Marquess of Glenaire

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.)

 

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Spotlight on Fire & Frost: Lord Ethan’s Courage

I love all five Fire & Frost stories, but this is my favourite.

When a lovely—but foolish— young woman marches into an insalubrious alley full of homeless former soldiers, Ethan Alcott feels something he thought dead stir to life: his sense of honor and will to live. Her innocent efforts to ease the suffering of men might have touched his heart if she hadn’t put herself in danger to do it. Someone needs to take her in hand.

Lady Flora Landrum chafes under her brother’s restrictions, but she’s willing to compromise if they can join forces to join in the Duchess of Haverford’s charity efforts. When she discovers that the mysterious one-armed ruffian she encountered in a back alley is Lord Ethan Alcott, son of the Marquess of Welbrook, her astonishment gives way to determination to make the man see reason.

Courage takes many forms. As Ethan comes to admire Flora’s, perhaps he can recover his own.

And here’s an excerpt:

Flo heaved a sigh of exasperation and closed the distance between them, grabbing his shoulders, and meeting his lips with her impatient ones. After a heartbeat he returned the kiss with an achingly tender one, using his damaged arm to pull her close while he feathered his graceful fingers across her cheek.
“Much better,” she sighed against his neck, “But know this. I can wait out my mourning and your illness, but do not ask me to be patient.” She spat each of the last words out one by one. “I am not a patient woman when I know what I want, Ethan Alcott, and I want you.”
He kissed her again, this time deeply, passionately, possessively. When she moaned and pulled him closer, he pulled back, tipping his forehead onto hers. “Your brother believes you deserve a Season. I agree. If you still want this in a year…”
“God save me from men and their honor,” she muttered into his cravat. “I’m not promising an entire year. My time of mourning ends September third. I expect to see you at Chadbourn Park that very day.” She grabbed his lapels and gave him a shake.
“I will court you properly,” he swore.
She rolled her eyes. “If you insist, you may make it a courtship, but Ethan, don’t be too proper.” Then she kissed him again, and he forgot to reply.

Meet Flo:

“War is an ugly thing. It demands inhuman amounts of courage, and can be soul destroying.”
“You mean they may have turned coward? They bring shame home with them?” Flo asked, trying to think it through.
“Sometimes, yes. But war can strip off the veneer of civilization. Men are driven to savagery of which they didn’t know themselves capable.”
“But not all of them surely, and the war is necessary, is it not?” Flo asked. “The Corsican is a beast, and if they don’t defend us what will happen?”
“Necessary, perhaps, but the longer it goes on the more it eats at them. They see and do things they can’t talk about at home—both on the battlefield and off.”
Flo mulled that thought over for a while. Her companion’s sympathetic voice interrupted her reverie. “We’re not meant to know, and they’re not to be condemned by those of us who weren’t there.”
“No, I suspect not. Who knows what we would do in that situation? The women of Spain have suffered greatly,” Flo murmured. The papers spoke of hunger and disruption, but she could guess what undefended women on their own might face.
Lady Georgiana nodded gravely. “We can only care for them, while they heal.”
“Shame would be a terrible burden, would it not?” Flo remarked, not requiring an answer. The image of Ethan Alcott’s deeply sorrowful eyes came to her.
What had those eyes witnessed? Things he dreads his family knowing, I’ll wager.
Another thought came to her. Her sister never spoke to Flo about her marriage. Flo assumed it to be fear; now she wondered if it was shame, an even more debilitating emotion. Shame festers when hidden, she thought, and it brought Ethan Alcott to mind again.
How will we help him heal? she wondered. It didn’t occur to her to question the determination that she and Will between them would try to do just that.

