Charlotte Winderfield

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Tea with the daughters

While Parliament was sitting, Eleanor, the Duchess of Winshire brought all her female brood together for tea once a week, or at least those who were in London. Her daughters of the heart, though she’d birthed none of them.

She looked around the room at them all chattering, sharing family news and discussing the issues facing their world and the charities to which each devoted time and attention.

Cherry, Duchess of Haverford, had her head close together with Matilda, Sophia, and Prue. Cherry was the beloved wife of Eleanor’s eldest son, and the lady responsible for the happiness that lit Haverford’s eyes and curved his lips into a smile whenever she was near, or even when they were briefly parted and he thought of her. She was also Eleanor’s niece by marriage, being the daughter of Eleanor’s husband’s deceased brother.

Matilda, Countess of Hamner, her eldest foster daughter, was once known to all the ton as the Ice Maiden, though no one would think it to see her now. Matilda had entered Eleanor’s nursery as a baby, and captivated the Duchess of Haverford, as she was then, with one fathomless gaze from those blue eyes.

Sophia, Countess of Sutton, wife to her husband’s eldest son, was a lady who coupled great dignity with enormous warmth. Sophia was another Eleanor had loved all her life, since her friend the Countess of Hythe had asked Eleanor to be godmother to the newborn babe. After Sophia’s marriage to Jamie and Eleanor’s marriage to his father Winshire, Sophia was now her daughter in law, as well as religion and affection.

Prudence Wakefield was the mother of a number of Eleanor’s grandchildren. It was true that the younger ones who were acknowledged as grandchildren were so only by courtesy, since Prue’s husband David was a by-blow of Eleanor’s first husband and no blood relation. The eldest could not be acknowledged as a blood relation, for she was the daughter of Prue and Eleanor’s eldest son, conceived in a long ago youthful folly that the family had no intention of sharing with the world. Those who noticed her resemblance to the Haverfords assumed David was her father, as he was in every way except biological. To make the relationship even more complicated, she and David had taken Tony into their family. He was a slum brat, rescued by Cherry, and discovered to be the offspring of Eleanor’s younger son, Jonathan.

Ruth, Sarah and Becky were also deep in conversation. Ruth was the Countess of Ashbury and the Duke of Winshire’s daughter, and Sarah was Countess of Lechton and twin sister to Cherry. From the serious looks on the two faces, Eleanor would guess that they were talking about the medical clinic that Ruth had founded and where Sarah’s husband Nate worked.

Like Prue’s, Becky’s relationship with the Haverfords had elements that most of the world did not know. She was Baroness Overton, wife to the current Duke of Haverford’s closest friend. But under another name, she had once been Haverford’s mistress. Bella, the youngest Overton daughter, was another unacknowledged grandchild.

Rosemary was laughing with Jessica and Frances. They were probably talking about Frances’s debut ball, which had been a grand success.  Lady Rosemary Winderfield was Winshire’s youngest daughter, and the only one yet unmarried. Perhaps she would choose a husband this year. Certainly, she would need one to chase away the wistful look Eleanor had caught from time to time when Ruth watched the other ladies with their children.

Jessica’s laugh was good to hear. Eleanor’s middle foster daughter, the Countess of Colyford, still wore black for her husband, though Eleanor wondered how she could mourn him after what he’d done to her, and tried to do. She was laughing again, though, and would perhaps put off her blacks soon.

Frances’s laugher was unforced. The sweetest of Eleanor’s three foster daughters was also the smartest. She had quickly summed up the majority of her suitors as fribbles without serious intention and had picked out the fortune-tellers with unerring accuracy. Eleanor, Winshire, and even her brother Haverford told her to marry for love, and Eleanor hoped that she would.

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Spotlight on To Tame the Wild Rake

The whole world knows Aldridge is a wicked sinner. They used to be right.

The ton has labelled Charlotte a saint for her virtue and good works. They don’t know the ruinous secret she hides.

Then an implacable enemy reveals all. The past that haunts them wounds their nearest relatives and turns any hope of a future to ashes.

Must they choose between family and one another?

