Spotlight on Ravishing Camille

Pierce Hanniford returns to England after tripling his fortune in China. He’s come for business. Not pleasure. And definitely not for love.

Camille Bereston decided years ago that Pierce was not for her. He’s her step-brother, famous, restless, a savvy Shanghai taipan and a menace…to her heart.

She has ambitions to marry. Funny that none of her candidates seems good enough.

Yet Camille excites him as no woman ever has and he must have her, no matter the cost.

But should she take an older, experienced rogue as her lover…and should she claim him forever as her only love?

If you love swoon-worthy historical romance, starring endearing heroes, sassy heroines and a family of irresistible charmers, this book is for you!  Buy RAVISHING CAMILLE to begin your journey!

Amazon  – Amazon Affiliate  – KOBO – B&N  – iTunes

 

RAVISHING CAMILLE is the fifth book in THOSE NOTORIOUS AMERICANS series but can also be read as a standalone novel.

Book 1: Wild Lily (Lily and Julian)

Book 2: Daring Widow (Marianne and Remy)

Book 3: Sweet Siren (Liv and Killian)

Book 4: Scandalous Heiress (Ada and Victor)

Book 5: Ravishing Camille (Camille and Pierce)

Book 6: If You Were the Only Girl in the World (Katrina and Nate)

Book 7: Let Me Call You Sweetheart (Giselle and Dylan)

Tea on the Ice

UPDATE: The prizes for the blog hop have been awarded, but please read on for flash fiction and historical tidbits. Prizewinners names at the bottom of the post. Comments always welcome.

***

It was going to work!

Maddie Forrest had called in so many favours and promised more, that if she’d been wrong, she’d be ruined in all the ways a disgraced former lady’s maid could be.

“The ladies will want somewhere they can sit down and warm their hands around a proper cup of tea,” she’d told her brother Will.  It was the first Frost Fair in a generation, and Maddie was sure they’d all come.

Will had scoffed. “Them proper ladies won’t even come down ’ere. Think they want to rub shoulders with the likes of us? Leave it to me, Maddie. This is our chance to make some real money.”

Maddie refused to listen. Will’s ideas about getting his hands on some cash were shady at best and mostly downright criminal. If she’s was going to get herself and little Nan out of London before Will found himself imprisoned or worse, she needed money, and the Frost Fair was her chance. Maddie knew what ladies liked. She’d been a favourite until she fell for the false promises of a black-hearted gentleman.

That, she thought, as she smiled a welcome at yet another group of fashionably dressed ladies as they entered her booth, was her biggest remaining risk, now that the Duchess of Haverford had made all her dreams come true by bringing some huge ton event onto the ice. She was counting on no one knowing her from her former life and spreading around the gossip that the hostess of this discreet and convenient booth was a fallen woman, dismissed without reference when found to be with child.

The chance was low. No one looked at servants. As she served tea and plates of tiny tarts and cakes, the ladies in their fine gowns and warm coats huddled around the braziers that she had begged from a friend in the Night Watch and ignored her, except to speak orders to the air with every confidence that their desires would be met.

A gentleman entered, escorting two ladies. Maddie took their cloaks and showed them to a table. The tent had come from the pawn shop, and she shuddered to think of the payment the pawnbroker would have demanded had she not made its hire fee in the first day on the ice. Yes, and enough to pay for the tables and chairs, too.

“I’ll think of something a fine woman like you can do for me,” he’d told her, his leer leaving no doubt about his meaning.

She didn’t need to worry about the pawnbroker now. She already had his fee wrapped in a package and hidden under her bed. And she’d arranged for her landlady to give it to the man the day after Maddie and Nan got on the stage and left town.

“What is your pleasure?” she asked the ladies who had just taken their seats. She rattled of the types of tea she had available; the foods that local bakers were supplying for her to sell on their behalf, with a small commission sticking to her pocket with every sale.

She was also being paid for supplying the booth two doors up, where the Ladies Society was giving pamphlets about the plight of those returned, and the families of the dead and injured. Yes, and the fortune teller’s booth, and the book tent. She was even making a few extra coins selling tea out the back of the tent made from the great folks’ leavings, with each steep fetching a progressively lower price. Even the chestnut seller could afford to bring her own mug to Maddie’s friend who was serving out the back, for a weak brew that cost her a farthing.

