A Gift to the Heart

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Courtship trials on WIP Wednesday

The girls’ chaperone is determined to thwart a courtship in A Gift to the Heart. Three extra ladies on a walk to Hyde Park might deter all but the most determined of suitors. But Bane has an idea.

Ahead of them, Bane and the other two Marple sisters had stopped by a woman wearing a large basket on her back and carrying a tray. Cilla’s sister looked around as Drake and his two ladies approached, and grinned at Cilla, who raised her eyebrows in question.

Miss Livy pointed at the ducks, who were hastening toward the vendor and her customers. Ah! Drake understood what had excited them. Clearly, they knew what the vendor was selling, and what happened after that. “My brother is buying bread to feed to the ducks, ladies. Would you enjoy feeding the ducks?”

“I would love to feed the ducks,” Miss Ruby declared.

Bane heard, and declared, “I have purchased enough for everyone who wishes.”

A cunning fellow, Drake’s brother. In less time than it took to tell, Miss Ruby was tearing small chunks off a loaf of bread and dropping them as she walked toward the Serpentine, a trail of ducks processing behind her. Her sisters, with a loaf each, had hurried ahead, and were feeding those birds who had not joined the exodus.

Bane was carrying three more loaves under one arm and had offered the other to Miss Livy. They followed the Marple sisters and the ducks, but at a slower pace.

“Do you wish to feed the ducks?” Drake asked Cilla, hoping she didn’t, for Bane had bought them time to actually talk, and the bread would not last forever—or even for very long, given that every waterfowl in sight had converged on the three young ladies and quite a few blackbirds and sparrows were darting under the beaks of ducks, chasing crumbs that were too small for the larger birds.

“What I would like is for us to talk, Mr. Sanderson,” Cilla said. “My aunt likes you as a person, but does not approve of you as a suitor. I will make up my own mind, however. And I want to know more about you before I do.” She blushed prettily. “That is, if you are courting me. Do I need to apologize for speaking so openly?”

“You do not owe me an apology,” Drake told her. “Straight talking saves a lot of misunderstanding, and I’m pleased you have spoken so honestly to me. Yes, I am a suitor. Like you, I need to know more but I very much like what I have seen of you so far. Will Lady Marple’s opposition cause problems? For you or for us? Or is it your father’s approval that is most important?”

She tipped her head on one side and regarded him with a steady blue gaze. “My approval is most important. If you gain that, Mr. Sanderson, I shall deal with my father and my aunt.”

 

 

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Little tame creatures


“How did they allow them to keep rats as pets?” asked my editor at the end of my epilogue, when my nine-year-old boy cousins were racing indoors after a fortnight away, to check on their pet rats. “Were they even domesticated at this time?”

Well, yes. They were. And nine-year-old boys love rats as pets at least in part because it upsets the maids and bothers the adult female cousins. Not my boys’ mothers, of course, who are made of sterner stuff.

Rats as domestic pets might have been familiar in Europe as early as the seventeenth century, and this was certainly  the case in Japan. We have excellent documentation for domesticated rats in England in the early nineteenth century. In fact, the ancestor of many of today’s pets might have been raised by Jimmy Shaw or Jack Black. (This might not have been his legal name, but it is the name under which he was interviewed by Henry Mayhew. The interview the two men was published in a book titled London Labour and the London Poor.)

Jack and Jimmy were ratcatchers. He suppled live rats to the rat pits, a popular blood sport that didn’t end until 1912. Another lucrative income source for him was breeding from rats that had different coloured coats. He told Mayhew ‘I have ’em fawn and white, black and white, black white and red. People come from all parts of London to see them rats. They got very tame and you could do anythink with them.’  He sold them as pets or curiosities, mainly to young ladies. Jimmy Shaw was even more interested in the odd rats. If today’s pets are not descended from those kept by one of these two men, they no doubt originated in a similar way.

Laboratory rats appear to have been used in research from at least 1828, and probably were also saved from the rat pits or bred from such animals. The Albino rat often used in laboratories or as pets is also known to have been around for a while. There was apparently a wild colony of Albino rats in Bath in 1828.

 

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First dance together in WIP Wednesday

This excerpt is from A Gift to the Heart, which is finally taking shape.

