Elijah Ashby

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Tea with Elijah

Eleanor, the Duchess of Winshire looked around her parlour with great satisfaction. The school for indigent gentlewomen that she supported would benefit from today to the tune of several hundred points. Even better, though many of the crowd had come to listen to the famous speakers, she had taken the opportunity to give them more that they expected for their ticket price. Her daughter-in-law Cherry had been the first speaker, and eloquent on the topic of the plight of gentlewomen who could not support themselves, and the value of providing education so that they could find appropriate jobs.

Of course, both Cherry and Eleanor supported education for women at every level of Society, but the idea of education a costermonger’s daughter, or even a costermonger’s son, was so far from the orbit of this audience that they would just look at her bluntly if she suggested it.

Not, perhaps, all of them. Mrs Paddimore, for example, who was here with her dear friend Cordelia, Marchioness of Deerhaven. Both Mrs Paddimore and Lady Deerhaven donated to the ragged school at which Cherry taught mathematics. Mrs Paddimore had caught her eye because the lady’s own attention was quite firmly fixed on the speakers. Or, rather, one of the speakers.

World travellers and travel writers Elijah Ashby and Lord Arthur Versey had talked about their journeys for over an hour, answered questions for another half hour, and were now refreshing their surely dry throats with sips of port, poured by Eleanor’s husband, who had winked and insisted that tea would be insufficient after the gentlemen’s ordeal in front of Eleanor’s crowd.

What was between Mrs Paddimore and Elijah Ashby? Not only did she turn towards him every few moments as if to check that he was still in the room, when she wasn’t watching him he gazed at her with reverence and longing. Eleanor approved. Mrs Paddimore was a lovely woman and deserved a husband who adored her, and Ashby was as intelligent and charming as he was handsome.

If there was anything she could do to promote the romance, she would. Eleanor did love a happy love story.

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Tea with a pair of adventurers

The Duchess of Haverford had given instructions that she was not at home to guests, had retreated from the private sitting room in which she entertained favoured guests to the even more private boudoir off her bedroom, where few were ever invited.

The tray she had ordered had been served, and the maid and footman who brought it had left the room.

The box that was the cause of this seclusion sat on a table, its string cut, but the paper still not unwrapped.

To draw out the anticipation, Eleanor made her tea, carefully measuring the leaves into the pot, filling it with the water that boiled over the spirit lamp, and leaving it to brew. Next to her share, within reach of her hands once she was sitting, she placed the pot, the jug of milk, and a plate with a selection of tasty treats made especially for her by Marcel Fournier, who had once been her chef and was now married to a sort of a cousin of Eleanor’s.

Now. It was time. She approached the box, her heart beating with pleasurable anticipation. She removed the paper, taking time to fold it neatly. The box within was made of heavy card. The lid lifted easily, and she set it aside. And there it was at last, her companion for the afternoon and for many pleasurable stolen moments thereafter. Given how thick it was, it might keep her satisfied for weeks.

She lifted it out of the box and held it to her nostrils. Aahh! The smell of a new book. There was nothing like it.

Eleanor sat in her chair and put her feet up on the footstool. She put the book in her lap and traced the letters on the cover with one finger. “Adventures Around the World,” by Two Gentlemen.

This was volume four, dealing with travels in India and Ceylon. Eleanor had read the previous three. It was an open secret that the two gentlemen were the Duke of Dellborough’s fourth and youngest son, Lord Arthur Versey, and his travelling companion and secretary, Mr. Elijah Ashby, who was some sort of connection of the Earl of Werebridge. A great grandson of the sixth earl, if she remembered correctly.

Whoever they were, they were marvellous writers. Their books were full of the most wonderful descriptions, with clever ink sketches. Eleanor poured her cup of tea, sat back in her chair, and opened the covers. She was spending the afternoon with two gentlemen in India.

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A girl’s first ball on WIP Wednesday

The book I have just finished has two distinct parts and a bridging section. In the first part, my heroine is turning 17, and one of the scenes is set at her birthday ball, which is also her debut to Society.  The section follow her from the planning for the ball to the end of her first Season. The second part picks up the story sixteen years ago, when she is a widow and the boy she wanted to dance with at her ball returns from many years overseas. Today’s piece is set at the ball.

Regina had thought that the dinner party would drag, given how excited she was about the ball, and how eager for the dancing to begin. Mr. Paddimore, however, proved to be an entertaining dinner companion. He told Regina several stories about funny things that happened at balls he attended, and assured her he was happy to fight off any suitors she would prefer not to entertain.

