Perchance to Dream

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Tea with a marchioness

Eleanor invited her visitor to sit. “Cordelia, my dear, I am so glad you could come to visit. Have you heard any news?”

“Indeed, Your Grace,” said the Marchioness of Deerhaven, “I have had a letter from Paris. They have found her!”

Eleanor felt faint with relief. Ever since Deerhaven’s little niece had been abducted, she had been worrying about the child. Yes, the woman who stole her was the child’s own natural mother, but a more self-centred female Eleanor had never met, and her second husband was no better.

“I am so glad,” she said. “Have they managed to retrieve her? When will they be home?”

The marchioness leaned forward. “Let me tell you the whole story,” she said.

Cordelia was left behind when her husband went to Paris to look for his brother and his niece. Read all about what happened in Paris in Perchance to Dream, published 7 September 2023.

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Accidents and mishaps on WIP Wednesday

Nothing like a small hiccup in a character’s travel plans to get a plot going. In this excerpt. Pauline and Vivienne are begging for refuge from the storm, but the servant does not want to let them in.

Thorne shook his head and brandished the rifle. “You cannot come in and you cannot stay here.”

Surely, he would not actually use that thing on them? “You must see that we cannot return down the path in the dark,” she told him. Where was his master? She hoped Peter’s friend would not turn Peter’s sister from his door, much as he might wish Pauline herself to perdition.

Thorne was still shaking his head. “Not my problem. We don’t have visitors.”

Technically not true, since Peter had been here several times since Captain Lord John Forsythe moved so far north, and at least once, he had brought Arial. The man’s brother, the Marquess of Deerhaven, had also visited.

Perhaps Thorne’s objection was to women visitors.

He added some weight to that theory by saying, “You can’t stay here. Unmarried young women with no chaperone? I know what you’re about.”

Pauline was perilously close to losing her temper. She could feel the scalding hot words bubbling up inside her. She breathed deep and forced them down.

Vivienne took her hand. “What are we going to do?” she whispered.

Through the wet gloves they each wore, Pauline could feel Vivienne shivering with the cold. “My sister is wet and cold, and can go no further tonight,” she said. “You will find us a place to sleep out of the rain.”

Thorne sneered. “Or what?”

Beside Pauline, Neil squared his shoulders and opened his mouth, but before he could speak, someone else did. “Or I shall have a word or two of my own to say, Nathaniel Thorne.”

Jane Forsythe scampered back into view, leading the speaker, a woman of about the same age as the man Thorne. “The idea of leaving Lord Stancroft’s sisters on the doorstep in the rain! Or any other Christian out on a night like this. Put that silly gun away and go and light a fire in the blue bedchamber. Come in, you poor dears.” She nudged her husband out of the way, and beckoned them forward.

Pauline kept a wary eye on Thorne as she followed Vivienne into the tower. Neil and Keith, close on her heels, also watched him closely, waiting for him to make a wrong move. He stood there, indecisive, as Betsy dropped the bag she had been carrying.

Mrs. Thorne hovered over Vivienne, helping her remove her coat and bonnet while lamenting their sodden condition. Thorne put the rifle back on a couple of wall hooks and walked off through an interior door, muttering, “It is not as if it was loaded.”

At a nod from Neil, Keith followed the man, and Miss Jane skipped off after them both.

Mrs. Thorne turned her attention to Pauline. “Off with those wet things, Miss Turner. I shall just set the kettle on to boil. And is this your maid?”

“Yes,” Pauline acknowledged. She introduced Betsy and Neil. “Neil’s brother Keith has gone to help your husband with opening up the room.”

Mrs. Thorne looked a bit uncomfortable. “It will just be the one for the two of you,” she said. “And your men will have to share, too. It’s not that we don’t know how to entertain guests, but we are a bit out of practice, and Thorne and I are the only live-in servants, so you see…”

Pauline spoke hastily to reassure her. “Vivienne and I are very happy to share. If you have a pallet, and the room is big enough, Betsy can stay with us as well. We are well able to help with the chores. We are so very grateful you have allowed us to stay.”