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Livy was already with Lady Marple. “You don’t have to dance with me, Mr. Sanderson,” she blurted. “I will not hold you to your offer. I know your brother dragooned you into it.”
Bane was amused. “Drake doesn’t make my decisions for me, Miss Wintergreen,” he told her.
Perhaps she thought he was laughing at her, for she lifted her chin and sniffed as if offended. “I am not interested in a pity-dance,” she said, through gritted teeth.
“Good. Neither am I. I wish to dance with the only woman in this ballroom who is worth a second look.”
He meant every word, but she had made up her mind to be contrary, or she thought he was spouting empty flattery for she snapped back, “Go and ask her, then.”
“I was referring to you, Miss Wintergreen. And before you accuse me of laying it on with a paddle, I mean every word.”
Was that alarm in the lady’s eyes? And if it was, was he to be encouraged by it or discouraged? Drake had arrived, and was raising his eyebrows at their banter. It was banter, was it not? Bane nodded at Drake but kept his attention on Livy.
“I am not sure that I wish to dance,” the lady commented, crossing her arms defensively, then shooting a glance at her aunt and letting them drop to her side again. Were ladies not meant to cross arms? Bane would never understand all the silly rules these people imposed on one another.
“Perhaps you would prefer a stroll rather than a dance?” Bane suggested, as Miss Cilla joined them.
“Perhaps you are afraid I will stand on your feet,” Livy retorted, which certainly sounded as if she wanted to step out on the floor with him.
Good, for he had been looking forward to this dance all evening. He grinned at her. “Deathly afraid, that a little sylph like you might damage me. Do you commonly suffer the experience of crippling your partners?”
Livy’s lovely eyes were alight with the joy of verbal battle. “My previous experience is not based on dancing with elephants.”
“Your previous experience is based on dancing with rabbits, if this evening is typical. An elephant is much more up to your weight.”
“Are you calling me overly large, Mr. Sanderson?”
He laughed out loud at that. “Not compared with me, Miss Wintergreen.” He winged his elbow at her and could have cheered with relief when she placed her hand on his arm and allowed him to lead her onto the floor.
Drake and Cilla joined them, and the dance was one where two couples formed a group of four people who stayed together through the dance, though they occasionally combined with another group to make a broader set of patterns with eight dancers.
It was a vigorous dance, too, with no time to stand out briefly and talk to one’s partner unheard by the rest of the crowd on the floor.
The lady he was fast growing to love was as graceful as she was lovely. Even better, she was the right size. He didn’t have to shorten his steps to match hers, or stoop to put his hands on his waist when the dance called for him to assist her in a short jump, or bend himself almost in half to go under her raised arm.
Reinforcing the point, he had to do all those things when he repeated the patterns with her sister while Livy danced them with Drake.
Bran’s mind jumped to a quite different sort of dance, a private one. He was abstemious, his mother’s fate fuelling a disinclination to promiscuity. Even so, he was no virgin, having been less disciplined in his youth, when his blood ran hot and his position as son—even illegitimate son—of the wealthiest man in town won the favour of a number of daring females.
He had always had to temper his passion to the size of his lovers, fearing he might otherwise cause an injury. And if he thought any further about how Livy’s height and size might change the experience, he would embarrass himself. Modern cut-away evening coats for men meant that the results of private thoughts became a matter of public display—not something he wanted to experience right here on the dance floor.
Time to think of something deflating. The missing engineer. The parlous state of the rural poor or, even worse, those who had flocked into London after last year’s failed harvest, looking for work that did not exist.
For a short time, his mind ran on two tracks, one matching his movements to the demands of the dance and relishing the company of his lady, and the other adding detail to a plan he and Drake had made for funding for a dame school in the slums.
A man called Basingstoke, the vicar of an inner city parish, was setting up a network of them, each paid for by private donors who believed that all children, boys and girls, had a better chance of escaping poverty if they could read, write and do basic arithmetic.
Calculating costs worked to subdue his animal appetites—they’d need enough rent a room, hire a teacher, pay for basic supplies such as slates, chalk, and coal for heating, and more. It was achievable. He hoped his courtship of Livy would likewise be merely a matter of working out the steps, calculating the costs, and putting a plan into practice. Truly, they seemed to be made for one another.