Caroline Warfield

by

Sunday Spotlight on Christmas Hope

A compelling story of love in impossible circumstances

I loved this book.

Caroline Warfield invariably engages our hearts, and Christmas Hope is no exception. Harry has the heart of a poet; a heart that is sickened by life with the Canadian Forces in the trenches of WWI. Rosemarie is a widow struggling to feed herself and her son, Marcel, while withering under the contempt of small-minded locals. Harry’s hunt for his lost bible brings them together. For Harry, Rosemarie and Marcel come to represent all that is good and peaceful. For Rosemarie, Harry is a light in the darkness.

The book follows them through four years, each ending in a Christmas, as their relationship deepens in brief encounters stolen out of the ruinous war. Even the end of the war does not bring peace for this small would-be family — Rosemarie has been evacuated out of the path of the battles, and she and Harry have lost touch with one another.

Part 4 of the book is set in 1919, beginning as Harry faces repatriation from Wales to Canada, his father’s well-meant interference in his future, and the influenza that devastated the post-war world. Rosemarie leaves her son with his uncle to search for her beloved. Nothing is easy.

I enjoy Warfield’s decent men and courageous women. Harry might just be one of my favourites. I particularly cherished his scenes with Marcel. As for Rosemarie, watching her overcome obstacle after obstacle, including her own self doubt, broke my heart — but I trusted Warfield to mend it again, and she did. Right at the eleventh hour, which is the best time, in a novel.

I strongly recommend Christmas Hope.

Christmas Hope

When the Great War is over, will their love be enough?

A wartime romance in four parts, each ending on Christmas, 1916-1919.

After two years at the mercy of the Canadian Expeditionary force and the German war machine, Harry ran out of metaphors for death, synonyms for brown, and images of darkness. When he encounters color among the floating islands of Amiens and life in the form a widow and her little son, hope ensnares him. Through three more long years of war and its aftermath, the hope she brings keeps Harry alive.

Rosemarie Legrand’s husband left her a tiny son, no money, and a savaged reputation when he died. She struggles to simply feed the boy and has little to offer a lonely soldier, but Harry’s devotion lifts her up. The war demands all her strength and resilience, will the hope of peace and the promise of Harry’s love keep her going?

Buy links:
Barnes & Noble * Kobo * Apple 

Amazon: US * UK * CA * AU * IN

Excerpt

Harry woke with a stab of fear. He reared up, groping for his rifle, afraid he had fallen asleep on duty.

He sank back into the bed as awareness flooded in. No enemy lurked. He reposed in soft covers in an unfamiliar room, his clothes had gone missing, and he wasn’t alone. A small boy watched him steadily from the doorway. Memory flooded back—fleeing from Lens, frantic to get to Rosemarie. He hadn’t deserted; he’d gotten leave or rather had it thrust on him with orders from Captain Mitchell to come back whole. He remembered a frantic journey, reaching her cottage, falling against the door, and not much else.

“You are dirty,” the boy said, approaching the bed. Harry ran a hand across the stubble on his face. It came away filthy.

“Apparently so. And you are tall, much too tall to be Marcel.”

The boy stiffened in offense. “I am Marcel. I am three.” He held up three fingers.

Before Harry could think what to say next the boy ran to the stairs shouting, “Maman, ‘arry is awake!”

His soldier’s instinct took stock of his surroundings. The room spread out under peaked roof beams. He doubted he could stand upright anywhere but the center of the room; it had only one way out, the direction Marcel had taken. He had slept in an actual bed. Rosemarie’s bed, it has to be. Did we share it? He thought not. If we had, I would certainly remember.

The blankets he lay in were worn and mended, but warm enough and clean—at least they had been until he lay in them. Since whoever took his clothing left his drawers and nothing else, he thought it best to stay nested where he lay. A tiny window at the peak of the roof let in a beam of light. It appeared to be slanted low in the sky. Does that window face east or west? Did I awake at dawn or sleep round the clock?

He could hear the boy talking with his mother and the sounds of pots and pans. Sharp awareness told him one more thing. Somewhere in this haven, fresh bread baked, sweet dough, he thought. His mouth began to water. With that, came the realization of gnawing hunger.

He debated what to do, undressed and feeble as he was. He envisioned Rosemarie fussing over her baking, and an even greater hunger overcame him, one he might do well to tame before he got out from the covers.

Her appearance in the doorway, his own vision of heaven itself, carrying a basin of steaming water, saved him the decision.

She put it on the little three-drawer chest against the opposite wall, along with the towel and rag she had over her arm.

“You’ll want to wash up,” she said. “I’m sorry we have no bathing tub. I found Raoul’s robe in storage,” she added, pointing to a purple robe draped over a trunk. The trunk, Marcel’s pallet at the foot of the bed, and a chest of drawers furnished the tiny room. She looked oddly shy, as if having him tucked in her bed with her late husband’s things nearby made her awkward.

Raoul. He had forgotten the husband, long dead now. The acid of pointless jealousy ate at him, and he could think of nothing to say. He sat up, letting the blanket fall to his lap, and her eyes dropped to the floor, but not before he caught the heat when she spied his naked chest. The jealousy fell away.

For more about the book and a giveaway, go to Silver Dagger Tours. The stops are near the foot of their tour post, and the Rafflecopter is under that.

Meet Caroline Warfield

Caroline Warfield

Award winning author Caroline Warfield has been many things: traveler, librarian, poet, raiser of children, bird watcher, Internet and Web services manager, conference speaker, indexer, tech writer, genealogist—even a nun. She reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows where she lets her characters lead her to adventures in England and the far-flung corners of the British Empire. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart.

Visit Caroline’s Website and Blog                http://www.carolinewarfield.com/

Meet Caroline on Facebook                          https://www.facebook.com/carolinewarfield7

Follow Caroline on Twitter                            https://twitter.com/CaroWarfield

Email Caroline directly                                   warfieldcaro@gmail.com

Subscribe to Caroline’s newsletter            http://www.carolinewarfield.com/newsletter/

Amazon Author                                                   http://www.amazon.com/Caroline-Warfield/e/B00N9PZZZS/

Goodreads                     https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8523742.Caroline_Warfield

Bookbub                                             https://www.bookbub.com/profile/caroline-warfield

 

 

Caroline’s Other Books

Amazon                       https://www.amazon.com/Caroline-Warfield/e/B00N9PZZZS/

Bookshelf                      http://www.carolinewarfield.com/bookshelf

by

Vimy Ridge: Canada’s coming-of-age

Guest post from Caroline Warfield.


