Bluestocking Belles collection

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Spotlight on A Christmas Quintet

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A Christmas Quintet

The Bluestocking Belles bring you five charming stories for your holiday season:

  • Friends to Lovers—The farmer’s daughter, the viscount’s son, and the estate manager reunite as adults. Della is starry-eyed for the viscount’s son, but is he really the one for her? (Regency, Christmas)
  • Fake Relationship—When the pressure to marry is overwhelming, can a plan put in place at a Christmas house party turn into a love that will last forever? (Regency, Christmas)
  • Second-Chance Love—An accident leaves the modiste burned, blinded and in despair until the physician offers hope and stirs memories. (Regency, Christmas)
  • Country Mouse and Marriage-Shy Duke—Invited at the last minute to make up the numbers, she expects to be an interested observer. The duke has other ideas. (Georgian, Twelfth Night)
  • Two Spies, One Secret—Trapped in a deserted wilderness, will they set aside secrets and past betrayals to rekindle their love and ring in the New Year together? (Medieval, Hogmanay)

https://books2read.com/AChristmasQuintetBluestockingBelles

My contribution is Maryanne and the Twelfth Knight

Maryanne is only at the house party as chaperone for her half-sister. She is far too old and insignificant to attract the attention of a duke. Or, at least, if he is pursuing her it cannot be for honorable purposes. Can it?

Dell knows it is time to take a wife, but the offerings of the marriage mart bore him to tears. The only lady of interest at his sister’s house party is the spinster chaperone. But she isn’t eligible, is she?

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Tea with Zahrah

The Duchess of Winshire brought the bride a cup of tea. The various ladies of the family, the dresser who attended Sophia, her daughter-in-law, and her own dresser, had been hovering over the poor dear for hours, and she must be parched.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” Zahrah said, gratefully.

“Aunt Eleanor to you, my dear,” the duchess insisted. Zahrah was the daughter of James’s personal steward and best friend, Yousef ibn Achmed, who was like a brother to him. Yousef’s wife, Patience, had raised the duke’s younger children after the death of his wife, and was like a sister to him. It seemed to Eleanor that Zahrah was a niece, or as good as.

Ruth, James’s third daughter and the eldest of the two who had accompanied him to England, hurried over with a towel and placed it over Zahrah’s elegant silk undergarments, tucking it into the top of the corset. “In case you drip,” she said.

Eleanor’s dear girls, Matilda, Jessica, and Frances, chorused, “Ladies do not drip.”

Sophia sent Eleanor a twinkling smile, recognising the phrase as one Eleanor had often used when her little charges had come to take teas with her. Sophia had been part of some of those lessons. She had been Eleanor’s goddaughter long before she married James’s eldest son, also called James.

Rosemary, James’s fourth daughter, carried over a plate with a couple of biscuits. “We cannot have you fainting at the church,” she said.

With the bride temporarily disengaged from preparations, everyone took the opportunity to pause for refreshments. The next step was the gown, which was hanging on the dressing screen, ready to go over the bride’s head and be fastened in place.

“The gown is beautiful, and you shall look lovely in it, Zahrah,” Eleanor told the bride, and the bride’s mother beamed, as if the complement was addressed to her.

“Even better,” Patience said, ever the governess, “she is marrying a good man.” Everyone in the room nodded. Simon Marshall was a fine jeweller, a successful businessman, and a gentleman in his demeanour and behaviour. But most of all, he was a good man.

Eleanor clasped her hands together and beamed around the room. The marriage had all the signs of being an excellent one. Eleanor did love a happy ending.

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This is a short scene that belongs with Zara’s Locket, my contribution to Belles & Beaux, the new Bluestocking Belles collection that is out next month. I say with, not in. It would be a step out of the story if it had been included there. Besides, I only wrote it a minute ago. But such is the way the imagination works. My characters have lives outside of the words that actually reach the page. If you’d like to know more about this story and the other seven delightful tales that make up the new collection, take a look at: https://bluestockingbelles.net/belles-joint-projects/belles-beaux/

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The artist Turner and Lady Twisden from Desperate Daughters.

Author Alina K. Field joins us today to discuss some of the research for Lady Twisden’s Picture Perfect Match, her contribution to the new Bluestocking Belles collection with friends, Desperate Daughters.

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Having fulfilled her duties to her late husband, her stepson, and the family estate, our heroine, Lady Honoria Twisden has removed herself to York where she plans to become reacquainted with her niece, Lady Seahaven, live independently, and most importantly finish a painting!

I am not by any means skilled in drawing or painting, and writing a heroine whose passion is painting was a challenge for me! So I gave Honoria a fascination with someone I knew a bit about, one of the most famous artists of the period, J.M.W. Turner. Information about Turner abounds on the internet, and I had seen one of his paintings up close, in real life, the Battle of Trafalgar, at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Turner’s landscapes and paintings of the sea are distinctive and dramatic. One would never expect the practical, dutiful Honoria to have such romantic taste in art!

As it happens, Turner spent a great deal of time at Farnley Hall near Otley in Yorkshire, the home of one of his patrons, Walter Fawkes.

Having learned about Turner and his visits to Farnley Hall from her stepson’s art tutor, Honoria stops there on her journey to York for a chance to see some of Turner’s sketches and paintings.

My hero has seen some of Turner’s watercolors at the National Gallery and finds them not to his taste—too emotional, too dramatic. He much prefers portraits and paintings of dogs or horses—George Stubbs for example, or at the very most, restful landscapes:

Excerpt

“When I viewed Turner’s work in London, I didn’t…well, I’m a literalist, I suppose. When one is outlining a plan of assault, precision is helpful. I’ve always been drawn to portraits, or paintings of horses.” He laughed. “Or dogs. Yes, forgive me. I enjoy George Stubbs’s work. And I like restful landscapes.”

