Marquess of Aldridge

by

Tea with an apologetic duchess

The following excerpt is from a Christmas special I wrote about the mend in the breach between Haverford and his mother. It was a made-for-newsletter-subscribers story called Christmas at Hollystone Hall (password is in two-monthly newsletter). Another version of the same scene is told from Eleanor’s perspective in Paradise Triptych.

It was the day before Christmas, and the incessant rain had let up long enough for an expedition to bring in the greenery for decorating, and the windfallen log that had been marked as a Yule log for the massive fireplace in the great hall.

Four wagons set out for the woods, each driven by one of the party’s gentlemen, with the littlest children riding in the tray watched by various of the older sisters and mothers, and everyone else tramping along beside.

Haverford drove one of those conveyances known as a break, inviting anyone who did not want to walk or sit on the floor of the wagons to take their place in one of the long benches behind him, but found himself travelling alone.  No matter. The wagons would be full on the return trip, and the break would come in handy for the little ones.

Groundsmen, grooms, and footmen trailed the party, ready to lend a hand with the heavier hauling, but—for the most part—the family planned to collect their own raw materials for the garlands and other decorations they planned.

The woods were beyond the water gardens and up a small rise. Each wagon took a different turn from the main track, and Haverford carried on to the central clearing, where servants had started a fire and set up blankets and cushions for those who needed a rest from their excursions. Maids were already unpacking refreshments, and footmen hurried to the back of the break to offload the steaming kettles of hot chocolate, coffee and two different kinds of punch, with and without alcohol.

Haverford left them setting the kettles near the fire to stay warm and followed the sound of voices to join in the fun. Before he reached the main crowd, however, he encountered his mother, lifting Nate’s sister, little Lavinia, up into a tree to reach for a pine cone, while one of Lechton’s daughters, Millicent, held onto Mama’s gown and watched.

“Do you need help, Lavie?” Haverford asked.

Mama started. “Haverford! I didn’t see you there. The little girls wanted to help, and I remembered that last year some of the trees along here had pine cones under them, but the only ones I can see are still on the branches.”

“There are some further along, the way I came,” Haverford told her. He reached up and took Lavie’s hand, guiding her to push the cone up so that it detached from the branch. It evaded her snatch at it and plummeted into the undergrowth, and Millicent let go of Mama and dived in after it, emerging triumphant with it in her hand.

Mama lowered Lavie to the ground, saying, “The two of you make a good team.” She darted a glance at Haverford. “Perhaps I should take them back to the others.”

She wouldn’t meet his eyes. Cherry was right. He had to fix this, or at least try.

“They know the little girls are safe with you,” he said. “Bring them this way, Mama, and they will be able to fill their basket with cones to paint.”

Lavie sealed Mama’s fate by slipping her hand into Haverford’s. He would have taken Millicent’s hand, too, except she was shy of him. Besides, that would leave Mama carrying the basket, which was hardly gentlemanly. He picked it up and led the way to a small cluster of fir trees of different kinds, with cones scattered on the nearly clear ground beneath.

Mama would have helped the little girls who were scurrying to and fro, picking up all the cones they could find, but Haverford said, “Mama. A word, if I may.”

She stopped, and the anxiety in her eyes had him hiding a wince as he added, “Would you meet with me in private when we get back to the house? I think we need to talk.”

She inclined her head, her social mask firmly in place and her eyes opaque. He had learned the skill from her—to hide his feelings behind a bland and unreadable exterior, but neither of them treated family to that distancing. Given the situation between them, he had no right to feel bereaved at her shutting him out.

Cherry would remind him that his armour was most impenetrable when he felt most threatened. Doubtless, Mama was the same. “Nothing too terrible, Mama. Even if I had stopped loving you, which I haven’t, I wouldn’t want to upset Cherry.”

She gave him the ghost of a smile. “The pair of you are good together,” she acknowledged, then turned her attention to Lavie, who had dropped her side of the basket so that all the cones the little girls had picked spilled onto the ground.

Haverford crouched to help pick them up, while Mama soothed the wailing child.

The afternoon had been set aside to create and put up the decorations. The foliage and other items they had collected was spread out on tables in the ballroom, where it would be formed into garlands, wreaths, and kissing balls decorated with ribbons and paper chains and flowers that the ladies had unearthed from previous Christmases or made from their own supplies.

Mama was seated with a flock of girls, watching them dip pine cones into paint and set them to dry. Haverford beckoned to her, and she murmured a word or two to Jessica, who was helping her and the girls.