Last April, I posted about the 102nd anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge on History Imagined. It was a well planned, brilliantly executed operation in which all four divisions of the Canadian Corps, fighting together for the first time, successfully dislodged Germans from the top of a high ridge, a feat the French and English had failed to accomplish earlier in the war. It cost 3,595 Canadian deaths and approximately 7,000 wounded.

I will repeat most of that post here. Vimy Ridge in many ways represents to Canada, what Gallipoli does to Australia and New Zealand. Brigadier-General Arthur Edward Ross has been quoted as saying, “in those few minutes I witnessed the birth of a nation.” As Gallipoli defines the moment in which Australian and New Zealand came of age as independent countries, so Vimy Ridge took on mythological importance to Canadians. They came out from the shadow of Britain.

Weeks of training and nighttime drilling made use of models and mock-ups to prepare the troops for the attack. Unlike tactics employed at the Somme the year before, effort was made to empower leadership down to the squad level so every man knew that if officers fell, the assault would continue. Units were given as much information as possible, to decentralize command and to encourage initiative.

They built roads and railways, shored up the French trenches, made use of existing underground caverns called souterrains dug into the chalky soil, and built an additional 6km of subways to transport troops as close to the front as possible while protected from German Fire.

More important than any other innovation and preparation, however, were the overwhelming amount of artillery brought up to support the attack and improvements that enabled artillery shells to explode on contact so few simply burrowed into the mud. Steady bombardment began March 20 and lasted twenty days, raining death and destruction onto the top of the ridge. On April 3 it intensified, and Germans called it “the week of suffering.”

Coincidentally that week was holy week; Good Friday must have been hellish for men on both sides. My own interest is rarely about strategy and planning, but primarily about the men themselves, the lives of the common soldier, hiding in tunnels, trenches, and caves waiting. When the time came the stories of individual heroism at Vimy Ridge abounded. The names of Ellis Sifton, William Milne, and Jeremiah Jones, stand out as examples. Ordered to take Vimy Ridge, take it they did.

Shortly after dawn on Easter Monday, 9 April 1917, 15,000 Canadian troops, joined by a British division in their right flank, began their assault uphill in driving sleet, supported by still more artillery fire in a “creeping barrage” designed to protect them, and keep the Germans in their trenches. By the end of April 9 Canadians held the entire ridge with the exception of one hill; they pushed the Germans back 5Km, the greatest one-day advance in the war to that point. The artillery had been less effectively employed against Hill 145 (aka “the Pimple”). Defenders cut the Fourth Canadian Division to pieces in the initial assault. Renewed bombardment and a second infantry assault took the hill on April 12.

In the grand scheme of the Great War, Vimy Ridge could be defined as a mere tactical victory, its importance overshadowed by the British Army’s failure to make significant progress in the overall Battle of Arras of which it was a part, and the failure of the French action at Aisne, which it was designed to support. In the quagmire that was the war in northern France, Vimy cost the Germans an important vantage point, but only a few kilometers of ground.

Strategically vital? No. Defining? Emphatically yes. Though joined by a British division, and other the overall command of Sir Julian Byng, architect of the meticulous planning, at the end of the day Canadian soldiers accomplished the thing. Men from every part of Canada charged up Vimy Ridge, functioning as a single unit. They had good reason to be proud of their daring, initiative, and success.

They were not finished. There were battles of greater strategic importance, and more bloodshed still to come—Amiens, Cambrai, Passchendaele, and Ypres. Yet it is Vimy that is remembered as the corps’ defining moment. It is therefore fitting that Canada’s main monument to the Great War in France is the Vimy Memorial, which sits atop Hill 145.

Caroline Warfield, award winning author of historical romance usually set in the Regency and Victorian eras, reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows where she lets her characters lead her to adventures. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart, believing love is worth the risk.

Her most recent release is Christmas Hope, set in France during World War I, it includes scenes at Vimy Ridge.

After two years at war Harry ran out of metaphors for death, synonyms for brown, and images of darkness. When he encounters the floating islands of Amiens and life in the form a widow and her little son, hope ensnares him.  When the Great War is over, will their love be enough?

Full blurb and excerpt

 

 

by

Tea with Fred

“Eleanor Winshire is a tiny wisp of a woman, not a dragon,” the Duke of Murnane told his cousin.  Fred Wheatly looked skeptical. “She may be small, Charles, but she’s terrifying.”

The duke chuckled at his cousin’s shudder. He stood a head shorter, but he made up in coiled strength what he may have lacked in the other man’s bulk. Red haired and blue eyed the both of them, no one who saw them standing side by side on the fashionable street could mistake their family resemblance.

“Remember the time she caught us doing battle in her garden?” Charles asked.

“You and Rand hid under the Wisteria and let me take the all the blame,” Fred remembered with a smile. They had been visiting with Fred’s brother-in-law who was also the duke’s uncle.

“Well it was your idea to have her favorite bushes represent the Lancastrian army,” the duke pointed out with a grin.

“They were red roses weren’t they? They took two years to recover. Will made me muck out her stables for three days over that,” Fred said ruefully. He looked up at the intimidating entrance to the Haverford Townhouse and grimaced.

“You best get it over with,” Charles said sympathetically, “And before you ask, no. I will not go with you to face her. I’m returning to Eversham Hall. Jonny needs me,” he added soberly.

Fred clamped one hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “Then you best get home,” he said, sympathy cracking his voice. Word had come that the boy was ill again. “I’ll face the duchess alone. I wish I knew what she wanted.”

“I suspect it’s what she always wants,” Charles told him. “To manage the well-being of the kingdom by keeping its young men in line.”

Fred watched his cousin walk away, and muttered under his breath. “Easy for him to say. He isn’t a disgraced officer tossed home to make his way.” The duke’s accomplishments had been stellar, and his position in the government no doubt had the woman’s approval.

Half an hour later Fred faced his nemesis, standing with his hands clasped behind his back and head bowed as he had faced his uncle or headmasters a dozen times as a boy. The Duchess of Winshire had that effect on men.

