Lord Cuckoo Comes Home

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Spotlight on “Lord Cuckoo Comes Home” in Desperate Daughters

Lord Cuckoo Comes Home: By Jude Knight

Dom Finchley only came to York as a favor to his half-brother, who asked him to attend a meeting there. After a devastating break with the Finchley family followed by ten years at war, he is keen to get the favor done and then leave to build the home he’s never had. A place to call his own.

Then he meets Chloe.

Chloe Tavistock is past the age for the marriage market, and unfashionable in her shape, her opinions, and her enthusiasms. She is not going to find a husband in York, whatever her fond brother might think.

And then she meets Dom.

Two people who have never fitted in just might be a perfect fit.

And 8 other great stories.

Excerpt

“Did you always want to be a soldier?” Chloe asked.

“Yes, for as long as I can remember. Gary and I had complex battles with battalions of soldiers back in nursery days. We planned to join up together and win glory for King and country.” His wistful smile faded, and his face hardened. “After Pevenwood threw me out, I thought I was going to have to take the King’s shilling.”

Chloe gasped. “He threw you out?”

Dom’s shrug belied the hurt that lingered in his hazel eyes. “Perhaps an exaggeration. It was my eighteenth birthday. He said I could continue to live in one of his houses until I reached my majority, but I could choose one he didn’t visit. He said I was no son of his, and that he’d more than fulfilled any obligation he might have had to his wife’s brat by paying for my education until I could stand on my own two feet. I asked if I might have the money to purchase a commission, and he turned me down flat. So, I walked out.”

“The old fiend!” Chloe wished he was here. She would—she would push him in the lake, that is what she would do. “What a nasty old man! Well done you for becoming such a good person despite him!”

“I am not a saint,” Dom warned. “But I will try to be a good man for you, Chloe. I can promise, if nothing else, that I want a true marriage, where both parties are faithful. Where they respect one another, and look after one another’s interests.” The wistful smile returned. “And I would like to be an involved father.”

It sounded appealing. Chloe barely remembered her own father. Her step-father Lord Seahaven was more absent than cruel. He ignored all the females in the nursery, and it was well known that his only interest in children was in siring an heir. As for Uncle Swithin, he readily explained to anyone who would listen that a family was a yoke around the neck of a godly man, and his cross in life was to be burdened with a wife and his nephew’s children.

She returned Dom’s smile. “Did you, then? Take the King’s shilling and win a commission in the field?”

“I went to all the relatives I could think of. As a last throw of the dice, I even went to the Duke of Haverford, and was being refused an audience when the Marquis of Aldridge arrived and invited me to talk to him, instead. He purchased my commission and paid for my kit. He said it was the least he could do for a brother.”

“That was good of him. And you have stayed in touch. He is the duke, now, isn’t he? His seal was on your letter.” Aunt Swithin had often read bits from the gossip columns about the duke when he was the Marquis of Aldridge. He had married two years ago and disappointed many avid readers by becoming a devoted husband.

Whatever his past, Chloe was predisposed to like him for his kindness to Dom.

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Tea with Lord Cuckoo

Eleanor, the Duchess of Winshire, had called into Haverford House to have tea with her son, the new Duke of Haverford and her daughter-in-law Charlotte–or Cherry, as the whole family had taken to calling her (at least in private).

“Anthony will be joining us shortly,” Cherry assured her, after they had greeted one another, commented on the weather, and shared the most pressing of the family news. “He had a meeting.”

Even as she spoke, the Duke entered the room, another young man trailing in his wake. Haverford greeted his wife with a kiss on the cheek and gave another to Eleanor. “You are looking well, Mama. Marriage to His Grace of Winshire clearly suits you.”

It certainly did. Eleanor could not help a smug smile.

“But allow me to present my guest,” Haverford continued. “Lord Diomedes Finchley, Your Graces. Lord Dom is heading to York later this week, and has been kind enough to offer to carry out a commission for me while he is there. Dom, these wonderful ladies are my mother, the Duchess of Winshire, and my darling wife, the Duchess of Haverford.”