“I could not turn you out into that storm,” Mrs. Thorne said. “Even the master would not expect that,” she added, but the crease between her eyebrows hinted she was unsure of the last statement.

Another thought wiped the crease away. “He will have nothing to complain of if you just stay clear of him, which will be easy enough, for he seldom comes out of his own tower, and then only to see Miss Jane. If you keep to your rooms, all shall be well.”

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Just like clockwork

When I was a child, we used to go every December to Wellington to see the windows at Kircaldy and Stains, the big department store, where each window contained a different animated scene, which we had to follow in order, as they told a story. It was a different story each year, and to me as a child, they were beautiful, exciting, and an important part of Christmas. More recently, I took my grandchildren to see the same windows in the same shop. (My children did not grow up in Wellingon.)

The department store closed in 2016 after 152 years, but some of the automata live on at the Wellington Museum.

I’ve had simpler automata as toys. A monkey that played a drum when wound up. A ballerina that danced when a jewelery case was opened. Automata have always fascinated me.

Perhaps that’s why I have made the hero of the book I’ve just sent to beta the creator of clockwork automata. They were a sensation when they first appeared in the 17th century, and remained popular with wealthy collected and intrigued patrons throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. And, as I’ve just indicated, into the 20th, though from the Victorian age on, they tended to be powered rather than clockwork.

The history of mechanical figures goes back into legend and through various accounts of the last 2,500 years. Stories of moving statues, mechanical men, and automated birds who sang pop up in accounts from Ancient Greece and Biblical Judea, Persian and China, the Ottoman Empire, and other places. But we are concerned with Europe in the 18th and 19th century, where they were a sensation with wealthy collectors and influential patrons. Many even went on tour. The History of the Automaton Mechanical Miracles describes three by Pierre Jaquet-Drois, built between 1768 and 1774:

Each figure is 28 inches tall and performs a range of realistic actions. The draughtsman draws four different pictures, including a portrait of Vaucanson’s royal patron, Louis XV. The musician plays upon an organ, while the writer — made of more than 6,000 separate components — can be programmed to pen any message of 40 characters or fewer, making him in the eyes of many the true progenitor of the modern computerised android.

The three automata toured Europe for many decades, advertising the firm that built them, which prospered.

France remained a centre for automata building, moving to powered automata in the second half of the 19th century. Germany and Switzerland also had their great makers.

Clocktower automata like the one in my book are also know as glockenspiel, though the name refers to the instrument that makes the sound rather that the figures. As my hero says, it is made of bells or small pieces of metal struck be hammers. Not the one in Stratford in New Zealand, which is a town not far from where I’m writing this blog post. The town website says:

Since 1999, the clock tower has been entertaining passersby with a short Shakespearean performance four times a day.

Following the striking of the tower bells at 10 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., carved figures of Romeo and Juliet emerge from doors within the tower. As they do so, a recording begins of some of the most famous lines from the Balcony Scene, backed by some suitably Elizabethan music. Six different figures emerge in total (three of Romeo and three of Juliet) during the five-minute mechanized performance, with the last set standing hand in hand. The music plays throughout, with various lines from the play.

The music, along with the lines from the play, is piped out from a modern(ish) sound system. It is not played using a traditional carillon system of bells as found in more authentic towers of this type.

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First meeting on WIP Wednesday

First meeting in the book, that is. They first met a decade earlier, and the picture he formed of her was not positive. When she turns up at his house seeking refuge, he suspects her of ulterior motives, and is certain she must be causing trouble. After fretting about it all morning, he goes to find them, sure they won’t have stayed in their room, as his housekeeper assured him they would.

He heard nothing in the house. No voices, no movement. Down the main central passage he went, from one end of the main wing to the other, and then up the branch passage that led to the other tower.

When he reached the other end of the main wing, he knew he had been right. The visitors had not stayed put. He could hear them downstairs in Mrs. Thorne’s kitchen, laughing and talking. What on earth were ladies like that doing in the kitchen? Making a nuisance of themselves, he’d be bound.

He wasn’t going to be kept out of his own kitchen by a pair of Society ladies. And if they were bothering Mrs. Thorne, they could simply get back to their rooms, and so he would tell them.

