, Sir, mademoiselle…” Rene’s interruption was tentative.

Philip nodded his approval and Rene continued, “They will ground the boat as close to dry land as they can, and then use the anchor to winch themselves off again, when it is time to leave. I saw this many times in my village when I was a boy.”

Even as he spoke, the scow nudged gently into the sand a few yards from where the waves washed and retreated. Two of the sailors ran to fetch along a cleated plank that had been tucked along one side of the deck.

“Now, mademoiselle, you shall see how to reach the shore dry shod,” Rene said.

The lady turned to smile at the manservant before returning her attention to the makeshift gangway now being created from the bow of the boat. Philip caught his breath. Sparkling eyes shone from a heart-shaped face framed by dark blonde curls that had escaped the confines of her bonnet and that gleamed gold where the sun caught its threads.

For a long moment, until he wrenched his eyes elsewhere, they focused on lips he would have given a year of his life to touch, to kiss. She was lovely. She was also a lady, and therefore not for Philip Taverton, unemployed tutor and secretary whose origins were far more humble than his present appearance might indicate.

The plank was laid. One by one, the passengers disembarked, two of the females accepting a steadying hand from a sailor who walked in the sea beside them. Not his lady. She waved away the support and strode boldly down the plank followed by a more plainly-dressed girl of around the same age whom he took to be her maid.

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They are us

Human inhumanity seems to dominate the news.  Builders who cut corners causing deaths when a building collapses. Airlines who decide to fly a plane known to have a fault. Prominent men who hide predatory behaviour with charm and lawyers. Gunmen who open fire on little toddlers, leaving them dead or critically injured.

Monsters, we call them. What kind of a monster, we ask, would tie a five-year-old in the sun to die of thirst? What kind of a monster would steal the life savings of a widow? What kind of a monster would bully a person until they committed suicide?

In fiction, the lines can be clearly drawn. The villains are, as one reviewer said about one of my books, people we can comfortably hate, knowing they are beyond redemption and that they’ll get their just desserts before the book ends. The rest of the cast are good and virtuous, flawed only enough to make them human.

It can be a tricky dance for a writer of historical fiction who wants to be as accurate as possible.

In every book I read, including my own, the protagonists are on the side of abolishing the slave trade, reforming the corn laws, providing pensions for war widows, and educating the village children. If they own factories, they don’t allow children to work in them and they pay fair wages. They are loved by their tenants and servants, and support all kinds of charities, including homes for fallen women.

In reality, some good people of the time opposed all those things for what seemed to them to be good reasons. Some villains were in favour for reasons of their own. The world has few monsters, and any half-way attentive student of history has to concede that – given the right circumstances – decent people can do monstrous things.

Many regency romances include the concept of ruination. We love our single mothers and even courtesans who find love and acceptance in society. In reality, the idea that women had second chances was a myth. If a gentlewoman lost her reputation, and no one married her smart quick, she couldn’t retrieve it. A few courtesans married peers, but they were never accepted socially. (Mind you, what ‘everyone knew’ was not necessarily grounds for a lost reputation. A level of discretion might mean that even a flagrant affair could be ignored.)

Given the consequences of dalliance to a woman, why are rakes so popular with authors and readers? One reviewer found my Merry Marquis in A Baron for Becky an abhorrent character for his casual affairs. And quite right, too. Even so, the fans who love Aldridge for his charm and generosity are also right. His behaviour towards women can be monstrous, but he is not a monster.

Another reader took great exception to the way the entire village turned on my heroine in House of Thorns. In a review, she took a hundred words to list all the horrible ways every other character in the book behaved, including the protagonist. I was thrilled with the emotional response, but I didn’t agree that Bear was a monster. A clumsy fool, but not a monster.

We took our son to see the movie Shazam! the day before yesterday. It was your typical ‘teenager becomes a superhero and can only save the day after he deals with his personal problems’ story, with some laughs thrown in. Shazam’s contribution to this article was the premise that the seven deadly sins, personified as monsters, dwelt within the villain and wanted to come out and infest the world. At one point, the villain asks his nasty father ‘Who is your sin? Oh, of course. Greed!’ At which point, Greed emerges and swallows the father.