And Ethan:

The cold had stiffened Ethan’s bones and numbed his injured stump until he thought he likely could not rise even if he wanted to—even if he had somewhere to go. He knew he should move lest the cold take his worthless life, but the ice around his heart seemed to have frozen all motivation as well.
Odd, he thought idly, that the cold of Mayfair could kill a man as thoroughly as the icy streets of the east end. His father’s garden smelled better, however, even with the flowers dead and the hedges withered and brown. His feet had found the garden with no conscious decision on his part after an hour or more of aimless wandering in the dark streets of London on the coldest night in Ethan’s memory. Now he hunkered between the cold stone of the garden shed and the unforgiving wall, unable to move.
The early morning sun rose weak and grey, but enough to pierce the fog and illuminate the place as if through a veil, and memory seized him. From his haven between the two walls he could see the edge of a stone bench, one he and Edmund used as a pirate ship or galloping steed as the mood seized them in boyhood. One of the balconies two stories up would open to his brother’s room, the other to what once was his. Memory left him with a hollow longing.
He had left Chadbourn’s rooms in a panic, thinking to get as far away from the overbearing Landrums as possible. They pushed him, brother and sister, to open his soul to his family, something he could never do. It would hurt them too badly. Yet, here he was. Perhaps the warmth and obvious affection of the Landrum family made him sentimental. Perhaps he’d allowed Lady Flora’s earnest plea—and her gentle gaze—to penetrate the protective shell he inhabited.
He tossed about for somewhere to go—anywhere but here—but found none. He knew he ought to return to the Albany, but he found it harder and harder to think clearly. Before he could make the effort to rise, the back door of the elegant townhouse flew open and a flash of blue pushed past two men and down the steps.
His heart stuttered at the sight of Lady Flora Landrum turning her head from side to side, searching the garden until she jarred her coiffure loose and one chestnut lock tumbled over her ear. A spark of warmth curled itself around his heart. The foolish chit. She’ll catch her death without a cloak.

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Cover reveal for Dangerous Weakness, by Caroline Warfield

CarolineToday, I welcome Caroline Warfield to the blog. Caroline is a fellow Bluestocking Belle, and author of Dangerous Works and Dangerous Secrets, both of which I love. And today, she is sharing with us the cover of her next book in the series. Caroline, the stage is yours.

I am delighted to reveal the cover of Dangerous Weakness from Soul Mate Publishing, which will be available for preorder in September. I hoped also to tell you more about the hero, Richard Hayden, the Marquess of Glenaire and heir to the Duke of Sudbury, but characters can be elusive. They often have depths they show only reluctantly, even to their authors. Richard is particularly private about his life. I had to enlist the help of the interview fairies.

We managed to corner him in a reflective mood one afternoon in Saint James Park. When we took a place next to him on the bench and assured him nothing he said would be published until the distant future, he opened up, at least a bit.

  1. What are you most proud of about your life?

Glenaire2“Pride?” he sputters. “I come from a family that has raised it to an art form. My father wraps himself in it like a coronation robe and my mother? My mother floats into any room she enters on a river of pride. No one in the kingdom, she believes, has more consequence than a Hayden, except perhaps the royal dukes, and she isn’t sure about them. Is that what you wanted to know?”

His tone is bitter, as if that kind of pride blights his life. When we suggest that is not precisely what we asked, he looks weary and appears to give the question more thought.

“A job well done gives me satisfaction,” he muses. “You might call that pride. I always put England first. I oversaw intelligence gathering during the Peninsular Campaign. I’ve managed the czar and his entourage, kept the Ottomans from provoking revolution, and helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris. I know my duty and I do it, even at personal cost.” A faraway look comes over him. “Even at cost,” he repeats.

He brightens somewhat. “I always do my best for my friends. I’m proud of that. I gathered information that brought Will, the Earl of Chadbourn, and the lady now his wife together. I managed to smooth my sister’s path to marriage with Andrew, though I may have erred earlier in their relationship. I am supporting Jamie, Baron Ross, who has inherited a tainted title and bankrupt estate, although Jamie has made himself scarce lately. The foolish man needs someone to keep him out of trouble. Is that what you had in mind?”
We nod and move on.

