What sets your hero or heroine apart from the ordinary? Share an excerpt in the comments! Here’s an excerpt from To Mend a Proper Lady, which is due to be published the month after next. My hero is admiring the skill of his beloved and her best friend.

“Join me,” Ruth suggested. “A little sword work will soon loosen your muscles.”

Val hoped he was successful in hiding the anguish twisting his gut, but he didn’t attempt to speak; just held up the arm that ended at the wrist.

“That?” Ruth waved away his maiming as if it was a trivial detail. “You can hold a sword in the other hand, can you not?”

Nettled, he followed her into the room. She had had it cleared of furniture, apart from a table against one wall. On it, a number of edged weapons lay—foils, sabres, swords both curiously curved and straight, and daggers of various lengths.

Val was torn between admiration for their quality and nausea at the thought of displaying his incompetence. “I have never fought with my left hand,” he commented.

Ruth was picking weapons up and then putting them down again. “We are not going to fight.” She handed him a large sword. “Here, this looks to be about your size. The weapons act as a weight to force your muscles to work harder. And, of course, the practice steps I use are useful in an actual fight, training the body to particular movements. Like the exercises that we teach our horses. They ensure the fitness of the horse and rider, but also can be used in battle.”

Bemused, Val took the sabre and performed a couple of practice swipes. It felt heavy and ungainly, and he missed his former skill with a deep ache.

Zyba entered the room. Dressed like her friend, she held one of the curving swords in one hand and a long dagger in the other. A slight widening of the eyes was her only reaction to Val’s presence. She inclined her head in a graceful greeting. “Princess, Lord Ashbury.”

“Val is joining us today, Zyba. Val, why not stand in front of me so you can copy what I do.”

Val was slow, that first day. The two women took him through a series of movements of body and sword that left his muscles trembling, and then suggested he rest. He watched, awed, as they moved into a sequence as fluid as a dance, one facing the other, on opposite sides of the room as they continued to honour the quarantine.

They started slow, but the graceful movements of feet and arms sped up gradually, until they were moving with blinding speed, each swing of a weapon enough to eviscerate anyone unfortunate enough to be in reach.

They took it in turns to call out, at frequent intervals, a single word he didn’t know, but whose meaning he guessed at something like ‘swap’ or ‘change’. “Caly,” the one whose turn it was would shout, tossing both sword and dagger in the air and snatching them back again, but with the opposite hands. The game seemed to be for the other dancer—for it was a dance, though without music, fluid and beautiful—to react so quickly that the two sets of weapons rose and fell in unison.

Val could not tell whether his deepest yearning was for the skill they showed, the hand whose loss had robbed him of his own skill, or Ruth, whose movements mesmerised him. Sore though he would be once his muscles caught up with the strain he’d put them under, he would be here tomorrow, too, if they allowed him. Even if his reasons for that were as confused as his desires.