lost heir

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Spotlight on The Secret Word

What does the tale of “Rumplestiltskin” look like set during the Regency, and written without magic?

My answer is The Secret Word, which – once I started writing it – took on a life of its own. This book is published on September 6th.

The Secret Word

(Book 10 in A Twist Upon a Regency Tale)

When Christopher Satterthwaite rescues Clementine Wright from would-be kidnappers, he is offered an opportunity he can’t refuse. Clemmie’s father, a wealthy coal magnate, has been looking for a husband for his only child. Someone with aristocratic bloodlines and no family—someone who can give him the blue-blooded heir he craves, without the interference of noble relatives.

Chris figures he and Clemmie can work together to keep Wright from controlling their every move. As their partnership develops, they fall in love. Wright doesn’t stand a chance against them. Or does he?

And what about the other men who are showing an interest in the child who is soon on the way? Chris’s reprobate grandfather is hanging around like a bad smell, and clearly has a scheme in mind. Chris’s more respectable relatives have not disowned him after all, and are eager to show the as yet unborn child with every advantage—because they regret not helping Chris as a child? Or for purposes of their own?

And then there is Ramping Billy O’Hara, the most sinister of them all, and Chris’s patron.

Some are villains. Some are on the side of the couple and their child. Only time will tell which is which.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FM8R25VP

 

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Spotlight on The Knight Falls First

The Knight Falls First is volume 7 in the Ladies Least Likely, a series of romances set in Georgian Britain featuring ambitious, determined women and the heroes who win their hearts. Knight is the sequel to the first book in the series, Viscount Overboard, and continues where that book ends.

The Knight Falls First

Anne Sutton has the beauty and breeding to make a gentleman’s wife, but not the dowry. When her parents offer her to the vile Calvin Vaughn, Anne does something a gentleman’s daughter would never do: she decides to ruin herself. And the best means at hand is Calvin’s prodigal older brother, Hew, lately returned from war.

Hewitt Vaughn is either the hero of Acre or under a cloud of disgrace—he’s yet to find out which. He’s home to recover from his wounds and take charge of the family estates; stealing his brother’s fiancée is decidedly not a way to redeem himself. But when the lovely, desperate Anne entreats Hew’s help, how can he, as a man of honor, deny her?

When Anne’s plan spectacularly backfires, the only solution is a forced marriage—to each other. But as she makes a home in Newport, Anne wonders if Hewitt Vaughn is the smartest mistake she ever made. And Anne might be the future he never dreamed he could have, but to win her, Hew has to persuade her he would have chosen her anyway—and he’ll have to defeat the dangerous enemy who wants to take everything from them, including one another.

Excerpt from The Knight Falls First:

The newcomer drew in a breath as the surge of voices rose to an excited babble. His gaze went to the hall leading to the refectory. “It’s time for the reckoning,” he said.

This ought to prove interesting. Anne wanted to see the impression this stranger made. More than that, she wanted to watch him a bit longer. He grew more prepossessing the more one looked at him, more discoveries to acknowledge and appreciate. There was something not quite right in the way he moved, though she couldn’t define what it was, and at any rate, as she turned toward the refectory, he was behind her. Hair prickled all over her scalp.

Why should she be so very conscious of his eyes on her, perceiving the cut of her gown, the drape of her shawl over her arms? She put a deliberate sway in her hips, a delicate, ladylike glide she’d been taught in endless grueling lessons in the Vine Court drawing room. Let him look. She wanted him looking.

The noise had resulted from the long, heavy refectory tables, there since the reign of Henry II, being moved aside to make room for dancing. Everyone in the room was on their feet, circulating excitedly, while musicians set up in one corner. Someone brought in Gwen’s traveling harp—Anne remembered her having it at Vine Court. She felt an imposter, an imposer on these revelries, watching from the outside but not part of the merriment.

And beside her this stranger, tall, lean, and alert, was an outsider, too.

“Oh, someone dropped a pin.” Anne spotted the small stick of bronze on the floor, about to roll between two flagged stones, and picked it up.

“The pin!” Prunella shrieked. “Anne found the pin!”

“The pin!” The cry spread, leaping from mouth to mouth like the sweep of wildfire. “The pin has been found!”

Anne stood bewildered. Pins were dear, yes, especially a bronze pin like this, but such an uproar. It must belong to someone important. Her heart took up its rabbit beat once again. Perhaps Lydia, the dowager Dowager Viscountess. Perhaps she would notice Anne at last and make a pet of her. Take her to London. Introduce her to men who were as handsome as this stranger, but less alarming in their manner. Perhaps she could marry someone proper and he would pay to keep her parents in their home.

