Snowy and the Seven Blossoms

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Poison and other google searches for murderous authors

When I needed a commonly available poison that would put my Snow White into a death-like state, the internet came to my rescue, telling me that even small doses of hemlock caused paralysis. Even today, the treatment for hemlock poisoning is artificial support for breathing and heart until the paralysis wears off.

So then I had to find out about what we in my youth called mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and (as it turned out) the Georgian era called expired-air ventilation (EAV). Medical history reports the use in 1732, when a surgeon at Alloa, Scotland, successfully used mouth-to-mouth to resuscitate a miner who was, to all appearances, dead.

There are other intriguing references going back over millennia that might have been mouth-to-mouth, but certainly, the practice became better known in the 18th century after the Alloa surgeon wrote his account.

The first humane society to promote artificial respiration was established in Amsterdam in the middle of the century, and was followed by others, first promoting EAV, and later the use of inflating bellows. Mouth-to-mouth, however, continued to be something any bystander could do.

So there it was. All I had to do was make apple pies my Snow White character’s favourite treat, and Bob’s your uncle [1].

Snowy ate the hemlock-laced apple pie and dropped down apparently dead. His Princess Charming gave him the kiss of life. It’s a classic!

Bob’s your uncle, for those not familiar with British slang, mean’s “job’s done” and is used at the end of a simple list of actions.

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Friends on WIP Wednesday

Whether it is fellow wallflowers, the other men at the club, old schoolfriends, or comrades in arms, the group of friends with whom our protagonists discuss–or refuse to discuss–their love life is rightfully a staple of historical romance. Here’s an excerpt from my current WIP.

By the time Arial arrived, with Regina in tow, Aunt Aurelia was up. Margaret had not expected to see her, since she normally breakfasted in bed and she was still sulking about Mr White. However, her maid must have mentioned that Margaret’s friend was expected, and so the four of them sat down for a polite cup of tea.

As Margaret poured the tea, Regina said, “I trust your cold is improved.”

Aunt Aurelia had the grace to look a little shame-faced. “I am perfectly well today, thank you.”

Margaret could not resist a small poke of revenge. “Her Grace was pleased to meet Mr White. She invited him to call on her.” She passed her aunt a cup of tea, made the way she preferred it.

Aunt Aurelia sniffed. “The Duchess of Winshire raised her husband’s base-born daughters and married a Persian. One must respect her position and her breeding, of course, but not necessarily her judgement.”

A glance at Arial and Regina showed they were trying not to laugh. Margaret gave Arial her cup.

Margaret could argue that the Duke of Winshire was as English as Aunt Aurelia, but it would be of no use. Her great aunt’s views on the class system and the superiority of the English nobility were rigid and lofty, as she proved with her next remark.

“Mr White is not of our kind. Add to that, one suspects, from his appearance, that he is an irregular connection of the house of Snowden, and I am disappointed in Margaret for lowering herself to encourage him. As I told her, Lady Stancroft, it will not do her any good with her worthy suitors to be seen in that man’s company.”

As Margaret served Regina, she decided it was time to assert herself. “Thank you, Aunt Aurelia. You have made your opinion perfectly clear.  However, if any of my suitors were worthy of my attention, they would not be offended by my doing a favour for the man who saved my life.”

“Which he would not have had to do, Margaret, if you had not been in a place you should never have gone. But there. I do not know why I bother. You were a rebellious child and a foolish girl. You have become a stubborn woman. I am going to my rooms. Good day, Lady Stanbrook, Mrs Ashby.” She clattered her cup back into her saucer and flounced out of the room.

She was getting worse. Her criticisms and complaints had never been made in front of guests before. Margaret was going to have to retire her to the country and hire a companion.

“I apologise for that scene,” she said to her friends. She managed to keep her voice level, though her hand trembled as she lifted her cup.

“No apology needed,” Regina assured her. “You behaved with dignity, Margaret.”

“We are not responsible for the misbehaviour our relatives,” Arial agreed. “Do not worry about it, Margaret.”

Regina frowned. “Is it common for her to speak to you like that in front of guests? Or is it just that she knows we can be trusted?”

Regina voiced Margaret’s own concerns. “She has been becoming more querulous. I think it is time for her to retire. I hate to hurt her feelings, but such scolds in front of the wrong audience could…” She trailed off, quailing at the thought of such public embarrassment

“She could damage your reputation with a misplaced word,” Arial agreed. “People will believe she has cause for her comments.”

Margaret nodded. After a moment’s silence, she said, “I do not suppose that is why you called.”

Regina grinned at Margaret over her own cup. “We were both very impressed by your Mr White. He is…” she appeared to be searching the ceiling for a word.”

“Delectable,” Arial offered. “You have been holding out on us, Margaret. You told us that he was stern and borderline rude. You did not tell us that he was almost as beautiful as Peter.”