I think almost anyone can become so consumed by greed, lust, sloth, pride, gluttony, envy or wrath that we cease to be humane. The more likely scenario, though, is that we cease to think of others as human. We naturally sort and categorise – it is a major strategy for understanding our world. We’re not wrong to sort and categorise human beings – black, Hindu, capitalist, bi, Australian, green-eyed, environmentalist, or a thousand other labels that are more or less descriptive of one or more characteristics of that group.

We are wrong to think that the label describes every member of the group in detail. We are wrong to demonise or sanctify groups, as Regency society demonised ‘fallen women’ and sanctified the great ladies of the ton.

I want to write stories with real people, and that includes monsters; not just the monsters who have been consumed by their sins, but ordinary men and women who are capable of monstrous behaviour.

If we name those who do terrible things as monsters, we are refusing to face up to the darkness within us. ‘This man is a monster for the way he shot innocent people. I have not shot innocent people. Therefore I am not a monster.’ Never mind that I might have ignored bullying or shared jokes that shuffled people into a group and labelled them. Even though I tolerated the demonising of that group, which is a monstrous act.

I have seen the monsters, and they are us.

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The widow’s portion

This is Part 3 of a series I began ages ago and never finished.

Part 1 was about entails

Part 2 was about wills

In this part, I want to look at dowries, jointures, and dowers. (I’ve avoided the term portion, because it is used for both dowries and jointures.

Dowries and dowers

Women of the propertied classes expected to have a dowry — land, or at least a sum of cash. The theory was that the dowry a woman brought with her into marriage provided  the income for the cost of keeping her in the same comfort as she’d enjoyed before the marriage. The principal (or the land) was often part of the dowry paid when her daughters married. In theory at least, the woman had to be party to anything done with her dowry, and could claim the dowry back when her husband died. Of course, if the land had been sold or the money all spent, that wasn’t going to go down so well.

A dower was originally the wife’s right to a third of her husband’s estate when he died. From at least the 12th century, the right to ‘thirds’ or the ‘dower’ was common law, and that continued to be the practice when the man left no will. It wasn’t hers outright, but she had it for life or until she married again. By the 19th century, in the propertied classes, the remnant of this practice was land and buildings known as the dower property or dower house.

Jointures

In time, the payment of a jointure came to replace the dower. The couple made an agreement (a settlement) that exempted the estate from the dower in return for stating how much the woman would receive if she survived her husband, as well as what would go to the children. The jointure was usually anchored on the dowry, and was generally paid out by the heir as a yearly amount (or its cash value, if the dowry was in land). The heir would need to pay the yearly amount (typically 10% of the dowry) until the woman’s death, at which point the principal was divided up among her surviving children.

The arrangement was generally regarded as providing more security for all parties. The estate didn’t need to come up with a large sum of money all at once, which might be impossible. If the heir couldn’t pay, he might lose everything and so would the widow. On the other hand, if widow lived long enough, a dowry might run out, but the jointure would continue.

Marriage settlements

The settlements contained more that the financial details about providing for a widow. They specified what was to be done with the wife’s dowry, what her discretionary income (pin money) would be, and what part of her dowry would go to her children, as well as her income after her husband’s death. The law said a husband had to provide his wife with a home, clothing, and food. Pin money was meant to allow her a little extra she could spend on luxuries without answering to her husband.

The father might also settle funds on the children from his estate, and the settlement would state the total amount.

Settlements for the landed and wealthy could be very complex. At this higher level of society, the sum of money for the wife’s use was paid to a third party. Settlements among the simpler folk tended to be much simpler. Dr Amy Erikson found that up to 10% of probate accounts included marriage settlements, and a quarter of these were for less than thirteen pounds. The two types of settlement found in these less complex situations both specified lump sums; one to be paid to the woman if she survived the husband, and one to the children of a wife’s former marriage.