Before she knew it, dinner was over and Mama was saying it was time to form the receiving line. That, too, was exciting. All of these people had come to celebrate Regina!

She received many compliments. Mama and Papa, too, for having such a beautiful and charming daughter. Even so, she was glad when the stream of new arrivals dwindled to a trickle, and Mama announced it was time for the first dance.

Her one disappointment was that Elijah had not arrived. She had gone to such trouble, too. Yesterday afternoon, at the dancing class that one of Mama’s friends had got up for young ladies and young gentlemen who were new to the Season, Regina had managed to speak to several of the young men to whom mother had given one of her dances.

One of them—a youth she had known from the cradle—was more than happy to forego his dance with her in return for an introduction to another of the debutantes who had caught his eye.

If Elijah arrived, she would be able to dance with him. She had always wanted to, since she had seen him dancing with his mother at a village festival more than six years ago.

However, if he could not be bothered to come to her ball, she was certainly not going to spare him another thought. She smiled at Mr. Paddimore and allowed him to lead her out onto the dance floor. He was a very graceful dancer. She supposed that, at his age, he had had a lot of practice.

She enjoyed every minute of the next two hours. She did not enjoy some of her partners. The clumsy ones who trod on her feet or tried to lead her the wrong way. The ones who talked the entire time, and never had a single interesting thing to say. The ones who served ridiculous and overblown flattery with a helping of questions about how rich her father really was.

But Regina loved to dance, and was happy to imagine the clumsy, boring, or calculating partner of the moment replaced with the perfect gentleman of her imagination. The perfect gentleman who would partner her in one perfect dance.

It was for that imaginary person she danced gracefully to the music, smiling and glowing with pleasure.

At supper, her partner was tongue-tied, so she carried on with her daydream, imagining that her perfect gentleman had selected morsels to tempt her appetite from the best of the dishes set out for the guests.

Her escort managed to break his silence long enough to stammer, “Are you enjoying the evening, Miss Kingsley?”

Regina heard the question in her perfect gentleman’s thrilling tones, and it was to him that she answered, “I am having such a wonderful time. Everything is so exciting, so beautiful, and the people have been so kind.”

The enthusiastic response loosened her escort’s tongue a little. “It is very easy to be kind to one as lovely as you, Miss Kingsley.”

He might not be her perfect gentleman, but he was a very nice person.

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Comfort and kindness on WIP Wednesday

One of the most endearing things a hero can do is comfort his heroine after she has been hurt or frightened. How he does this tells us a lot about his character. Here is my Ash comforting Regina, who is reacting to being assaulted in her own drawing room by a suitor she thought to be harmless. (Ash has punched him, threatened him, and had him thrown out.)

In a moment, she was a warm fragrant bundle on Ash’s lap, her curves draped across his torso, her arms wrapped around him, her face tucked into his shoulder as she cried.

He patted her shoulder, murmuring comfort. “There now. You’re safe now, Ginny. He’s gone. He won’t bother you again. I have you, my darling. I have you.”

He had not seen Regina so discomposed since she was a child, grieving the loss of a kitten. He wished he’d hit Deffew harder. He’d thought he and Charles were in time, but if the swine’s violation had gone beyond what he’d seen, the dog would die for it, Regina’s opinion notwithstanding.

Charles poked his head around the door, his eyes widening in alarm when he saw the state of his mistress. Ash pointed to the brandy decanter he could see on a sideboard. “Two,” he mouthed, ceasing his patting to hold up two fingers then resuming again, barely breaking rhythm.

Charles nodded, and tiptoed to the decanter to pour two glasses of brandy, then tiptoed back across the room to place them on a side table next to Ash’s elbow, setting them down so carefully that they did not clink.

Ash briefly wondered whether the young man wanted to save Regina the embarrassment of knowing her emotional collapse had been witnessed, or whether he feared that she might expect him to do something about it if she knew he was there. Whichever it was, he faded back across the room and out of the door, pulling it shut behind him.

She was still crying, but the angry storm was gone, fading into heart-wrenching sobs that twisted Ash’s gut even more than the initial outburst. “There now, Ginny” Ash said. “Let it out, dearest. You’re safe now, my love.”

She turned her face up at that, drawing back so that her tear-drenched eyes could meet his. “Am I, Elijah?”

“Yes, of course. He has gone, and I won’t let him near you again.”

She thumped his chest softly, an action so reminiscent of the child Ginny that he had to repress a smile. “Not that,” she scolded. “The other.”