He walked down the servants’ stairs to the kitchen, which was in the lowest level of the main wing of the house. It and its associated store rooms were the only part of the main wing in regular use, though Mrs. Thorne had women from the village up several times a year to give the whole place a good clean.

When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he was struck dumb by the sight of a pretty young lady in a simple day gown slicing a loaf of bread, while an older one whom he recognized as Miss Turner was helping Jane to sprinkle powdered sugar over the top of a cake.

That was the most startling part of the scene, though all of those currently in the kitchen were busy. Another strange female, presumably the maid, was buttering the slices as Lady Vivienne cut them, and a large lean man had stopped setting the empty end of the table with crockery and cutlery to eye him suspiciously.

Jane looked up from the cake and flung up her hands, scattering sugar all over Miss Turner. “Papa!”

Mrs. Thorpe twisted her hands in her apron and eyed him warily. “Captain, sir.”

John heard her, but couldn’t tear his eyes off Miss Turner, who was nothing like the besom of his imagination. She wasn’t even much like her former self except in general appearance, somewhat modified by the passage of time. The haughty female who had been bosom friends with his former betrothed wore her discontent on her face and looked down her nose at the world.

This older version of the woman he had met years ago was altogether softer. More rounded, for a start. Eight years ago, she had been slender to the point of gaunt. The extra weight was distributed in all the right places, too, which he shouldn’t be noticing.

Nor was she dressed in the height of fashion. In fact, he was fairly certain he had seen the dress under the capacious apron that had caught most of the sugar. If he was right, and it was one of Mrs. Thorne’s, she certainly didn’t seem to be bothered by it.

She was laughing as she dusted sugar off her nose and cheeks. When she darted out a tongue to taste her own lips, he tore his eyes away, embarrassed by his reaction.

“Papa, did you come to have some of my cake? Miss Turner and I made it our own selves!”

There was only one possible answer. “I would love some cake you made, Jane of mine.” For his darling girl’s sake, and not because he was at all interested, he added, “Will you introduce me to our guests?”

Jane went to jump down from the chair she was standing on and realized two things in swift succession. First, that she was still holding the sieve of powdered sugar. Two, as she turned to hand it to Miss Turner, that the lady was had been soundly dusted.

“Oh dear,” Jane said. “I threw sugar on you.”

“These things happen,” Miss Turner said, with a twinkle in her eye. “You were excited to see your Papa.” She took the sieve and held out the other hand to help Jane jump to the floor.

Jane grabbed John by the hand and pulled him towards the table. “Lady Vivienne and Miss Turner, may I present my Papa, Captain Forsythe?”

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Weddings on WIP Wednesday

I’ve somehow managed to find myself writing three weddings in three different works-in-progress all in the same month. Here’s the first one.

Pauline had never believed this day would come. The morning had passed in a flurry of excitement, with Tante Marie, the modiste, and two of the maids fussing over her, and Jane and Mrs Thorne providing a running commentary.

Pauline kept expecting someone to stop her, and tell her it was all a mistake. But here she was, walking towards John and the altar on Noncle Pierre’s arm, in a gown of the softest silk in a warm buttery cream, carrying a huge golden yellow bunch of Noncle Pierre’s prize roses, and wearing John’s gifts around her neck, in her ears, and on her wrist.

It was real. There he was, smiling at her, his eyes warm and welcoming. She fought against submitting to the fantasy. This was not a love match. He had been very clear. He liked her. He desired her. He wanted her as a mother for Jane. She should not expect anything more.

As she moved towards him down the aisle, she balled up those sensible thoughts and locked them away in the deepest recesses of her brain. Today was a dream. She was wedding the man she loved, and she was going to enjoy every moment. When she reached his side and Noncle Pierre released her into his hands she gave herself over to the fantasy.

She was determined to memorise every moment, but afterwards, she mostly remembered John’s voice, strong and confident, vowing to love her above all others, placing a ring on her finger and then not releasing her hand, John sneaking glances at her throughout the ceremony, glances that hinted at his own wonder and delight as they bound themselves to one another for life.

