scandal and gossip

by

Tea with Arial

 

This is an excerpt post from Lady Beast’s Bridegroom, now on preorder on Amazon, and out on 16 February. My heroine Arial has been the victim of a scurrilous caricature campaign. Then our Duchess throws the weight of her approval behind Arial and her husband. (This is not a scene in which they have tea, but I like to imagine that she invited Arial to visit shortly after.) The scene begins with Peter showing Arial the caricatures.

Arial raised her eyebrows at the pictures and blushed at the indecent ones. She was inclined, though, to be optimistic about their likely impact. “They have gone too far, Peter.” She raised one of the worst and put it down again. “Our friends will be as indignant as you are, but even those who are mere acquaintances will recognize these as outrageous rubbish. The viciousness of the lies may work in our favor by garnering us the sympathy of Society’s leaders. After all, if people can be made outcasts on the basis of provable fictions, nobody is safe.”

Peter shook his head, doubtful. However, on the drive through Hyde Park and at the theater that evening, many people approached with invitations, compliments on Arial’s gown or her mask, and even outright statements of support. Even one of the patronesses of hallowed Almack’s sought them out to assure Arial that she would be sent tickets.

Then the Duchess of Winshire, one of society’s most influential matrons, cast the weight of her reputation on their side. She had one of her stepsons escort her to the Ransomes’ theater box, where she reminded Peter that she had known his mother. She further claimed to have kissed Arial when she was a baby. She took a seat next to Arial, in full view of the rest of the theater, chatting for several minutes.

When she stood to leave, she said, “You are doing the right thing, my dear Lady Ransome. Facing down these ridiculous calumnies is your best option. It is unpleasant, I know, and takes courage, but I and my friends have seen that you have plenty of courage and are of good character, besides.”

She held out her hand to Peter. “You have found yourself a treasure, Lord Ransome. Young ladies who are beautiful on the outside are common enough in Society. Young ladies who are brave, wise, and honorable are much rarer—and my friend Cordelia Deerhaven assures me your wife is all three.”

Peter bowed and mimed a kiss above the back of the duchess’s hand. “I am fully sensible of how fortunate I am, Your Grace. My wife is a delight to my eyes as well as a true friend and partner.”

“Good answer,” the duchess replied. “Come along, Drew. Your father will wonder what is keeping us.”

 

by

Scandalous gossip on WIP Wednesday

In today’s excerpt, my heroine’s step-son gets into a fight at university, and is sent down.

In the drawing room, Geoffrey prowled while the tea makings were brought in. When the maids had left the room, Regina patted the seat beside the couch.

“Come and sit down, my darling.”

Geoffrey straightened. “I would prefer to stand, Mother.”

Regina inclined her head. “As you wish.”

“The short story is that I was sent down for fighting. I – Ah – broke someone’s jaw. That’s why I have no money. I gave it all to pay for the doctor and for the nurse who was going to look after him while he recovers.” Geoffrey swallowed, and shuffled from one foot to the other.

Regina waited. Let him tell his story in his own words, and then ask questions.

After a moment or two, Geoffrey took a deep breath and continued. “The Chancellor said that was part of my punishment for resorting to brute violence instead of using my brain. He told me to go home until my hand healed, and to talk to you about what Richard Deffew said.” He sat down like a puppet with its strings cut, flopping any old how into a chair.

“Richard Deffew?” Regina commented. “That would be the gentleman whose jaw you broke, I take it.” Mr David Deffew had mentioned having a nephew at Cambridge.

Geoffrey nodded. “Although he is no gentleman, Mother. I did not mean to hurt him so hard, although he deserved it.”

Regina remembered the threats David Deffew made when he tried to coerce her into an elopement all those years ago. She had a good idea of what he might have said to spark Geoffrey’s temper. Her boy was generally easy-going and slow to anger, but his wrath burned hot when it did erupt. She took a deep breath. Best to know what was said, before she at last told Geoffrey the truth of his origins.

“What exactly did Deffew say?”

Geoffrey blushed. “I won’t repeat his foul words, Mother. But in essence, he said you are my mother in truth, and you were married off to Father — Gideon Paddimore — because you were ruined beyond recovery, and he was your father’s…” He hesitated, looking for a word. “Your father’s intimate friend.” His blush burned deeper.