“Oh do sit down Captain Wheatly,” the petite white haired woman snapped.

He raised an eyebrow. “Captain? I was Frederick the last time we met.”

“You were a boy the last time we met,” she pointed out, gesturing for her assistant to move a decanter closer to her table. “But you’re no longer in the army, I hear.”

“Your information is correct, as always, Your Grace.” He accepted a glass of brandy with thanks.

“Good,” the duchess said, pinning him with her piercing eyes.

“Good?” He expected a dressing down, not approval. He took a swallow and let it settle his nerves.

“Good,” she repeated. “Excellent in fact.” His shock must have shown because she went on. “Did you think I would agree with the fools on that court martial board in Calcutta? I saw Colonel Davis’s report. He’s the only one that got it right.” She leaned forward. “You’re needed here, Fred,” she said earnestly. “You must see that. Charles needs you.”

“You mean because his son is ill, and I am next in line? I would make a horrid duke. It isn’t—”

She made a dismissive gesture with one hand as if to wave that away.  “Yes, yes, there is that—and you would do your duty in the unlikely event it should it come to that—but he needs you now.”

“You heard about the sabotage?”

She nodded. “Someone wishes your family ill, Fred, and you are the one best equipped to protect them, especially with Charles so absorbed in the boy’s illness.”

“You have the danger part right. We came down to London in part to hire an enquiry agent,” Fred told her.

“Well done, but your involvement is crucial. It is a family problem, Fred, and family matters most of all.” She studied him carefully. “I don’t think you understood that when you were younger.”

“I’ve always loved my family,” he protested.

“Yes, in a distant kind of way. They need you nearby and involved. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I’m beginning to…” He glanced up to see her studying him. “I just don’t know how.”

“England needs Charles, and he needs your help. Go back to Eversham Hall and stay there. You’ll figure it out.”

When he didn’t answer right away she added, “That brilliant young woman you brought home with you may help.”

The conversation turned to inconsequential things, and soon enough he found himself on his way feeling oddly better. He had expected one more recounting of his failures, and yet he walked away buoyed up. Life, Fred thought, continued to surprise him. He went on his way with jaunty step.

About the Book

When all else fails, love succeeds…

Captain Fred Wheatly’s comfortable life on the fringes of Bengal comes crashing down around him when his mistress dies, leaving him with two children he never expected to have to raise. When he chooses justice over army regulations, he’s forced to resign his position, leaving him with no way to support his unexpected family. He’s already had enough failures in his life. The last thing he needs is an attractive, interfering woman bedeviling his steps, reminding him of his duties.

All widowed Clare Armbruster needs is her brother’s signature on a legal document to be free of her past. After a failed marriage, and still mourning the loss of a child, she’s had it up to her ears with the assumptions she doesn’t know how to take care of herself, that what she needs is a husband, and with a great lout of a captain who can’t figure out what to do with his daughters. If only the frightened little girls didn’t need her help so badly.

Clare has made mistakes in the past. Can she trust Fred now? Can she trust herself? Captain Wheatly isn’t ashamed of his aristocratic heritage, but he doesn’t need his family and they’ve certainly never needed him. But with no more military career and two half-caste daughters to support, Fred must turn once more—as a failure—to the family he let down so often in the past. Can two hearts rise above past failures to forge a future together?

It is available in Kindle format free with Kindle Unlimited or for purchase as ebook or in print:

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

BooksAMillion

The Reluctant Wife is Book 2 in Caroline Warfield’s Children of Empire Series.

Three cousins, who grew up together in the English countryside, have been driven apart by deceit and lies. (You may guess a woman was involved!) Though they all escape to the outposts of The British Empire, they all make their way home to England, facing their demons and finding love and the support of women of character and backbone. They are:

  • Randolph Baldwin Wheatly who has become a recluse, and lives in isolation in frontier Canada intent on becoming a timber baron, until a desperate woman invades his peace. (The Renegade Wife)
  • Captain Frederick Arthur Wheatly, an officer in the Bengal army, who enjoys his comfortable life on the fringes until his mistress dies, and he’s forced to choose between honor and the army. (The Reluctant Wife)
  • Charles, Duke of Murnane, tied to a miserable marriage, throws himself into government work to escape bad memories. He accepts a commission from the Queen that takes him to Canton and Macau, only to face his past there. (The Unexpected Wife)

Who are their ladies?

  • Meggy Campeau, the daughter of a French trapper and Ojibwe mother who has made mistakes, but is fierce in protecting her children. (The Renegade Wife)
  • Clare Armbruster, fiercely independent woman of means, who is determined to make her own way in life, but can’t resist helping a foolish captain sort out his responsibilities. (The Reluctant Wife)
  • Zambak Hayden, eldest child of the Duke of Sudbury, knows she’d make a better heir than her feckless younger brother, but can’t help protecting the boy to the point of following him to China. She may just try to sort out the Empire’s entangled tea trade–and its ugly underpinning, opium, while she’s there. (The Unexpected Wife)

Book 3, The Unexpected Wife, will be released on July 25.

Here’s a short video about it:

https://www.facebook.com/carolinewarfield7/videos/924791187669849/

For more about the series and all of Caroline’s books, look here:

https://www.carolinewarfield.com/bookshelf/

About the Author

Caroline Warfield grew up in a peripatetic army family and had a varied career (largely around libraries and technology) before retiring to the urban wilds of Eastern Pennsylvania, where divides her time between writing Regency and Victorian Romance, and seeking adventures with her grandson and the prince among men she married.

 

by

Tea with Rand

Rand Wheatly paused his pacing to study the young woman behind the desk. She looked exactly as he remembered, but she couldn’t be. She had the same composed manner, grey frock, and simple hairstyle.  Her visage hinted at a connection with the Grenford family. This woman, however, was much too young to be the same companion he remembered from fifteen years before. He had been a boy, and this one didn’t appear to be much older than he had been then. No, it was not the same woman. The Duchess of Haverford—not Haverford—Winshire now, he reminded himself—had a penchant for employing needy relatives.

She also had an uncanny ability to interfere in a man’s life at inconvenient times. Rand met the duchess soon after his sister married the Earl of Chadbourn. Even then the duchess knew everyone in the haut ton, every foible, every conflict, every devastating crisis, every damned failure. Like his. Like now.