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The Preface on WIP Wednesday

This is a long one–2,500 words. I’ve written a preface for Perchance to Dream, and I don’t know if it is good, bad, or indifferent. If you can bear to read it, let me know your opinion in the comments.

John Forsythe placed a tender kiss on the cheek of his baby daughter, then passed her to her nursemaid, gently, so as not to wake her. “You have worn her out, my lord,” the nursemaid whispered, smiling.

John returned the smile. His hour and a half outside with his little girl had cemented the decision he’d been coming to for weeks. In a few days, she would reach her first birthday. It was time for John and Tina Jane’s mother to resolve their difficulties. Yes, their marriage had begun in lies and continued in discord, but surely they could build on their joint love for their daughter and build a real marriage? John was going to find his wife and ask her to try.

He had collected Tina Jane from the nursery after her breakfast and carried her with him on his rounds of the stable, the dairy, the barn and the poultry yards. He couldn’t say who enjoyed it more—him or the baby girl, who loved the animals, the bustle, and being with her father.

The name had been the cause of one of their fights. Augusta had wanted to name her baby Phillippa Augustina, uniting her own name with that of Philip Spindler, the treacherous rat who had impregnated her then abandoned her to marry the bride who was his family’s choice.

John had first been flabbergasted at her sheer effrontery at wanting to name the child born in their marriage after her former lover, then furious. Augusta reacted to his unequivocal ‘no’ with a six-week-long sulk. She had shut herself in her room and had refused to talk to him. She had not even visited the baby.

As he searched the house for his wife, John’s mind continued to revisit the sorrowful memories. The saddest part was that it had been six weeks of bliss. None of her tantrums or weeping jags or other dramatics. Jane could get on with the work of the estate, and spend all his spare time with the baby. He had fallen in love with the wee mite from the moment she had been placed in his arms on the day she was born, and had tumbled more deeply every hour he spent with her.

In the end, he had given Augustina Jane her first name as an overture of peace to his wife.

After all, however it came about, however he and Augusta felt about it, they were married. It had, to a degree, worked. Augusta emerged from her room, resumed her place at the dinner table, accompanied him to social events in the neighbourhood and did her best to behave well in public.

She even began to show an interest in the baby, or at least in having Tina Jane’s nursemaid trail behind Augusta with the little girl dressed in a gown made from scraps of fabric left over from whatever Augusta was wearing. “Do we not make a picture, Lord John?” she would simper.

“Where is Lady John?” he asked each servant that he met, but she must be restless today, for she was not in any of the rooms to which he was sent. Lord and Lady John. She insisted on the ridiculous title rather than his preferred use of the military title he had earned fighting Napoleon’s armies, and retained as a part time soldier in the local militia.

Again, it seemed a small price to pay for a relative degree of marital peace.

“She is very young,” he reminded himself. Only nineteen when he met her, and much younger in her years. Her parents had alternatively ignored her and given in to her many whims. She had always been able to get anything she wanted, merely by having a tantrum.

Even John, though she had not wanted John himself. Only a fool with an estate and noble connections who could be trapped into marrying her without asking too many questions. An older man she could manipulate as she had manipulated her parents.

She had been disappointed to discover that the worn-out soldier she’d conspired to trap had a will stronger than her own, and would not bend to her pleading or her histrionics.

Though he gave way to her in minor things, all the sulking in the world had not convinced him to allow her to redecorate the house that had been fully refurbished eighteen months ago before they moved into it, or to take her to London for the Season where they would inevitably meet Spindler and his wife, or to fire Thorne, his manservant, who had been with him since Salamanca in the Peninsular Wars, because Thorne had come across her beating the nursemaid with a riding crop, and had taken the crop off her.

John, appealed to by both Augusta and his manservant, discovered that the nursemaid’s crime had been to argue that Tina Jane should not go out visiting with Augusta on a cold and blustery day, since the poor little girl had the sniffles.

John had been coldly furious. “Miss Embrow was right to protest, Augusta. Taking our daughter out in this weather when she is already ill would have been foolish.”

“But Lord John,” Augusta protested, “it was not her place to question my instructions.”

“It is her place to put the welfare of the baby first. But even if she was wrong, you should not have beaten her. I will not have any in my household subjected to such violence. You will never raise a hand or any other implement to a servant again.”

