Rumplestiltskin

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Spotlight on The Secret Word

What does the tale of “Rumplestiltskin” look like set during the Regency, and written without magic?

My answer is The Secret Word, which – once I started writing it – took on a life of its own. This book is published on September 6th.

The Secret Word

(Book 10 in A Twist Upon a Regency Tale)

When Christopher Satterthwaite rescues Clementine Wright from would-be kidnappers, he is offered an opportunity he can’t refuse. Clemmie’s father, a wealthy coal magnate, has been looking for a husband for his only child. Someone with aristocratic bloodlines and no family—someone who can give him the blue-blooded heir he craves, without the interference of noble relatives.

Chris figures he and Clemmie can work together to keep Wright from controlling their every move. As their partnership develops, they fall in love. Wright doesn’t stand a chance against them. Or does he?

And what about the other men who are showing an interest in the child who is soon on the way? Chris’s reprobate grandfather is hanging around like a bad smell, and clearly has a scheme in mind. Chris’s more respectable relatives have not disowned him after all, and are eager to show the as yet unborn child with every advantage—because they regret not helping Chris as a child? Or for purposes of their own?

And then there is Ramping Billy O’Hara, the most sinister of them all, and Chris’s patron.

Some are villains. Some are on the side of the couple and their child. Only time will tell which is which.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FM8R25VP

 

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Family reunion on WIP Wednesday

I’m expecting The Secret Word back from the editor this week. Looking forward to it! Here’s an excerpt.

***

Chris waited anxiously in the private room at Miss Clemens’ Book Emporium and Tea Rooms. He was about to meet cousins from both sides of the family, and he was far from certain of the reception he was about to get.

Clem squeezed his hands and he smiled at her. He wasn’t at all certain he would be facing this if not for her. She gave him strength.

She had done so at Aunt Fern’s ball. Both his mother’s brother, the Earl of Crosby, and his father’s cousin, the Earl of Halton, were there. Later, he found that the public repudiation had been organised by Aunt Fern. But whether they meant it or not was the question.

Both reacted with the same disdain when Chris was presented to them.

Lord Halton said, “Reginald Satterthwaite’s son? I have no wish to meet anyone associated with that scoundrel.”

And Lord Crosby looked Chris up and down and declared, “No, thank you, Lady Fernvale. With all due respect, I see no reason to acknowledge this person.”

Chris wanted the floor to open up and swallow him, and then Clem had slipped her hand into his, and all was right with his world. He had not had their approbation before, and had not felt the need of it. He did not need it now.

Nonetheless, as the minutes ticked by, he acknowledged to himself his deep yearning for a family. He would have Clem, of course. Somehow. With or without Wright’s blessing. But, for as long as he could remember, he had longed for brothers and sisters or—failing them—cousins. Perhaps, if this meeting went well, his children with Clem might grow up knowing their cousins.

The first to arrive was Lord Crosby’s son, a tall man with that gaunt stretched look of a youth who was still growing—one who ate like a horse and put on no weight. “Are you the son of Reggie Satterthwaite, who ruined my father’s sister Christabel and ran off with her to Gretna Green?” he asked. “I am Michael Thurgood, Lord Crosby’s son and your mother’s nephew.”

He held out a hand to be shaken, so Chris figured his somewhat hostile first question could safely be ignored. “Clem,” he said, figuring a female—and a non-family member at that—might help to keep the conversation civil, “May I present my cousin Michael Thurgood? Thurgood, Miss Wright has done me the honor of accepting my suit. I have yet to convince her father.”

“Miss Wright.” Michael Thurgood’s nod was perfectly polite, but his attention remained on Chris.”

“Is it true, what Lady Fernvale said? That your grandfather abandoned you in the streets after your father died?” he demanded. “Father says he would have taken you in if you had come to him.”

Chris was about to protest that his nine-year old self had had no idea where the Earl of Halton lived, and no expectation of being welcomed, in any case. But they were interrupted by another arrival. A second man, this one around Chris’s age, so perhaps five or six years older than Thurgood.

Chris would have known him for a Satterthwaite even if he had not been expecting him. He look more like Reggie, Chris’s father, than Chris did, though his hair and complexion were fairer and his chin was firm and determined where Reginald Satterthwaite’s was weak. He wore the flashy uniform of a horse guard,

“If you’re Satterthwaite, so am I,” he growled. “Hello, Thurgood.”