He retraced his words in his mind. “My love?” At her tiny nod, he repeated, “Are you my love?”

She raised her eyebrows in question, the imperious gesture only slightly marred by the shuddering breath of a leftover sob.

“I love you, Ginny. Did you not know?”

She thumped him again, another gentle reprimand. “You never said,” she grumbled. “You never even tried to kiss me.” The last two words were disrupted by a hiccup, but he understood them well enough.

“I am abjectly sorry, Ginny,” Ash told her, managing to keep his voice suitably solemn while his heart was attempting to break out of his chest and into hers. She has been waiting for my kisses! Missing them, even. “I have never courted anyone before. I am clearly not very good at it.”

She hiccupped again as she put up a hand to cradle Ash’s cheek. “I am sorry to be so cross, Elijah. I hate hiccups. I hate crying, and it always give me the hiccups.” She proved it with another hiccup.

“Have a sip of brandy, beloved,” he suggested, and he picked up one of the glasses and held it to her lips. “It might help. And if it doesn’t, perhaps a kiss will cure them.”

Ash was very aware that she had not returned his declaration of love. However, she wanted his kisses. He would start there and hope for the best.

Ginny took the glass from his hand and had another sip, followed by another hiccup.

“It will have to be the kiss, then,” he suggested.

 

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Men in love on WIP Wednesday

My hero wanders in the rain, thinking about his beloved.

Ash walked through the streets of London in something of a daze. Hackman followed along in the curricle, shaking his head at his employer’s unaccountable decision to walk through the drizzling rain, but making no comment.

All of his intimate encounters had been, at root, transactional, though he had been fond of each of his mistresses and, he hoped, they with him. They said so, in any case. Being with Regina was so different that he was utterly at sea.

Their first kiss had rocked his world. It had begun as a yearning caress and become a carnal meeting of lips, teeth, and tongue. He had kissed before, and with women who were far more experienced in receiving and giving pleasure. This was Ginny and that made all the difference.

He had, somehow, managed to keep that encounter to a meeting of mouths. Her innocence helped. She followed his lead, but she initiated nothing. It was, as he’d thought at the time, as if she had never been kissed as a lover kissed.

Unlikely as it seemed, he was even more certain now that his first impression was right. She was a quick learner, though. As soon as their lips met tonight, his self-control almost escaped its leash. He managed to retain enough consciousness to keep his caresses within bounds; to slowly introduce her to the feel of his hand on her breasts, to kisses that crept every closer before he had one of her lovely nipples in his mouth.

Her fragrance, her soft skin, her moans of pleasure, the arch of her back as she lifted towards him, all tempted him to take it further, but he managed to resist. When she gave herself to him, and he was almost sure that she would, it would be a free choice, not one coerced through seduction.

A choice of forever, for he could bear no less. To bed her without promises was to risk destruction. Already, it was too late for him to walk away without a broken heart, but he still did not know if she wanted him for a lover or for a husband.

You may tell William you are courting me, she had said. But did she mean to accept him when he asked her to marry him? If she allowed him the honour of full intimacy and then refused his proposal, he did not know if he could survive it.

Holding to his honour by a thread, he had reversed his progress, gentling his caresses, kissing back up to her lips, invading her mouth one more time with the rhythm of coitus, and then retreating to closed mouth kisses and a final hug.

Hackman drew up beside him. “Sir, you are walking the wrong way.”

Ash realised that the drizzle had turned to a serious downpour. Hackman must have decided he had had enough, and he was right about Ash’s direction, too. He was further away from Artie’s townhouse than he had been when he started.

“Let me drive,” he said, and leapt up into the driver’s seat of the curricle, taking the reins from the servant.

The wise thing would have been to take the fastest route home, but he could not resist driving back past Ginny’s townhouse.

Hackman cast him a worried look when he made the turn. Ash couldn’t possibly subject the poor man a prolonged loiter outside the building while he mooned beneath his love’s lit window. But he wanted to.

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Danger on WIP Wednesday

Elegant young gentleman dandy dressed in Regency fashion holding a hat and walking cane on the footsteps to a impressive mansion, 3d render.

In this excerpt, my hero sees a silver lining in the fact he has just been shot at.

They said their goodbyes and made their way out of the club.

Ash was still thinking about his courtship of Regina. The difficulties depressed his optimism. Regina had accepted several of his invitations, yes. But she had other suitors. More handsome, wealthier, better connected. Why should she choose an orphan of no particular family who had to work for his living?