Buy now for delivery on 17 September: https://books2read.com/CMK-ToTame

Prologue

February 1812

The Marquis of Aldridge was closeted with His Grace. The Duke of Winshire, Charlotte’s grandfather, had permitted no visitors for months, ever since an apoplexy robbed his movements of precision and slurred his speech. But this morning he had agreed to see Aldridge.

“He can’t force you into the marriage,” her twin sister Sarah whispered through the spy hole from the servants’ passage in the wall, when she came to tell Charlotte about the visitor. Whether Sarah meant Aldridge or Grandfather, Charlotte wasn’t sure, but Sarah was wrong. Grandfather had already assured her she would be Aldridge’s bride if she had to be carried into the mansion’s chapel bound and gagged.

“My chaplain will marry you right and tight, without you saying a word, and once Aldridge has his hands on you, you’ll obey him like a wife should or suffer the consequences. The boy takes after his father. He’ll know how to handle a reluctant wife.”

Aldridge wasn’t like that. Was he? Five years ago, when he and Charlotte were friends, she would have been certain of him. But his friendship was a kindness to a child. By the time she was old enough to be in Society, her confidence in men had been shattered, and the whispers about Aldridge’s women had been a minor factor in her adamant refusal of his first two proposals.

This time, though, his father and her grandfather had brokered the arrangement, and the Duke of Winshire was determined to bring the unwilling bride to heel. Charlotte was fighting the match with all her powers, but those were few. “I’ll tell Aldridge why I’m unfit to be a bride,” she threatened her grandfather.

“Do that, and I’ll put you, your sister, and your mother out into the street in your chemises,” the old man promised. “Useless coven of females.”

The danger wasn’t as dire as it sounded. Aunt Georgie would make sure they were clothed and fed, and had a roof over their heads. But Charlotte’s threat was even more toothless. Her work depended on her reputation in Society, but even if she was prepared to lose that, she couldn’t condemn her mother or her beloved sister to forever living on the fringes of the Polite World, hidden from view, their very existence an affront.

Would it be so terrible to be married to Aldridge? Yes, and precisely because he was, in his own way, a decent man. She could very easily fall back in love with him as she had when she was fifteen, and that way lay unending heartache. Even if her own scandal remained a secret, he was a rakehell. She could not expect him to remain faithful to any woman, especially one who hated being touched. To love a man who sought his pleasure elsewhere—however discreetly—would be a kind of hell. And then there was the other…

The key rattled in her door and it swung open at the hands of the tall footman who stood guard over her and followed her everywhere she was permitted. Neither he nor his colleague would meet Charlotte’s eyes. “His Lordship the Marquis of Aldridge awaits you in the green parlour, my lady,” said the one in the lead.

Charlotte briefly considered refusing, but they probably had orders to carry her if she wouldn’t go. She tried for a sort of freedom anyway. “Please tell the marquis I will be down shortly.”

The footmen exchanged glances. “We must escort you, my lady,” said the spokesman.

Might as well get it over, then. If Aldridge was determined to go ahead with the marriage, she would tell him all and let come what may. If she made him swear first not to tell His Grace his reasons for crying off, would he keep his word? He was known for always keeping promises, but most men didn’t believe their honour compromised by breaking promises made to women.

With her mind on the coming interview, she was out of the family wing and on her way down the private stairs before she realised that the halls had been a stirred ant nest of activity, and here, hurrying up to brush past her with a chorus of murmured apologies, came the duke’s covey of physicians.

She turned to watch them ascend and disappear through the door into the family wing. “Is something wrong with my grandfather?”

The quieter of the two footmen replied, “They say he took another fit, my lady. When he was seein’ Lord Aldridge.”

Another apoplexy. Each robbed him of a little more function. She found it hard to summon any pity for the old tyrant, especially since he had undoubtedly set things up to rule them all from beyond the grave. Even if he had not, the unknown uncle who would succeed him was sure to be cut from the same cloth, as had been her father and brother.

If she weren’t so damaged, a dynastic marriage to Aldridge would have been preferable to remaining under the rule of the men of her family. As long as she could avoid the stupidity of falling in love. Kindness and respect lasted longer, and Aldridge was kind to his mother and sisters. Though who knew what a man was really like behind closed doors?

In any case, the point was moot. She would tell him all—or most—and it would be over.