Maddie’s grin at her own success won an answering smile from the gent. He was a handsome fellow for an old man. “Can you also take tea – strong, black and sweet – to my two men outside the tent? They’re the ones in the red coats and large hats.” He handed over a half crown, and for that she would have served half a regiment. Maddie offered him change and her heart sang when he refused.

She poured the ordered tea into mugs for the lesser folk, and carried them outside. Her eyes widened. The men were barbarians of some kind, in red coats like banyans, almost knee length and richly embroidered, and bushy hats made out of sheep’s wool.

“Your master asked me to bring you this,” she told them. They thanked her like civilised beings, but her heart still thumped in her chest as she retreated inside, stopping in the entrance to allow a veiled lady to go first.

Before she could show the lady to a table, the gentleman with the barbarian servants stood and pulled out a chair for her.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” the lady said. His Grace? The gentleman was a duke? He must be the Duke of Winshire, then. Maddie should have realised. The papers had been full of him for nearly a year, ever since he arrived back in England with an army of barbarians, including his own foreign born children. And there were some of the barbarians right outside her tent!

She crossed to the table to ask for the lady’s order, hoping she would lift the veil. Surely she knew that voice? She was to be disappointed. But as she turned away to make the ordered Oolong, the Duke of Winshire leaned forward and used a finger to lift the veil aside. “How is it?” he asked.

Maddie had a bare moment to catch sight of the lady’s face. The Duchess of Haverford herself sat in Maddie’s tent with the Duke of Winshire, one side her face a massive bruise discernible even through powder intended to conceal.

There must be a story there. Perhaps Maddie could tell the Teatime Tattler, which had a booth several Frost Fair streets over? But no. She’d done all sorts of things to win the funds she needed to give her and Nan a fresh start, but she’d never hurt another person. Whatever the duchess was up to meeting her husband’s greatest enemy, it was nothing to do with Maddie or the Teatime Tattler.

Besides, she owed the Duchess of Haverford for the success of her booth, and for the idea that had just entered her head. She’d taken home one of the pamphlets from the Ladies Society last night, and read it, too. All about the plight of those hurt by the wars over in France, where that fiend Napoleon was trying to scoop up all the countries over there before coming for England. Injured soldiers had a hard time, and so did their families. But widows and orphans were even worse off.

Maddie could be a widow. Why not? Start again where nobody knew her. Perhaps get work in a shop, or even – if the Frost Fair lasted long enough and the crowds remained as large – rent a shop: one that dressed ladies. Who better? Maddie almost sang as she tidied up tables and served more customers.

The Duke of Winshire came to talk to her after the veiled lady left. “I think you recognised the lady who joined me at my table,” he said.

“Discreet and comfortable, it says on the sign, Your Grace,” she told him. “I saw nothing and I know nothing. You can count on me, Sir.”

He examined her face, and must have been satisfied, for he smiled again. “Be sure that you speak of this to no one,” he advised, and she nodded.

He pressed something into her hand then turned away and unhurriedly joined his companions, who were waiting by the door.

Maddie watched him go before looking down. She knew it was a coin by the shape and size of it, but a spade guinea! She could get 27 shilling for that, easy. Why, even as a maid, she’d not made that much in a month! She hadn’t had any idea that keeping secrets could be so lucrative!

For the rest of the day, Maddie hummed as she worked. If just a few more people came to the tea booth seeking a place to hide their secrets, she and Nan would be in clover.

Comment to win

Tea was not the only beverage on sale. No doubt coffee and hot chocolate had their place, too, and all kinds of hot and cold alcoholic beverages. What would you want to drink and eat if you were attending a frost fair. Comment on this post, each of the other four, and the page on the Belles’ website to go into the draw for the main prize in the blog hop, a $50 US Amazon card.

All comments on this post will go in a draw for an e-copy of one the four earlier Bluestocking Belles’ collections, plus a copy of my Paradise Regained, the prequel to The Children of the Mountain King.

Next up: Anna’s Hot Roast Chestnuts!

Could ladies get a discreet cup of tea on the ice?

I don’t have any evidence that the 1814 Frost Fair included a tent where ladies of refinement could escape from the crush of the common people to purchase a good cup of tea, but why not? The ice offered entertainment for all classes and of all kinds, and not everyone enjoys mulled wine and copious quantities of ale.