To Arial, no one was as handsome as her husband, and she had a point. Margaret had become accustomed to his appearance since she met him two years ago, but considered dispassionately, he was breath-taking.

“Mr White is certainly easy on the eyes,” she conceded. At the least.

“That is all you have to say?” Regina asked. “Margaret, darling, we watched you dance with him. Twice. You cannot tell me you are not attracted to him, and he to you. He could hardly take his eyes off you all night.

Really?

“She is blushing,” Arial told Regina.

“It is not like that,” Margaret insisted. “Yes, he is an attractive man, especially when he is not acting like a bear with a sore paw, but he is not interested in me in that way, and if he was, I could not possibly consider him as a suitor.”

Regina raised an eyebrow. “Because he is from the slums and perhaps base-born?” she asked.

“Those things matter, Regina,” Arial said. “You know they do, even if we all agree they shouldn’t. Margaret needs to think of her future children.”

“I have no idea where Mr White is truly from or what his intentions are in confronting the Snowdens,” Margaret told them. “That is why I cannot see him as anything more than a temporary escort. I cannot trust a man who keeps secrets from me. Not that he owes me an explanation. I am merely returning favour for favour.”

Arial sipped her tea while she considered that remark. “He is still delectable,” she said, decisively. “If nothing else, he makes a very attractive accessory to a lady in a ball gown.”

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Mirror, mirror on WIP Wednesday

Here’s my first Mirror Mirror scene in my Snow White reinterpretation.

A candle either side of the mirror lit Richard’s face and upper body without relieving the gloom behind him. The black of his evening wear merged with the darkness, leaving the planes of his face and the folds of his white cravat to swim against the shadows.

“It cannot be him,” he told his reflection. “He’s dead. He died nearly two decades ago. A boy of that age? A soft spoiled brat like that? And a pretty one? He could never have survived.”

The dark eyes of the reflection stared back. He thought he saw an ironic twitch of the eyebrow.

“Curse Matt. He was meant to kill the little horror and throw the body somewhere it would be found.”

Richard scowled and the reflection scowled back. The plan should have succeeded. With a body to grieve over, Madeline would have recovered. Richard could have charmed her into believing in him again. Instead, she insisted that the boy was still alive.

“She was meant to be mine.” He nodded his head once, decisively, and his reflection nodded back, agreeing with him. He had seen the pretty girl first, begun to court her. Then she met cursed Edward. The man with everything. His grandfather’s favourite. The heir. The golden boy.

Tonight’s imposter looked just like him. “It cannot be the boy. He’s a by-blow; that must be it. Perfect Edward’s base born brat.”

How he would like to tell Madeline that Edward had been diddling someone else. His teeth flashed white in the candle light at the thought of her likely reaction. His own pain, though, was greater. He had won her for such a short time, and then lost her. She blamed him for the boy’s disappearance, and in the end, he had to put her away where she could do no harm.

It wasn’t fair. Matt had ruined everything. The boy had ruined everything by biting his abductor’s hand, wriggling from his grasp, and running away to die anonymously in the mean streets.

Matt was dead and could not pay for his mistake. The boy, too, was dead. He must be.

The reflection raised an eyebrow. Of course. It was right. He must take his revenge on the imposter.

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First Kiss on WIP Wednesday

Just over half way through Snowy and the Seven Blossoms, and my hero and heroine have had their first kiss.

Mr Snowden, exhausted, had fallen into an uneasy sleep, and hardly stirred when a messenger arrived back from the House of Blossoms with clean linen and blankets to make the bed. A bag of clothing for Snowy, too, from which he produced a nightshirt for Mr Snowden.

Ash and Peter helped to move the patient from one side of the bed to the other so that Snowy and Margaret could make it, and then said their farewells.

“I’ll have my cook’s assistant sent over with breakfast makings tomorrow morning,” Peter said. “She’s competent to take over your kitchen until you can hire servants. I’ll send some maids, too, Snowy.”

“And I shall send a couple of maids, too, Snowy, and some footmen,” Ash added. “Are you ready to leave, Margaret?”

“Not yet, Ash. Have my carriage take you home and come back for me.”

Peter protested. “We cannot leave you alone with to two unmarried men, Margaret.”

“I won’t tell anyone if you will not,” Margaret retorted.

The two men exchanged glances and then inclined their heads in acceptance. When Snowy returned from seeing them out, he protested, too. “You cannot stay alone with me during the night, my lady. Tell me what I must watch for.”

“I am staying with my patient, Snowy. It is likely that it will take both of us to care for him tonight. If you have paper and ink, I shall write a note for my household and send it with the carriage when it returns.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but must have seen the determination in her eyes, for what he said was, “Whatever fate did I offend that independent-minded women beleaguer me at every turn?” But his eyes were warm when he said it.

