Lady Sarah Grenford

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Tea with a new granddaughter

Outside of the nursery they may be the Duchess of Winshire and the Duchess of Haverford, but leaning over the ornate and much befrilled cot, Eleanor and her daughter-in-law were merely Grandmama and Mama.

“She is so beautiful, Cherry,” Eleanor exclaimed. “Look at the little darling.” Her voice slipped into the higher register that is natural to even the most dignified of ladies when speaking to a tiny infant. “Are you smiling? Are you smiling at your Grandmama? You are, Sally. Yes, you are.”

The baby, highly amused at the faces Eleanor was pulling, chortled.

“She is so precious,” Eleanor added.

The child’s mother was wearing a frown. “Anthony says that he does not mind that she is a girl,” she said.

“No more he should,” Eleanor replied, stoutly. The next words were cooed to the baby. “She is a little blessing, and he adores her from the tip of her sweet little toes to the dear little curls on her head.”

“He does.” Cherry sounded uncertain, and Eleanor dragged her attention from the dear little angel to focus on the mother.

“Cherry, he will has five nephews to be duke after him. He married you because he loves you, knowing the pair of you may never have children, and has never regretted his choice. He did not expect a child, and is over the moon with this one. Believe me. He is my son.He adores this little miracle, and would not change anything about her.”

Once, long ago, Eleanor had tried to talk Cherry out of accepting Haverford’s offer of marriage, knowing that Cherry had been told a disease had made her unlikely to carry to term, and being convinced her son would resent a barren wife.

She had been wrong. She had castigated herself many times for putting doubts in her beloved daughter-in-law’s mind, since they surfaced to torment Cherry every time a pregnancy failed.

“Come, darling,” she suggested, “let us send for a pot of tea and sit and talk. You shall tell me what is worrying you, and I shall rattle on about how happy we all are that Sally is a beautiful, healthy, little girl.”

She picked the baby up and cradled her in her arms. “You darling, darling child. You are going to be a heartbreaker, I can tell. Your father’s eyes and the curls your father cuts off lest anyone call him pretty! You shall be wooed by every nobleman in Great Britain. Yes, and Europe, too!”

That made Cherry laugh. “Her father swears that he will turn Catholic, just so that he can lock her up in a convent when she turns fifteen.”

Eleanor dropped a kiss on the little girl’s petal soft skin. “Do not you worry, Sally. Mama and Grandmama will make Papa behave.”

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Tea with Sally

The Duchess of Winshire’s beloved James had added a conservatory onto his townhouse as a wedding present for his new wife. Even a decade later, Eleanor felt warm at the thought. No. A decade did not decrease her appreciation of her husband. Rather, it made it richer and deeper. The conservatory was just one of many ways he showed his deep love for the companion of his old age. Her lips curved in amusement. Not as old as all that! Bed sports with a generous man she adored, and who adored her in return had been a revelation to the former Duchess of Haverford. Neither her children nor his appreciated the passion between the couple, and they tried to be considerate, but really! They were married, after all.

Today, the conservatory was a play house for two of her favourite people. The little Marquess of Abersham, not quite four years old, was a godson–almost an honorary grandson, since his father had been a close friend of Eleanor’s own son for most of his life. Lady Sarah Grenford, that son’s daughter, was almost a year younger, but imperiously certain of her right to rule of the child-sized tea table where the two children entertained an assortment of dolls, stuffed toys, wooden animal and tin soldiers to afternoon tea.

Eleanor had refused a seat on the tiny chairs in favour of an adult-sized chair pulled close to one side of the table, but she accepted the tiny porcelain cup Sally handed her, filled with coloured lemonade.

“Now you must hand Grandmama the custard squares, David,” Sally commanded, and Abersham obeyed, carefully carrying the plate around the table balanced on both palms. He bowed as he offered it, and it tilted, the contents threatening to slip off before he slapped a hand over the top of them.

“I saved them, Aunt Eleanor,” he told her proudly, lifting a sticky hand to allow her to select from the offerings, the custard slightly squashed under cracked icing.

“You crushed them, silly,” his sternest auditor pronounced.