As an aside

I’ve found another research rabbit hole in investigating Dr Erikson. Here’s the abstract for an article I need to get hold of: Coverture and Capitalism.

Most capital in this period was both accumulated and transferred by means of marriage and inheritance, so it stands to reason that the laws governing marriage and inheritance played a role in structuring the economy. English property law was distinctive in two respects: first, married women under coverture were even more restricted than in the rest of Europe; second, single women enjoyed a position unique in Europe as legal individuals in their own right, with no requirement for a male guardian. I suggest these peculiarities had two consequences for the development of capitalism. First, the draconian nature of coverture necessitated the early development of complex private contracts and financial arrangements, accustoming people to complicated legal and financial concepts and establishing a climate in which the concept of legal security for notional concepts of property (the bedrock of capitalism) became commonplace. Second, without the inhibiting effect of legal guardianship, England had up to fifty per cent more people able to move capital purely because that market included the unmarried half of the female population in addition to the male population. [Erikson: 2005]

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Expect the unexpected on WIP Wednesday

 

I love twists and turns. One of my favourite plotting mechanisms is to think about what might possibly go wrong, and then make it happen. How about you? Do you enjoy surprising your characters and your readers? Show me an excerpt in the comments!

Mine is from the start of To Mend the Broken-Hearted, the second book in the Mountain King series. My hero, Val, is a recluse after some terrible experiences at war and at home. His seclusion is about to end.

Val heard Crick before he saw him. “My lord, my lord,” the man was shouting, his voice high with barely suppressed panic. Val excused himself from a discussion about clearing a blockage in a stream that was threatening to flood the young barley, and took a few paces to meet Crick as the butler came hurtling across the field, careless of the new shoots.

“My lord, we’re under attack. They’ve captured the house, my lord.”

Val took the man’s arm and led him to the side of the field. “Take a deep breath, Crick,” he soothed. “All is well. We are in England. For us, the war is over.”

Crick pulled his arm free and so far forgot himself as to seize Val’s shoulders. “No, sir, you don’t understand. Soldiers on horseback. A lady with a sword. Another lady in the carriage. I tried to stop them, sir, but they forced their way into the house. They made Mrs Minnich take them to the family wing. We have to marshall the tenants, my lord, and rescue the servants.”

Being addressed as ‘my lord’ gave Val pause. Usually, when Crick had one of his episodes, he reverted to Val’s former rank. Always, in fact. When Crick called Val ‘major’, the whole household knew to hide anything that could be used as a weapon.

Barrow and his gangly young son had followed and were listening. Val met Barrow’s concerned eyes. “A carriage and some horsemen went down the lane a while back,” Barrow disclosed. The lane was out of sight from here, but Barrow explained his knowledge by fetching his son a clip across the ear. “The boy here saw them when he went to fetch the axe, but didn’t say nothin’”

Young Barrow’s observation suggested some truth to Crick’s fantasy, but it couldn’t possibly be the invasion Crick imagined. What would be the point? “I’ll investigate,” Val decided.

Crick and Barrow protested him going alone. “Five men, my lord,” Crick insisted. “Foreigners, they were, and the lady, too.”

Val’s troops were a half-mad butler, a burly tenant farmer, and his fifteen-year-old son. Val would do better alone. “You shall be my back-up,” he told them. “Stay at the edge of the woods where you can see the house. If I don’t come out within thirty minutes and signal that everything is safe, ride to the village for help.”

Crick argued, but Val was adamant. Still, as he crossed the open ground to the house, his skin prickled with the old familiar sense of walking into enemy territory.

He diverted his path to pass the stables. Sure enough, a strange carriage stood outside the carriage house, and through the open door of the stable block he could see two strangers, one with a fork of hay and one with a bucket, heading towards the stall. They stopped when they saw him, and stood waiting for him to approach.

Val saw why Crick had identified them as foreign. The olive skin and the beards would have been enough, without the red tunics that flowed loosely to mid thigh, the loose black trousers gathered into knee high boots, the bushy sheepskin hats. They did not put down their burdens, which argued for peaceful intentions, but the weapons in their belts, their alert stance, and their wary eyes suggested that ‘warrior’ was the correct identification.