Dovey clapped her hands. “Bodes a wedding!” she said with a smile. “Another wedding for St. Sefin’s.”

Gwen slung her way through the crowd toward them. “You found my pin!” she exclaimed. “That’s the custom, it is. You’re next to be married, Anne. Who’s the young man to be, then?” She turned to the newcomer with a frank, curious grin that faltered once she got a look at him.

A storm of wind shook through Anne’s head. Calvin Vaughn, back inside, pushed toward them like a fat pike swimming upstream. The smirk on his face was as smug and condescending as could be. He meant for Anne to marry him, and now this blasted pin was his opportunity to claim her.

Calvin marked the man standing beside Anne, and the smile dropped off his face.

The most curious silence followed the pin clamor. It spread swift and somber, like the ripples in a pond when something precious had been dropped and lost in it. The hush reached the edges of the room, including the head table, where Lord Penrydd stood, his eyes widening.

Beside him the Earl of St. Vincent shot to his feet, disbelief overtaking his placid features.

“You,” he exclaimed.

“Me,” the stranger agreed.

Lady Vaughn gave a scream like her soul had been torn from her body. Her eyes rolled back in her head and her limbs collapsed like a marionette clipped of its strings. Mr. Evans, Dovey’s new husband, caught her ladyship with his one good arm before she hit the floor.

Anne turned to regard the stranger. He started forward in a halting fashion, his eyes on Lady Vaughn, every line in his body as tight and pained as a rigged sail fighting the wind. The fragments of suspicion rushed together with a snap, and she knew him.

Calvin’s older brother, Lady Vaughn’s revered hero, Greenfield’s prodigal son and heir. Hewitt Vaughn.

Back from the dead.

Meet Misty Urban

Misty Urban is a medieval scholar, freelance editor, and college professor who writes stories about misbehaving women who find adventure and romance. Her Ladies Least Likely series of historical romances, set in Georgian Britain and beyond, feature headstrong heroines who set out to carve themselves a place in the world and find soul-searing love along the way. Misty lived for several years inside assorted books and academic institutions, and now lives in the Midwest in a little town on a big river. She loves to hear from readers and give away free stories through her newsletter and on her website, http://www.mistyurban.com

 

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Family reunion on WIP Wednesday

I’m expecting The Secret Word back from the editor this week. Looking forward to it! Here’s an excerpt.

***

Chris waited anxiously in the private room at Miss Clemens’ Book Emporium and Tea Rooms. He was about to meet cousins from both sides of the family, and he was far from certain of the reception he was about to get.

Clem squeezed his hands and he smiled at her. He wasn’t at all certain he would be facing this if not for her. She gave him strength.

She had done so at Aunt Fern’s ball. Both his mother’s brother, the Earl of Crosby, and his father’s cousin, the Earl of Halton, were there. Later, he found that the public repudiation had been organised by Aunt Fern. But whether they meant it or not was the question.

Both reacted with the same disdain when Chris was presented to them.

Lord Halton said, “Reginald Satterthwaite’s son? I have no wish to meet anyone associated with that scoundrel.”

And Lord Crosby looked Chris up and down and declared, “No, thank you, Lady Fernvale. With all due respect, I see no reason to acknowledge this person.”

Chris wanted the floor to open up and swallow him, and then Clem had slipped her hand into his, and all was right with his world. He had not had their approbation before, and had not felt the need of it. He did not need it now.

Nonetheless, as the minutes ticked by, he acknowledged to himself his deep yearning for a family. He would have Clem, of course. Somehow. With or without Wright’s blessing. But, for as long as he could remember, he had longed for brothers and sisters or—failing them—cousins. Perhaps, if this meeting went well, his children with Clem might grow up knowing their cousins.

The first to arrive was Lord Crosby’s son, a tall man with that gaunt stretched look of a youth who was still growing—one who ate like a horse and put on no weight. “Are you the son of Reggie Satterthwaite, who ruined my father’s sister Christabel and ran off with her to Gretna Green?” he asked. “I am Michael Thurgood, Lord Crosby’s son and your mother’s nephew.”