“I’m not silly,” the young lord protested. Then, clearly feeling that honour must be restored, he stalked towards Sally waving his custard-covered palm in threat.

“Abersham, your manners, please,” Eleanor reminded him. “And Sally, ladies never call other people ‘silly’. You have hurt your friend’s feelings.”

Sally’s eyes widened and she turned to Abersham, all contrition. “I did not mean to, David. Here!” She picked up a linen napkin. “Let me wipe your hand clean.”

Abersham grinned, and licked his palm. “All clean,” he said, “and it tastes good.”

Eleanor thought about reprimanding the child again, but he had nurses and parents for that and, after all, he would not still be licking his palm at dinner parties when he was twenty. Let him learn kindness now and manners later.

Both were the eldest children of dukes, which meant they were more indulged than was good for them, but they both had sweet natures, and were dearly loved. And they had one another as the best of friends. What would the future bring them, she wondered, as she used a spoon to select the undamaged edges of her custard square.

 

 

 

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Tea with Sally

Sally Grenford roamed the room, bewildered by the way it mixed familiar and unfamiliar. The note had invited her to take tea with her grandmother this Christmas afternoon, and she recognised many of the room’s appointments as treasures her grandmother kept in her private sitting room. But many were also missing; gifts she and others had given Grandmama, the experimental dagguerreotype of her and Jonny that Papa had commissioned as part of an investment in the new process, keepsakes from the merchant wanderings of the Winshires.

The proportions of the room were familiar, too, but not from the palatial townhouse where Grandmama lived with her second husband. No, Sally could swear that this was her own mother’s private suite, though from the window all she could see was fog with an occasional swirl of snow.

The portrait of Grandmama over the mantel belonged in the portrait gallery, where it had hung for as long as Sally could remember. Longer. Since Mama became Duchess of Haverford and Grandmama married her second duke, and became Duchess of Winshire.

A stir at the door had her turning, and there stood the woman in the portrait. The self-same woman. Her grandmother, but as she had been nearly thirty years before. This duchess stood to one side of the door, allowing a small troop of maids and a butler to hurry in and out setting up a side table with tea makings.

Both the duchess and Sally waited until they completed their tasks and left the room, then Sally took a tentative step forward. Familiar, but not familiar.

“Grandmama?” she asked.

The duchess hurried forward, reaching with both hands for Sally’s and in moments Sally was enveloped in Her Grace’s familiar scent, hearing the voice she had loved since before she could speak.

“Lady Sarah Grenford. You are my granddaughter, are you not? My dear, when I saw the name I hoped so much — Aldridge’s or Jonathan’s? But let me look at you. Yes, there are the Haverford eyes, and I see something of my boys about your chin. I’ll warrant you are stubborn.”

“What is happening?” Sally asked. “Where am I?”

The duchess led Sally to the sofa next to the tea table, and they sat, the duchess still holding Sally’s hand. “It is odd, is it not? I have quite recovered from being unsettled by the different people who visit me on a Monday afternoon, from many different places and times, Sarah, and I have no idea how or why. I see the names on the invitation and then they appear here in my room at Haverford House. But you have not told me whose daughter you are, dear.”

“Haverford’s,” Sally explained. “Aldridge in your time, of course.” She nodded at the portrait. “But Haverford long before I was born.”

“He finally married then. I am so glad. And so tempted to ask for more detail, but one must not, of course. Just tell me, dear, has he found love? Is he content with your mother? Oh dear. Do not answer that. What a question to ask a child!”

Sally laughed confident of the answer and delighted to reassure her grandmother, whose rattle of conversation made her more familiar by the moment. “Papa and Mama deeply love one another, and are never happier than when they are together.”

Papa had been a rake and a scoundrel when he was young, by all accounts, but Sally could not imagine him loving anyone but Mama.

The duchess gave a pleased sigh. “Then I shall be patient. It will be easier knowing that he will marry, and happily. And a beautiful daughter, too!”

“And a son.” Sally was five years older, but Jonny, the Marquis of Aldridge, was the pride of the house. Sally mostly didn’t mind.

