gossip

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Tea with Mrs Moriarty

This was not the first time that Eleanor, the Duchess of Winshire, had sat down to afternoon tea with Mrs Moriarty. The young woman was the daughter of an excellent family, but had been ruined—by the rules of Society, at least—several times before she was out of her teens. 

She had hidden in the slums to escape from the murderers of her parents. That was the first count against her. Eleanor had heard the cats among her peers saying, “Of course one cannot blame the child, but she survived on the streets for two years. Heaven knows what she did to feed herself. Any proper young lady would have been dead in a week.” 

Eleanor, of course, admired Mrs Moriarty for her courage and her resilience.

The second mark on her copybook was her uncle, who had taken her from the slums and, instead of retrieving her reputation and seeing her reestablished in Society, had taken her to Spain to follow the army. Rumour had it she had been a spy and worse. Those who raked for scandal never worried about whether rumour was correct or an outright lie.

Then, when she turned up in London again this summer, she was somehow involved in a vast criminal enterprise. It did not matter to the gossips that she and her husband had been instrumental in bringing down said criminals. Ladies, they said, did not involve themselves with such things.

The final count to her demerit was that her husband was a commoner, a former street boy and current Supervisor with the Thames River Police. A wife took the status of her husband, and so Mrs Moriarty could safely be ignored.

Not by Eleanor, she could not. Eleanor found her to be an estimable young woman.

“Let me pour you a cup of tea, my dear,” she said to her guest, “and tell me more about your place for an agency of hired guards. Moriarty Protection, I think you said.”

Eleanor’s guest is the heroine of One Hour in Freedom, published yesterday.

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Tea with a black widow

The widow was not one of Her Grace’s usual circle. She was too young to be one of the grand ladies with whom the duchess had ruled Society for more than thirty years, and too old to be one of their daughters.

That was not the real reason Eleanor barely knew her, of course, as Eleanor admitted to herself. The real reason was that Eleanor liked cats only when they had whiskers and four paws. Lady Ashurst was a cat of the human kind; one for whom the less influential members of Society were mice to hunt and torment.

If an innocent action could be given a vicious interpretation, Lady Ashurst would find it and the sycophants who clustered around her would spread it. And woe betide the person, lady or gentleman, who made a misstep in negotiating the silly rules that governed the lives of the ton. It would be magnified a thousand fold if Eleanor and her own allies were not in time to mitigate the damage.

She sat in Eleanor’s formal drawing room, a striking beauty still, though she was in her mid-thirties. She should look colourless in her light blue walking dress and white spencer, with white-blonde hair drawn into fashionable ringlets that did not dare to do anything so indecorous as bounce, delicately darkened brows arching over ice-blue eyes. Instead, in the sumptuous splendour of the room, she drew the eye, like a diamond centre-piece of a barbaric collar of gold and gems.

“How kind of you to invite me, Your Grace,” she purred. “I have long wished to be better acquainted. I admire you so much, and feel for you in your current circumstances. My husband, too…”  She trailed off.

Eleanor smiled, a baring of teeth containing little amusement. If this upstart thought the Duchess of Haverford was going to be manipulated to play her game of insinuation and scandal, she could think again.

“You were invited for one reason only, Lady Ashurst. I understand you are taking some interest in Lady Ruth Winderfield, the daughter of the Duke of Winshire.”

Lady Ashurst dropped her lashes to veil her eyes. “You take an interest in the matter, of course. The feud between Winshire and Haverford is well known to me, Your Grace.”

Eleanor allowed none of her disgust to show. “Your interest, of course, is your brother-in-law, whose name you have chosen to couple with that of Lady Ruth.”

The woman looked up, a flash of spite in her eyes. “They connected their own names, Your Grace, when she stayed with him, unchaperoned.”

Eleanor could argue that Ruth had her companion with her, as well as a bevy of armed retainers, a maid, and six children; that she was taking refuge during a typhus epidemic; that she was providing medical care for several of her party. But Lady Ashurst was not interested in facts, but in fixing her claws into the weak. This time, she had chosen the wrong targets.

Eleanor showed her own claws. “I would take it amiss, Lady Ashurst, if these rumours continue to circulate. Very amiss.”

An expression at last. Alarm, quickly concealed. Lady Ashurst’s tinkling laugh was unamused. “You jest, duchess. Haverford hates the chit’s father.”

Eleanor raised a brow. “I have not invited you to address me as an intimate, young woman. Nor will I.”

Colour flooded Lady Ashurst’s face. “Your Grace. My apologies, Your Grace.”

