Secret Child

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Meeting the in-laws on WIP Wednesday

And so, as The Night Dancers goes to beta, I have begun An Unpitied Sacrifice.

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Chapter One

London, 1816

In the street outside of the elegant townhouse, Valeria Izquierdo checked the address. The sheet of paper had suffered since her husband gave it to her on their wedding night, five years ago. Stains marred the surface, one corner was torn away, and the folds were worn and beginning to come apart. It was still precious to her, not just for the address, which she had memorized long ago, but because it was a witness to Harry’s care for her—almost the only one to survive the intervening years.

“Take this and keep it safe,” he had said. “If anything happens to me, go to my father. He will welcome you for my sake.”

But would he? Valeria owed it to Harry to put it to the test, but she was not confident that either she or Ricci would find the promised welcome. And if she had no doubt that Ricci deserved recognition and a place, she was not so certain about herself.

That was the reason she had come on her own, leaving her children and her companions at the lodgings her English agent had found. If she was turned away at the door, at least she would be the only one to know and to suffer.

Perhaps, after all, Valeria should have written. But letters are far easier to ignore than callers, and besides, how could she explain the past five years in a letter?

Indeed, how could she explain it at all? Which was why she was dithering in the street like an idiot. What would those who had nigh worshipped El Phantome say if they could see her now? What would her current followers say, come to that?

It was the last consideration that allowed her to break the paralysis that kept her hesitating in the street. She could not ask the women with her to approach the families of their husbands or lovers when she was not prepared to make such a move herself.

Five paces brought her to the steps that led to the front door. Ten of them, bridging a kind of small dark courtyard set into the ground and surrounded by a fence. As she looked over the rail, a maid with a basket came out from the house from the basement below and set off up a flight of steps that brought her up to street level, where she opened a hitherto unseen gate in the fence and turned set off down the street.

Two more steps, and then knock on the door, she commanded herself.

The knocker was in the form of an ugly little man. Ricci and Marie-Therese would love that. She lifted the ring that the little man held in his oversized hands, and dropped it again to strike the brass plate below. Knock, knock, knock.

And wait.

But she had not taken more than a couple of breaths before the door opened. The man who opened the door stood in the entrance way, ensuring she could not enter. He had the air of an upper servant of some kind. “May I be of assistance, Madam?” he enquired.

Valeria had come prepared with a small rectangle of pasteboard, according to the English custom. She had written her name on it. Both her own name—Señora Valeria Eneco Izquierdo—and Mrs. H. Redepenning, for the English had the custom that a woman took her husband’s name upon marriage.

“Please ask Lord Redepenning if he will see me,” she said the butler, handing him the card.

She was permitted inside, to stand in the entry hall, still wearing her bonnet and coat, while the butler went up the stairs to discover the wishes of the master of the house. It was a lovely space, with furniture that was not new but that had been lovingly dusted and polished so that it gleamed with a rich patina. The carpet and the matching stair runner were likewise a little worn but clean and richly covered. On one wall, a large mirror in a gilt frame reflected light around the hall and made it seem larger.

A large vase of fresh flowers stood on a table under the mirror, adding a light floral high note to the atmosphere.

The butler came back down the stairs almost immediately. “His lordship shall see you, Madam.” He gave a shallow bow. “May I take Madam’s bonnet and coat?” Once he had placed the items on a polished brass coat stand near the door, he led her up the stairs.

On the landing for the next floor, he turned right and opened the nearest door. “Your visitor, my lord,” he said.

Perhaps he does not want to mangle my Basque surname nor give me the family’s surname when I have not yet been accepted.

The man stepped out of Valeria’s way, and she walked into the room where her husband’s father waited.

She knew him immediately. Both of the men who stood up when she entered were relatives of Harry’s—that was clear at a glance. Both had the striking blue eyes. The older gentleman must be Baron Redepenning, her father-in-law. He was still vigorous and handsome, and his eyes were as striking a blue as her husband’s. However, his hair had faded with age to a sandy-brown rather than her husband’s guinea-gold, and also receded from his forehead.