Another pleased sigh. “Excellent. Your papa must be very proud. Now, dear, tell me what you have in your hand. Something you have brought to show me?”

On receiving the summons, Sally had picked up her favourite Christmas present; perhaps the best Christmas present she had ever received. It was not just because that the box of precisely engineered mathematical tools was exactly what she wanted, though she had not felt the lack until she unwrapped them. It was also — even mostly — that the boy who held her heart had known, acknowledged, and respected her passion for understanding the infinitely wonderful universe of numbers.

“Look, Grandmama,” she said, opening the box on her lap, eager to share. “Look what David Abersham gave me.”

Sally’s Grandmama is in 2011. Sally is fifteen, and is visiting from  1838, on the afternoon of the Christmas morning featured in God Help Ye, Merry Gentleman, the story that starts the collection of the same name, which Mariana Gabrielle and I released just before Christmas. For blurb and buy links, click on the title.

Excerpt from God Help Ye, Merry Gentleman

As she began unwrapping the first box, he murmured a bit closer to her ear, “Have you found all eight, then?”

Blushing, and with a quick glance at her parents, completely immersed in discussion with the Wellbridges, she whispered, “No, not yet. But I will.”

“I will give you the key if you promise to never ask me another question about any of it.”

“I do not need to give up my questions, for I shall find the latches without your help.”

Toad rubbed his right hand over his face and groaned. “Of course you will.” He brightened, though, as he added, “But I am afraid your questions must wait, for Etcetera and I ride out this afternoon to my cousin Smythe’s place.” Another of their set at Eton. “We will return next week for your mother’s ball, but I’d like to see my aunt and uncle and cousins before I go off to school.”

Sally sighed. “Of course, you must go, and I hope you will remember me to Lord and Lady Ostelbrooke. But we only have such a short time left before you go away to school.” She stopped herself a second too late. She mustn’t whine. She mustn’t impose herself on his time, or annoy him.

“I’ll not neglect you, Monkey. I promise. On my return, you shall have first pick of every moment of every day before I leave. And you’ll hardly know I am gone, with all the activities your mother has planned.” She hardly wished to consider what sorts of activities he, Smythe, and Etcetera had planned, once outside their parents’ purview.

“You are right, but I will miss you, Toad.”

“I will be back in no time.”

She opened the top box, a finely wrought wooden case with brass latches, that opened on three hinged tiers of mathematical instruments, a full set of more than two dozen items also wrought of brass, each piece engraved with her initials and set snugly in its own velvet-covered place.

“I found them in Germany.”  Running his finger along the side of the box in a way that made Sally shiver, Toad offered, “They are Swiss, so of course, they are as precise as can be.”

Sally couldn’t explain why she had to suddenly blink away tears. It was such a functional gift. Not something frilly or girlish or decadent, like practically every other gift she’d ever been given in fifteen years. But something that acknowledged her intellect; acknowledged and applauded the love of numbers that others, even Papa, found inexplicable and unfeminine. That Toad should give her such a gift moved her, soul-deep.

“Toad, I… thank you. I think I shall surpass Mr Galbraith’s knowledge of mathematics with these at hand.”

“Then the other box will see you the first woman admitted to Oxford.”

Something in her chest was shifting with every word he said, and she couldn’t explain it. It was seismic—and perfectly right in every respect. And completely foreign.

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Proposals on WIP Wednesday

I’m posting a proposal scene today. The lady in question is the heroine of Never Kiss a Toad, the book I am cowriting with Mari Christie, who writes historical romance as Mariana Gabrielle and who is a colleague of mine in the Bluestocking Belles. Sally is Lady Sarah Grenford, only daughter of the Duke of Haverford, who you may know as the Marquis of Aldridge. The man tendering the proposal is the novel’s villain.

Post your proposals, folks. I’d love to read them. And don’t forget to share!

c399bc77cf3488d42d075b56376e52c4“I think that funeral-faced wine merchant’s son wants to propose, Sally,” Etcetera told her. “Shall I make an excuse to leave the two of you alone?”

“Do not dare,” Sally warned. “I will make your life hell if you do.”