“Who told you to make free with my stables?” he demanded.

The man with the hay fork used his head to indicate Val’s elderly stable master, who appeared from the aisle the men had been heading into. “Is it a mistake, my lord?” Greggs stammered. “Only, Mrs Minnich said I was to let them have what they needed.” His eyes lit and he smiled blissfully. “Such horses, my lord! I have never seen such horses in my stables. No, not in all my years.”

The man with the hay fork bowed. “Lord Ashcroft, I take it. I regret the necessity to trespass on your hospitality, your lordship.” The English was perfect, but Val could not place the accent any more than he could the clothing.

“You have the advantage of me,” he pointed out.

The thick brows drew together over the eagle’s beak of a nose. “The advantage, sir?” He cast a glance at his companion, who did not quite shrug.

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Tea with James (Part 2)

 

Eleanor could not take her eyes off him. She had seen him, of course, since he returned to England; not just at that memorable ball when they stood face to face for the first time in nearly thirty-five years then passed without a word, but also in the distance on the street, in the park, even at other social events that they accidentally both attended at the same time.

She had not stood close enough to catalogue all the ways he had changed and all the ways he was still the young man — almost a boy — that she had loved and lost.

“James,” she said again, her vocabulary deserting her.

His eyes were the same warm brown, but the face from which they smiled had matured into a shape far distant from her memories. His height had not changed, nor were his shoulders broader. Indeed, if she ignored the maturity lines, and the wisdom and knowledge in his eyes, she would not believe him to be nearly sixty. He had been a handsome youth, almost pretty. The prettiness had worn into something sharper, something stronger.

“I waited,” she said, not knowing the words were in her mind until she heard them leave her tongue. “I told them if they dragged me to the church I would refuse Haverford at the very altar. Then they told me you were dead, and it didn’t matter any more.” It didn’t matter now. More than thirty years had passed. She had two sons. He had married a woman he loved and had ten children with her. How could she possibly care what he thought about the actions of that girl from so long ago. But somehow, it did matter that he knew she had tried to be faithful to their love.

His gaze had not left face. “Winshire had reason to believe that I was dead. My captor said he would kill me if Winshire did not pay the ransom he wanted.”

“Georgie explained.” She flushed, suddenly aware that she was gawking like a giddy girl. “Please, Lord Sutton, do have a seat.” She arranged herself in the chair closest to the tea makings. “May I pour you a cup.”

James’s lips curved, just a little. “Thank you. Black, please. No milk, cream or sugar.” As he took the chair opposite, he added, “Are we to be formal, then, Eleanor? Or should I say ‘Your Grace’?”

No. Never that. For James to address her as Haverford’s duchess struck her as a perversion of all things righteous and good. Floundering to regain her balance, she thought again of his wife. She had suffered decades of marriage to a monster, but he had loved and been loved, and she was glad of it. “I was sorry to hear about the death of Lady James. When Georgie told me she had died, I so wanted to write, but…” Unable to find the words to explain the social constraints she would have needed to ignore to write a condolence letter to her first love on the death of his wife, she gestured meaninglessly with one hand.

He seemed to understand. “Thank you.” He put out his hand to receive the cup she passed and her hand touched his. Even through two layers of glove, she felt a jolt, as if all the barely contained energy that gave him such presence and power had discharged up her arm and through her — through her torso. She snatched her hand back, and only his quick reflexes allowed him to take a firm grip on the cup in time to prevent more than a slight slosh into the saucer.

It was a relief when the door opened again, to let in Grace and Georgie. The flurry of greetings gave her time to calm down.

James said, “I will leave you ladies to your meeting and walk on to my own. The carriage will wait for you, my ladies. Your Grace, thank you for sparing me a few moments of your time.”

Eleanor curtsied and allowed him to bow over her hand, very properly not touching it. “It was a pleasure to see you, my lord,” she managed to murmur, her voice creditably even.

