All of a character’s intimate interactions can help to display or develop character, and in some ways no one knows you better or can more easily push your buttons than your brothers and sisters (or cousins or other close relations that you grew up with.
In this week’s WIP Wednesday, I’m looking for an excerpt that shows your related characters in a scene where we learn something about them because of what they think or how they behave.
They had talked it over at length while still staying with Charlotte, and in the carriage on the way from Essex. At inordinate length.
Charity could not, would not stay in Selby’s cottage. She would go somewhere she was not known, and introduce herself as a widow, using another name. Mrs Smith, she said, for who was to find one Mrs Smith among thousands?
But how she and the children were to live was a problem. Prue would help, of course. She could double the allowance she was paying for Antonia’s care, would triple it if Charity would allow. Tolliver’s work paid well enough, and she had a little set aside.
Charity wanted to borrow Prue’s nest egg. She had some idea of setting up a milliner’s shop. Not in London, but somewhere that was cheaper to live and safer for the children. “Even you said I make beautiful hats, Prue,” she argued.
True enough, but running a business required more than an eye for fashion and an artistic touch with a needle. Prue didn’t want to see her savings disappear and leave Charity and the girls in a worse case than before.
“We need somewhere for you and the children while we think about how best to make your plan work,” she told Charity. “I know a lady who supports women in trouble such as yours. She may have a place.” Or she may never wish to speak to Prue again, in which case they would have to think of something else.
One thing Charity was determined on; Prue was not to ask Selby to support his daughters until they were somewhere he could not find them. “It is not as if he is going to give us any money, anyway, Prue. He barely gave us a thing when I thought I was his wife. Just a few pounds now and again when he visited. He paid the servants directly and is several quarters in arrears, Prue. Oh dear. Should I not pay them before I let them go?” Another problem for her to worry at until Prue was ready to leap screaming from the carriage with her hands over her ears.