The genial giant pose slipped briefly, and it was the Nordic warrior who asked, “Do I need to break his neck for you, cousin?”

“Just do not leave me alone with him, Etcetera. I do not like the man, and I do not trust him.”

But in the week leaving up to Christmas, Crowhurst behaved like a gentleman, apart from frequent florid compliments and a tendency to treat any opinions she offered in conversation with patronising amusement. Though if those two behaviours were not gentlemanly, there were few true gentlemen in Society.

So when he found her alone in Command Central on the day before Christmas, she merely greeted him and asked him to put his finger on the ribbon that she was attempting to make into a bow. All her usual helpers were off about the great house on decorating tasks or out with Elf and Uncle James who were captaining the Yule log team. Yule logs, in fact, since no fewer than three would burn from this evening until Twelfth night: one in the chief parlour, one in the Great Hall, and one in the ballroom.

Even Etcetera had deserted her, since his mother and father, the Archduchess of Erzherzog and her consort, had arrived with their younger children.

“What are you making?” Crowhurst asked, though the bunches of mistletoe berries carefully bound among the silk ribbons and paper flowers should have made it obvious.

“We were short one kissing bough,” Sally told him. “I am remedying the defect. It is to go in Grandmama’s drawing room, so I want it to be particularly lovely.” She frowned at the bough, trying to visualise it in place. “I think it is nearly done.” She had chosen ribbons of a deep turquoise blue and a delicate pale green, and flowers in gilt paper and a softer cream tissue, all woven together on the white-washed bough with silver cords.

“I wish to just attach these glass baubles to catch the light.” They were the latest fashion—blown glass fashioned into little ornaments intended to be displayed on Christmas trees after the German fashion the royal family had adopted.

“Yes, very nice. But if it needs to be special, perhaps you should wait until one of your usual helpers returns, Lady Sarah. I am sure they would be better qualified to advise you than I.” Crowhurst’s little huff of laughter was self-deprecating.

“I am not expecting any of them for an age,” Sally said, most of her focus on binding the baubles so they were firmly attached and displayed to best advantage. “I will be finished in a moment, and then, if you are not otherwise occupied, Mr Crowhurst, perhaps you could give me a hand to carry it to Grandmama’s parlour while she is occupied with Aunt Margarete and Uncle Jonathan.”

“The Arch-Duchess,” Crowhurst said, as if he were checking which Aunt Margarete she meant, “and your father’s brother. They have arrived then?”

“Yes, thereby depriving me of all those not off somewhere decorating or out with Uncle James. You did not wish to go out with the duke to bring in the Yule log, Mr Crowhurst? There!” She sat back, satisfied with her work, and at the next moment startled to her feet as Crowhurst suddenly fell to one knee.

“Lady Sarah, I can remain silent no longer,” he declaimed.

“Please, Mr Crowhurst, do not continue.”

Crowhurst ignored her. “I am inflamed by your beauty, your charm, your wit, and I flatter myself that you are not indifferent to me. Lady Sarah, dare I hope you will favour me with your hand?”

The pompous ass. She had done everything she politely could to discourage the man. Impoliteness, then. “No, Mr Crowhurst, I will not.” Never mind that nonsense about being conscious of the honour and so on. It was not an honour at all to be desired for one’s prominent relatives and one’s fifty thousand pounds a year.

Crowhurst surged to his feet and wrapped both arms around her, pulling her tight against his body. “No need to be shy with me, sweet dove. I know you want me as much as I want you.” Sally, one arm trapped, tried to push him away with the other, but he was much larger and stronger and would not release her.

“Let me go this instant! What has got into you?”

“You have, tempting heart-breaker. Your teasing has driven me beyond manners. I am crazed by you, unkind Angel. You must be mine.” He had captured the hand with which she had tried to claw his eyes, forcing it behind her back until he could grasp both her wrists in one hand, pulling her tight against his body. He laughed when she struggled. “That’s right, little treasure. Wriggle against me. Did Abersham leave you the innocent you seem, I wonder? Shall we find out?”

Fear was rapidly winning over fury. She could scream, but no one would hear.