He stood as she entered the parlour. From the artistic disorder of his fair hair to the mirror-gleam of his boots, he was dressed with his usual elegance. His coat fitted his broad shoulders like a glove. The single emerald on the gold pin that anchored his snowy cravat echoed the embroidery on his waistcoat and the glints of green in his hazel eyes. His tight pantaloons lovingly shaped slender hips and muscular thighs. Which she was not going to look at.

He’d chosen a seat on the far side of the room from the door, and he now ordered the footmen to wait outside. “I require a few moments of privacy with my betrothed.” After a moment’s hesitation, they obeyed, leaving the door wide open.

As she took a chair, he murmured, “Are there servant passages near us? Can we be heard if we keep our voices low?”

So that is why he’d chosen a seating group by the outside wall. “Not if we are quiet,” she confirmed.

He was examining her in the way that always made her restless—a steady look, as if he could see her innermost thoughts. “You asked to see me,” she reminded him, to put an end to it.

That broke his gaze. His lids dropped, and he laughed, a short unamused bark. “And you would like to see me in Jericho. Straight to the point, then, Lady Charlotte. Your mother told my mother that you are being threatened with dire consequences if you do not marry me.”

He leaned forward, meeting her eyes again, his voice vibrating with sincerity. “I have never forced a woman, and I don’t plan to do so. I will not take an unwilling wife.”

Charlotte tried to hide the upwelling relief, but some of it must have shown, for he sighed as he sat back, his shoulders shifting in what would have been a slump in a less elegant man. “It is true, then. Given a choice, you will not have me.”

Charlotte had not expected his disappointment, the sorrow deep in his eyes, swiftly masked. Before she could measure her words, she leapt to reassure him. “It is not you. I do not plan ever to marry.”

He grimaced. “That is what my mother tells me. Is there nothing I can say that would change your mind? You would be an outstanding duchess.”

No. She really wouldn’t. Like everyone else, he saw only the duke’s granddaughter, not the woman within. Perhaps, if he had been a man of lesser estate, if he had spoken about affection and companionship, she might have risked it. Not love. Charlotte did not trust love.

Again, he read something of her mind, for he sighed again, and gave her a wry smile and the very words she wanted. “We were friends once, my Cherry, were we not? Long ago?”

Her resolve softened at the nickname he had given her that golden summer, before it all went wrong. “I was very young and you were very drunk,” she retorted.

He huffed a brief laugh. “Both very true. Still, we could be friends again, I think. I have always hoped for a wife who could also be my friend.” He frowned. “Is it my damnable reputation? I am not quite the reprobate they paint me, you know.”

Charlotte shook her head, then rethought her response. His reputation might outrun his actions, but he was reprobate enough, and the lifestyle he brushed off so casually had destroyed her brother. And her, as well, though not through her own fault.

“Not that, though if I were disposed to marry, I would not choose a rake. Marriage is not for me, however.” She should at least hint at the reason. “I cannot be your duchess, Aldridge.” She hesitated. How should she tell him? Blurt it out? Make a story of it?

The words wouldn’t come, and he must have assumed that she’d finished. His social mask dropped back into place, proud though affable. “I have told your grandfather we will not suit. He asked if you had told me what he called ‘your maidenly reservations’, and I assured him I had not spoken with you. I let him think that the marriage arrangement was my father’s idea, and not mine.”

Marrying her had been Aldridge’s idea? Charlotte put that away to think about later. “Thank you. He has had me locked in until I agreed to receive your proposal.”

Aldridge nodded, unsurprised. The mother network must have included that information. “I am afraid my repudiation of the arrangement made him ill again. I’m sorry to say he took a fit.”

Charlotte shrugged. She couldn’t be sorry, even if that made her a horrible person. Again, Aldridge seemed to know what she was thinking.

“He, like my own sire, is too used to everyone leaping to his commands. We can’t let their refusal to brook denial shape our lives any more than they must.” He stood. “Still, I must hope I haven’t killed him. Will you let me know?”

“I will. And thank you.” She held out her hand in farewell, and he took it, turning it over and placing a kiss in the palm.

Once again, his mask dropped away, and something unfathomable stirred in his eyes. “If you change your mind, or if you ever have need of anything I can do for you, let me know, Cherry. I will always come at your command.”