But one thought beat persistently in her mind all through tea with her friends, the ride home in the unmarked carriage she had borrowed from her son, her entrance into his private wing — yet another anonymous veiled lady visiting the wicked Merry Marquis — and her retreat to her own side of the house. Her attraction to James Winderfield, Earl of Sutton and future Duke of Winshire, was as potent as it had been when she was an innocent girl.

It was foolishness. She was married. They were enemies by her husband’s decree. James was a widower famous for still loving his deceased wife. Foolishness or not, he was still the only man who had ever made her heart race and her body melt. And nothing could ever come of it.

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Spotlight on Hearts in the Land of Ferns

Hearts in the Land of Ferns is on preorder, and will be out on 23 April. It’s a collection of my New Zealand based novellas — two historical romance and three contemporary romantic suspense. All of them have been published in other collections, but never together.

Here are the covers for the five stories. I made the one for A Family Christmas, and the others are by the talented Mari Christie.

The historicals

Step into the 1860s in All That Glisters, set in Dunedin at the time of the first gold rushes. It was first published in Hand-Turned Tales.

Rose is unhappy in the household of her fanatical uncle. Thomas, a young merchant from Canada, offers a glimpse of another possible life. If she is brave enough to reach for it.

 

 

Forged in Fire is set in geothermal country just outside of Rotorua in 1886, and was first published in the Bluestocking Belles’ collection Never Too Late.

Forged in fire, their love will create them anew.

Burned in their youth, neither Tad nor Lottie expected to feel the fires of love. The years have soothed the pain, and each has built a comfortable, if not fully satisfying, life, on paths that intersect and then diverge again.

But then the inferno of a volcanic eruption sears away the lies of the past and frees them to forge a future together.

The contemporaries

These were all previously published in collections by Authors of Main Street.

A Family Christmas: She’s hiding out. He’s coming home. And there’ll be storms for Christmas.

Kirilee is on the run, in disguise, out of touch, and eating for two. Rural New Zealand has taken this Boston girl some getting used to, but her husband’s family and her new community have accepted her into their hearts. Just as well, since she’s facing Christmas and the birth of her baby without the man who wed her and sent her into hiding. What will he think when he comes home and discovers he’s a father?

Trevor is heading home for Christmas, after three years undercover, investigating a global criminal organization. He hasn’t spoken to his sister and grandfather since the case began. He hasn’t spoken to Kirilee, his target’s sister, since the day nearly nine months ago he married her and helped her escape. Will she want to stay married? And if so, will he?

In the heart of a storm, two people from different worlds question what divides and what unites them.

 

 

Abbie’s Wish: Abbie’s Christmas wish draws three men to her mother. One of them is a monster.

After too many horrifying experiences, Claudia Westerson has given up on men. She’s done everything possible to exorcise the men in her life, short of changing her name and appearance. They’re unpredictable, controlling and, worst of all, dangerous. Besides, all her energies are devoted to therapy for her daughter, Abbie, who is recovering from a brain injury.

But after Abbie is photographed making a wish for Christmas, Claudia begins receiving anonymous threats, proving her quiet refuge is not nearly hidden enough.

Who can she trust? Three men hope to make her theirs:

  • Jack, the driver from her daughter’s accident
  • Ethan, her daughter’s biological father
  • Rhys, a local school teacher and widower.

They all sound sincere, but which one isn’t?

 

 

Beached: The truth will wash away her coastal paradise…

Grieving for the grandparents who raised her and still bruised from betrayals in New York City, Nikki Watson returns to her childhood home in Valentine Bay.

Zee Henderson has built a new life in New Zealand: friends, a job he enjoys and respect he earned for himself, without the family name and money he left behind.

The attraction between Nikki and Zee flames into passion, until Zee’s past arrives on their doorstep and washes away their coastal paradise.