Regina raised her eyebrows. She had expected Gideon’s reputation to be called into question, but not her own. “I had just turned fifteen when you were born,” she pointed out. “Rather young to be steeped in sin.”

“Yes,” Geoffrey said, but the relief in his tone indicated that the accusation had bothered him. “I knew he was lying, especially when he said Uncle William must be my father because I look so much like him.”

Regina’s eyebrows shot up further. “That would have made him a very precocious twelve-year-old,” she said. “To set the record straight, Geoffrey, I did not give birth to you, and William is not your father.” She paused, wondering how to broach the truth.

Geoffrey gave her an opening. “Do you know, Mother? Who my real mother and father were, I mean. Only, I do look like Uncle William.”

Regina took a deep breath. Gideon, I wish you were here. “You know that we always told you that your father took you into his arms, his heart, and his life when you were a few hours old.” She held out a hand that trembled rather more than she wished.

Geoffrey took it. “Yes, and you did the same when I was two years old and you married Father.”

“I did,” Regina agreed, and continued with what she needed to say. “Gideon was there that day because, when the mother who gave birth to you died shortly afterwards, the midwife sent for her lover.”

Geoffrey’s hand gripped hers and his eyes burned. “My father.”

Regina nodded. “Your father. Gideon was with him when he got the message. Your father was married, Geoffrey. He could not take you home, he refused to put you into an asylum, and he was reluctant to leave you to paid care. But Gideon had already, as he told you, taken you into his heart. He claimed you as his ward, and from that moment on, you were his son and everything but blood.”

Geoffrey’s focus was on the man who had given him up rather than the one who had taken him in. “Did my real father want nothing more to do with me?” he asked, a tremble in his voice.

“He visited you often, my darling, until the day he died when you were only two years old.” Regina had given Geoffrey a handful of clues, but he still didn’t put them together.

“Father told you all of this.” It was a statement, not a question.

Regina nodded again. “Certainly. Once we had agreed to marry.”

by

Scandal on WIP Wednesday

Horse and riderBy 1 May, I need to have finished the first draft of my novella for the Bluestocking Belles’ next holiday box set. I’ve made a start, posted below. The story (The Bluestocking and the Barbarian) features a hero whose very existence, let alone his courtship, is a scandal to the English ton.

So post me an excerpt about scandal, and share with us all.

“Limp,” James Winderfield said to his horse. “Limp, my lovely, my treasure, my Jewel of the Mountains.”

Seistan obeyed his master’s hand signals, and limped heavily as they turned through the gates of the manor, and began 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 father had commanded him to marry before his grandfather the duke died of the disease that consumed him, and Lady Sophia was the other half of his soul. He had felt the connection on his third day in England, when they first met, and nothing since had changed his mind. Surely he was not imagining that she felt it too?

On the other hand, Lady Sophia’s brother had threatened to beat him like a dog if he approached either of the Belvoir ladies. The house was owned by his father’s greatest enemy: the man who was challenging James’ legitimacy in the House of Lords. 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. And Lady Sophia had told him that neither she nor her sister Felicity wished to speak to him.

Her eyes spoke for her, though, finding him as soon as he entered a room, and following him until he left. Blue-grey 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 slender. They preferred dolls, like her sister, and Sophia was no doll.

The family needed him to marry a strong woman, one with family ties to half the peerage of this land they somehow belonged to, though he had first seen it four months ago; one who was English beyond question and English nobility to her fingertips.

James needed to marry Sophia. When their eyes first met, as he handed her the child he’d rescued from the path of a racing curricle, the shock of their connection had nearly knocked him from his horse. Him. Who had been riding before he was weaned! And then to find 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 Seisten who reacted to his master’s hesitation with a nervous sideways shuffle.

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

Beat him and cast him out, but from what he’d heard 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 carriage way, 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 leave his horse to the servants while he consolidated his position.

But if they turned him away, he might need to remove himself at speed, Seistan’s limp disappearing as fast as it appeared. Besides, in the Turkenstan mountains 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.