With that, he dropped her hand and strode for the door, leaving Charlotte less happy than she expected. If he had been a yeoman farmer, or a lawyer, or some other humble man to whom she might aspire—someone who did not require from her the primary duty of a peer’s wife—they might have been happy together. But then, he would not have been Aldridge.

Author’s Note

To Tame the Wild Rake is the last novel in the series The Return of the Mountain King. Can it be read as a stand-alone? Yes, it can. The main plot line is the romance between the Marquis of Aldridge and Lady Charlotte Winderfield. In this novel, you’ll find out about their history, together and separately, what stands between them, and how it is resolved. And I’ll give you a glimpse of their happy ever after in the epilogue.

If you want to know the full story of the villain’s dealings with the two main families in the book, or the stories of the married son and daughter of the Duke of Winshire, and of Charlotte’s sister, you may wish to read the other books in the series. They’re listed in order at the back and on my web, and on retailer sites, you’ll notice that the novels are numbered on the cover.

Beyond that, I write historical romances set in a complex Regency world of my own imagining, where all the most powerful families know one another, and a main character from one book may be a secondary or background character in another. For example, Aldridge has appeared in more than thirteen of my novels, novellas, and short stories, and not only in this series. When I edit, I have to discipline myself to cut out all the detail about these extra people that doesn’t have anything to do with the plot lines of the particular book I’m writing. I don’t want to confuse new readers. But I know readers of my other books enjoy these glimpses of old friends.

This book has one unresolved plot line from the series. What becomes of the relationship between Aldridge’s mother, the Duchess of Haverford, and Charlotte’s uncle, the Duke of Winshire? That story will be published as Paradise At Last in a three-part set later this year. I’m aiming at 15 December. The set, The Paradise Triptych, will include the duke’s novella, Paradise Regained, the duchess’s memoirs, Paradise Lost, and Paradise At Last.

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Attraction in WIP Wednesday

Charlotte finds the secret of the relationship between her and Aldridge hard to keep in the following excerpt from To Tame the Wild Rake. (Anthony is Aldridge’s given name.) Do you have an excerpt about attraction that you’d like to share?

Seeing Anthony in company proved to be more difficult that Charlotte expected. To keep their secret, she had to behave as if nothing had changed since yesterday. She wanted to smile at him, spend the whole evening at his side, touch him, bask in the warmth of his eyes.

He seemed unaffected, nodding to her gravely from the other side of the room when she looked his way, then continuing his conversation with his mother and Jessica as if Charlotte was merely an acquaintance of no particular importance.

She sat with Sarah and Nate, and Anthony took a place a couple of rows behind her. Charlotte exercised all the willpower she had at her command and managed not to turn around, but to give at least the appearance of listening to the music. Her mind kept slipping to the events of the previous night and to wondering whether Anthony was thinking about them too.

When the musicians stopped for a rest and their hostess announced that supper was served in the next room, he made his move, bringing his ladies over to greet her party, then offering Charlotte his arm and holding her back to allow the others to lead the way.

He bent his head close to her ear and whispered, “There’s a door two down from the room set aside for women to retire. Meet me inside that room? In ten minutes?”

She turned her head to meet his eyes, meaning to refuse. What came off her tongue was a breathy, “Yes.”

He smiled, more with his eyes than his mouth, then left her at the door of the room, taking a couple of steps forward to say to the duchess, “I trust you will excuse me, Mama. I have seen someone I wish to speak with.” He was gone before Aunt Eleanor could reply.

Was it always this easy to keep an assignation? When she excused herself a few minutes later, no one in her party made any comment. Perhaps it was her reputation. No one would think anything of Saint Charlotte heading down the passage that led to the ladies retiring room.

Everyone else must be focused on their supper, because she had the passage to herself. She counted doors, opened the right one, and slipped into a room dimly lit with a single candle. She sensed Anthony’s presence a bare second before she found herself seized and ruthlessly kissed.

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The marriage mart on WIP Wednesday

The marriage market aspect of London’s Season is a staple of Regency novels. How does our heroine react? In this week’s episode from To Claim the Long-Lost Lover, I have my heroine and her sister discussing her strategy: a list of possibles. If you have a heroine seeking a groom–or refusing to do so, please share an excerpt in the comments.