She found him attractive; he couldn’t doubt the purely feminine interest with which she regarded him. But she didn’t flirt. She did not employ any of the many ways a woman indicated that a man’s attentions would be welcomed.

He descended the steps to the street lost in thought. Artie’s body crashed against his and they tumbled to the footpath. Even as he fell, his mind replayed the sharp bark of a rifle, heard through the din of the busy street. As Artie rolled off him and he clambered to his feet, he was already scanning the rooftops on the other side of the road.

Artie had hurried back up the steps, and was exploring the fresh hole in one of the stone pillars that held up the portico. “The bullet came from above and to the right,” he reported, before coming back down, scanning the ground. “And dropped here.” He stooped, and came up again with a lump of misshapen lead.

“Good reactions,” Ash told him.

Artie shrugged. “I saw a glint off the barrel. On the way down, I thought—it couldn’t be a rifle. Not in London!”

Ash was still scanning the rooftops. “I cannot see any movement.” He grinned at his friend. “I’m glad you didn’t stop for second thoughts. Was that for you or for me?”

Artie shrugged. “Or a case of mistaken identity. I can’t think of anyone who is that annoyed at me.”

Ash thought about his own possible enemies. “I can’t see Daffy Deffew being good enough with a rifle to make that shot.”

Artie examined him, head tipped to one side. “Because he thinks Mrs Paddimore favour you?” he asked.

It was a cheering thought. If Daffy was desperate enough to attempt murder, perhaps Ash really did have a chance with Regina.

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Journeys on WIP Wednesday

Barge haulers on the Volga River

I seem to get a lot of travel into my books, one way and another. My hero in the book I’m writing at the moment has been overseas since his twenty-first birthday. He is now a week shy of his thirty-seventh. My excerpt is part of his journey home (They departed from Ceylon — today’s Sri Lanka — by ship to what we today call Pakistan, then went up through Kashmire to Afghanistan and from there to Kazakhstan. I had to work out the timings, allowing for the monsoons and the northern winter. I think I’ve got it. If you have a journey in a book of yours, please share in the comments.

Nowhere smelled like England. It was raining, but Ash rode anyway, the better to enjoy the sights, smells, and sounds of his homeland. His childhood memories were created in the tame and gentle lands of South East England, the lands their little line of carriages and horsemen were currently traversing on their way from Dover to London.

Artie had put his riding horse on a lead rope when the rain first began, retiring to the family carriage where Rithya, Caroline, and little Gareth travelled in as much comfort as Artie could procure at short notice.

Caroline had been born in March of 1817. Artie had taken a house in a small village in Kazakhstan when Rithya adamantly refused to travel any further while she was, as she complained, larger than an elephant and far less useful. Besotted with his baby daughter, Artie had quelled his restlessness until Rithya pronounced herself well enough to travel. They set off again, with a wet nurse, he is a train of pack animals and a small army of local guards.

After that, Artie travelled as if possessed. No more stopping for weeks or even months at a time, to see the sights and get to know the locals. “I want to leave St Petersburg before the Baltic ices over,” he explained.

In Turkmenistan, they heard about an Englishman who ran shipping on the Caspian Sea, paradoxically known as the King of the Mountains. The man they found in a small port on the eastern shores proved to be the son of the rumoured king, though from his looks, his mother had been a local. He was able to supply space for their party on a ship sailing for the mouth of the Volga River, and also advice on dealing with Russian officials as they travelled up through the waterways of that enormous empire.

The river travel took longer than expected, and they spent Christmas at the Winter Palace of the Tsar in St Petersburg.

Tsar Alexander was delighted with his visitors, whom he proclaimed he knew well, for he had read all of their books. Artie, in particular, was a favourite, his birth making him, in the Tsar’s eyes,’his British cousin’.

The nearby port was frozen over. Indeed, the ice blocked much of the sea for hundreds of miles. The Tsar assured them they could stay as long as they wished, but Artie insisted on taking an overland route, by troika, to Klaipeda, which was ice free. Somehow, he managed to charm the vehicles and their teams, an escort, and a ship out of the Tsar.

Perhaps it was because Rithya was with child again, and the childless Tsar and Tsarina were enchanted with Caroline, and anxious to do all they could to make sure Artie was back in England “for the birth of your heir, my cousin.”

So, at last, in the middle of February, after being storm-diverted to Calais where Rithya gave birth to Gareth, they arrived in Dover.

Travelling by gentle stages, they spent two nights on the road and were now approaching London. Their sixteen-year journey was all but over.