She had been cowed by his anger, perhaps, for she slunk away and treated him to a week-long sulk, after which she emerged to demand that Thorne be dismissed for laying hands on her when he took the crop off her.

John’s refusal earned him the silent treatment for a further two weeks.

Still, she had not persisted, so perhaps she was learning. She was, after all, nearly twenty-one and had become a mother. She might be maturing. He’d seen a firm hand and kindness transform many a wild young man into a steady officer.

Indeed, for the last few days, she had been smiling, sometimes even at John. She had even spent an hour in the nursery yesterday, ignoring Miss Embrow as she had since the incident, but playing pat-a-cake and peep-a-boo with the baby.

Where on earth could the woman be? She was not in the house, and she was hardly one to spend hours in the garden. He checked with the stables, and discovered that she’d ridden out, and refused to take a groom with her.

John was worried. Augusta was not the most accomplished of riders. Perhaps she has fallen. He ordered his own horse saddled and rode off in the direction the grooms indicated.

The path split, with one branch entering his woods, and the other joining the lane that led out to the village road. John rode a short way along the lane, but he could not see Augusta or a horse, so he returned to the woods. Perhaps she felt the need of the shade.

The path led to a clearing where the woodcutter had a cottage that he used, but this was not the season for harvesting or planting or clearing undergrowth. So why were two horses tied up at the side of the cottage, and why was smoke rising from the chimney?

John stopped just inside the trees to examine the scene. He couldn’t be sure, as it was in the shade and partly obscured by the larger of the two horses, but he thought the smaller one was Augusta’s mare. He was still processing the implications of that when the cottage door opened and two people came out. One was Augusta. The other he could identify by the man’s white-blonde hair. It was Spindler. The swine bent to give John’s wife a tender kiss.

John nudged his horse into a walk. Spindler looked up at the clop of hooves, started, and ran for his own horse. John resisted the urge to give chase as Splindler threw himself into the saddle and kicked the beast into a gallop. After all, what would he do with the man if he caught him?

Rearranging the dirty dog’s pretty face would be satisfying, but it wouldn’t solve the problem of his marriage.

Augusta looked up at him without a hint of remorse or concern, trying but failing to compose her face into a serious expression. But a beaming smile of absolute delight kept breaking through. “Lord John, don’t be cross. We didn’t do anything, honestly. And he brought such good news.”

He didn’t trust himself to speak to her. He dismounted, tied his horse beside hers, and walked past her into the cottage. Didn’t do anything? The blankets had been thrown from the bed and the room reeked of sex.

Augusta had followed him, to stand in the door. “You must try to understand, Lord John. We have not been together for nearly two years.”

Nor had Augusta and John. Not once since they wed. John had been patient, thinking that she would accept their marriage in time. He had also been celibate, since he had long since promised himself that he would never cheat against his marriage vows, as both his parents had.

And she thought he should understand? “I do not understand, Augusta.” When Captain Forsythe spoke in that tight clipped voice, soldiers knew to stand to attention and keep quiet, for retribution was about to fall. “I don’t understand how you can stand there and expect me to countenance you and your lover meeting in secret, right here on my lands, less than a mile from the nursery where our daughter sleeps.”

Augusta was not one of his soldiers. “My daughter,” she insisted. “Mine and Phillip’s.”

A touch of panic spiked his fury. “Not according to the law,” he reminded himself. “She was born within our marriage. I have claimed her. Spindler has no rights here.”

At that, the smile blossomed again, though her eyes remained wary. “Not Spindler. Lord John, that is what he came to say! Kingston is dead! Phillip is free!”

The Duke of Kingston was Spindler’s grandfather, and in some ways the orchestrator of John’s misery. Spindler had been his pensioner, along with his mother and father. Disliking his grandson’s attachment to Augusta, who had only beauty to recommend her, being of modest family and wealth, he forced Spindler to make a choice. Poverty and Augusta. Riches and a bride of Kingston’s choosing. Either he did not care that the scoundrel had impregnated Augusta, or her condition did not become apparent until after her lover married the selected lady.