Thurgood nodded. “Satterthwaite.” He gained a bit of respect from Chris when he then turned to Clem. “Miss Wright, may I make known to you Captain Satterthwaite of His Majesty’s 27th Regiment of Horse, and Satterthwaite, this is our cousin Christopher Satterthwaite and his betrothed, Miss Clementine Wright.”

As with Thurgood, Satterthwaite greeted Clem politely, but then turned his attention back to Chris.

“Is it true you did not go overseas with your grandfather? My father wants to know why you didn’t come to us. We would not have turned you away.”

“You did,” Chris said, dryly. “Or at least your grandfather had me and my grandfather thrown out of the house, and when my grandfather sent me on my own, the butler would not let me in.”

“You were nine or ten,” the guard’s officer said.

“I was nine.”

“You went back out into the road, and then what?”

“I ran back to where my grandfather had been, but he was gone. I called out for him. I asked other people if they had seen him. Then I ran down the street he’d left by. But I never found him.”

“I saw you,” Satterthwaite said. “I was watching from the schoolroom. You turned at the corner. Do you remember? You shook your fist at the house.”

“I did,” Chris said.  He had forgotten that detail until this moment. “I was angry with my grandfather and with yours.”

“It is you,” Satterthwaite said. “Chris, isn’t it? Chris, I’m Harry.

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Interviewing a suitor on WIP Wednesday

The clothing is out of period, but I love the determined look on the model’s face. AI generated, and the sneakers made me giggle.

(An excerpt from The Secret Word, my current novel-in-progress)

Soon, they had covered the short distance to Leicester Square. Billy had suggested the destination and provided a key to one of the gates so they could walk in the private garden that filled the center of the square.

Apart from a sharp look when Chris pulled out the key, Clemmie did not react to him claiming resident’s privileges. As soon as Martha had lagged far enough behind them, he answered the question she hadn’t asked. “Ramping Billy gave me the key. I didn’t ask where he got it.”

The answer was not to her taste, Chris could tell, but he had no other, so he changed the subject. “Shall we talk about the choices each of us has before us?”

“Do I have a choice?” Clemmie asked. “Father has already said that the decision is his, and that if I refuse the groom he offers me, I will be—and I quote—‘out in the street in your shift, my girl.’”

Nasty old man. “Then your choice is whether you cooperate with me to convince your father I am the preferred suitor, or make common cause with another suitor, or simply sit back and let come what may.”

Clemmie bowed her head so all he could see of her was her bonnet. A pretty confection, but he’d have preferred it back in her wardrobe so her face was visible. She had not mastered the art of keeping her thoughts to herself, which was probably what her father meant by saying she needed to be more ladylike.

Personally, Chris preferred her openness.

“But if you are at risk of being thrown out, Clemmie, send for me, and I will meet you with a cloak and take you some place safe.”

She turned her head up at that and searched his face. Let her. He meant every word. Some of the women who had raised him took to their way of life because they’d been thrown penniless into the street—by a lover, a father, even a husband. For their sakes, he’d come to the rescue of anyone in such need.

Perhaps she did not believe what he saw. Certainly, her harrumph sounded dismissive. “What choices do you face, Chris?” she asked.

That was a victory! She had called him by his preferred name. He hoped his exultation did not show on his face. “Two, but each has options and both benefits and costs. Do I accept your father’s challenge or do I walk away? If I accept, can we manage your father’s expectations or will we end up paying his price? I think we can avoid being his puppets, and I know Billy will help, but what will Billy’s price be?” He paused for her comment, but she said nothing. That pestiferous bonnet was back in the way again.

“If I walk away, what will your father do to force my hand? Or can I convince him that I would be too much trouble, so that he dismisses me. And what of Billy? He is taking an interest in this match. If I refuse it, what will it cost me?”

She had a tart comment about that. “My, Mr. O’Hara is taking an interest in my affairs. I wonder that you let him push you around. I know that you owe him, but does he own you?”

“In much the same way as your father owns you, Clemmie. And I daresay Billy has been as much a father to me as my own was. More, in fact, for he…” He trailed off, not sure if he was ready to share that particular piece of dirty laundry.

He expected her to demand that he finish his sentence, but instead she asked a question that got to almost to the heart of his discomfort with her knowing his past. “Why do they call you Fingers? The people at Mr. O’Hara’s.”
They turned a corner and walked along the next side of the square. She didn’t press the question except by her silence.