He held out a hand to be shaken, so Chris figured his somewhat hostile first question could safely be ignored. “Clem,” he said, figuring a female—and a non-family member at that—might help to keep the conversation civil, “May I present my cousin Michael Thurgood? Thurgood, Miss Wright has done me the honor of accepting my suit. I have yet to convince her father.”

“Miss Wright.” Michael Thurgood’s nod was perfectly polite, but his attention remained on Chris.”

“Is it true, what Lady Fernvale said? That your grandfather abandoned you in the streets after your father died?” he demanded. “Father says he would have taken you in if you had come to him.”

Chris was about to protest that his nine-year old self had had no idea where the Earl of Halton lived, and no expectation of being welcomed, in any case. But they were interrupted by another arrival. A second man, this one around Chris’s age, so perhaps five or six years older than Thurgood.

Chris would have known him for a Satterthwaite even if he had not been expecting him. He look more like Reggie, Chris’s father, than Chris did, though his hair and complexion were fairer and his chin was firm and determined where Reginald Satterthwaite’s was weak. He wore the flashy uniform of a horse guard,

“If you’re Satterthwaite, so am I,” he growled. “Hello, Thurgood.”

Thurgood nodded. “Satterthwaite.” He gained a bit of respect from Chris when he then turned to Clem. “Miss Wright, may I make known to you Captain Satterthwaite of His Majesty’s 27th Regiment of Horse, and Satterthwaite, this is our cousin Christopher Satterthwaite and his betrothed, Miss Clementine Wright.”

As with Thurgood, Satterthwaite greeted Clem politely, but then turned his attention back to Chris.

“Is it true you did not go overseas with your grandfather? My father wants to know why you didn’t come to us. We would not have turned you away.”

“You did,” Chris said, dryly. “Or at least your grandfather had me and my grandfather thrown out of the house, and when my grandfather sent me on my own, the butler would not let me in.”

“You were nine or ten,” the guard’s officer said.

“I was nine.”

“You went back out into the road, and then what?”

“I ran back to where my grandfather had been, but he was gone. I called out for him. I asked other people if they had seen him. Then I ran down the street he’d left by. But I never found him.”

“I saw you,” Satterthwaite said. “I was watching from the schoolroom. You turned at the corner. Do you remember? You shook your fist at the house.”

“I did,” Chris said.  He had forgotten that detail until this moment. “I was angry with my grandfather and with yours.”

“It is you,” Satterthwaite said. “Chris, isn’t it? Chris, I’m Harry.

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The plot thickens on WIP Wednesday

In this week’s WIP  extract, I tangle several different plot threads just a little more.

Margaret sat with her friends in the shade, sipping fruit juice and watching Peter, Ash, Deerhaven and Snowy on the lake with half a dozen other men, rowing two to a boat in heat after heat. The ladies had been out on the water, but when the men challenged one another to a race, they had asked to be set ashore on the island, where refreshments were set out in the temple-like folly.

“You like him, don’t you?” Regina asked Margaret.

“Which him?” Margaret asked, though she knew perfectly well that Regina was referring to Snowy.

“I do,” Arial said. “Peter does, too. He is not what we expected when you told us about allowing him to escort you, Margaret.”

Margaret dropped the pretence to pursue this more interesting topic.

“What did you think he would be like?”

Arial thought about it. “A lot rougher. Less concerned about your safety and your reputation.”

“After all,” Cordelia pointed out, “you did meet him in a slum alley just behind the brothel where he works. It was not a recommendation.”

Regina agreed. “We were concerned, but not now that we have met him.”

“He has been raised as a gentleman,” Margaret said. “In my experience, he is more of a gentleman than many you meet in Society.”

The other ladies nodded. “Lord Snowden for one,” Regina agreed. Snowden was watching them from the far shore. His son and young Deffew, his ward, were out on the lake, racing, but Snowden did not turn his stare away from the four ladies.

“The rumours say Snowden is not the viscount, that there is a lost heir. Is it Snowy, do you think? Is that what this display of Snowy’s is about?” Ariel asked.

“He hasn’t said,” Margaret told them. “But the way these rumours have appeared just when he chooses to go into Society—it is too unlikely a coincidence. I think he must be behind them. Lord Snowden must be rattled. He sent his son to tell me that Snowy was a charlatan, a fraud, and that I must cease seeing him immediately.”

Regina’s reaction was the same as Margaret’s. “The cheek!”

“Interesting, though,” Cordelia mused. “Have you told Snowy?”

A face on the other shore caught Margaret’s eye. It could not be… At this distance, it was impossible to be sure, but somehow, she was.