Kingston’s death was not a surprise. Even John, who took no notice of Society gossip, knew he had been failing since the apoplexy that followed the tragic deaths, months ago, of his heir and his heir’s son. Which made Spindler’s father the heir presumptive, and now the duke. Spindler’s father, who had never refused his son anything except his attention.

“He is not free,” he told Augusta. “Your lover is married and so are you. You both have a spouse and a child.”

She stared at him as if he was speaking in a foreign language. John didn’t want to look at her. He moved around the room, picking up a chair that had been knocked over, folding the blankets, pulling the underblanket off the mattress and throwing it into a heap by the door to take to the laundrymaid.

“We can be together,” Augusta insisted. “Tenby—he is Earl of Tenby now—does not have to please his grandfather ever again.”

John faced Augusta. She was clenching her fists and jutting her chin, ready to fight. “Augusta, talk sense. You are both married. Tenby lives in London. You live here, with me.” His voice dropped to a growl. “And you can be sure I will not turn a blind eye to you meeting your lover here or in London.”

He took a deep breath. She was not listening to him. Instead, her eyes were fixed on some mythical and impossible future that only she and Tenby could see.

“Augusta, we could make something of our marriage. Wouldn’t life be better if we were comfortable with one another? Would you not like more children?”

That caught her attention. “No!” she declared. “I don’t ever want to go through that again, getting lumpy and ugly. And then the pain! No, my lord, not even for Tenby. But he says he has his heir and that cow is pregnant again, so there might even be a spare. He will not ask it of me.”

John shook his head. It was like arguing with a river. You could talk all you liked, but it wasn’t going to stop flowing in the direction it had chosen. “You and Tenby cannot wed,” he pointed out. “You are both married to other people.”

At that, she crossed the room, laid a hand on his arm, and looked up at him pleadingly. “Yes, but we could live together. Tenby says that if I move in with  him, you can easily sue him for stealing me away (though I was always his, so that part I do not understand), and then petition the church for a legal separation. You get to keep Augustina, and you will not have to pay for clothes and the like for me ever again. And I get Tenby.”

“You will be cast out of Society,” John warned. He would, too. Not so much because he would be blamed, but because he would be laughed at. People might pity a cuckold, but they did not admire him. Still, he could live without Society.

“We can live in Paris, Tenby says,” Augusta said, airily, “where they understand these things. It is the best plan, my lord. Everyone gets what they want.”

“What of Lady Tenby? What does she want?”

If John had hoped to appeal to Augusta’s sympathy for another woman, he would have been disappointed. She shrugged. “She gets to call herself Marchioness and live at Spindler Palace with her sons. I don’t care about her. It is me that Tenby loves.”

“My answer is no. Your plan is foolish, Augusta. You and Tenby owe it to your children to make the best of your marriages. Come. We shall return to the house. I shall write to Tenby and tell him that if he approaches you again, he will regret it.”

That was not the end of it, of course. Augusta was convinced that she was the female half of a romance for the ages: a Helen of Troy, an Isolde, a Guinevere, an Eloise, a Juliet. Nothing would be allowed to stand in the way of her happy ending. She blocked John’s every attempt at a reconciliation, raised the option of a legal separation at every opportunity heedless of who else might be listening, and in the end forced his hand by running away to France with Tenby.

By then, it was almost a relief to see the end of what would have been a total disaster from the beginning, except it had given John his little Jane. When Lady Tenby died shortly after the church courts had granted their legal separation, John barely argued at all about taking a case to the House of Lords for a full divorce.

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Descriptions on WIP Wednesday

When I write, I want you to see what I see in my mind’s eye, without belabouring the point. In my fourth novel for the A Twist Upon a Regency Tale, I’ve been describing the nursery to which my heroine and her charge are consigned.

The nursery at the Paris townhouse was ruthlessly clean and sparsely furnished with a random collection of unmatched items. Against one wall were two beds, made with fresh sheets, sported a continental style of comforter each. Between the windows stood a table with two chairs. The wall opposite the beds had fitted shelves, which stood empty. A circular rug, the colours faded except where someone had darned a couple of worn places, covered the centre of the wooden floor. And that was all, apart from Pauline’s and Jane’s bags, which a footman had deposited just inside the door.