His well-lined face had the heavier look around the jaw of a man approaching old age, and his figure was also somewhat stouter than his son’s. He still had the carriage of the soldier she knew him to be. He held a general’s rank, though when she asked for him at the Horse Guard yesterday, she had been told he was retired.

He inclined slightly toward her in a bow and smiled in welcome.

The other man’s hair was still bright gold. No smile here. His blue eyes were hard with suspicion, and his brows were drawn together in a frown.

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How to be a child in Regency England

Today, I welcome Quenby Olsen to the blog, to talk about her research into Regency childhood. Over to you, Quen.

While writing The Firstborn (a story that features a very chubby, very assertive infant named George) I fell down the frequent rabbit hole of research about how babies and children were regarded in the nineteenth century. The fact that stood about above everything else? If you were a child born in Regency-era England, then your childhood was most likely remarkably different from only one generation before you.

In the eighteenth century, the prevailing belief about children was that they should be treated (and be expected to behave) as miniature adults. The advice we hear today, to let kids be kids? Not something you would have heard in the early Georgian-era of powdered wigs and telling French peasants to eat cake. But round and about the turn of the nineteenth century, there was a tremendous change in not only how children were brought into the world, but how they were raised.

Obstetricians began to take the place of midwives, and women were encouraged to “lie in” for at least a month after giving birth, taking on help from neighbors and family. Many households still sent their young children off to be cared for by wet nurses from about the age of three months (poorer households would most likely not have this option) presumably to give the mother freedom to re-enter society and also to bring about the ability to have more children quickly. (Jane Austen, for instance, was sent to live with another family from the age of three months to two years. As dire as this sounds, she was visited by one or both of her parents every day. Though this practice was looked down on by the generations immediately followed.)

The tight, constraining swaddling of an infant that had been the norm in the eighteenth century was pushed aside in an effort to give babies more freedom of movement. Swaddling had also been used in an effort to keep babies calm and quiet, as if the crying of a child was a bad thing. In the nineteenth century, adults began to understand that crying was a normal part of infancy and childhood, often a result of the baby and child still learning how to express themselves.

Play and games were encouraged as being essential towards a child’s development, and children’s clothing reflected these changing attitudes. While babies were kept in long gowns to keep them warm, as soon as they reached the age of crawling and walking, they were placed in “short clothes” to give their chubby little legs room to maneuver. Pudding caps were used as well, a slightly padded helmet, of sorts, to help prevent the bumps and bruises that came with learning to walk and run and jump. (And just when you thought overprotective parenting was a modern invention…)

Children were also drawn tighter into the bosom of the family, and many households all ate their meals together rather than keeping the children separate with a nursemaid round the clock. The belief was that they would better learn to socialize and grow into better adults by seeing the behavior of their elders and to “practice” with them. But it had the added benefit of keeping the family together and letting the parents and children play a larger part in each other’s lives.

By the age of eight is when things would begin to change in the child’s life. If you were a boy, your education went into overdrive. Being sent off to school, the hiring of a tutor, or being sent to learn from the local parson were all popular options. Girls, on the other hand, were more likely to be kept at home for their education (especially as a girl’s education consisted of things like needlework, painting, music, and less history, science, and languages than their brothers). A governess would often be added to the household staff (though we all remember Lady Catherine De Bourgh’s horror at discovering that all five Bennet daughters were raised without the aid of a governess).

As the nineteenth century moved forward, the role of motherhood and the importance of children being children only progressed further. A short while after the Regency period, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert arrived, two people who both reportedly doted on their children (all nine of them!) and all while running an empire. Now, nearly two centuries later, it is remarkable how many things have changed, and yet how with the upswing in popularity of cloth diapers and midwives and ensuring that kids have ample time to play, just how many things have remained the same.