Her summons had arrived within an hour of the awkward meeting in his brother-in-law’s drawing room in which the earl, the Duke of Sudbury and their cronies blackmailed him into cooperating with the one man he hated most in this world. To rescue his Meggy he would do what they wanted, even accept the company of His Grace the Duke of Murnane, his traitorous cousin Charles. For Meggy he would swallow even that humiliation, but he would not let the bastard coerce him into doing the government’s bidding.

“Mr. Wheatly?” The woman’s voice had an emphatic tone, as if repeating her words to an obstinate child. Or distracted man.

“I beg your pardon, Miss, ah…”

“The duchess will receive you now,” the woman said, opening the door with admirable efficiency. Rand noticed she caught the eye of the regal looking lady seated in a brocade chair. Some silent message passed between them, and the younger woman dipped a curtsey and departed.

“Your Grace.” His tone sounded curt to his own ears when he bowed over her hand. I‘ve lived alone too many years, he thought. On the edge of the frontier in Upper Canada he had little call to practice refined manners, as his sister had reminded him the past few days.

“Randy, how good to see you! Or perhaps I’m meant to call her Rand now.” The silver haired woman beamed at him. In her seventies Eleanor Winshire radiated the same timeless beauty and controlled power she had as a young woman.

“Rand, please, Your Grace,” he murmured taking the seat she indicated.

“When did I see you last?” He had no answer. “I believe it was at Charles’s wedding, was it not?” she asked with deceptive sweetness.

My cousin’s wedding to the woman I loved —or thought I did, fool that I was. She knows full well it was the worst time of my life. He clenched is teeth. “Perhaps. I don’t recall,” he said.

She watched him under her lashes while she poured tea with practiced grace, his laconic reply bringing an amused twinkle to her eyes.  Rand knew better than to let down his defenses. Amusement or not she wanted something, and he doubted it would be to his advantage.

The weather received short attention, his nieces and nephews a bit more. The duchess certainly knew them better than Rand, who had returned to London after an absence of six years, did.

“Have you met Jonny?” she asked.

Jonny. His cousin’s son.  The bride’s obvious pregnancy at the wedding had been the last straw. She had been Charles’s lover even as she still let Rand believe she loved him. She had led him by the nose the entire time.  He left or Canada within days and had not come back. None of that was the boy’s fault. Rand forced the muscles in his face to relax.

“I met him yesterday. One gathers he spends much time in my sister’s nursery with the other children. He and my nephew Toby are great friends. Drew’s as well.”

“Drew? You sister’s mysterious guest, I gather.”

“Drew’s mother is my, ah, friend.” Rand looked over at the empty hearth. He had begun to sweat and wondered at the heat.

“You are to be commended for your fierce protection of the boy and his mother. There is a sister as well, I’ve heard. The abuse of a domestic tyrant is a terrible thing, and you are quite right to intervene. A husband, even a poor excuse for one, complicates things, does it not?”

He expected something very different. Compassion can burden a man as well as condemnation, however, and this lovely woman threatened to weigh him down with it.

“The children’s safety matters, Your Grace,” he said, passion lending fierceness. “And Meggy’s as well. Once I’ve secured that I will go back to Canada. My business requires my attention.”

Her skeptical glance disappeared quickly as she lay down her teacup. “Yes, one gathers you are making the earl even wealthier. Timber, I hear.”

There was little point in confirming what she obviously knew. There has to be more. What does she want?

“In your goal to protect this woman you are lucky to have the assistance of your cousin Charles.” Rand went rigid and fought the urge to leap from his seat. She continued. “He isn’t the shy young man you left. His professional and political rise has been stellar and life—well, life hasn’t been kind to Charles. He has the fortitude, the skills, and the power to protect your Meggy.”

The thought of Charles with Meggy made bile rise in his throat, but she didn’t mean anything inappropriate. At least he hoped not.

The duchess leaned forward into his silence and patted his arm. “You would be wise to accept his help, Rand,” she told him. “Truly. You can trust him.”

Rand didn’t believe it, but he would accept the snake’s help if it meant Meggy’s safety. “I believe he has his own goals,” he said, trying to turn the conversation.

“Yes, someone is corrupting the coinage in our port cities. Sudbury fears some in the military may be involved as well.”

“That isn’t my problem. My cousin and my uncle may jump to Sudbury’s tune, but I don’t. I want Meggy safe; that is all.”

Her eyes bore into him. “You will do your duty, Rand. I know you will; its how you’re made. Perhaps you will get what your heart desires at the same time.”

“Perhaps.” Bloody, damned unlikely.

She leaned forward again; this time authority took the place of compassion. “Follow your heart Randolph Wheatly. Your instincts are right. And trust Charles. He won’t fail you.”  She fell back on small talk after that, and in short order Rand found himself skillfully dismissed.

“Charles? Bloody damned unlikely,” he repeated out loud when he reached the street.

About The Renegade Wife

Reclusive businessman Rand Wheatly finds his solitude disrupted by a desperate woman running with her children from an ugly past. But even his remote cabin in Upper Canada isn’t safe enough. Meggy Blair may have lied to him, but she breached the walls of his betrayed heart. Now she’s on the run again and time is running out for all of them. He will have to return to London and face his demons if he wants to save them.

A Night Owl and The Romance Reviews Top Pick, In D’Tale Crowned Heart of Excellence, and Reader’s Favorite Five Star book.

♥♥♥FREE♥♥♥ with Kindle unlimited or buy it at https://www.amazon.com/Renegade-Wife-Children-Empire-Book-ebook/dp/B01LY7IRT6/

Excerpt From The Renegade Wife

“I met Jonny,” Rand said, accepting a third glass of port.

“I expected you would. He spends much of his time at Chadbourn House.”

“He is a bright boy. You must be proud of him.” Rand gripped his glass. Should I mention his illness? He had no idea how comfortable Charles might be with the subject.

“I am. He endures his illness with courage and grace.”

Rand relaxed somewhat. “I wasn’t sure—that is, Catherine told me. I’m so sorry, Charles. It must be devastating for you, and for Julia.” He meant every word and was distressed to see Charles stiffen.

“I manage. I have no idea about Julia,” Charles said through tight lips.

