Margaret Charmain

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Tea with Margaret and Pauline

Lady Charmain looked none the worse for her awful experience, though her friend Miss Turner hovered over her as if she might collapse at any moment. Eleanor, the Duchess of Winshire, was acquainted with the two of them. Lady Charmain she knew very well. Eleanor had been friends with her mother. Miss Turner was more of an unknown. She had not impressed at first meeting several years ago, but had remained with her step-brother after her mother and sister were exiled for crimes against him and his wife. From all accounts, Miss Turner had not put a foot wrong since. Eleanor believed in second chances and would give the woman the benefit of the doubt.

She knew about the other woman in the room, too, though they had not met. Miss Trent was a personal guard, hired from Moriarty Protection to defend Lady Charmain after several attacks on her betrothed. Unusual to have a woman in that role, but how clever. Miss Trent could follow Lady Charmain into places no man could or should go.

“The men have gone downstairs to interview the scoundrel who slandered Lady Charmain,” reported Sophia, wife to Winshire’s eldest son and therefore Eleanor’s daughter-in-law. “They will join us in time to share a pot of tea, Aunt Eleanor. Jamie will have coffee, of course.”

Eleanor was not going to discuss the nasty scene in the ballroom that had led to the incarceration of the man Sophia rightly called ‘the scoundrel’. She knew just the topic to introduce to lighten the mood. “How are plans for the wedding, Margaret, my dear? Have you chosen your gown? I am so looking forward to witnessing the occasion.”

(This scene wasn’t in Snowy and the Seven Doves, out on August 10th. Instead, we follow Snowy down into the cellars. “First, they visited the Duke of Winshire, where Margaret and Pauline were scooped up by Lady Sutton and taken upstairs to visit with the duchess. Miss Trent followed behind the ladies, as silent and inconspicuous as a shadow.” After the scene in the cellars, “Snowy and the duke joined the ladies. They were discussing the wedding; apparently, the duke and duchess would be in attendance. Snowy wondered if the invitation had originated with the duchess, but since Margaret seemed happy, he said nothing. They then went for their drive in the Park. It was almost anticlimactic that nothing happened.” Not that this was the end. Indeed, 20% of the book and the worst attack of all remained to be told.)

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Different worlds meet in WIP Wednesday

My latest hero resides in a slum. Here’s the first part of the first scene of his book.

Seven Dials, London, April, 1819

“That there countess is back again,” Tommy reported. Pestiferous woman. Snowy had told her repeatedly that she risked her reputation as well as her life by venturing into the slums to visit the residents of a brothel.

Stubborn female. Had she not already found out that her high birth and fancy title would not protect her if some of the slime who polluted the streets she traversed decided to kill her fancy footmen and help themselves to a taste of noble flesh?

Snowy’s anger rose again at the thought of how they had met. He would never forget his first sight of the lovely young woman standing over her footman’s body and swinging a weighted reticule to keep six armed men at bay.

Snowy sent the boy back to his post in the entrance hall. He left his account books and locked the door of the office. He would escort her home again, once she had finished whatever errand of mercy brought her back to the House of Blossoms.

He sighed. If he had not brought her here for refuge after he rescued her, she would never have met his friends, never have begun bringing them herbal remedies from her still room. How did a countess become a gifted herbalist? No. He did not want to know. His only interest was in seeing the woman returned to her own world.

Blue, whose nickname was an ironic comment on his flaming-red hair, guarded the top of the stairs on the floor with the private apartments. He stood as Snowy approached. “Where is she?” Snowy asked.

Blue pointed along the passage to Lily’s suite, which took some of the wind out of his sails. If Lily herself had invited the aristocrat to visit, then Snowy’s objections were on shaky ground. The owner and mistress of the House of Blossoms had her reasons for everything she did, and would not have brought the countess here on a whim.

At his knock, Lily called for him to enter. “Snowy,” she said. “I am pleased you are here. You know Lady Charmain, of course.”

Snowy gave the lady his best court bow. “My lady.” Not only did Lily expect him to display the impeccable manners she had paid his tutors to beat into him, but it discomposed the Countess Charmaine, which was turnabout and fair play, for she had been discomposing him since the day he looked into her vivid blue eyes.