The Firstborn

Sophia has sacrificed everything for her younger sister, Lucy. She has removed them from the only home they ever knew, taken on the care of Lucy’s illegitimate son, George, and even assumed the role of a widow and mother in order to erase all hint of scandal from the boy’s birth. But rumor continues to follow them like the darkest of clouds, and Sophia must adapt to her new existence as a false widow with no prospects beyond the doors of her small cottage.

Lord Haughton will stop at nothing to prevent the slightest whiff of disgrace from tainting his family’s name. When he learns of his younger brother’s latest indiscretion-one that leaves a bastard child in his wake-Haughton rushes across the country to offer the boy’s mother a comfortable living in exchange for her silence about the child’s true parentage. But he arrives only to have his generous offer thrown back in his face by Sophia Brixton, a sharp-tongued and sharper-witted woman who proceeds to toss him out of her house. But just because he is banished from her home does not mean he is so easily banished from her life.

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Excerpt:

Finnian shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Up to this point, nothing had transpired in the way he’d imagined it would. And as for Sophia, she was too blunt, and too intelligent. And that was what worried him most.

He gestured towards the recently vacated table. “Will you be seated?”

Her shoulders pressed back. “I’ll stand, thank you.”

He cleared his throat. She was not going to make this easy for him. A point for her, since he doubted she had any idea what had brought him all this way. “The child—”

“George,” she said, interrupting him. “His name is George, after our father.”

“Of course.”

“No,” she spoke again, while his next words still danced on the tip of his tongue. “Not ‘of course’. Such a phrase denotes your being aware that our father’s name was George, or knowing what type of man he was and why we would choose to honor him in such a way. But here you are, darkening my doorstep nine months after his birth. A fact which proves to me that either you didn’t know about him before now, or you simply didn’t care.”

He inclined his head, yet dared not take his eyes off of her, not for a second. “My apologies. I assure you it was the former, and as soon as I discovered that my brother had a son—”

“And where is your brother? And why are you here in his stead?”

Finnian could feel his temper beginning to rise. Never before had he allowed himself to show anger in front of a woman, and yet she was the most infuriating creature he’d ever encountered. “He is in London. I assume.”

“You assume?” To his surprise, her mouth broke into a smile and a soft laugh emanated from the back of her throat. “In other words, you have about as much sway over the life of your brother as I have over my sister.”

“I’m not here to discuss my family,” he said, his voice taking on a note of warning he hadn’t even intended to be there.

“Oh, but I’m sure you’re here with the sole purpose of discussing mine. Or am I wrong?” A flash in her eyes countered the steel in his voice. “The mere fact that you’ve arrived today with a prior knowledge of not only both our names, our location, George’s existence, and no doubt a myriad other trivial items concerning our past and present life tells me that you’ve gone to great lengths to find out all you could before traveling here from…” She waved her right hand in a vague circle. “… wherever you call home. Which means, no doubt, that you wanted the upper hand in this discussion. Which also means that I will most likely not care for whatever it is you’ve come to tell me.”

Finnian fumed in silence. If the baby’s mother was even half as maddening as the woman standing before him, he wondered how David had survived with his manhood and his sanity intact. “I had come here with the intention of speaking to the mother of my brother’s child,” he ground out between clenched teeth.

“But she is not here,” she said, delivering the confession with the precision of a wielded weapon. “And she is not like to be anytime soon. And since your appearance here is most likely connected with George, then you will have to make do with speaking to me.”

Meet Quenby Olsen

Quenby Olson lives in Central Pennsylvania where she writes, homeschools, glares at baskets of unfolded laundry, and chases the cat off the kitchen counters. After training to be a ballet dancer, she turned towards her love of fiction, penning everything from romance to fantasy, historical to mystery. She spends her days with her husband and children, who do nothing to dampen her love of the outdoors, immersing herself in historical minutiae, and staying up late to watch old episodes of Doctor Who.

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