The twin’s list grew through November. Society was greeting those returning to the capital as Parliament began its sessions after the summer recess. Sarah and Charlotte attended entertainments carefully chosen to meet as many suitable gentlemen as possible. After each event, they added names, though they also crossed some out. They wrote notations against every potential candidate they encountered.

“Hythe is probably not ready to set up his nursery,” Sarah said, after meeting the earl in question at a dinner party. She wrote this next to his name. That done, probably was not certainly. He stayed on the list.

“Aldridge probably is ready to set up his nursery,” Charlotte noted. The cross through Aldridge’s name had been the subject of some debate. The twins agreed that the Duke of Haverford’s terminal illness meant his heir, the Marquis of Aldridge, must be in need of a bride, but otherwise disputed his suitability for Sarah.

Charlotte argued that Sarah was not seeking a love match, and that Aldridge met all her specifications for a husband. “He would be a kind, courteous, and respectful husband, Sarah. He is not out for your money or your social position—he has more than enough of both. You get on well with his mother. And they have so much scandal of their own that they’re hardly likely to cavil at yours.”

Sarah countered with all of the marquis’s well-known character flaws, and then won the argument with a sneak attack. “Besides, while I do not want a husband who loves me, nor do I want one who has been dangling after my sister these past four years. He wants you, Charlotte, not me. Besides, even if I was prepared for the embarrassment of being married to a man who loves my sister, I doubt if Aldridge is going to accept such a substitution.”

Charlotte shook her head. “It is not love. It can’t be. I appear to be a suitable bride for a man of his rank. That is all. But I am not, Sarah. You know I am not.”

“I know nothing of the kind.” Sarah enfolded her sister in an embrace. “I shall not hound you, my love. But neither shall I marry Aldridge.”

Someone would. It should be Charlotte, but Sarah understood the reasons for her sister’s reservations, and would say no more. “What of Lord Colyford?” she asked. “I have no objection to a widower, and I have seen his little girls at the park. They appear delightful.”

“I’ll put him on the list,” Charlotte agreed. “Hurley? He seems pleasant enough.”

“He can go on the list,” Sarah decided, “but I remain to be convinced he has substance to go with his charm.”

They added a couple more names and crossed out that of a man who had over-imbibed at Lady Forrest’s musical evening. Apparently, he was developing a reputation for becoming drunk and assaulting the maids.

 

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Authorly devices in WIP Wednesday

Part of the fun of writing is coming up with solutions for ways to tell the story that keep the reader engrossed while giving them the information they need. My current Work in Progress, To Tame the Wild Rake, depends on the past history of the protagonists, both as a couple and as individuals. Managing this in conversation and reflection proved tedious, and I’m not fond of flashbacks. So I’m adding the occasional interlude, taking the name from music to mean a short scene set in a different place and time to the story in the chapters. Here’s the first. (If you have an authorly device you’d like to share, pop it in the comments.)

Applemorn Hall estate, July 1807

“Mathematics is truth,” the girl told Aldridge, her thin face glowing with passion. “It is beauty. The world is patterns of logic and shapes, and the task of mathematicians is to understand those patterns, Lord Aldridge.”

Aldridge was drunk, but not so much that he didn’t know he was in dangerous territory. He should not be trespassing on the wrong side of the pond that marked the boundary of the estate he was visiting. He should not be alone in this quiet folly with a girl who was both younger and better born than he had at first assumed. He should not be listening, enraptured, to her explanation about why she was beguiling her convalescence from an embarrassing childhood illness by solving puzzles.

Richport’s house was hidden from their sight by a small tree-covered hill that rose on the other side of the pond. It was filled, as Richport’s houses tended to be, with willing women, good liquor, wagers of all kinds, and countless inducements to forget the sins and follies that haunted him.

Yet he had been here for nearly an hour, in peaceful conversation—intellectual conversation—with a chit not yet out of the schoolroom, and he was already planning to return tomorrow.

“You know my name, my lady. May I know yours?”

She blushed, then, and cast her eyes around as if a suggestion might be written up in the rafters of the folly. “I am called Charrie.” 

