Regina Paddimore

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Tea with Regina

“It is my first ball,” Regina Paddimore explained to the ladies gathered in one of Mrs Clemens’ private meeting rooms.

“I have no doubt it will be highly successful,” said Eleanor, the Duchess of Winshire. “We have seen how efficient you are Mrs Paddimore.”

Regina was a member of the overarching committee Eleanor had set up to oversee all the various charitable groups in which she had a hand. Today’s meeting having concluded, they were enjoying one another’s society over tea and cake. The young widow’s organising capabilities had made her an asset in one of the subsidiary groups from the moment she joined, and Eleanor had swiftly put her to work here, too.

She blushed at the compliment. “You are very kind, Your Grace.”

Eleanor found her modesty charming, though not the cause of it; more than a decade buried in the country caring for an ailing husband.”Nothing but the truth, but if you want advice, my dear, some of the best hostesses in the ton are right here in this room.”

“A good chef is essential,” said Eleanor’s daughter in law, Cherry, the Duchess of Haverford.

“I recommend my cousin’s husband,” Eleanor said. “The creator of these cakes. You cannot go wrong with Monsieur Fournier.”

***

Regina Paddimore is the heroine of One Perfect Dance, published this coming Thursday.

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Tea with Elijah

Eleanor, the Duchess of Winshire looked around her parlour with great satisfaction. The school for indigent gentlewomen that she supported would benefit from today to the tune of several hundred points. Even better, though many of the crowd had come to listen to the famous speakers, she had taken the opportunity to give them more that they expected for their ticket price. Her daughter-in-law Cherry had been the first speaker, and eloquent on the topic of the plight of gentlewomen who could not support themselves, and the value of providing education so that they could find appropriate jobs.

Of course, both Cherry and Eleanor supported education for women at every level of Society, but the idea of education a costermonger’s daughter, or even a costermonger’s son, was so far from the orbit of this audience that they would just look at her bluntly if she suggested it.

Not, perhaps, all of them. Mrs Paddimore, for example, who was here with her dear friend Cordelia, Marchioness of Deerhaven. Both Mrs Paddimore and Lady Deerhaven donated to the ragged school at which Cherry taught mathematics. Mrs Paddimore had caught her eye because the lady’s own attention was quite firmly fixed on the speakers. Or, rather, one of the speakers.

World travellers and travel writers Elijah Ashby and Lord Arthur Versey had talked about their journeys for over an hour, answered questions for another half hour, and were now refreshing their surely dry throats with sips of port, poured by Eleanor’s husband, who had winked and insisted that tea would be insufficient after the gentlemen’s ordeal in front of Eleanor’s crowd.

What was between Mrs Paddimore and Elijah Ashby? Not only did she turn towards him every few moments as if to check that he was still in the room, when she wasn’t watching him he gazed at her with reverence and longing. Eleanor approved. Mrs Paddimore was a lovely woman and deserved a husband who adored her, and Ashby was as intelligent and charming as he was handsome.

If there was anything she could do to promote the romance, she would. Eleanor did love a happy love story.

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A girl’s first ball on WIP Wednesday

The book I have just finished has two distinct parts and a bridging section. In the first part, my heroine is turning 17, and one of the scenes is set at her birthday ball, which is also her debut to Society.  The section follow her from the planning for the ball to the end of her first Season. The second part picks up the story sixteen years ago, when she is a widow and the boy she wanted to dance with at her ball returns from many years overseas. Today’s piece is set at the ball.

Regina had thought that the dinner party would drag, given how excited she was about the ball, and how eager for the dancing to begin. Mr. Paddimore, however, proved to be an entertaining dinner companion. He told Regina several stories about funny things that happened at balls he attended, and assured her he was happy to fight off any suitors she would prefer not to entertain.

Before she knew it, dinner was over and Mama was saying it was time to form the receiving line. That, too, was exciting. All of these people had come to celebrate Regina!

She received many compliments. Mama and Papa, too, for having such a beautiful and charming daughter. Even so, she was glad when the stream of new arrivals dwindled to a trickle, and Mama announced it was time for the first dance.

Her one disappointment was that Elijah had not arrived. She had gone to such trouble, too. Yesterday afternoon, at the dancing class that one of Mama’s friends had got up for young ladies and young gentlemen who were new to the Season, Regina had managed to speak to several of the young men to whom mother had given one of her dances.

One of them—a youth she had known from the cradle—was more than happy to forego his dance with her in return for an introduction to another of the debutantes who had caught his eye.

If Elijah arrived, she would be able to dance with him. She had always wanted to, since she had seen him dancing with his mother at a village festival more than six years ago.

However, if he could not be bothered to come to her ball, she was certainly not going to spare him another thought. She smiled at Mr. Paddimore and allowed him to lead her out onto the dance floor. He was a very graceful dancer. She supposed that, at his age, he had had a lot of practice.

She enjoyed every minute of the next two hours. She did not enjoy some of her partners. The clumsy ones who trod on her feet or tried to lead her the wrong way. The ones who talked the entire time, and never had a single interesting thing to say. The ones who served ridiculous and overblown flattery with a helping of questions about how rich her father really was.