No pictures or ornaments softened the room, which held no toys or books to read.

“It is not very nice, is it?” Jane murmured to Pauline.

The footman shut the door as he left, and she heard the tumblers of the lock fall as he locked it. Pauline felt the strain go out of her shoulders. She had been afraid they might be separated straight away, or that one of the maids might be assigned to stay with them. She was determined to escape tonight, and to take Jane with her.

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Absence makes the heart grow fonder, in WIP Wednesday

In Perchance to Dream, I have nearly 17,000 words in the bucket, and have just written a scene where John is listening to his daughter in the garden and thinking about his recent visitor, with whom he has been exchanging letters.

Jane’s writing and reading was going ahead by leaps and bounds, and she also showed a flair for numbers. I suppose I shall have to employ a governess sooner or later. His mind’s eye pictured Pansy, bending over her work on that last afternoon. She would make a wonderful governess. John rejected the thought, shoving it away with something akin to horror. Even if the lady was looking for employment, which she wasn’t, he could never have her living under his roof.

Witness his frequent thoughts of that visit, of the growing desire that made him both anxious for her present and eager to avoid it, of how he struggled with lust that last afternoon as he viewed her lovely rear, neatly outlined in her woollen gown.

She is a friend, and has become a good one over the past few months. That was all it could be.

His inner self asked, snidely, So is that why you are hovering by the window instead of getting on with your work?

He had to admit, if only to himself, that he was waiting for Thorne to come back from the nearest Royal Mail stop, some five miles away by road. He’d been sent to post a letter and to collect any mail that might have been waiting.

You had a letter only a week ago, he scolded himself. She had written that she was travelling to Essex. He hoped Peter’s children were recovering. He hoped she found treasures in her new rose blooms.

His own letter carried an invitation. He was nearly ready to install the Carlisle clock tower scenes, and would be travelling up there within the fortnight. Yesterday, the town council had sent him the date for the opening ceremony. The Thornes and Jane would travel up for it, of course.

He should not hope for it. It is a long way for Pansy to come. On the other hand, it was in July, when the ton were abandoning the stinky hole that London became in the summer, and she did, after all, have a sister to visit in Galloway, only a day’s journey from Carlisle.

Against that, it was high summer, and she would be desperate to get back to her garden after the long months in London.

The clop of hooves had him crossing the room to look out at the carriage way. Thorne was home.

John drew away from the window before Thorne could see him, and busied himself tidying his work desk, and then his tray of parts. Doubtless, Thorne and his wife had figured out how besotted John had become. It was hard to keep such a secret from a man who had been his batman since he first took up his commission. John could, however, at least pretend to be indifferent.

It was a very long half hour before Thorne knocked on the door and entered.

 

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Preconceptions on WIP Wednesday

What a delight to turn a character’s preconceptions around. Here’s my John Forsythe, invaded by unwanted guests and suspicious of their motives.

The rain was even heavier the next day. John’s unwelcome guests would not be moving on. He did not have to see them; he trusted the Thornes for that. Nonetheless, their presence in his house and on his land distracted his attention, so that he failed to lose himself in his work, concern about what the she devil might be up to coming between him and the total concentration he needed to ensure that every part of the machine was placed just exactly where it belonged.

This particular automaton would have over five thousand precisely-made parts, so the potential for disaster was a very real. He covered the work and moved to another bench where a simpler piece, a children’s toy in the form of a monkey drummer, was waiting for spots of paint where the metal pieces had been joined together with pins, so they could move.

Painting was more mindless than constructing a clockwork engine, which had the disadvantage of that he had time to wonder what game Miss Turner was playing. Presumably, she—and probably her sister—were done up in their best gowns, all primped and pretty, and ready to charm him. He was almost tempted to go and see the show.

Mrs Thorne insisted both ladies and their three servants would remain in their quarters. John snorted his disbelief. Mrs Thorne did not know ladies of the ton the way that John did.

