pets in romance

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Tea with Major Kellborn

Major Augustus Kellborn was uncomfortable in Eleanor’s little sitting room. Not that his stern compelling face showed any emotion at all. Nor did his posture betray him. He sat straight and still, his dark eyes alert.

Nonetheless, his very tension betrayed a desire to be elsewhere. Anywhere else, perhaps.

The dog took his cue from his master, sitting to attention at Kellborn’s feet, watching every movement of Eleanor’s hands as she poured a cup of tea to Major Kellborn’s specifications. She gave it to the waiting maid to carry to the guest. Thankfully, Hattie was not nervous around dogs.

Sir Sancho, as the small beast was named, had not been invited, though he had been at Major Kellborn’s heel when Eleanor met him, visiting some his former command in the hospital for returned soldiers that was one of Eleanor’s charitable interests.

“I knew your mother, Kellborn,” she had told him. And invited him to afternoon tea.

The brindled terrier had arrived today three minutes after Kellborn, prompting the gentleman’s first display of emotion—alarm, quickly subdued, and a slight flush of embarrassment. “I apologise, Your Grace. I will return him to my carriage to wait.”

Eleanor examined the beast, who sat staring adoringly up at Kellborn. Clearly, the brindled terrier could not countenance a separation. “He is welcome to stay, major. He appears to understand proper deportment in a lady’s parlour.”

To draw the major out, she asked about the origins of the animal. Slowly, he relaxed, and even smiled a time or two as he told her about some of Sir Sancho’s adventures since he had insisted on adopting Kellborn. Eleanor imagined her guest had been an exemplary officer.

“What are your plans now that you have left the army, if I may enquire?” Eleanor asked, after a while.

“I have inherited Whitlaw Grange, an estate in Cumberland,” Kellborn explained. “I am told it is a fine manor, though I’ve not yet seen it. I will be heading north later in the week.”

Eleanor nodded with approval. “Wise to arrive before the winter sets in.”

“That is what I thought.” His brow creased momentarily with the first indecision he had shown. “From the books, it seems well run, though my relative has been gone for over a year.”

“No children, I take it?” Eleanor asked.

“Never married.”

Eleanor thought about Cumberland—parts of it were very remote, and all of it was too far from London for easy travel. Would Major Kellborn appreciate advice? Perhaps not, but he could always ignore it. “Marriage is not for everyone, I know, but if you do plan to seek a wife, you might consider looking in the north. York, perhaps, or even Edinburgh. Someone who won’t be intimidated by the weather, and who prefers country living.”

His eyes crinkled and his lips curved in a smile. “Excellent advice, Your Grace. I have not thought that far ahead, but I know sense when I hear it.

Gus Kellborn is the hero of “Lady Twisden’s Picture Perfect Match”, a story in Desperate Daughters. On preorder now. Only 99c until publication.

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Pets on WIP Wednesday

Or perhaps animal companions is a better word, since if you want to share an excerpt in the comments, any animal is welcome. Mine is from the new story I’m writing for the next Bluestocking Belles collection.

The monkey did not want to stay in the basket. Chloe had to hold down the lid while pretending that nothing untoward was happening, and keeping an expression of polite interest on her face to convince those around her that she was listening to the speaker.

She didn’t dare look at Doro. Her friend had her eyes focused forward with a determination belied by her dancing eyes and the occasional tremble of her lips. If they met one another’s eyes, they would collapse into giggles as if they were twelve or thirteen again, and sharing a schoolroom.

Chloe needed to not think about Rosario the monkey or Doro’s amusement. Which meant, of course, that was all she could think about. The lecture might have helped, but the man currently currently droning on about the iniquities of the Habeas Corpus Act was too boring to actually make any sense.

The lid kicked under her hand. She bent over to rap it with her knuckles, just as the audience started clapping. The sudden roar of sound, of course, made Pepper even more desperate to get out of the basket.

Doro leaned closer and hissed out of the side of her mouth, “I did suggest the reform meeting might not be the best place for a monkey.”

“I couldn’t leave him behind,” Chloe protested. “Martin threatened to wring his neck when he caught him.”

Doro’s amusement bubbled out in a gurgle. “Rosario did steal Lord Tavistock’s cravat pin,” she pointed out.

It was true, but not the whole truth. In the two weeks since Chloe rescued Rosario from a mob of villagers, she had stolen several things a day, bringing them all to Chloe with every expectation of approval.

The villagers had told Martin, Chloe’s brother, the Viscount Tavistock, that the original owner was in prison awaiting trial for theft.