  1. What are you most ashamed of in your life?

“Sometimes duty to friends suffers when duty to country demands it. I sent my best friend, Andrew, the brother of my heart, on a dreadful mission knowing he might fall into French hands. He found the vital intelligence but was captured and tortured. By the time we got him out he bore horrific scars, some visible on his person, some deeper.”

We suggest that incident sounded like the cost of duty. Is there nothing else? He looks ashamed for a moment.

“I’ve always treated women with care—with discretion at least. I have never been tempted beyond control until lately. I ruined an innocent. I’m ashamed of that. When I attempted to make it right, the woman threw my proposal in my face. It leaves a scar on my honor.”

Assured this interview will not see the light of day until long into the future he added, “It leaves a scar on my heart as well. I don’t understand it.”

In response to a raised eyebrow he went on reluctantly, “I may have been a touch managing about the matter. I offered to make her a marchioness. Does she need romance too?”

  1. What impression do you make on people when they first meet you?

“They call me “the Marble Marquess,” in drawing rooms and gentlemen’s clubs. I must strike people as a cold fish. I can’t think why.”

  1. Do you think you have turned out the way your parents expected?

“I’ve given my parents no reason to criticize. I do my duty by the estate, meeting monthly with His Grace and his man of business to stay abreast of affairs. I create no scandal. I never challenge either of them overtly. When I disagree, I do it discretely and they pretend not to know.”

We suggest that is an odd answer and ask for an example.

My sister, Georgiana, defied them openly and created what they consider a scandal when she published Poetry by the Female Authors of Ancient Greece, and allowed her authorship to be made public. She compounded that by marrying beneath her in their opinion. She ceased to exist as far as Her Grace is concerned. They don’t acknowledge her.”

“I offered to support her, but she refused my help. She married my friend Andrew Mallet and the two of them do very well. I see them often. My parents pretend not to know.”

  1. What is the worst thing that has happened in your life? What did you learn from it?

“I might have said there was no such thing a year ago. Perhaps I would have believed it. Every privilege and deference has been given to me since birth. My family name smoothed the way for me in school, society, and even government. (Although I pride myself in having risen on my own merits.) In an odd way the lack of catastrophe is itself the worst thing. Rank can be a gilded cage. While my friends fought for king and country, I had to play my part behind a desk.”

“Worse, they all married for love, something I was raised to call maudlin. Seeing them now I’m not so certain. Women see me as a title to be coveted, wealth to be acquired, an ornament to be displayed. I can’t help what I am, but I can wish to be desired for myself rather than my prospects. Only one woman I ever met saw beyond those things, and she won’t have me. Lily Thorton’s rejection may be the worst thing. I’m still trying to learn what to do about it. Why can’t women be as easily managed as the affairs of state?”

  1. How do you feel about your life right now? What, if anything, would you like to change?

In recent months I almost allowed myself to be drawn into my parents’ machinations regarding marriage. My mother wants a protégée and my father wants more land, more money, and more prestige—as if he didn’t already have more than he needs. They pressured me about it over dinner last night, each in their own way.”

“It came to me then: I don’t want a future duchess. I want a wife. I want family. I want what my friends have found. I have to try with Lily one more time. If she won’t have me, I have to find another woman who will see me for what I am. I refuse to live my parents’ life.”

 

Alas poor Richard was unaware at the time of this interview that his efforts to protect her had failed and Lily had already disappeared.  If he wants to try again, he will have to pursue her.

To find out what happens, you will have to wait for Dangerous Weakness.

For Georgiana and Andrew’s story, read Dangerous Works.

For Baron Ross’s story, read Dangerous Secrets.

The Earl of Chadbourn’s story will be in “A Dangerous Nativity,” in Mistletoe, Marriage, and Mayhem available for preorder in October.

And here it is, folks: the cover!

Dangerous Weakness

If women were as easily managed as the affairs of state—or the recalcitrant Ottoman Empire—Richard Hayden, Marquess of Glenaire, would be a happier man. As it was the creatures—one woman in particular—made hash of his well-laid plans and bedeviled him on all sides.