Well, and why not? If she rejected him once she knew his story, so be it. If they were to decide to marry, he wanted a relationship based on honesty and trust. “When I was nine, my mother died,” he said, eventually. “My father had not been home for some time. I found out later that he was dead, too, which I suppose is why his debts were called in. The debt collectors took everything and left me homeless and alone.”

Out in the streets, in fact. In more than his undershirt, but that didn’t last. A gang of boys beat him up for his clothes, which were still sturdy though not new. Fortunately, they were impressed at how well he fought and how many of them it took to subdue him, so they took him back to the den they’d made in the cellar of a burnt out building.

“I was lucky. I found a place to live with some people who taught me a skill with which I could pay my share of food and board.” For nearly a year, he worked in a team lifting purses and watches, swiftly graduating from decoy to pick pocket as his skill grew. “They taught me to be a pickpocket, Clemmie.”

An indrawn gasp was her only comment. After a pause, he picked up the story. “Then I was caught. Ramping Billy had me, and not only that, he recognised me, because he was one of the men who had collected money from my father in the past, though not one of those who stripped my mother’s rooms. He took me back to Fortune’s Fool—at that time, it was his only establishment. He handed me over to the ladies who worked there.”

Chris could remember exactly what he said to them. “Wash him, delouse him, dress him in something that isn’t rags, and put him to work. We’re keeping him.”

“He told them to watch me, because I was light fingered. So they called me Fingers, and they still do. I never stole again, though.”

He shuddered at the memory of the hungry, terrifying year from which Billy had saved him. He’d been well aware of his fate if he were caught, and scared every time he lifted something.

And it had been made clear that if he was caught stealing from Billy or any of his employees or customers, he’d be out on his ear again. By that time, he’d been a street rat for long enough to know how lucky he had been the first time. Being beaten and stripped was far from the worst fate to befall a handsome boy alone in the stews of London.

“So that is why they call me Fingers, and that is why, between your father and Billy, I’ll take Billy every time. He is a villain, Clemmie, I’ll grant you that. But he’s an honest villain.”

“Whereas my father is a dishonest upright citizen. I accept your point, Chris.”

She was not yelling for her maid and stalking off in outraged disgust. That was a bonus. Instead, she seemed to have decided on an interrogation. “Do you gamble?”

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A rescue in WIP Wednesday

The first pages of The Secret Word, for your reading pleasure.