My tea lady’s experience with the ton was not uncommon. A maid seduced or raped by a so-called gentleman was assumed to be of loose morals and carried all the consequences, while the gentleman was forgiven, because everyone knew that the lower classes were asking for it, and men couldn’t be blamed for taking what was offered.

The secret meeting touches on the matters in my series, Children of the Mountain King, but the main action here and in the rest of the blog hop is Fire & Frost. Don’t miss our five tales of love in a time of ice.

Fire & Frost

In a winter so cold the Thames freezes over, five couples venture onto the ice in pursuit of love to warm their hearts.

Love unexpected, rekindled, or brand new—even one that’s a whack on the side of the head—heats up the frigid winter. After weeks of fog and cold, all five stories converge on the ice at the 1814 Frost Fair when the ladies’ campaign to help the wounded and unemployed veterans of the Napoleonic wars culminates in a charity auction that shocks the high sticklers of the ton.

In their 2020 collection, join the Bluestocking Belles and their heroes and heroines as The Ladies’ Society For The Care of the Widows and Orphans of Fallen Heroes and the Children of Wounded Veterans pursues justice, charity, and soul-searing romance.

Celebrate Valentine’s Day 2020 with five interconnected Regency romances.

Melting Matilda by Jude Knight – Fire smolders under the frost between them.

My One True Love by Rue Allyn – She vanished into the fog. Will he find his one true love or remain lost, cold and alone forever?

Lord Ethan’s Courage by Caroline Warfield – War may freeze a man’s heart; it takes a woman to melt it.

A Second Chance at Love by Sherry Ewing – Can the bittersweet frost of lost love be rekindled into a burning flame?

The Umbrella Chronicles: Chester and Artemis’s Story by Amy Quinton – Beastly duke seeks confident woman who doesn’t faint at the sight of his scars. Prefers not to leave the house to find her.

Congratulations to Cheri, winner of the overall prize for the blog hop, and to Kimberly, who has won two ebooks: her choice of one of the Bluestocking Belles’ earlier collections (Holly and Hopeful Hearts, Never Too Late, Follow Your Star Home, or Valentines From Bath), plus a copy of my Paradise Regained.

Spotlight on Fire & Frost: Visit the Frost Faire

Starting tomorrow, the Bluestocking Belles are taking you on a tour of the 1814 Frost Faire. Start on this blog for a piece of short fiction, prizes, and more. Then follow the links to each of the booths in turn.

Or go to the Bluestocking Belles’ website for blog hop central, or to the blog Facebook page for more about the fair and links.

Fire & Frost: it’s almost here

Hot mulled wine and a book on the wooden table. Fireplace with warm fire on the background.

In a winter so cold the Thames freezes over, five couples find a love to warm their hearts. Love unexpected, rekindled, or brand new—even one that’s a whack on the side of the head—heats up the frigid winter. After weeks of fog and cold, all five stories converge on the ice at the 1814 Frost Fair when the ladies’ campaign to help the wounded and unemployed veterans of the Napoleonic wars culminates in a charity auction that shocks the high sticklers of the ton.

Preorder now. Released next Tuesday.

Charity events in Georgian England or the poor shall be with us always

Our view of Georgian life is often coloured by fictional accounts of high society, where ladies spent vast amounts on bonnets and gentlemen gambled away entire estates on an evening’s card game. Which is a fair reflection of a small part of society, come to that. But one in ten families lived below the ‘breadline’, and at times as many as two in five. Many people were precariously balanced on a knife edge where illness, accidents or old age could tumble them into starvation.

The Poor Law and parish-based support

The Poor Law was meant to make sure such unfortunates had the help they needed. Wealthy households paid a levy to the parish, and local overseers apportioned financial hand-outs, clothing and fuel, and bread to those who could prove they belonged to the parish and therefore had a right to its support.

Where the parish authorities were genuinely charitable, poor relief might tide a family through a bad patch so they could get back on their feet. But the idea that poverty was a character fault is not a 21st Century invention. Strident voices wanted the poor to suffer for their charity handout.

Workhouse to discourage the poor from seeking help

IN 1722, the first legislation passed allowing parishes to provide poor relief in specially built workhouses. By the end of the century, more than 100,000 people lived under their stringent and often dire regime.

The sexes were segregated, and the able-bodied set to work, with strict rules and routines. Some workhouses were pleasant enough. Others were no better than prisons, and many of the poor preferred to starve rather than be put in the workhouse.