“Restful landscapes before battle.”

He took her hand and his gaze slid to the canvas. “Yes. I’ve seen enough scarred, tumultuous landscapes after the fighting.”

“Oh. Augustus, I’m sorry. It was thoughtless of me—”

“No.” He set a finger to her lips. “What I’m trying to say is that Turner’s work with his play on light and shade, and yours, are steeped in, well, feelings. Your Minster is marvelous, gothic, and haunting. Are you working on the sky?”

Marvelous. Did he truly mean that?

“The sky?” he prompted.

“The sky. Yes. One would like a beautiful blue, but this is closer to the true one as it is now.”

“They say the strange skies and cold weather might be due to a volcanic eruption in Java two years ago.”

“Yes,” she said. “I read of that. It’s such a big world.” She would never see Java, but she’d like to go as far as France, and in her wildest dreams, Italy.

Honoria is referring to the 1815 volcanic eruption at Mount Tambora, an historical event that had a world-wide effect on weather and agriculture, and also the paintings of J.M.W. Turner!

Have you seen Turner’s work? What do you prefer—romantic and emotional, or precisely drawn images? Or perhaps something modern and completely open to interpretation?

About Lady Twisden’s Picture Perfect Match:

After years of putting up with her late husband’s rowdy friends, Honoria, Lady Twisden, has escaped to York where she can paint (even if badly), investigate antiquities, and enjoy freedom.

Then her stepson appears with a long-lost relation in tow.

Promised York’s marriage mart and the hospitality of his cousin’s doddering stepmother, Major August Kellborn is shocked to find that his fetching hostess is the one woman who stirs his heart.

Where to find it: Lady Twisden’s Picture Perfect Match is one of nine novellas included in the Bluestocking Belles & Friends collection, Desperate Daughters, to be released on May 17, 2022.

About Desperate Daughters: Love against the Odds

The Earl of Seahaven desperately wanted a son and heir but died leaving nine daughters and a fifth wife. Cruelly turned out by the new earl, they live hand-to-mouth in a small cottage. The young dowager Countess’s one regret is that she cannot give Seahaven’s dear girls a chance at happiness. When a cousin offers the use of her townhouse in York during the season, the Countess rallies her stepdaughters. They will pool their resources so that the youngest marriageable daughters might make successful matches, thereby saving them all. So start their adventures in York, amid a whirl of balls, lectures, and al fresco picnics. Is it possible each of them might find love by the time the York horse races bring the season to a close?

Available for Pre-order: https://books2read.com/u/bMwL17 for $0.99. The price goes up after the book’s May 17, 2022, launch day.

About the Author:

USA Today bestselling author Alina K. Field earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English and German literature but prefers the happier world of romance fiction. Her roots are in the Midwestern U.S., but after six very, very, very cold years in Chicago, she moved to Southern California where she shares a midcentury home with a gold-eyed terrier and only occasionally misses snow.

Website: https://alinakfield.com/

 

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A picnic by any other name…

Sometimes, you dodge a bullet by sheer happenstance. This week, Ella Quinn, in her wonderful resource on FaceBook, Regency Romance Fans, posted about the meaning of the term ‘picnic’ in Regency England, and I went back and did some more research.

I’d looked into it for the Bluestocking Belles new collection, Fire & Frost. The heroines of our five stories make baskets of food to be auctioned for the charity that is underpinning theme for the collection. The food is to be eaten at a Venetian Breakfast on the ice of the frozen Thames (a last minute change to take advantage of the unusually cold weather).

I knew, of course, that a Venetian Breakfast was an afternoon entertainment at which food was served. The ladies, in morning dress (anything worn before the change into dinner gowns in the early evening), and gentlemen of Society would have been familiar with the term ‘picnic’.

The term started in France as pique-nique, and referred to what we today would call a collaborative meal. Everyone either brought food or drink, or they paid something towards the costs. Pique-niques became very popular in Europe during the 18th century, and when people fled the French Revolution, some of them anglicised the term and started a Pic-Nic Club. The plan was to get together to eat, drink, gamble, and put on theatricals. Around 200 people joined, and the dramatist Sheridan saw it as competition for his own professional theatre. In 1802, the resulting spat spread across the newspapers, with cartoons and the lot.

Blowing-up the Pic-Nic’s or Harlequin Quixote Attacking the Puppets, vide Tottenham Street Pantomime, James Gillray, April 2

The kerfuffle popularised the term, probably because it sounded kind of catchy. I’m guessing people began to apply it to the outdoor entertainments that were already happening, where people all brought their own food and sat and ate together. Jane Austen used it in the outdoor sense in Emma, and Dorothy Wordsworth used it in letters to a friend, both close to the period of Fire & Frost (Wordsworth in 1808 and Austen in 1816). So I think we could stretch a point to say that our Regency heroes and heroines of the winter of 1813 to 1814 might be a little ahead of their times in planning an outdoor event and calling it a picnic.

However, we were saved by the collaborative original meaning of the word. Our ladies are preparing baskets to share with the successful bidder at the auction. Hurrah! Picnic baskets.

In time, the outdoor sense outlived the joint meal sense. Meanwhile, I’ve sent a couple of line edits to make sure the picnic pedants (myself among them) don’t trip over an anachronistic name for a social practice. Phew!

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Reference: https://www.historytoday.com/archive/historians-cookbook/history-picnic