He took her to the library, to a chair near the desk he’d taken over for the work that followed him everywhere. He was neglecting it today, but it wasn’t going to go away. He’d get back to it after Christmas.

As he settled in his own chair, and before he could pour her tea from the waiting tray and start his prepared speech, Mama spoke. “Haverford, I have apologised for interfering between you and Cherry, but I would like to do so again. I have known all along that I was wrong to go privately to Cherry as I did. You are adults, and I should have said what I thought to both of you and trusted you to make your own decision. I am truly sorry for the distress I caused you.”

Haverford opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Mama put up a hand to stop him. “I have a second apology to make, Haverford. Watching you and Cherry together in the past week shows me that I was wrong again—wrong to believe that your love for Cherry was less deep than hers for you. Wrong to think that you would fall out of love once you had achieved your prize. All I ever wanted was for both of you to be happy. You are perfect for one another, and I shudder to think how close I came to preventing that happiness.”

Mama had rendered him speechless, taking all the best lines from what he had been about to say to her. All he had left to say was, “Thank you, Mama.”

“I will never interfere again,” Mama promised, then, with a slight frown, “or, at least, I will try my very best.”

Haverford smiled at the thought of his managing mother keeping her fingers out of any situation she thought she could improve. “I shall not ask such a sacrifice, Mama. Both Cherry and her mother have pointed out what a marvellous gift you have for interfering, as you call it. All I ask is that you consult us first on any plans you have that involve us and don’t proceed without our agreement.”

Mama had tears in her eyes. “I can promise that,” she agreed.

Cherry had been right to push him to reconcile. All his irritation had melted away. “Tea, Mama?” he asked.

They enjoyed a peaceful cup of tea, and the kind of conversation he had so enjoyed in the past, ranging far and wide on topics as diverse as family, the corn tax, and the Luddites.

“Come on, Mama,” he said, when her cup was empty, “We have a house to decorate.”

He offered her his hand to help her rise, and his elbow to escort her back to the ballroom, just in time to see a footman moving a ladder away from the arched doorway. A kissing ball hung in the middle of the arch. Cherry stood looking up at it, and she glanced their way and smiled to see them together.

Haverford put his arm around his mother, reached up for a mistletoe berry, and pressed a gentle kiss to her cheek. “I love you, Mama,” he told her. “Merry Christmas.”

She patted the side of his face, the tears welling again. “It will be,” she agreed. “I love you, Haver… I wonder, would it be a great impertinence of me to call you Anthony, as Cherry does?”

“I would like that, very much,” Haverford assured her, blinking back a little moisture of his own. The candles must be smoking.

She patted his cheek again, then reached out to Cherry, who was beaming at them. “Here, Anthony. You would be better off kissing your wife than your old mother.”

Haverford thought both was better still, but he was certainly glad to follow up his peace-making kiss to his mother with one of gratitude and jubilation shared with Cherry. He drew her into his arms, and sank into one of their soul-moving kisses, while around them the family stopped what they were doing to applaud, laugh, cheer or jest, according to their natures.

It was, indeed, going to be a very Merry Christmas.

by

A Baron for Becky – this is how it starts

BfBcoverAldridge never did find out how he came to be naked, alone, and sleeping in the small summerhouse in the garden of a country cottage. His last memory of the night before had him twenty miles away, and — although not dressed — in a comfortable bed, and in company.

The first time he woke, he had no idea how far he’d come, but the moonlight was bright enough to show him half trellised window openings, and an archway leading down a short flight of steps into a garden. A house loomed a few hundred feet away, a dark shape against the star bright sky. But getting up seemed like too much trouble, particularly with a headache that seemed to hang inches above him, threatening to split his head if he moved. The cushioned bench on which he lay invited him to shut his eyes and go back to sleep. Time enough to find out where he was in the morning.

When he woke again he was facing away from the archway entrance, and there was someone behind him. Silence now, but in his memory the sound of light footsteps shifting the stones on the path outside, followed by twin intakes of breath as the walkers saw him.

One of them spoke; a woman’s voice, but low—almost husky. “Sarah, go back to the first rose bush and watch the house.”

“Yes, mama.” A child’s voice.

Aldridge waited until he heard her dance lightly down the steps and away along the path, then shifted his weight slightly so that his pelvis flattened, dragging the rest of his torso over till he was lying on his back.

He waited for the exclamation of shock, but none came. Carefully— he wanted to observe her before he let her know he was awake, and anyway, any sudden movement might start up the hammers above his eye sockets—he cracked open his lids enough so that he could see through his lashes.