Rand raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“I haven’t seen Julia in two years. She hasn’t seen Jonny in longer. I have no idea how she ‘manages.’” He leaned toward Rand. “Don’t look at me like that, Randolph Wheatly. We separated less than a year after we married. It happens. If you had stayed, you might have delighted in my misfortune.”

Charles glared at Rand, who could think of nothing to say. When the silence became painful, Charles sank back in his chair. “Don’t worry. Though it seems unlikely Jonny will ever be duke, know that he is loved. I love him as if he were my own.”

As to Charles, the Duke of Murnane, watch for his story in May 2018

 

by

Tea with Harry

A nervous young man stands in the Duchess’s anteroom certain he has fallen asleep over his writing moments ago. His lanky form and khaki pants feel out of place among the finely carved furniture, porcelain artifacts, and gilded wallpaper of an earlier age.

He must be dreaming. He is sure of it.

A rather plain young woman in an antique, but rather business-like looking gown appears in the doorway. “Mr. Wheatly, the Duchess will see you now.”

Duchess? All doubts flee. He is most certainly dreaming. Why does it feel so real?

A dainty grey-haired woman beams at him from a settee when he enters. “Henry Wheatly! How delightful.”

“Harry,” he mumbles. “My name is Harry.”

“Of course! I had forgotten. You look very much like your great-grandfather, by the way.”

He runs a hand over his neck, puzzled. My great-grandfather? She must mean Rand Wheatly, the patriarch who first came to Canada. Can she be old enough to have known him?

“I’m sorry,” the duchess says. “You must be wondering why I summoned you here. Please sit and I will explain.”

“I’m wondering how,” he replies sinking into a small but surprisingly comfortable chair and stretching out his long legs.

A quiet moment passes while the duchess pours tea, fascinating Harry with the grace of her movements. He has seen nothing so graceful at university in Ottawa or even in his father’s house in Calgary, rough western town as it was when he grew up. She made a far lovelier sight than anything his army-training depot had to offer.

“I’m afraid I cannot tell you how I summoned you here,” she says at last. “Just know it is for your own good. I am Eleanor Haverford and I am a friend of your three times great aunt, Catherine, the Countess of Chadbourn.

Harry had been only vaguely aware that nobility lurked on his family tree. That startled him almost as much as the realization that this woman could not have possibly have known them, unless— “What year is it?” he demanded.

“1814,” she replied.

Harry choked.

“Don’t drop your tea dear, I know that shocks you.”

He had traveled back a hundred years. “How—that is, why—and who did you say you are?”

“I am Eleanor, the Duchess of Haverford, and I brought you here to warn you.”

He breathed in deeply and waited.

“I know that you have enlisted in the Expeditionary Force and expect to ship out to France any day. You signed up rather impulsively, I must say. That young woman who snagged the mayor’s nephew and dropped you cold was not worth your life, Harry. She would have made you more miserable if she married you than she did when she ran off. Your heart isn’t broken, it is merely bruised.”

Harry glared at her. “The state of my heart is not your concern, Your Grace,” he spat. “Or whoever you are,” he added under his breath.

The duchess chuckled. “Ah but it is your heart that concerns me. You have a good and tender heart, Harry, full of love and beauty. It shows in your poetry.”

Is there anything this woman does not know?

The woman leaned forward. “You are about to enter a great and terrible war. You are a courageous and valiant soul and will acquit yourself with integrity. But oh! Your heart! The darkness will overwhelm you if you let it. Despair kills, Harry. Never doubt it, particularly in a world where one must fight to stay alive every day. Worse, the darkness could kill that beautiful soul of yours and leave you dead inside even if you survive. Don’t let this happen.”

Harry sat back and studied the woman. “What precisely to you suggest I do about it?” he asked, genuinely curious.

“Stay open to beauty when you find it. Stay open to love. Love terrifies, but it is always worth the risk.”

He snorted. Duchess or no, she was a fool. “Was Lauren worth the risk?”

“Goodness no! I told you. She merely bruised you. When you find the real thing open your heart wide. You won’t be sorry.”

He sighed and put his cup down. “Thank you for your advice, Your Grace.” This old woman has no idea what she talks about. We’ll be home by summer—everyone says so—and I’ll go back to university.

“Please send me back where I belong.” Or let me wake up.

“One more thing, Harry. When the war is over, study law if you wish, but don’t let your father bully you. Do it only if you want it, but never forget you are a writer. Writing may make your heart bleed, but it is what you were born to do.”

A moment later Harry stood in a musty tent, standing in front of a camp desk with a pen in his hand. He looked down on the poem he had begun a moment ago. “What just happened?” he asked into the empty tent.

Never Too Late

Eight authors and eight different takes on four dramatic elements selected by our readers—an older heroine, a wise man, a Bible, and a compromising situation that isn’t.

Set in a variety of locations around the world over eight centuries, welcome to the romance of the Bluestocking Belles’ 2017 Holiday and More Anthology.

It’s Never Too Late to find love.

25% of proceeds benefit the Malala Fund.

Never Too Late has its own page on the Bluestocking Belles website, where you can learn more about each story and find buy links. (It’s 99c for one more week only, so buy now.)

If you’re an Amazon US purchaser, buy it here.

An excerpt from Roses in Picardy

Are men in Hell happier for a glimpse of Heaven?”

The piercing eyes gentled. “Perhaps not,” the old man said, “but a store of memories might be medicinal in coming months. Will you come back?”

Will I? He turned around to face forward, and the priest poled the boat out of the shallows, seemingly content to allow him his silence.

“How did you arrange my leave?” Harry asked at last, giving voice to a sudden insight.

“Prayer,” the priest said. Several moments later he, added, “And Col. Sutherland in the logistics office has become a friend. I suggested he had a pressing need for someone who could translate requests from villagers.”

“Don’t meddle, old man. Even if they use me, I’ll end up back in the trenches. Visits to Rosemarie Legrand would be futile in any case. The war is no closer to an end than it was two years ago.”

“Despair can be deadly in a soldier, corporal. You must hold on to hope. We all need hope, but to you, it can be life or death,” the priest said.

Life or death. He thought of the feel of the toddler on his shoulder and the colors of les hortillonnages. Life indeed.

The sound of the pole propelling them forward filled several minutes.