Buy links:

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Hearts-Land-Ferns-Tales-Zealand-ebook/dp/B07NDT826B

Amazon Aus: https://www.amazon.com.au/Hearts-Land-Ferns-Tales-Zealand-ebook/dp/B07NDT826B/

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hearts-Land-Ferns-Tales-Zealand-ebook/dp/B07NDT826B

Apple iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/au/book/hearts-in-the-land-of-ferns-love-tales-in-new-zealand/id1451855017?mt=11

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ww/en/ebook/hearts-in-the-land-of-ferns-love-tales-in-new-zealand

Barnes & Noble Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1130533818?ean=2940155970781

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/921843

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Marriage proposals on WIP Wednesday

 

The marriage proposal is often a highlight of a historical romance. Tender, inept, funny, disastrous — it shows the character of both protagonists and is an important point along the plot arc: often the penultimate moment, but also frequently much earlier in the plot. Show me the passage with your proposal, if you have one. If not, share another important declaration of intent, feelings, or both.

Mine is from Unkept Promises, and happens in Chapter Two.

“Jules,” Father said gravely, leaving the point, “her father appears to have been her only family. She has been left near destitute and with her reputation in ruins. But she refuses the remedy that would save her.”

“I heard,” Jules said. “Marriage to me. Because of Kirana.” He met his father’s gaze, his own solemn. “Kirana and I have two children, Father, if all went well with her lying in. I cannot desert them. My life is in Madras. I am posted to the Far East fleet, and should have been on my way back days ago. In addition, Mia is a child—just fourteen. Her peculiar upbringing has made her mature in many ways. She is not ready for marriage.”

“Mia is…” Susan began, but Father waved her to silence, leaving Jules to finish his own arguments for and against.

He was thinking about what his life might look like with Mia as his wife. He could think of worse fates. She would, as Aldridge had implied, be a magnificent woman when she grew up. “Can I leave her with you? If I marry her… Would you take her in as a daughter and look after her until I come home?” Which could be years from now, and anything could happen. He was going back into the war. He might die. Any of them might.

Yes. He would marry Mia and let the future look after itself.

It happened quickly after that. Mia argued when he proposed, but he assured her he was not being coerced. She looked gravely at him as he explained the arrangements he had made to leave her in England, and agreed. “That would be best, I expect. Kirana would not like if you arrived home with a wife.”

Would Kirana be upset? He worried about that for a moment, then put the thought aside. He was doing the best he could for everyone, and they would just have to accept it.

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Tea with James

Eleanor looked around the shop with interest. Long ago, in the early miserable days of her marriage, one of Haverford’s elderly aunts had told her to always look for the silver lining. Aldridge had been born later that year, the first silver lining in the dark cloud of her life as a duchess.

More than thirty years had passed, and she was usually able to arrange her life just as she liked it, but every now and again, the game of hunting silver linings still kept her calm and sane.

The current cloud was Haverford’s dictate that she have nothing further to do with her two closest friends on the grounds that they were sisters to the Earl of Sutton, on whom he had declared war.

The silver lining was all the places she was discovering. Duchesses, His Grace decreed, sent for anything they needed. The modiste came to her. Books were ordered from a catalogue and delivered. When she chose to redecorate, she selected what she wanted from samples and someone made it all happen.

Shops were a revelation. In all her life, she had never been to a fabric emporium, such as the one where she and her friends met two weeks ago, or a millinery — last week’s meeting place. Both had been fascinating, but today’s book shop surpassed them all.

After this ridiculous kerfuffle was over, she was going to continue to go out to shops, and not in disguise, either. She would adore the opportunity to stroll, as other ladies were doing, taking a book from the shelves and reading a few pages. But the veil that kept her from being recognised was too heavy to allow her to read.

Instead, she followed the shop assistant to the private room where she was to meet Lady Sutton and Lady Georgiana Winderfield. The shop also served refreshments and provided rooms for meetings. This room was set up with comfortable chairs, and the table was already set with all the appointments for making and serving tea.

Eleanor was the first to arrive. She seated herself before reaching up to lift her veil, and had no sooner cast it back over the bonnet, and sighed with relief at being able to see clearly, when the door opened behind her back. Just to be careful, she did not turn. “Grace? Georgie?”