He could see more than he expected. The woman had a shuttered lantern that she was using to examine him, starting at his feet, pausing so long when she reached his morning salute that it grew even prouder, then sweeping up his torso so quickly he barely had time to slam his lids shut before the light reached and lingered over his face.

She’d been just a vague shadow behind the light, but the smell that reached him spoke of young woman. He held himself still while she completed her examination, which she did with a snort of disgust. Not the reaction he was accustomed to.

“Now what do we do,” she muttered. “Perhaps if Sarah and I…? I’ll have to cover him. What on earth is he doing here? And like that? Not that it matters. Unless he is something to do with Perry? Or the men Perry said would come?” Her voice was rising a little and becoming more shrill as she grew agitated. “Stop it, Becky.” She took a deep calming breath. “Stay calm. You must think.”

redingote1For all her efforts, there was an edge of panic in her voice. Aldridge risked opening his eyes a mere slit, and was rewarded by a better look at the woman as she paced up and down the summerhouse in the light of the lantern she’d placed on one of the window ledges.

Spectacular. That was the only appropriate word. Hair that looked black in the poor light but was probably dark brown, porcelain skin currently flushed pink with her agitation, a heart-shaped face, cornflower blue eyes under perfectly curved brows, and a perfect cupid’s bow of a mouth, the lower lip—which she was currently chewing—larger than the upper.

The redingote she wore was fitted to a shape of amazing promise, as far as he could see as the shawl over her shoulders swung with her movements. Even more blood surged to his ever-hopeful member. “Down, boy,” he told it, silently.

“Mama?” That was the little girl, returning down the path. “Mama, I can hear horses.”

The woman froze, every line of her screaming alarm.

Aldridge could hear them now, coming closer through the rustling noises of the night; the quiet clop of walking horses, the riders exchanged a word or two, then nothing. They must have stopped on the other side of the house.

“Sarah.” The woman’s voice, pitched to carry only as far as her daughter’s ears, retreated as she crossed the summerhouse. “Sarah, we must go quickly.”

harpicture_876“But Mama! The escape baskets!” the girl protested.

“I do not dare wake the man, my love. He might stop us.”

Aldridge responded to the fear in her voice. “I won’t stop you. I’m not a danger to you.” As he spoke, he swung himself upright, wincing as the headache closed its vices around his skull. Though he screwed his eyes with the pain, he kept them open enough to watch the woman, turned to a statue by his voice, her hand on the framework of the arched entrance as if without that support she would fall.

“Mama?” The girl’s fearful voice freed the woman from her freeze, and she moved to block the child’s sight of him. “Sarah. Watch the house. Do not turn around until I say.”

Eyes wide open, he could confirm his initial assessment as she spun to face him. Spectacular. Then she shone the lantern straight on him, and he flinched from the light. “Not in my eyes, please. I have such a head.”

She made that same disgusted sound again, then stripped the shawl from her shoulders and tossed it to him, taking care to stay out of arms’ reach.

“Please cover yourself, sir.”

by

A Baron for Becky

This is an excerpt from the novel (or possibly long novella) I’m writing for release in late July. This story grew out of the adventures that the Marquess of Aldridge had at the Bluestocking Belles inn. Catherine Curzon and I wrote a long chase, a mixed courtship and negotiation, between my Aldridge and her 18th Century Mrs Angel. They could meet only in the timeless world of the inn, but they inspired this novel.

Mrs Darling is by no means Mrs Angel. She is an altogether more naive and vulnerable creature. But Aldridge continues to be Aldridge, and has no idea of the Pandora’s Box he is opening when he conceives a retirement plan for his mistress of three years.

What follows is not Aldridge’s story. But it is Becky’s, and it is Hugh’s.

This excerpt comes near the beginning of Becky’s story, when she and Aldridge are still negotiating.

BeckyAfter an anxious start to the visit, Becky decided to take it as a holiday. The Marquess of Aldridge left to ransom her and Sarah from the man Perry owed money to. At her insistence, he’d taken her few good pieces of jewellery—far fewer than she’d hoped. Next time, she would have any presents checked by a jeweller!

The press of Aldridge’s hands, and the warmth in his eyes when he made his farewells, gave her hope that he might be her next time.

Meanwhile, the Earl and Countess of Chirbury treated her like a guest, and Sarah was in heaven in the upstairs nursery, with the Countess’s daughter and sister, both of whom welcomed a new playmate. For a few days, she could pretend to a life far further up the ranks of the gentry than she would ever have achieved, even if she hadn’t fallen before her sixteenth birthday.