“So will you come back?” the old man asked softly. He didn’t appear discomforted by the long silence that followed.

“If I have a chance to come, I won’t be able to stay away,” Harry murmured, keeping his back to the priest.

“Then I will pray you have a chance,” the old man said softly.

About the Author

Caroline Warfield has been many things, from poet to librarian, from mother to nun. Now retired to the urban wilds of Eastern Pennsylvania, she divides her time between writing and seeking adventures with her grandbuddy and the prince among men she married. Her new series sends the children of the heroes of her earlier books to seek their own happiness in the far-flung corners of the British Empire. She wishes to inform readers of this post that Harry’s great-grandfather, Rand Wheatly is the hero of The Renegade Wife.

• Website: http://www.carolinewarfield.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carolinewarfield7
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/CaroWarfield
• Newsletter: http://www.carolinewarfield.com/newsletter/
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/warfieldcaro/boards/

by

Spotlight on Sunday: Caroline Warfield’s 2017 Christmas novella

This beautiful cover for Caroline Warfield’s 2017 Christmas Novella comes with the announcement that the book is available for pre-order from various retailers.

Love is the best medicine and the sweetest things in life are worth the wait, especially at Christmastime in Venice for a stranded English Lady and a dedicated doctor.

About the Book

Lady Charlotte Tyree clings to one dream—to see the splendor of Rome before settling for life as the spinster sister of an earl. But now her feckless brother forces her to wait again, stranded in Venice when he falls ill, halfway to the place of her dreams. She finds the city damp, moldy, and riddled with disease.

As a physician, Salvatore Caresini well knows the danger of putrid fever. He lost his young wife to it, leaving him alone to care for their rambunctious children. He isn’t about to let the lovely English lady risk her life nursing her brother.

But Christmas is coming, that season of miracles, and with it, perhaps, lessons for two lonely people: that love heals the deepest wounds and sometimes the deepest dreams aren’t what we expect.

Pre-order it on Amazon here. ♦ Pre-order it on Smashwords here.

About the Author

Traveler, poet, librarian, technology manager—award winning and Amazon best-selling author Caroline Warfield has been many things (even a nun), but above all she is a romantic. Having retired to the urban wilds of eastern Pennsylvania, she reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows where she lets her characters lead her to adventures while she nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart. She is enamored of history, owls, and gardens (but not the actual act of gardening). She is also a regular contributor to History Imagined, a blog at the intersection of history and fiction, and (on a much lighter note) The Teatime Tattler, a blog in the shape of a fictional nineteenth century gossip rag.

Her current series, Children of Empire, set in the late Georgian/early Victorian period, focuses on three cousins, driven apart by lies and deceit, who must find their way back from the distant reaches of the empire.

Click here to find out more here.

by

Sunday Spotlight on The Reluctant Wife

Caroline Warfield writes a superb book, and has had me as a devoted fan since Dangerous Works, the first in her Dangerous series. The Reluctant Wife is her best yet.

The hero, Fred, is one of the boys from Dangerous Nativity, all grown up and following his boyhood dream of being a soldier. But his dreams have turned sour. We meet him in a village in Benghal, drinking his sorrows after the sudden death of the local woman who was his housekeeper and mistress.

No better able to bear injustice and bullying than he was as a child, he has spoken for those without a voice, protected those without power, and been rewarded by demotion and sidelining. In his eyes, he’s a failure; a failure, furthermore, faced with responsibility for his two mixed-race daughters.

The heroine, Clare, bursts in on his life at that moment. She is the sister of his supervising officer, who is a pompous idiot, and bears deep scars of her own. In India only to get her brother’s signature on papers that will give her financial independence, she is still grieving the loss of her only child, and sees herself as a failed wife, and a failed mother.

From the first, Clare understands that what the girls need is their father.  Fred takes some more convincing: across the Indian Ocean and the Egyptian desert, and on into England, where he and Clare must confront their doubts and fears, as well as facing down a bully from Fred’s past in India; a bully who means murder.

Fred’s cousin Charles, Duke of Murnane, has an important role to play in this book, and we see some more healing from the damage his wife did years before to the relationship between Fred, Charles, and Fred’s brother Rand (hero of The Renegade Wife). Charles stars in The Unexpected Wife, due out later this year, and I can hardly wait.

Find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Reluctant-Wife-Children-Empire-Book-ebook/dp/B06Y4BGMX1/

by

Research and The Reluctant Wife

My guest for Footnotes on Friday is Caroline Warfield, who will talk to us about the different types of research that inform her wonderful books. And continue scrolling for a giveaway and an excerpt of her next release.

Research represents one of the vital tools of a historical novelist. We’re frequently asked to share our research when we discuss our books. I’m always bemused by that. Which research?

Early in the process, academic research is important. I need to understand the era, the setting, the historical figures, the circumstances and a general picture of people’s lives.  A stack of books glares at me from across the room as I type this.  East Asia the Modern Transformation, my Fairbank-Reicshauer survey text from college is buried under two works on the East India Company.  The Reluctant Wife is set in India, but that one is finished. The work-in-progress, The Unexpected Wife (due next October) takes the hero to Canton, China where he will encounter—surprise—the East India Company. Again. This kind of research mostly sets the mood and enlightens the setting. It isn’t terribly helpful on a daily basis.

Some details are tough to get at. Tomes on the company, and even forays into the internet, weren’t much help with details of daily life. I got stuck on uniforms and military life on the edges of the Bengal Presidency. A friend connected me to her father-in-law who provided pages of wonderful detail. I may have only used bits and pieces but those bits make the story much more alive and, I can only hope, more authentic.

Once writing is underway, the questions we didn’t anticipate crop up left and right. What is the punishment for counterfeiting coins in 1832?  (severe, possibly capital) How would the heroine treat burns in 1835? (with honey) How could the hero tell if a dead assassin was hindu or muslim? (circumcision) When was foxglove found to be useful for heart failure? (before 1800) For those, I scurry to the Internet, usually successfully.

There is another sort of research that enlivens my work, however. Fiction, regardless of historical era or setting, is about people, and romantic fiction is about relationships. My books are all embedded in family—the families of origin of the hero and heroine, and the family they form when they finally come together. For that, my research is all around me. Family is the great school of life. Families mold us for better or for worse. They lie under our character, conflicts, and motivation good and bad. They  provoke the strongest of all human emotions, both negative and positive. Reasearch? I’d say so—if we’re paying attention.