If the lady had let go of her reticule, Christopher Satterthwaite might never have met her. A sensible person would have let Dasher Baggins take off with the scrap of lace and whatever was inside it. A sensible person would not have made a fuss in a street like this, where the law-abiding denizens knew better than to stand in the way of a villain, and where the villains would swarm like sharks at the hint of a victim.
A sensible person would not be in this street to begin with, not looking like a sweet and expensive confection in laces and silks, and certainly not screeching at the top of her voice, hanging on to her reticule for dear life, and beating the thief around his ears with her parasol.
Chris, who was mostly law-abiding, knew better than to interfere, but he couldn’t help himself. He closed the distance between himself and the little tableaux—outraged maiden beats off cheeky rascal—in a fast walk, designed not to attract more attention than he could help.
“Let go, Dash,” he told the boy. “She’s with me.”
“Aw, Fingers,” Dasher whined. “Don’t know what she’s got in there, but it must be worf somefing, way she hangs on.”
“My mother’s miniature, and you shan’t have it,” said the lady, who held her parasol ready but had at least stopped using it to beat Dash with. The poor lad should stick to mud larking. He was not a good thief.
“Get lost, Dash,” Chris told him, and flipped him a farthing.
Dash let go of the reticule to catch the coin, and then demonstrated the reason for his nickname, dashing off through the crowd.
“You should have held him while I called a constable,” proclaimed the lady.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Miss, but constables don’t come down here,” Chris replied. Up until now, he had been speaking street cant, or just far enough above it that Dash was comfortable, but now he changed accent and vocabulary to talk to the lady in a way she would respond to. A cut above hers, in fact, for her vowels were not quite as nasal nor her consonants as crisp as Chris’s grandfather’s. “It is too dangerous,” he elaborated. “Too many villains.”
The lady huffed with displeasure, setting the ruffles on her bodice quivering. “One would think there would be fewer villains if the constables did come down here.”
“Or fewer constables,” Chris argued.
She blinked at him as she absorbed the point, then huffed again. “I should not be here. I must have got turned around. Can you direct me to Meadow Court?”
“You do not want to go to Meadow Court,” Chris told her. If Bleak Street did not eat her up and spit her out, Meadow Court would swallow her whole. And there’d be no spitting her out, either.
The lady’s huff was more of a snort. “I decidedly do, sir,” she insisted.
“”Shall I tell you what will happen if you make it as far as Meadow Court?” Chris asked. It was a rhetorical question. “First, you shall be robbed of everything you have, including the clothes you stand up in. Then one of two things will happen to your naked person, depending on whether you fall into the hands of an organised gang or just a mob of the hopeless.”
He fell silent and watched to see how she would react. Not as expected. Her eyes widened—they were a lovely shade of blue. Her cheeks paled. So far, quite predictable. But then she pressed her coral-pink lips together and gave a sharp nod, as if she had presented herself with a compelling argument.
“Nonetheless, sir, I have an errand in Meadow Court that will not wait.”
“An organised mob will sell you to a brothel, where they will auction your virginity then put you to work servicing their clients until you drink yourself to death or die of an unspeakable disease,” Chris told her.
She paled still further. Not such an innocent that she did not know what he meant, then. “Nonetheless,” she repeated, but her voice shook.
“A mob will not bother with the brothel,” he continued, determined to make her change her mind. “And you will die of what they do to you.” He could not bear to describe it further, did not even what to think of her intimately assaulted by one brute after another, screaming for help that never came, dying in agony of body and soul.
“Nonetheless.” It was little more than a whisper, and she was so pale he thought she might faint.
“Why?” he asked. “What is so important that you are willing to die for it—die, most likely, without accomplishing it?”
She narrowed her eyes at him, considering. “I have no reason to believe you, sir,” she said. “All I know about you is that you belong so well to this street, in which you say everyone is a villain, that thieves do your bidding. Ama— My friend would not have written asking me to come to Meadow Square if it was as dangerous as you say.”
“I said the place had too many villains,” Chris pointed out. “Not that I am one. As it happens, I am not, but you have a point. We do not know one another. Please allow me to introduce myself.” He bowed. “I am Christopher Satterthwaite. And you are…?”
She curtseyed in response to his bow, “Clementine Perkins.”
“Miss Perkins, I cannot know what your friend had in mind—you are sure it was in her hand? But have you considered she might have been threatened or tricked.”
“Why?” Miss Perkins’ asked. “Why would someone bother?”
Chris had recognised her name and he knew the answer to that. Perkins was a common enough name, but combined with Clementine? She was the coal heiress, beyond a doubt, and her father was one of the richest mine owners in the United Kingdom.
Something about the way Miss Perkins was not quite meeting his eyes hinted that she, too, knew the most likely reason criminals would attack her.
“Option three,” he replied. “You must have thought of it yourself, Miss Perkins. I would have mentioned it before, if we had been introduced earlier. Option three is ransom, though that doesn’t mean that other criminal groups will not prefer option one or option two.”
Oh-oh. He had grown up in places like this, and knew better than to allow her undoubted charms to keep him from scanning the street, looking for danger. But despite that, he’d been distracted.
He should have run as soon as the first of the three men arrived at the mouth of the alley that led to Meadow Court. He would be hard pushed to make it out of Bleak Street now that three of them were gathered.. He certainly could not manage it with Miss Perkins in tow.
There was really only one option. “Miss Perkins, there is someone I would like you to meet. Step this way, please.” He offered her his arm.
She put both of hers behind her back. “I do not think so, Mr Satterthwaite. If that is your name. You keep telling me not to trust anyone and then insisting I can trust you.”
They were coming. All three of the Brown brothers, and behind them, the rest of the gang. Cautiously, for this was Ramping Billy O’Hara’s street, and he’d not take kindly to the Brown brothers trespassing on his territory.
Chris sighed and pointed. “See those men, Miss Perkins?”
She caught sight of Basher Brown’s grin and let out a squeak of dismay. Wise girl! She moved closer to Chris.
“This way,” Chris told her. He took her hand, and led her at a run up Bleak Street. To her credit, she ran like a deer, but the Brown gang was in full pursuit behind, and everyone else was turning away, pretending that they saw nothing.