Lily Thornton came home from Saint Petersburg in pursuit of marriage. She wants a husband and a partner, not an overbearing, managing man. She may be “the least likely candidate to be Marchioness of Glenaire,” but her problems are her own to fix, even if those problems include both a Russian villain and an interfering Ottoman official.

Given enough facts, Richard can fix anything. But protecting that impossible woman is proving almost as hard as protecting his heart, especially when Lily’s problems bring her dangerously close to an Ottoman revolution. As Lily’s personal problems entangle with Richard’s professional ones, and she pits her will against his, he chases her across the pirate-infested Mediterranean. Will she discover surrender isn’t defeat? It might even have its own sweet reward.

Meet Caroline Warfield

Caroline Warfield has at various times been an army brat, a librarian, a poet, a raiser of children, a nun, a bird watcher, an Internet and Web services manager, a conference speaker, an indexer, a tech writer, a genealogist, and, of course, a romantic. She has sailed through the English channel while it was still mined from WWII, stood on the walls of Troy, searched Scotland for the location of an entirely fictional castle (and found it), climbed the steps to the Parthenon, floated down the Thames from the Tower to Greenwich, shopped in the Ginza, lost herself in the Louvre, gone on a night safari at the Singapore zoo, walked in the Black Forest, and explored the underground cistern of Istanbul. By far the biggest adventure has been life-long marriage to a prince among men.

She sits in front of a keyboard at a desk surrounded by windows, looks out at the trees and imagines. Her greatest joy is when one of those imaginings comes to life on the page and in the imagination of her readers.

Caroline’s social media—use as it suits your purpose

Visit Caroline’s Website and Blog                http://www.carolinewarfield.com/

Meet Caroline on Facebook                          https://www.facebook.com/carolinewarfield7

Follow Caroline on Twitter                            @CaroWarfield

Email Caroline directly                                    warfieldcaro@gmail.com

Subscribe to Caroline’s newsletter               http://www.carolinewarfield.com/newsletter/

Dangerous Weakness Pinterest Board   http://bit.ly/1M1Fgls

Play in the  Bluestocking Bookshop        http://on.fb.me/1I7MRe4

 

She can also be found on

LibraryThing                    http://www.librarything.com/profile/CaroWarfield

Amazon Author               http://www.amazon.com/Caroline-Warfield/e/B00N9PZZZS/

Good Reads                      http://bit.ly/1C5blTm

Bluestocking Belles      http://bluestockingbelles.com/

 

Caroline’s Other Books (on Amazon)

Dangerous Works    http://amzn.to/1DJj0Hi

Dangerous Secrets   http://tinyurl.com/ph56vnb

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Dangerous Weakness meets Encouraging Prudence, second encounter Part 1 of 2

Last week Caroline Warfield and I posted a two-part story in which characters from their different books met in the virtual world. Today, exclusively in cyberspace, we tell the story of their second encounter in 1818. The first half is below, and the second half on Caroline’s blog.

Today’s story involves David Wakefield and The Marquess of Glenaire.

David Wakefield is the baseborn son of the Duke of Haverford. He earns his living as an enquiry agent and has acquired twenty years experience by the second encounter. (Encouraging Prudence, work in progress to be published in September 2015)

Richard Hayden, The Marquis of Glenaire, is heir to the Duke of Sudbury. He is also Castlereagh’s protégé, spymaster, diplomat, and fixer (He appears in Dangerous Secrets and will have his own story told in Dangerous Weakness, to be published next winter) He believes he can fix anything, given enough information, but is currently stumped.

Part 1

Chelsea 1818

west-view-of-chelsea-bridge 1790brit museumThe Marquess of Glenaire rarely came to Chelsea.  Duties occasionally brought him to look after the pensioners, the veterans in the Royal Hospital. The area itself, still semi-rural, held little interest.  As his carriage sped down the Brampton Road, however, signs of new development drew his eyes.  He thought the neighborhood, up and coming with the rising middle class, fit the man he sought, David Wakefield.