What do you think?  How much real information do you look for in what is, after all, a novel? Is the human more or less important?

The Reluctant Wife

Children of Empire, Book 2

Genre: Pre Victorian, Historical Romance  *  Heat rating: 3 of 5 (two brief -mild- sexual encounters)

ISBN:  978-1-61935-349-9 * ASIN:  B06Y4BGMX1 * Page count: 275 pages

Pub date: April 26, 2017

When all else fails, love succeeds…

Captain Fred Wheatly’s comfortable life on the fringes of Bengal comes crashing down around him when his mistress dies, leaving him with two children he never expected to have to raise. When he chooses justice over army regulations, he’s forced to resign his position, leaving him with no way to support his unexpected family. He’s already had enough failures in his life. The last thing he needs is an attractive, interfering woman bedeviling his steps, reminding him of his duties.

All widowed Clare Armbruster needs is her brother’s signature on a legal document to be free of her past. After a failed marriage, and still mourning the loss of a child, she’s had it up to her ears with the assumptions she doesn’t know how to take care of herself, that what she needs is a husband. She certainly doesn’t need a great lout of a captain who can’t figure out what to do with his daughters. If only the frightened little girls didn’t need her help so badly.

Clare has made mistakes in the past. Can she trust Fred now? Can she trust herself? Captain Wheatly isn’t ashamed of his aristocratic heritage, but he doesn’t need his family and they’ve certainly never needed him. But with no more military career and two half-caste daughters to support, Fred must turn once more—as a failure—to the family he let down so often in the past. Can two hearts rise above past failures to forge a future together?

Find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Reluctant-Wife-Children-Empire-Book-ebook/dp/B06Y4BGMX1/

About Caroline Warfield

Traveler, poet, librarian, technology manager—award winning author Caroline Warfield has been many things (even a nun), but above all she is a romantic. Having retired to the urban wilds of eastern Pennsylvania, she reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows while she lets her characters lead her to adventures in England and the far-flung corners of the British Empire. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart.

Caroline is a RONE award winner with five star reviews from Readers’ Favorite, Night Owl Reviews, and InD’Tale. She is also a member of the writers’ co-operative, the Bluestocking Belles. With partners she manages and regularly writes for both The Teatime Tattler and History Imagined.

Website http://www.carolinewarfield.com/

Amazon Author http://www.amazon.com/Caroline-Warfield/e/B00N9PZZZS/

Good Reads http://bit.ly/1C5blTm

Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/carolinewarfield7

Twitter @CaroWarfield

Email warfieldcaro@gmail.com

Children of Empire

Three cousins, torn apart by lies and deceit and driven to the far reaches of the empire, struggle to find their way home.

Giveaway

Caroline will give a kindle copy of The Renegade Wife, first book in the series, to one randomly selected person who comments. She is also sponsoring a grand prize in celebration of her release. You can enter it here: http://www.carolinewarfield.com/2017blogtourpackage/

The prequel to this book, A Dangerous Nativity, is always **FREE**. You can get a copy here: http://www.carolinewarfield.com/bookshelf/a-dangerous-nativity-1815/

Excerpt

Clare briefly explained what she had learned about the inaugural run of a mail steamer to the Suez.

“What is the advantage?” he asked.

“It cuts four months off the time we would spend cooped up on a ship,” Clare answered.

“Camels,” Meghal declared. Her eyes widened as a new idea struck. “And crocodiles.”

“The disadvantage?” he asked, barely controlling his laughter.

“Goodness, Fred. I would have to disembark with two children, travel overland to Cairo, travel by river barge down the Nile and the Mahmoudiyah Canal to Alexandria before embarking on yet another steamer for Falmouth or Southampton while managing luggage and keeping your daughter from wandering off with the first interesting band of Bedouins she encountered.”

“But Papa can help with the luggage, and I promise not to follow any—what are Bead-oh-ans?”

Clare’s face registered the shock he felt. Neither one of them had mentioned his plans to his daughters. Clare raised a brow and shrugged, obviously unwilling to rescue him.

You’re on your own, Wheatly, he thought as he tried to put words together while Meghal smiled hopefully at him.

“I thought you knew, Meghal. I’m not going with you. You will have to take care of Miss Armbruster for me.” She will like the idea of caring for everyone, he thought, pleased with himself for coming up with that.

His daughter’s instant response disabused him of that notion. “Why?” she demanded, the universal challenge of children everywhere. Before he could think, she stabbed him in the heart and twisted the knife. “Don’t you care for us?”

“Of course, I do! Never think that.”

“Where will we go? Who will take care of us? Do we have to live with Miss Armbruster?” Meghal colored and turned to Clare. “I’m sorry, Miss Armbruster. Ananya and I like you, but you aren’t family,” she said. “We need family.”

Fred seized on her words. “That’s just it. I’m sending you to family. Your Aunt Catherine and your cousins will be happy to have you come and stay with them while I”—he clenched his teeth—“while I find work so I can send her money for your care.”

Meghal sank back in the chair, outrage still rampant on her face.

“Meghal, I can’t care for you if I can’t work.”

In lieu of an answer, she jumped down from her chair and hurried to the bedroom, returning with her beloved box. Fred groaned. I should never have read them to her. She dug down under her cousins’ missives and pulled up ones she knew were from his sister.

“My aunt wants you to write to her. She would be dee-lighted to see you if you come to England. She would help us, and the earl who is a farmer would too,” Meghal announced, folding her arms across her chest and thrusting out her lower lip. “We can come back after we see them. You must come.” She leaned forward when another notion flitted across her expressive face. “We could go by Egypt if you come. Please come,” she wheedled.

 

by

Tea with Esther

monday-for-tea

Esther Baumann squeezed her fingers together in a futile effort to control her nerves when Miss Cedrica Grenford approached her in the anteroom to the Duchess of Haverford’s drawing room. The woman’s kind eyes behind wire-rimmed spectacles reassured her, however. She took a deep breath.

“Her Grace is so pleased you came,” Miss Grenford told her.

Esther rose to her feet, hoping she did it as gracefully as she intended. This caused Reba, her ever present companion, to do so as well.