He looked at the basket that held cherry pits, all that was left of the fruit they had been sharing, and raised one eyebrow. 

“Not Cherry,” she told him. “Charrie.” 

“Cherry suits you better,” he told her, though he was by no means drunk enough to explain why. The alcohol must be clearing from his system, though, for an errant memory surfaced. Didn’t Elfingham refer to his twin sisters as Charrie and Sarrie? And didn’t Elfingham’s grandfather have an estate somewhere in this area? 

She was Lady Charlotte Winderfield, then, and the granddaughter of the Duke of Winshire. Highly eligible, then. Still too young, but she would be marriageable in a year or two.

And if he was thinking such foolish thoughts, it was high time he found another drink. He had not been sober for more than a month, and he had no intention of starting now. He stood.

“I must take my leave, Cherry, but I will visit tomorrow, if you will admit me. I shall present my card at the door.” He gestured to the open side of the structure.

She giggled at his fooling, but said, “If we are to be friends, and if you are to call me Cherry,” the blush deepened, “then I shall call you Anthony. That is your name, is it not?”

Hardly. It was one of several names that had been bestowed on him at baptism, but no one had ever addressed him by anything but his title. He was Aldridge even to his closest relatives, and would remain so until his father died and he became Haverford. If she called him Anthony, he would look around to see who was being addressed.

Still, fair was fair. If he insisted on calling her by a name he had selected, she had every right to choose what to call him.

“Then we shall be Anthony and Cherry. Friend.”

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Best friends on WIP Wednesday

Best friends are a great help to a writer. They give the hero or heroine someone to talk to, someone to support them, even someone to act on their behalf. In this week’s WIP Wednesday, I’m inviting authors to show us all an excerpt from your WIP with a best friend in it.

In mine, my heroine’s twin is meeting with the man who deserted her sister seven years ago, and who has suddenly reappeared in their lives.

The butler unbent enough to say, “Lady Sarah left for the country this morning, my lord.”

Nate knew it was no use, but he asked anyway, where she had gone and how long should be away.

As expected, the butler refuse to answer. “It is not my place to say, sir.”

Nate was turning away when he had another thought. The butler had said Lady Sarah had left. “Perhaps you could take my card up to Lady Charlotte? Tell her I would be grateful if she could spare me a moment of her time.”

He more than half expected the butler to explain that Lady Charlotte was also out of town. However, the man merely bowed, and asked him to wait. He ushered Nate into a small parlour, and carried off the card.

Nate tried to remember what Lady Charlotte was like. He had barely noticed her yesterday evening, his attention all on not embarrassing Lady Sarah or, for that matter, Libby, by staring at his long-lost love like a gawky youth. He had a vague impression that she was much of a size with her sister, but brown haired where Sarah was fair. In that golden summer when he and Sarah had become friends and then lovers, Charlotte had been ill with some embarrassing childhood illness; mumps, he thought. Sarah—at a loose end without her twin—had wandered the estate and come across the vicar’s son in the woods, rescuing a rabbit from a trap.

Nate had met Charlotte once before the day he was plucked from everything he knew, but he remembered little. Thoughts of Sarah had filled his every waking moment and fueled his dreams, and when he was with her, he was blind to everything else. No wonder Elfingham, the twins’ brother, had guessed what they were about.

He knew her most through Sarah’s descriptions. Loving, loyal, the best friend a sister could have. If she would talk to him, he could, perhaps, find out what he most needed to know.

“Lord Bencham. Have we met, sir?”

Nate spun round to face the lady who had just entered the room. A maid crept in behind her and took station in the corner, but Nate’s full attention was for Lady Charlotte. She was similar in size and build to Sarah, but on the surface, little else was the same. Except that, as she tilted her head to the side to examine him as he was examining her, the gesture and her thoughtful expression brought powerful memories rushing back.

“She used to look at me like that when she was irritated with me,” he blurted.

Some of the tension went out of Lady Charlotte’s shoulders, and one corner of her mouth twitched as if she suppressed a smile. “She, so our old governess used to say, is the cat’s mother.”

Nate felt his cheeks heat. “Lady Sarah, I mean. I beg your pardon. And yes, we have met, though it was many years ago.”