“Margaret?” Arial asked.

“Hmmm?” What had they been talking about? “No, I haven’t had the opportunity, yet.”

Her friends were looking at her with concern. “You have gone pale, darling.” Arial said. “Is something the matter?”

“Nothing,” she assured them. “I thought I saw someone I knew long ago. But I am sure I was wrong. He was some distance away, and I could not see the face clearly. Just the hair colour and the uniform.”

“Not the odious officer!” Arial exclaimed.

“The odious officer?” asked Cordelia.

Arial was the only one who knew quite how odious Martin had been, but the rest was not a secret. “A man who trifled with my heart during my first Season. I was too young to realise that his compliments were lies and his promises so much empty air. I am sure it cannot be him. As far as I know, his regiment is still posted overseas.” For years she had been checking the listings in the newspapers, hoping that he never sold out.

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Spotlight on A Gentleman’s Promise

Congratulations to Penny Hampson on the publication of her debut novel. It is free until 27 August, so get in now!

It is 1810, and Richard has inherited a title, a neglected estate – and the attentions of a killer; then young Jamie Smythe and his older, independent-minded sister, Emma, turn up, claiming to be the rightful heirs. Suspicion, scandal and murder can’t be ignored, neither can this unsettling female, who is determined to sort things out on her own. Can Richard unmask the villain, hang on to his sanity, and keep headstrong Emma safe, all whilst trying to convince her that they would make an ideal couple?

Buy link with excerpt:

https://read.amazon.co.uk/kp/embed?asin=B07F6B28GT&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_0wYEBb4B1PBPW

Chapter One

There was no getting away from it; someone wanted him dead. The trigger had surely been the notice in the Gazette of his recently acquired title. But who begrudged him the title of Viscount enough to try and kill him? Richard Lacey’s mouth twisted, trying to fathom it out. Well, he was here now; come to see for himself what was so special about Easterby Hall.

He eyed the decaying façade of the house as he brought his curricle to a halt before the property’s front door. His gaze raked over pointed gables and large chimney stacks. No doubt at one time it had been an inviting house; now there was a definite air of neglect. The disappearing sun glinted off stone mullioned windows, and a lone curl of smoke ascended from one of the rear chimneys.

He dismounted to make a closer inspection; the horses snorted and pawed the ground, displaying their impatience. He turned and patted the nearside horse’s flank.

‘Steady, boys; soon have you rubbed down and watered.’

‘Shall I take them round to the stables, sir?’ his groom asked.

‘Yes, see what you can find.’

The front door at the top of the steps remained closed. Fool; obviously, he was not expected. What was he thinking? If the interior was in a similar poor state he would have to return to the inn at Minster Lovell. Not something he wanted to do; like his horses, he’d had enough of travelling for the day.

He stretched to ease his aching muscles; his hopes for a hot bath, a decent meal, and a warm bed were becoming obsessions.

Julia and David are right to tease me. I must be getting set in my ways if all I’m anticipating is a bath and an early night.

He smiled to himself and shook his head; this wouldn’t do. His boots thudded on the steps, jarring his stiffened knees. He tugged on the bell and chimes resonated through the house. Footsteps clattered over what sounded like a tiled floor; then a key grated in the lock. The door opened and a grey-haired gentleman peered out at him, a quizzical expression on his face.

‘Yes, yes, may I help you? I’m afraid the family are not at home to visitors at present.’

The man’s tone was querulous, as if he’d been disturbed from a far more pleasant activity than opening the front door to passing strangers.  Controlling his first vexed impulse – this was now his property after all – Richard replied with his own question.

‘And you are…?’

The old chap pulled himself up to his full height and announced, ‘I am Wrighton, butler to the late Lord Easterby. Who might you be, sir?’

‘Richard Lacey, Viscount Easterby. Your new employer.’

Meet Penny Hampson

I’ve been passionate about books ever since I first learnt to read. A common refrain at home was that I always had my nose in a book; things haven’t changed, even though I’m now somewhat older.
History is a passion too; it’s great that these two interests combine so well.
With degrees in history and historical research, I’ve spent my working life helping others to achieve publication; now I’ve decided it’s my turn.
My Regency stories are filled with mystery, adventure, and romance – my three favourite themes. I’ve enjoyed writing them and I hope you enjoy reading them.

Visit my website: www.pennyhampson.co.uk

Follow me on Twitter @penny_hampson