Fussier members of the haut ton looked down their overbred noses at David’s origins and profession. They called him a thief taker and said it as if the very word smelled of stable muck.  Glenaire knew him for an enquiry agent and a damned good one.

Kate_Greenaway_-_May_dayWhen his carriage came down a stretch of empty road, a rag tag group of children marched past laughing and singing accompanied by two women, nursery maids no doubt. He frowned with distaste. Glenaire preferred children to be few in number, quiet, and in the nursery.

Townhouses had sprung up at the end of the road, one of them the place he sought. He hadn’t waited for an answer to his message requesting an interview. He hoped he would catch the man home.

The door swung open and David himself greeted him.

“Glenaire! I just sat to pen a response to your message.  You didn’t need to come to the wilds of Chelsea; I would have attended you at the Foreign Office.”  He stepped back to welcome Glenaire to the home that also served as his office, taking his hat and gloves and placing them on a table in the foyer.

“The business is personal, Wakefield. I thought it best if I came to you.  I hope the timing isn’t inconvenient.

“Not at all. I’m flattered, Glenaire. As heir to one of the most powerful dukes in the country, you could employ any number of agents.” Wakefield’s face gave away nothing of the curiosity he must be feeling.

“You know there’s a limit to what I can ask the government to do,” Glenaire said. “I have to have someone I trust, not one of His Grace’s minions, do this job.”

“I will help if I can,” Wakefield said. He opened a door, and led the way into what was clearly his office.

Glenaire started to follow, but a slamming door and raucous laughter interrupted him.  The ragtag parade he saw earlier marched through the house and up the stairs. Several of the children stared openly (and in Glenaire’s opinion rudely) at the marquess. Two women brought up the rear.  One was clearly a nursemaid. The other—

712px-English_Townhouse_(3610701791)“Glenaire, you may remember my wife, Prudence Wakefield. Prue, this is—”

“The Marquess of Glenaire,” she finished with laughing eyes. “All of London knows of the marquess.” She didn’t call him “the marble marquess,” but Glenaire thought he could see it in her eyes.  “Let me get the children settled on their lessons and I’ll join you,” she went on.  She gave Glenaire a proper curtsey and climbed the stairs.

Glenaire sat across from Wakefield moments later and sipped a remarkably fine whiskey.  He needed the fortification.   All this exuberant family life unnerved him.  He planned to marry soon, but when he did, his wife would be a proper lady from one of the best families; one who wouldn’t disrupt his orderly life.

Wakefield eyed him with open amusement.  “I’m not sure what I can do for you, Glenaire, beyond what I’ve already reported.   Your friend Baron Ross sold his horse and a fine silver watch in Falmouth. He took ship to Naples, as I told you when we met at the Crock and Bull Inn.”

“That intelligence gave me an excuse to use government agents in Naples. We like to keep an eye on that part of the world. If I can track down a friend at the same time, it is so much the better. I’m grateful.”

Wakefield nodded, sure there was more.

“Jamie’s not the sort to shy about asking friends for help. If he’s in trouble he need only apply to me or to the Earl of Chadbourn or to my sister and her husband. He didn’t. He ran like a scared rabbit.”

“And?

“Something here in England drove him. We know the direction he took; we don’t know why. I need you to find out.”

To find out what happens next, see PART 2

Dangerous Secrets

Rome, 1820

Jamie Heyworth fled to Rome.  He can’t let Nora Haley know the secrets he has hidden from everyone, even his closest friends. Nora fears deception will destroy everything she desires and she certainly can’t trust any man who drinks. A widow, she had enough of both in her marriage. Both Jamie and Nora, however, will dare anything for the black haired, blue eyed little imp that keeps them together, even enter a sham marriage to protect her. Will love—and the truth—bind them both together?

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