“Would you care for refreshments, miss?” the duchess’s companion asked Reba.

esther-baumannEsther put her hand on the woman’s arm. “I’ll be fine Reba. Do let Miss Grenford see to your comfort.”

A moment later the door closed softly behind her, and she found herself alone with the Duchess of Haverford.

“Miss Baumann, how lovely of you to come. Your message requesting an interview pleased me.” The duchess gestured to the seat next to her with a graceful hand. Afte pouring tea, offering biscuits, and making sure of Esther’s comfort she went on, “How may I help you?”

“Oh, you already have, Your Grace. I asked to see you to thank you for your invitation to the Hollystone Hall house party and to give you my acceptance in person.” Esther handed a sweetly scented missive to the woman she admired so greatly.

“I’m delighted you will come! May I hope this means your parents have accepted my invitation as well?” the duchess asked turning the little missive over in her hand.

“I fear not, Your Grace. That is the reason I wished to speak to you face to face. My mother is not well.” Esther felt tears well up. When the duchess reached over an put a sympathetic hand on her arm they spilled over, earning her the use of a lace trimmed linen handkerchief.

After a moment to gather her emotions, Esther went on. “She worries about me attending a house party without her, and I’m loathe to worry her. Still, I want badly to come; my father has arranged for my Aunt Dinah to attend come with me.”

“Please assure your mother I will happily stand in her place while you are my guest, Miss Baumann. Will your father accompany you?”

Esther shook her head. “He tells me the demands of business forbid it.” She stiffened at that and watched for the other woman’s reaction. Many looked down on bankers like Nathaniel Baumann, and Esther would not hesitate to defend him if she had to. She didn’t.

“Men like your father are much needed in these difficult times,” the duchess replied.

Esther had a surge of pride, even greater than her relief at the woman’s sensitivity. “Yes! Even the government—” She snapped her mouth shut, aware she had almost revealed things she should not.

The duchess laughed, leaned closer, and whispered. “Yes I understand your father’s young assistant has accompanied Viscount Rochlin to Spain. Such delicate matters must weigh on Mr. Baumann.”

“How do you know that?” Esther gasped. “Adam left only last week!”

“I fear there is little my son Aldridge doesn’t know, at least a it applies to the country. Adam is it? Well, well.” The duchess’s eyes twinkled. “I will look forward to meeting this courageous young man. Shall I invite him as well?”

“He won’t come,” Esther responded morosely. “Adam… that is, Mr. Halevy, has very traditional views and a narrow circle of friends.”

“Oh dear. That must be difficult for one as outgoing as you,” the duchess replied sympathetically.

Her mood had turned gloomy, an unfamiliar situation for Esther. She took a deep breath and reached into her reticule and retrieved a heavy vellum packet, eager to change the subject. “My father asked me to deliver this to you in person as well.”

The duchess glanced over at Esther once or twice while she opened Baumann’s message. At the sight of the enclosed cheque her eyes grew wide. “My goodness, this is extremely generous.”

Esther grinned broadly. “My father is always happy to contribute. He believes very strongly in education.”

“Does he know our charity supports education for women and girls?”

“Certainly. He is…”

“Learning?” the duchess asked with a laugh.

“Conflicted,” Esther replied. “He will also contribute directly to Mr. Montefiore’s project to build a Hebrew school in London.”

“One that won’t admit girls.”

“No. It won’t.” Esther couldn’t keep the irritation out of her voice.

“You sound unhappy about that. Did you wish for that sort of education?”

“I would have liked to study the Torah at the feet of the rabbis, but I know of no girls who do. ”

The duchess sighed. “Perhaps some do and we don’t know about it yet. She raised her chin and went on, suddenly radiating the power of her position. “It is the same for all girls. We will change that. Maybe not overnight, but it will change.”

The fire in her eyes softened when she looked at Esther. “I will send my gratitude to your father and assure him he is welcome at the house party, even if he can only come for the ball.”

Esther smiled back. The duchess and the banker’s daughter’s eyes met in perfect accord.

__________________________________

It might have surprised Esther to know that some girls did have the opportunity she longed for, as Adam is about to find out.

an-open-heart-fbAn Open Heart, by Caroline Warfield

Esther Baumann longs for a loving husband who will help her create a home where they will teach their children to value the traditions of their people, but she wants a man who is also open to new ideas and happy to make friends outside their narrow circle. Is it so unreasonable to ask for toe curling passion as well?

Adam Halevy prospered under the tutelage of his distant cousin, powerful banker Nathaniel Baumann. He’s ready to find a suitable wife, someone who understands a woman’s role, and will make a traditional home. Why is Baumann’s outspoken, independent daughter the one woman who haunts his nights?

BUY LINKS for HOLLY AND HOPEFUL HEARTS

Amazon US:  http://ow.ly/INwa3049Ey3

Amazon UK: http://ow.ly/ZMuH3049ELM

Amazon Australia: http://ow.ly/TczG3049EQ2
Amazon Canada: http://ow.ly/IERm3049EYM

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/664559

Kobo: http://ow.ly/Vx1n304jGzj

Barnes & Noble: http://ow.ly/LqCI304jGuS

iBooks: http://ow.ly/JcSI304jGWE

About the Author

carol-roddyTraveler, poet, librarian, technology manager—award winning author Caroline Warfield has been many things (even a nun), but above all she is a romantic. Having retired to the urban wilds of eastern Pennsylvania, she reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows while she lets her characters lead her to adventures in England and the far-flung corners of the British Empire. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart.

 

 

by

And meanwhile, elsewhere in the blogosphere…

I am at a two day work conference. Great stuff! I was going to write my Footnotes on Friday blog on the revolution in kitchens in the late Georgian. I didn’t get it done before I left home, so I put all my notes in my bag. But I’ve just arrived at the place I’m staying after a long tiring day, and the post isn’t about to happen.

Sorry, folks. Instead, though, here are two other research posts you might enjoy, if you haven’t already caught up with them.

The first, about rakehells, I wrote for Jessica Cale’s Dirty Sexy History blog.

The second, about the clash of cooking cultures that spelled the destruction of English cuisine (until it was resurrected in the late 20th century), I wrote for Caroline Warfield’s Highlighting Historical.

Enjoy! I’m off to have an early night before another day of conferencing tomorrow.