Lord Dom bowed, flushing a little as he looked at Eleanor. She knew what was troubling him and hastened to put him at ease. “Dom, how pleased I am to meet you. May I call you Dom? We are, after all, in some sort related, since you are half-brother to my sons and to my wards.”

He flushed still more. “Your husband did not acknowledge the connection, Your Grace,” he pointed out.

“My deceased husband did many things he should not, and left undone many things that were his duty, Dom. We do not need to perpetuate his errors.”

“Please sit down,” Cherry suggested. “Will you have tea? I know Anthony would prefer coffee.”

The young man sat, looking very uncomfortable at first. But Eleanor and Cherry exerted themselves to make him feel welcome, and soon they were talking about the charitable foundation the duchesses supported that found work and offered medical care to returned soldiers and sailors. Dom, who had been a captain in the Hussars during the recent wars, was very interested and offered to make a donation.

“And what is at York?” Eleanor asked, after a while. “If my question is not intrusive.”

“Not at all,” Dom told her. “My mother’s brother apparently died while I was overseas with the army. The solicitor’s letter has only just reached me. I have apparently inherited his estate, which is not far from York. I’m off to see whether it is a place I can make into my home. And I have promised Haverford to look into how people are feeling about the reform movement, while I am up there.”

“The York Season will be in full swing in a month or so,” Cherry commented. “I know my brother used to attend from time to time, mostly for the races, which are in early May.”

“I do not know if I will be there that long,” Dom said. “It depends how I find the estate.”

“Keep it in mind,” Eleanor advised. “Every single young man in possession of an estate, should be on the lookout for a wife.” She smiled again, thinking of her own recent remarriage. “And love. Love, I have discovered, is the best of all reasons to wed.”

Dom Finchley, alias Lord Cuckoo, is the hero of my “Lord Cuckoo Comes Home”, a story in Desperate Daughters. On preorder now. Only 99c until publication.

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Animal companions on WIP Wednesday

This week’s excerpt from Lord Cuckoo Comes Home could also be called “courting with monkey”. It’s from my next novella for the Bluestocking Belles. If you have an animal companion in one of your stories, please add an excerpt in the comments.

Chloe took his hand and allowed him to aid her balance as she climbed up to the seat. “I hope you don’t mind, Lord Dom. I had to leave Rosario at home this morning while I was at Lady Seahaven’s writing thank-you letters, since the schoolroom party were not home to entertain her. Aunt Swithin promised to take her out and let her play in the garden, but she forgot, so the poor beast was shut in her cage from the time I left until I got home.”

Lord Dom went around to his side of the curricle, took his own seat, and held out his hand for Rosario to shake, distracting the monkey from her focus on the boy with the horses. “You are very welcome, Sister Rosario.” He grinned at Chloe. “She adds a certain air of adventure to our outings, do you not think?”

Chloe blushed at the sly reference to Rosario’s escapades. Earlier in the week, she had climbed a tree in Tower Gardens and refused to come down until Lord Dom had borrowed a ladder from the gardeners’ shed, whereupon she had climbed down the other side of the tree. If Emma and Merry had not cornered her, she would have been up another before Chloe could have reached her.

Two days ago, she had stolen an ice from a passing waiter, tasted it, then thrown it with unerring accuracy at the back of the waiter’s retreating head. Lord Dom had soothed the man’s irritation with a large gratuity.

Then there was the concert, where Rosario conceived a passion for the brooch on the hat of the dowager in the next row, and reached out to snatch it when Chloe became lost in the music. Had it not been for Lord Dom’s quick action—the monkey’s hand was within an inch of the target when he jerked her back by her leash—the ensuing apologies for Rosario’s complaints would have been for a much worse offence.

“I will keep tight hold of her today,” Chloe promised.

“Or I will,” Lord Dom agreed. His smile warmed away her embarrassment. “She does not mean to cause mischief, I know. We will endeavor to keep her out of trouble, you and I.”