But Regina loved to dance, and was happy to imagine the clumsy, boring, or calculating partner of the moment replaced with the perfect gentleman of her imagination. The perfect gentleman who would partner her in one perfect dance.

It was for that imaginary person she danced gracefully to the music, smiling and glowing with pleasure.

At supper, her partner was tongue-tied, so she carried on with her daydream, imagining that her perfect gentleman had selected morsels to tempt her appetite from the best of the dishes set out for the guests.

Her escort managed to break his silence long enough to stammer, “Are you enjoying the evening, Miss Kingsley?”

Regina heard the question in her perfect gentleman’s thrilling tones, and it was to him that she answered, “I am having such a wonderful time. Everything is so exciting, so beautiful, and the people have been so kind.”

The enthusiastic response loosened her escort’s tongue a little. “It is very easy to be kind to one as lovely as you, Miss Kingsley.”

He might not be her perfect gentleman, but he was a very nice person.

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Comfort and kindness on WIP Wednesday

One of the most endearing things a hero can do is comfort his heroine after she has been hurt or frightened. How he does this tells us a lot about his character. Here is my Ash comforting Regina, who is reacting to being assaulted in her own drawing room by a suitor she thought to be harmless. (Ash has punched him, threatened him, and had him thrown out.)

In a moment, she was a warm fragrant bundle on Ash’s lap, her curves draped across his torso, her arms wrapped around him, her face tucked into his shoulder as she cried.

He patted her shoulder, murmuring comfort. “There now. You’re safe now, Ginny. He’s gone. He won’t bother you again. I have you, my darling. I have you.”

He had not seen Regina so discomposed since she was a child, grieving the loss of a kitten. He wished he’d hit Deffew harder. He’d thought he and Charles were in time, but if the swine’s violation had gone beyond what he’d seen, the dog would die for it, Regina’s opinion notwithstanding.

Charles poked his head around the door, his eyes widening in alarm when he saw the state of his mistress. Ash pointed to the brandy decanter he could see on a sideboard. “Two,” he mouthed, ceasing his patting to hold up two fingers then resuming again, barely breaking rhythm.

Charles nodded, and tiptoed to the decanter to pour two glasses of brandy, then tiptoed back across the room to place them on a side table next to Ash’s elbow, setting them down so carefully that they did not clink.

Ash briefly wondered whether the young man wanted to save Regina the embarrassment of knowing her emotional collapse had been witnessed, or whether he feared that she might expect him to do something about it if she knew he was there. Whichever it was, he faded back across the room and out of the door, pulling it shut behind him.

She was still crying, but the angry storm was gone, fading into heart-wrenching sobs that twisted Ash’s gut even more than the initial outburst. “There now, Ginny” Ash said. “Let it out, dearest. You’re safe now, my love.”

She turned her face up at that, drawing back so that her tear-drenched eyes could meet his. “Am I, Elijah?”

“Yes, of course. He has gone, and I won’t let him near you again.”

She thumped his chest softly, an action so reminiscent of the child Ginny that he had to repress a smile. “Not that,” she scolded. “The other.”

He retraced his words in his mind. “My love?” At her tiny nod, he repeated, “Are you my love?”

She raised her eyebrows in question, the imperious gesture only slightly marred by the shuddering breath of a leftover sob.

“I love you, Ginny. Did you not know?”

She thumped him again, another gentle reprimand. “You never said,” she grumbled. “You never even tried to kiss me.” The last two words were disrupted by a hiccup, but he understood them well enough.

“I am abjectly sorry, Ginny,” Ash told her, managing to keep his voice suitably solemn while his heart was attempting to break out of his chest and into hers. She has been waiting for my kisses! Missing them, even. “I have never courted anyone before. I am clearly not very good at it.”

She hiccupped again as she put up a hand to cradle Ash’s cheek. “I am sorry to be so cross, Elijah. I hate hiccups. I hate crying, and it always give me the hiccups.” She proved it with another hiccup.

“Have a sip of brandy, beloved,” he suggested, and he picked up one of the glasses and held it to her lips. “It might help. And if it doesn’t, perhaps a kiss will cure them.”

Ash was very aware that she had not returned his declaration of love. However, she wanted his kisses. He would start there and hope for the best.

Ginny took the glass from his hand and had another sip, followed by another hiccup.

“It will have to be the kiss, then,” he suggested.

 

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Journeys on WIP Wednesday

Barge haulers on the Volga River

I seem to get a lot of travel into my books, one way and another. My hero in the book I’m writing at the moment has been overseas since his twenty-first birthday. He is now a week shy of his thirty-seventh. My excerpt is part of his journey home (They departed from Ceylon — today’s Sri Lanka — by ship to what we today call Pakistan, then went up through Kashmire to Afghanistan and from there to Kazakhstan. I had to work out the timings, allowing for the monsoons and the northern winter. I think I’ve got it. If you have a journey in a book of yours, please share in the comments.