He finished touching up the monkey drummer and set it aside to dry. According to the workshop clock, Mrs Thorne would be putting together a meal about now. The visitors were making extra work for her. He could help lighten her load by going over to the other tower and fetching his own food.

He knew it was an excuse, even as he said it. So was his rationale that going through the house would help him avoid the rain. He unlocked the door that separated the tower from the main wing of the manor, locking it carefully behind him.

He could be honest with himself. He wanted to see the visitors, to prove to himself they were not staying where they had been put, that they were swanning around in fine clothing expecting his overworked servants to wait on them.

Perhaps not Lady Violet. He had met her years ago in London, when she and Rose, her sister, ran away from her manipulative self-centred harridan of a mother to beg refuge with Peter. She had been a sweet child. But eight years on, she was no doubt on the marriage market like all the other young women of her class, and lacked a thought in her head beyond marriage and clothing.

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Reluctant heroes on WIP Wednesday

The Writer is an automaton built in the 1770s using 6,000 moving parts by Pierre Jaquet-Droz, his son Henri-Louis, and Jean-Frédéric Leschot. Some regard it as the world’s first programmable computer. In Perchance to Dream, my hero makes automata.

I’m trying my hand at an enemies to lovers trope in the next book in A Twist Upon a Regency Tale. In Perchance to Dream, my hero had shut himself away in the country. He lives in a tower, guarded by his faithful servants, the Thornes. Guess the fairy tale! Here’s John’s first scene.

Ravenham, Cumbria, May 1825

“Another letter from that Miss Turner, Captain,” Thorne reported.

“Throw it in the fire,” John commanded. Thorne didn’t comment, but put the letter into his pocket, no doubt to store it with the others.

He didn’t need to read it to know it would be another request for cuttings from the roses that rambled everywhere at Rosewood Towers. At least, he assumed that all five letters were on the same topic. Not that he’d read them, but Arial, Lady Stancroft, whose letters he did read, had said that was what Miss Turner wanted.

Or claimed to want. Arial was one of only three females in the world that John trusted. Arial, wife of his dearest friend, Peter Ransome, Earl of Stancroft. Cordelia, wife of his half-brother, the Marquess of Deerhaven. Thorne’s wife, Maggie Thorne. Presumably, the world held other good females, whom John had not encountered. Pansy Turner was not one of them. John remembered her from his time in London, eight years ago, and wouldn’t trust her an inch. Arial, who was kind and good, might think the harpy would travel all the way to Cumbria for a bunch of rose cuttings. John was sure the Turner female had other motives, to do with her being single and him lacking a wife.

“If that’s all, Thorne,” John hinted.

“No, sir. I came to remind you that you promised to take Miss Jane fishing this afternoon.”

He had, too. He cast a wistful glance at the pieces of automaton scattered across his work table. “Tell Mrs Thorne I will collect her in ten minutes,” he said. “I had better change into something old.”

Not that he had anything new. He had last bought clothes in 1818, not long before he married Jane’s mother. But Mrs Thorne would growl if he went fishing in anything that was still presentable enough for visitors. Not that he ever had visitors.

Jane was waiting impatiently when he arrived at the other tower. “Papa, I thought you had forgotten me,” she scolded.

“Hush, Miss Jane,” said Mrs Thorne, throwing him a worried glance. “Your Papa would never forget you.”

That hurt on two counts. First, that Mrs Thorne could think he would be cross with his darling girl for challenging him. Second, that the only reason he was here, as the Thornes well knew, was his standing order to remind him of any promise to his daughter. When the melancholoy was bad, he forgot everything.

“I am sorry I am late, darling girl. Shall we go and catch some fishies?”

She gifted him with a sweet smile, took his offered hand, and for a moment, his world righted.

The world held four good females, he amended, and the best of them all was Jane, who was only seven. She was something of a tyrant, but she had a good heart.

They passed the rambling manor house and walked through the wild overgrown garden to the trout stream. Jane described the fish she was going to catch, speculated on when her wiggly tooth might fall out, spelled for him the words she had learned that morning, and described the new dress Mrs Thorne was making for her, which was the same colour as the roses.

The roses reminded him of Miss Turner. Five letters! The woman was determined. He hoped the latest would be the end of it.