A cravat pin, two pair of cuff links, a cross belonging to cook, a pair of Chloe’s earrings, one jewelled buckle from a shoe, and a handful of other small objects witnessed to the thief’s small hairy accomplice.

“He will calm down by the time I am home,” Chloe assured Doro, hoping it was true.

The next speaker had risen, and someone behind demanded that the ladies be silent. Chloe looked around and winced an apology at the large man glaring from the next row of seats.

Two rows behind him, a fair-haired gentleman caught her gaze and winked one twinkling hazel eye.

The speaker, a little man with a bristling beard and burning eyes, began his oration. Boredom was not going to be an issue. A voice that was surely too large for the man’s body boomed through the room, calling for them to protest the iniquities under which the workers suffered. “I love the King as much as anyone,” he claimed, at full shout, “but his son plays at building pleasure palaces while his government oppresses his people and drives us into the workhouse.”

At the man’s rant, Rosario threw herself against the lid with renewed  determination, so that the basket rocked despite Chloe’s attempt to keep it still.

Behind them, someone booed. The speaker shouted him down, but a jeer came from another corner. Then the first missile flew, straight past Chloe’s head.

Chloe ducked and lost hold of the lid of the basket. Rosario shot out, into the crowd, yabbering her distress.

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Animal friends on WIP Wednesday

 

Animal companions can be useful in a book. They show our character’s empathy and kindness (or lack thereof). They can be comic relief. They might, if the character doesn’t have anyone else to talk to, be an ideal recipient of the kind of information we want the reader to know and need the character to talk about.

So give me an excerpt with an animal. Mine is from To Wed a Proper Lady, the rewrite of The Bluestocking and the Barbarian. My hero is gate crashing a house party with the help of his horse.

Limp,” James said to Seistan. “Limp, my lovely, my treasure, my Jewel of the Mountains.”

The horse obeyed his master’s hand signals and limped heavily as they turned through the gates of the manor, beginning the long trek along the dyke that led between extensive water gardens to where Lady Sophia Belvoir was attending a house party.

In his mind, James was measuring his reasons for being here against his reasons for staying away.

His grandfather faded fast, and the end of the year – and his reprieve – was fast approaching. Lady Sophia was the other half of his soul, and only she could fill the place in his heart and at his side. Every meeting since the first had merely confirmed the connection in his mind. Was it only his imagination that had him believing she felt it too?

Surely her eyes spoke for her, finding him as soon as he entered a room and following him until he left, blue-gray eyes that veiled themselves when he caught them watching, in the longest soft brown lashes he had ever seen. She was not, as these English measured things, a beauty: her arched nose and firm chin too definite for their pale standards, her frame too long and too robust. They preferred dolls, like her sister, and Sophia was no doll.

On the other hand, there was Hythe’s threat and Lady Sophia’s rejection to consider. Beyond that, his father’s greatest enemy owned the house he approached. The party would be full of aristocrats and their hangers on, ignoring him until they found out whether he was a future duke or merely the half-breed bastard of one.

The family needed him to marry a strong woman, one with family ties to half the peerage of this land to which they somehow belonged, though he had only first seen it eight months ago. His foreign blood and upbringing meant he needed a wife who was English beyond question, and English nobility to her fingertips.

James needed to marry Sophia; had needed to since he first saw her in a village street. And then he found she had all the connections his family could desire. Surely their love was fated?

The house came into view—a great brick edifice rising four stories above the gardens and glittering with windows. Nothing could be less like the mountain eerie in which he had been raised, but he squared his shoulders and kept walking, soothing Seistan who reacted to his master’s nerves with a nervous sideways shuffle.

“Hush, my Wind from the North. We belong here, now. What can they do, after all?”

Beat him and cast him out, but from what he knew of the Duchess of Haverford, that was unlikely to happen.

“It is, after all,” he reminded his horse with a brief laugh, “the season of goodwill.”

The stables were off to one side, on a separate island to the main house. At the fork in the carriageway, James hesitated, tempted to take Seistan and see him cared for before chancing his luck at the house. If they invited him in, he would need to hand his horse over to grooms who were strangers while he consolidated his position.

But if they turned him away, he might need to remove himself at speed, Seistan’s convenient limp disappearing as fast as it appeared. Besides, in the mountains between Turkmenistan and Persia, as in England, one did not treat a private home as a caravanserai. He must be sure of his welcome before he took advantage of their stables.

The carriageway crossed the moat surrounding the house and ended in a generous forecourt. James left Seistan at the foot of the long flight of steps leading up to the front door, giving him the command to stay. Seistan stood, weight on three legs and ears pricked with interest as he watched his master climb the steps. Nothing short of outright panic would move the horse from his silent watch before James gave the counter command.