Nowhere smelled like England. It was raining, but Ash rode anyway, the better to enjoy the sights, smells, and sounds of his homeland. His childhood memories were created in the tame and gentle lands of South East England, the lands their little line of carriages and horsemen were currently traversing on their way from Dover to London.

Artie had put his riding horse on a lead rope when the rain first began, retiring to the family carriage where Rithya, Caroline, and little Gareth travelled in as much comfort as Artie could procure at short notice.

Caroline had been born in March of 1817. Artie had taken a house in a small village in Kazakhstan when Rithya adamantly refused to travel any further while she was, as she complained, larger than an elephant and far less useful. Besotted with his baby daughter, Artie had quelled his restlessness until Rithya pronounced herself well enough to travel. They set off again, with a wet nurse, he is a train of pack animals and a small army of local guards.

After that, Artie travelled as if possessed. No more stopping for weeks or even months at a time, to see the sights and get to know the locals. “I want to leave St Petersburg before the Baltic ices over,” he explained.

In Turkmenistan, they heard about an Englishman who ran shipping on the Caspian Sea, paradoxically known as the King of the Mountains. The man they found in a small port on the eastern shores proved to be the son of the rumoured king, though from his looks, his mother had been a local. He was able to supply space for their party on a ship sailing for the mouth of the Volga River, and also advice on dealing with Russian officials as they travelled up through the waterways of that enormous empire.

The river travel took longer than expected, and they spent Christmas at the Winter Palace of the Tsar in St Petersburg.

Tsar Alexander was delighted with his visitors, whom he proclaimed he knew well, for he had read all of their books. Artie, in particular, was a favourite, his birth making him, in the Tsar’s eyes,’his British cousin’.

The nearby port was frozen over. Indeed, the ice blocked much of the sea for hundreds of miles. The Tsar assured them they could stay as long as they wished, but Artie insisted on taking an overland route, by troika, to Klaipeda, which was ice free. Somehow, he managed to charm the vehicles and their teams, an escort, and a ship out of the Tsar.

Perhaps it was because Rithya was with child again, and the childless Tsar and Tsarina were enchanted with Caroline, and anxious to do all they could to make sure Artie was back in England “for the birth of your heir, my cousin.”

So, at last, in the middle of February, after being storm-diverted to Calais where Rithya gave birth to Gareth, they arrived in Dover.

Travelling by gentle stages, they spent two nights on the road and were now approaching London. Their sixteen-year journey was all but over.

 

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Being compromised on WIP Wednesday

The compromise is a stock scene in regency romance. Maybe when two people in love are caught unawares. Perhaps an accidental encounter that is seen and misinterpreted. Or, as in the scene I’ve shared below, an evil plot by a fortune hunter and a female snake, aided and abetted by my heroine’s own mother.

Perhaps you have one you’d like to share in the comments.

Regina put up her parasol and strolled down through the garden, nodding to acquaintances. She crossed the lawn at the bottom, and strolled back up the path on the other side. She was approaching the house when a footman hurried up to her. “Miss Kingsley?”

“Yes, that is I,” she said.

“A note for you, miss.” He handed over a folded piece of paper, and hurried away before she could question him.

It was from Cordelia, her friend’s usual neat copperplate an untidy scrawl that hinted at a perturbed mind.

Regina, I don’t know what to do! It is dreadful. I need your advice, dear friend.  I am waiting in a little parlour by the front door—I cannot bear for all those horrid gossipers to see me. Please do not fail me. Cordelia.

Regina didn’t hesitate. She hurried through the house, too anxious to find her mother and let her know where she was going. To the left of the front entrance, a door stood a little ajar. Regina could see a couple of chairs and low table through the gap. This must be it.

She pushed the door wider and was three steps into the room before she realised that Cordelia was not there.

Behind her, the door slammed shut. Regina spun around.

Mr David Deffew stood there, grinning. “Hello, Miss Kingsley. How good of you to join me.”

“Please get out of my way,” Regina demanded. “I am looking for my friend.”

“I would like to be your friend,” Mr Deffew crooned. “But if you mean Miss Miller, she has, or so I understand, left town.”

“It was a trick,” Regina realised.

Mr Deffew’s smirk confirmed her suspicion.

“Get out of my way, Mr Deffew. Whatever you think you are up to, I am not interested.”

“Such fire,” Mr Deffew crooned.

At that moment, someone spoke on the other side of the door. Suddenly, Mr Deffew leapt on Regina, crushed her in his arms, tore at her dress, and pressed sloppy kisses to whatever part of her face he could reach as she struggled.

The door burst open, and people crowded into the room. Miss Wharton, exchanging triumphant glances with Mr Deffew. Regina’s mother, looking smug. Lady Beddlesnirt, one of the most notable gossips of the ton. Others, too, all expressing gleeful horror.

Regina broke free of Mr Deffew and ran to her mother. “It is not what it looks, Mama. Mr Deffew tricked me. I got this note!” She held it up and Miss Wharton snatched it out of her hand and threw it in the fire.

Mama turned to Mr Deffew. “Shame on you, sir.”

Mr Deffew bowed. “I was overcome by love, Lady Kingsley. I will make it right, of course.”

“A betrothal,” Mama announced to the room.