They were overcrowded, and the people in them often overworked and underfed. Epidemics tore through them, and the deathrate for people of every age, and particularly for newborns, was brutal. Nearly 2,400 children were received into London workhouses in 1750. Fewer than 170 of those children were still alive in 1755.

Private charities

The parish levy wasn’t the only funding for the poor, though. Many landowners (and particularly their wives) kept to the age-old tradition of providing food and other items to those who lived on or near their estates, and some continued this one-on-one help in town. They also joined groups to provide help for those who needed it.

Private charities collected money for initiatives such as the Foundling Hospital in London, which cared for children whose mothers could not support them, the Marine Society, which trained poor boys for a life at sea, the Magdalen Hospital for Penitent Prostitues, various hospitals to provide free medical care, and educational initiatives. I particularly like the name of the Female Friendly Society for the Relief of Poor, Infirm, Aged Widows and Single Women of Good Character Who Have Seen Better Days. The days of 140 character tweets were well in the future.

Benefits with friends

To raise money, these charitable groups used the time-honoured idea of offering tickets to an entertainment: balls, musical concerts, art exhibitions. Some charged a weekly subscription to support their work. Some solicited donations through pamphlets and direct approaches to possible donors. (Some people have suggested balls were a Victorian contrivance, but British newspapers contain advertisements for charity balls and assemblies, or reports on them, going back to the middle of the previous century.)

Groups would also get together to raise money for a friend in need; perhaps someone who had been injured or widowed. In the British Newspapers Online archive, I found a number of advertisements for events ‘for the benefit of Mr. Xxx’, which is, of course, where we get our term Benefit, to mean a charity event.

Women and charity

While men ran many of the great philanthropic institutions, charity was “the proper public expression of a gentlewoman’s religious energy”. [Vickery, 254] Many women joined benevolent societies (where members agreed to provide support for any of their number who fell on hard times) and a huge number of women founded or joined charitable groups that supported what they themselves would have called ‘good works’.

References

Porter, Roy: English Society in the 18th Century. Penguin, 1982

Uglow, Jenny: In These Times, Faber & Faber 2014

Vickers, Amanda: The Gentleman’s Daughter, Yale, 1998

White, Matthew: Poverty in Britain. https://www.bl.uk/georgian-britain/articles/poverty-in-georgian-britain

Fire & Frost

Fire & Frost is coming out Tuesday of next week, and since the five tales of find love in the depths of winter revolve around a charity event, I thought it was a good time to look at Georgian charities.

In a winter so cold the Thames freezes over, five couples venture onto the ice in pursuit of love to warm their hearts.

Love unexpected, rekindled, or brand new—even one that’s a whack on the side of the head—heats up the frigid winter. After weeks of fog and cold, all five stories converge on the ice at the 1814 Frost Fair when the ladies’ campaign to help the wounded and unemployed veterans of the Napoleonic wars culminates in a charity auction that shocks the high sticklers of the ton.

In their 2020 collection, join the Bluestocking Belles and their heroes and heroines as The Ladies’ Society For The Care of the Widows and Orphans of Fallen Heroes and the Children of Wounded Veterans pursues justice, charity, and soul-searing romance.

Celebrate Valentine’s Day 2020 with five interconnected Regency romances.

Melting Matilda by Jude Knight – Fire smolders under the frost between them.My One True Love by Rue Allyn – She vanished into the fog. Will he find his one true love or remain lost, cold and alone forever?

Lord Ethan’s Courage by Caroline Warfield – War may freeze a man’s heart; it takes a woman to melt it.

A Second Chance at Love by Sherry Ewing – Can the bittersweet frost of lost love be rekindled into a burning flame?

The Umbrella Chronicles: Chester and Artemis’s Story by Amy Quinton – Beastly duke seeks confident woman who doesn’t faint at the sight of his scars. Prefers not to leave the house to find her.

(This post was originally written when we were promoting Holly and Hopeful Hearts, a collection about an earlier Charity event organised by the Duchess of Haverford and the ladies of London Society. It was published by the wonderful Madame Gilflurt on her Madame Gilflurt’s Guide to Life.)

 

Spotlight on Fire & Frost: My One True Love

The second story in the Bluestocking Belles collection, Fire & Frost, is Rue Allyn’s charming My One True Love.