Aldridge returned triumphant.

“Smite agreed,” he told her, catching her alone in the rose garden where two or three late roses clung to the last remnants of their blooms. He sat down beside her on the stone seat, taking up the centre so that she had to lean against the curved arm to keep some distance between them. “You and Sarah are free.”

“How can we thank you?” she said.

“I’m sure we can think of something,” he replied, leaning into her so she could feel his strength, but not his weight, his warmth sparking a responding heat. His complacent assumption, after five days of being treated like a lady, sparked a contrary impulse to deny him, at least for the moment.

She slid sideways off the bench and stood, focusing on smoothing her skirts as she said, “Perhaps you would accept a few pounds a quarter until the debt is repaid?”

“I would accept a kiss on account,” he said.

“Certainly,” she replied. “Sarah would be delighted to give you a kiss. You are quite her hero.”

The moment she spoke she wanted to take it back. She didn’t want to lose him, after all. But no, he was grinning at her, his head cocked to one side and a light in his eyes that said she had his interest. Ahah. The man enjoyed the pursuit. Well then, Becky  would lead him on a right merry chase.

“If you will excuse me, my lord, I promised to help the countess with her knitting.”

She dropped a curtsey and made her escape before he could think of a smart response.

He was waiting for her in the hall outside the countess’s sitting room an hour later.

“I had in mind something more personal than soulless pounds,” he said, without preamble.

“Perhaps I could bake you a cake,” she suggested.

“Certainly what I have in mind involves tasting,” he answered smoothly. “Some licking, undoubtedly. Perhaps a little gentle biting.”

Goodness, it was hot for October.

“A single meal, my lord?”

“Once would not be enough, dear Mrs Darling. Do you not agree?”

If she was not very careful, she would agree to anything he said. “An arrangement, then.”

“Certainly, an arrangement.” He took her hand as he walked beside her, and placed a single chaste kiss on a fingertip before sucking the whole finger into his mouth in a far from chaste gesture.

“Do you garden, my lord?” Her voice was unsteady.

“Garden? No, I don’t garden.”

“I had a garden at Niddberrow. I thought the cottage was mine, you see. Perringworth promised me a house.”

“A woman should have her own house,” Aldridge agreed. “But a woman like you deserves a townhouse in London rather than a cottage in the country.”

“London is so large, though. If I lived in London, would I not need a carriage?”

“A phaeton perhaps, that you could drive in Hyde Park during the promenading hour,” Aldridge suggested.

“It does sound lovely,” she said, but lost what she was going to say next as he whisked her into a curtained alcove and proceeded to kiss her so thoroughly that she almost forgot her campaign plan.

He let Becky go, though, when she pulled back.

“Something on account?” she teased.

“A promise of things to come,” Aldridge said.

“Perhaps.” She peeked cautiously around the curtain and then hurried away down the silent hall.

Aldridge next approached her after dinner, sitting on the other side of the love seat she had deliberately chosen in a shadowed corner of the great parlour, out of the direct view of the earl, who was playing the pianoforte, and the countess, who was turning the pages for him.

“I love that dark blue on you, Mrs D,” he said.

She blushed. Her lovers had seldom bothered to compliment her to her face, though extravagant and excruciatingly bad poetry had been written to the Rose of Frampton by those who didn’t have her in their keeping.

“It needs something else, though,” Aldridge commented. He pulled out a tissue-wrapped package. “This is a nothing. Not the diamonds and sapphires I thought of buying. But when I saw it was just the colour of your eyes, I had to have it.”

‘This’ was a shawl in patterns of blue, so fine that it was small enough when rolled to fit into his jacket pocket, but large enough to wrap warmly around her shoulders. She jumped up to examine it in the mirror, and he followed her, standing inches away, but leaning forward to breathe on her ear as he said, “Exquisite.”

“Something on account?” she asked again.

“Not this time. A present, given freely, with no expectation of reward. Because I admire you, lovely Rose.”

She had to remind herself of every rumour she had heard about the man. And even then, if she hadn’t heard him working his charm on Smite’s men, she might have unravelled as he clearly expected. No wonder he had left such a string of broken hearts behind him.

“And in return,” she told him, “I freely give you my thanks, my lord.”

It was worth it to see the moment’s stunned amazement before the amused look reappeared. “Well played, Mrs D.,” he murmured, just before Lady Chirbury called her to the pianoforte.