“Your Grace.” The deep voice was male. “My sisters say I may have five minutes, provided you agree.” His tones warmed with humour. “I daresay they are watching the door to see whether you will send me off with a flea in my ear.”

Eleanor stood and turned, her heart in her mouth. “Ja— Lord Sutton.” If Haverford found out… No. She had taken every precaution. She let go the breath she had known she was holding and held out her hand. “How are you?”

 

 

 

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Spotlight on To Love a Scottish Laird

Congratulations to Sherry Ewing on the release of To Love a Scottish Laird. I was a beta reader for this lovely medieval story, which is the prequel to her other Berwyk novels and links with the de Wolfe world.

Lady Catherine de Wolfe knows she must find a husband before her brother chooses one for her, but none of the knights and lords she knows have caught her eye. A tournament to celebrate the wedding of the Duke of Normandy might be her answer. She does not expect to fall for a man after just one touch.

Laird Douglas MacLaren of Berwyck is invited to the tournament by the Duke of Normandy. He goes to ensure Berwyck’s safety once Henry takes the throne. He does not expect to become entranced by a woman who bumps into him.

Before they can express their feelings, the Duke orders them wed to strengthen ties between his English supporters and the borderland, and then separates them by commanding Douglas’s escort to his home.

Yet, nothing is ever quite that simple. Not everyone is happy with the union of this English lady and a Scottish laird. From the shores of France, to Berwyck Castle on the border between their countries, Douglas and Catherine must find their way to protect their newfound love.

Buy Links:

Amazon US: https://amzn.to/2UbuMKB

AU: https://amzn.to/2OvonVg

BR: https://amzn.to/2OwN1Vs

CA: https://amzn.to/2uzkwNO

DE: https://amzn.to/2TFL8Xm

ES: https://amzn.to/2CFMxYi

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First kiss

Catherine fought against the urge to completely surrender to Douglas and his all-consuming kiss. She should not be allowing him such a liberty. She should be voicing her outrage at the close proximity of their bodies. But when his lips slid against hers, she was completely lost.

If only Douglas knew what he was doing to her. She was not experienced with the intimacies between a man and woman. Oh, she understood the fundamentals of the act of kissing but had only been given meaningless pecks on the cheek. But this…  A whole new world opened up to her, and she rejoiced in what Douglas brought out in her!

Her arms wound their way up his neck, and she played with the length of his hair. In turn, he all but crushed her to his body but ’twas not unpleasant. Nay! Her body begged for something she could not understand. Parts of her began tingling as if she was coming alive for the very first time, and she never wanted it to end.

When Douglas’s tongue skimmed across her closed mouth, she gasped. Apparently, ’twas just the opportunity he was looking for! His tongue began playing with her own. A low moan escaped her and only encouraged him to take her deeper into what could only be described as sheer bliss. Catherine felt as though she was soaring into the sky like one of her birds. But this was so much better!

His arm tightened around her waist, and she finally became aware of the unmistakable form of his manhood pressed intimately to her body. By the Blessed Virgin! What was she doing?

Catherine emerged from the abyss of pleasure, snapping back to a reality that would possibly become her worst nightmare; wed to a man who would probably control her every move. Douglas was a complete stranger, no matter how handsome. She was concerned about losing the freedom she had grown accustomed to.

He must have sensed some change in her, for his grip loosened as he broke the kiss. Catherine felt the loss immediately and almost stepped forward for them to continue. Her heart felt as though ’twould beat its way out of her chest, and she was pleasantly surprised when it appeared Douglas felt the same. Their kiss had revealed many things to Catherine. First, Douglas certainly knew what he was doing when it came to kissing. Second, she began to think mayhap ’twould not be so difficult to be this man’s wife.

Meet Sherry Ewing

Sherry Ewing picked up her first historical romance when she was a teenager and has been hooked ever since. A bestselling author, she writes historical and time travel romances to awaken the soul one heart at a time. When not writing, she can be found in the San Francisco area at her day job as an Information Technology Specialist.

 

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