Major Arthur Trevor PenRhyddyrch, Earl of Trehallow, returned to Wales from war and found his best friend gone. No one would speak her name let alone tell him where she might be. Then he found her in the frosty London fog of January 1814 only to lose her in the next moment.

When Miss Mary Percival Cummins saw Trevor in the fog, she ran. She knew he would hate her once he heard what others said, and the memory of their friendship was too dear for her to survive knowing he despised her.

But fate and the Duchess of Haverford had different plans. Her Grace knew, if they did not, that these two friends deserved the happiness of finding their one true love.

An excerpt

Trevor blinked. Percy had used his given name. Without any hesitation or prompting. Nor was she subdued and reluctant as she had been when the evening started. What had changed? He doubted anything in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice had inspired his love to drop her unnecessary shame. He did agree, however, that Kean’s performance was inspiring. Perhaps she was simply transported out of the personal darkness that suppressed her naturally buoyant and intrepid spirit.
Regardless of the cause, he was pleased and happy to see again the inner fire that had always shown bright and strong in his best friend. Pray heaven they encounter no one rude enough to cause his love to sink back into unwarranted guilt. He helped her rise and escorted her from the box. Jessica had been correct. It seemed the entire audience had come for refreshments and to discuss the performance thus far. Everywhere he turned he heard Kean, Kean, Kean as well as stellar, immortal, truly gifted, and many other accolades. No one spoke Percy’s name. No one noticed her enough to turn aside and give the cut direct.
Her Grace had been right to insist that Percy attend tonight’s performance.

Meet the heroine.

She did not want him knowing where she lived. She shook her head and dropped her gaze to her fingers clenched in her lap.. She dared not look at him. One glance at the concern in his deep brown eyes, might have her betraying all good sense and throwing herself into his arms to weep out her troubles. He would feel honor bound to solve all her problems. She could not allow that.
“For the coachman,” he continued.
“Haverford House,” she blurted. She did not have to go inside, and if Trevor insisted on seeing her as far as the foyer, she would let him. The footmen were all familiar with her comings and goings. No one would question her if she left through the kitchen the minute Trevor left through the front door.
But Robert Burns had been right in his poetic address To a Mouse,. “The best laid schemes o’ mice and men, gang aft agley.” Her plans went awry the moment she crossed the threshold. There, in the midst of the foyer, stood Jessica and the duchess herself.
“Trehallow, my lad,” the duchess said. Jessica followed, crossing to where Trevor and Percy stood just inside the now closed front door. “What a pleasant surprise, and you’ve brought our Miss Cummins back home with you. We had begun to worry about you, dear.” The duchess—who did not prevaricate–lied through her teeth. “Go on up and change. We shall wait dinner until you come down.”
Jess took Percy by the arm and compelled her to walk to the stairs. There she spoke a few quiet words to a nearby footman. Percy was being whisked away up the stairs before she could blink. What was Her Grace thinking?
“You will join us for dinner, Trehallow. I insist,” Her Grace decreed.

And her determined hero.

He and Percy walked in silence nearly half the length of the promenade, the only sounds coming from the crunch of straw on the frozen ground beneath their feet and the low murmur of the other couple’s voices.
He wanted to ask her what happened. Why she had become this silent almost shy person, when that was so alien to the lively, curious, intrepid Percy he remembered. But he could not find the words.
“How have you been, Percy?” was all he could manage.
“Well enough with the duchess’s patronage.”
Was she completely dependent on the duchess? That would not sit well with the Percy he had known. “I was sorry to hear of your parents’ passings. That must have been a very difficult time for you.”
She shrugged. “I prefer not to speak of it.”
So she would not talk about her family. “How did you come to know the Duchess of Haverford?”
“Jessica and I were at school together. She insisted I come to her and the Duchess after… after my father died. Mother was too ill to travel, so I came by myself. Her Grace has been all that is kind and helpful. Mother remained at Cummins house under the care of my cousin Donald. I hoped she was well cared for, since I could not be there to see to her comfort myself.”
Which implied that, without the Haverford’s help, Percy might not have been able to provide for her mother at all.
“I am very sorry I was not there to help, Percy. But surely your cousin gave you and your mother a home?”
Percy looked at him, her expression hard, her lips pressed together. “As I said earlier, it is not a time I care to discuss.”