“You have miscalculated, Lady Ashurst. His Grace of Haverford cannot abide scandal-mongering women. In addition, I am dearest friends with Lady Ruth’s aunt. I must thank you, however, for drawing my attention to the Earl of Ashurst. I had not noticed his absence from society since his brother’s death. I intend to amend that oversight. Your brother-in-law shall be presented to the Regent under my sponsorship and that of His Grace, the Duke of Haverford. I suggest you make yourself least in sight for the remainder of the little season. A sojourn in the country might be good for your health, Lady Ashurst.”

Lady Ashurst sat, as pale as her spencer, her mouth open.

Her Grace stood and pulled the bell chain. “My footman shall show you out,” she said.

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Scandal on WIP Wednesday

After: William Hogarth

Scandal, or the threat of it, is a useful tool in historical romance—and in many other types of fiction. Indeed, much of history revolves around what happens when people try to avoid scandal, or when a scandal breaks.

Today, I’m looking for an excerpt to do with scandal: past, present, possible, imagined, or actual.

Mine is from A Midwinter’s Tale, my box set story for the Speakeasy Scribes. It’s the scandal that wasn’t, because they managed to keep their secret.

Tee would have loved to have sisters, or at least known the ones her mother told Uncle Will about. Two older sisters, and a brother who was her twin, and who escaped with her mother. If the escape was real, and not just a kind story Uncle Will made up to comfort a grieving toddler.

After all, it could not be true. Her mother could not have walked out of the twentieth century into a tavern in nineteenth century Boston and then skipped two hundred years to frozen Jogenheim. That was Uncle Will’s story—his pregnant great grandmother had made a double time jump, first to the past and then to her future, where she gave birth to twins. Tee and her brother.

When the PED tried to scoop her up to add to the breeding pool, Tee’s mother and brother stepped through the tavern door into history, leaving Tee to be raised by Will, who was her great nephew and also sixty years older than her.

Tee snorted. More likely, her mother escaped the breeding pool long enough to have Tee, was then locked up, and would arrive once more on their doorstep when her breeding days were over. Breeders who coupled with unlicensed males or hid their babies lost their freedom of movement. Everyone knew that.

If they caught Tee, they would lock her up, too.

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Scandal and gossip on WIP Wednesday

VFS109732 Ladies Gossiping at the Opera (oil on canvas) by Barnard, Frederick (1846-1896) (attr. to) oil on canvas 39.3x37.4 Private Collection English, out of copyright

Ladies Gossiping at the Opera (oil on canvas) by Barnard, Frederick (1846-1896) 

One useful trope in the historic romance writer’s arsenal is scandal. In the highly structured societies many of us write about, social censure was a powerful sanction. It could ruin lives—not just the lives of the women gossiped about, and occasionally even the men, but also those of their families.

Have you used scandal, or the threat of scandal, as a plot point? Share a bit with us, if you would, in the comments.

Here’s mine, from A Raging Madness.

When Alex finished, Lord Henry turned to Ella. “You have shown exemplary courage, Lady Melville. Thank you for what you did for Alex. This family owes you more that we can ever repay. What are your plans? You may call on our help for anything you need. ”

Ella blushed. “Alex helped me first, my lord. He saved my life, I believe, and certainly my sanity. But I would be deeply grateful for help. I must work for my living, and I thought perhaps Susan might advise me on how to find an employer? I thought I could nurse, perhaps, or be a companion to someone elderly, as I have been these five years.”

“Oh, but…” Susan began, then fell quiet, her eyes sliding to Alex.

Lord Henry frowned. “There may be a more immediate problem, Ella. May I call you ‘Ella’, as my children do? You saved my son’s life and so I quite feel you are part of the family, my dear.”

Ella nodded her agreement, lost for words. The man was the son of an earl, and a brigadier general, and he wanted to include her in his family?

“I have met your brother-in-law, I am sorry to say. He is here in London, and he called on me to demand that I tell him the whereabouts of my son.”

“Edwin is here?” Ella said at the same time as Alex said, his mouth curving in a predatory grin, “I would be delighted to meet with Braxton, the hell-spawned bastard.”

At Lord Henry’s raised eyebrow, he muttered an apology, which Susan ignored, saying, “Braxton? You are Braxton’s mad sister!” She patted Ella’s hand again. “Not that you are, of course, I do not mean that. I mean Braxton and his wife have been spouting that story all over town. That their sister is not in her right mind, and that she has been abducted by a…” She trailed off. “Oh dear.”

“Yes,” Lord Henry murmured. “That is the problem.”