Lady Charlotte considered him for a moment longer, then waved to the chairs set around a low table. “Sit down, Lord Bencham. Tell me what brings you here.”

The answer was the same two words. “Lady Sarah.” Nate had so many questions he wanted to ask that he couldn’t think what to say first.

Lady Charlotte spoke before he could. “My sister is in the country. She is seeking a husband this Season, and hopes to narrow her short-list.”

A short-list of potential husbands? The room spun for a moment and Nate spoke before his brain connected with his tongue. “Me! I should be on her short-list.” Lady Charlotte raised her brows at him, and he realized he was shouting. He lowered his voice, but he couldn’t retract anything he had said. “Just me.”

 

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Haunted by the past on WIP Wednesday

Our heroes and heroines need a past, and in my kind of book, something about that past needs to still bother them.

I love stories where we get an early glimpse of this vulnerability, without lengthy backstory, then more and more comes out as the story unwinds. I was at a crime and thriller conference last weekend, and on a panel with Kirsten McKenzie, whose horror/crime story Painted does this to beautiful effect for both the horror and the crime plot threads. I didn’t finish the book until the trip home, and the others on the panel were all trying to discuss the history that motivated the key characters without giving away the key points. (Sorry, folks.)

Sometimes, readers of a series know at least some of what tears at the hero’s heart or the heroine’s, but we don’t know about the wounds of the other protagonist. Charles, in Caroline Warfield’s Children of Empire has kept his dignity despite his estranged wife’s lies and betrayals. We know this because those lies also hurt Charles’s cousins, each of whom stars in one of the previous two books. We learn more, and from Charles’s POV, but we also need to find out what drives Zambak to the other side of the world, where she and Charles will have to deal with their separate pasts as well as the budding Opium Wars, Zambak’s brother, a callous villain, and small-minded local society.

I could go on — in my favourite books, people all have pasts, and an important part of the story is them coming to terms with who they are because of that past.

This week, I’m asking you to share a passage where your characters share part of their past. It could be highly significant, like the books I’ve mentioned above, or it could be something quite minor. Mine is from To Win a Proper Lady: The Bluestocking and the Barbarian, which I’m rewriting as a novellisation of the novella I wrote for Holly and Hopeful Hearts. In this passage, I hint at a backstory that won’t become clear until book three of the series. Hint. The heroine of To Tame the Wicked Rake: The Saint and the Sinner, is Charlotte Winderfield. The hero is Aldridge.

Charlotte indicated the closed bedchamber door with an inclination of her head. “I take it Grandfather has heard that the Duke of Haverford has run mad,” she said.

“Mad like a fox,” James answered. “He has given up on the claim that my father is not the son His Grace of Winshire lost so many years ago. With our esteemed progenitor and Aunt Georgie both recognising him, that was a lost cause. He thinks to convince his peers that they don’t want half breeds living among them, dancing and worse with their daughters. It will be a simple thing, he thinks, to prove my parent’s marriage a fiction, and all of their children barred from my grandfather’s title.”

“Take a seat, James, and don’t loom over me. You don’t think it will be a simple thing?”

James obeyed, lowering himself into the chair opposite hers. “I think the man a fool for underestimating the King of the Mountains. You have heard our grandsire’s solution for swaying opinion our way?”

She had, of course. That was clear from the way she examined his face before she spoke; a considering look, as if wondering how much to trust him. “It is a good idea for you to marry an English girl with impeccable bloodlines.” With a snap, she closed the open book that was sitting on her knee. “That girl will not be me, James. I mean no offence, but I will not marry you, whatever Grandfather might say. I do not intend to wed, ever.”

“Thank you for telling me. Perhaps, you would be kind enough to help me find a bride that will fit the duke’s requirements and my own?”

“And what might your requirements be?” Charlotte asked.

“Someone I could grow to love. Someone who could be my friend and partner, as well as my wife.”

“You are a romantic, cousin. I warn you, Haverford is powerful. He will make it hard to find a girl from the right family who will accept you, despite our family’s name and your father’s wealth. Finding one who is your match may be impossible.”

James looked down at his hands. If she thought him romantic, she would be certain of it in the next moment. “Perhaps I have found her already. What can you tell me of Lady Sophia Belvoir?”