It was a long night. Several times, Margaret and Snowy sponged Mr Snowden—Ned, as Snowy called him—to bring down his temperature. Snowy sang to him when he was restless, and Margaret soon learned the words and took her turn with the lullaby.

Every few minutes she dribbled water into his throat, and from time to time fed him willow-bark tea from a spoon.

Towards morning, the fever broke and he woke with sense in his eyes for the first time. “Hal! You came!” He looked around. “Lady Charmain! You are here, too? Where are we?”

“In a house of my own, Ned,” Snowy replied. “One I have only just purchased, so it is bit bare at the moment. But it has the advantage that no one will know where we are.”

“Ah.” It was a sigh of satisfaction as Ned’s eyes closed again. This time, his sleep was more settled.

“A natural sleep,” Margaret said, pleased.

Snowy took her hand. “You’ve done it, Lady Charmain. I am forever in your debt.”

As he bent forward, she turned her head and the kiss he perhaps intended for her cheek landed on her mouth, tentative and gentle. Margaret closed her eyes and leaned into the kiss. It had been a long time, and never like this—a leisurely exploration that beckoned and enticed.

It went on forever, and was over too soon.

A knock on the front door downstairs broke through the pleasant haze that absorbed Margaret, and Snowy, too, drew back. Margaret was pleased to see he looked as dazed as she felt, and, as he shuddered as he took a deep breath. “I’ll see to that,” he said.

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The plot thickens on WIP Wednesday

In this week’s WIP  extract, I tangle several different plot threads just a little more.

Margaret sat with her friends in the shade, sipping fruit juice and watching Peter, Ash, Deerhaven and Snowy on the lake with half a dozen other men, rowing two to a boat in heat after heat. The ladies had been out on the water, but when the men challenged one another to a race, they had asked to be set ashore on the island, where refreshments were set out in the temple-like folly.

“You like him, don’t you?” Regina asked Margaret.

“Which him?” Margaret asked, though she knew perfectly well that Regina was referring to Snowy.

“I do,” Arial said. “Peter does, too. He is not what we expected when you told us about allowing him to escort you, Margaret.”

Margaret dropped the pretence to pursue this more interesting topic.

“What did you think he would be like?”

Arial thought about it. “A lot rougher. Less concerned about your safety and your reputation.”

“After all,” Cordelia pointed out, “you did meet him in a slum alley just behind the brothel where he works. It was not a recommendation.”

Regina agreed. “We were concerned, but not now that we have met him.”

“He has been raised as a gentleman,” Margaret said. “In my experience, he is more of a gentleman than many you meet in Society.”

The other ladies nodded. “Lord Snowden for one,” Regina agreed. Snowden was watching them from the far shore. His son and young Deffew, his ward, were out on the lake, racing, but Snowden did not turn his stare away from the four ladies.

“The rumours say Snowden is not the viscount, that there is a lost heir. Is it Snowy, do you think? Is that what this display of Snowy’s is about?” Ariel asked.

“He hasn’t said,” Margaret told them. “But the way these rumours have appeared just when he chooses to go into Society—it is too unlikely a coincidence. I think he must be behind them. Lord Snowden must be rattled. He sent his son to tell me that Snowy was a charlatan, a fraud, and that I must cease seeing him immediately.”

Regina’s reaction was the same as Margaret’s. “The cheek!”

“Interesting, though,” Cordelia mused. “Have you told Snowy?”

A face on the other shore caught Margaret’s eye. It could not be… At this distance, it was impossible to be sure, but somehow, she was.

“Margaret?” Arial asked.

“Hmmm?” What had they been talking about? “No, I haven’t had the opportunity, yet.”

Her friends were looking at her with concern. “You have gone pale, darling.” Arial said. “Is something the matter?”

“Nothing,” she assured them. “I thought I saw someone I knew long ago. But I am sure I was wrong. He was some distance away, and I could not see the face clearly. Just the hair colour and the uniform.”

“Not the odious officer!” Arial exclaimed.

“The odious officer?” asked Cordelia.

Arial was the only one who knew quite how odious Martin had been, but the rest was not a secret. “A man who trifled with my heart during my first Season. I was too young to realise that his compliments were lies and his promises so much empty air. I am sure it cannot be him. As far as I know, his regiment is still posted overseas.” For years she had been checking the listings in the newspapers, hoping that he never sold out.

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Friends on WIP Wednesday

Coffee houses were popular meeting places

Friends are useful to a novelist–someone for a character to talk to about everything that’s bothering him or her. Or, if they’re not the talking sort, someone to prompt thoughts of what they’d like to talk about. In my current work in progress, Snowy and the Seven Blossoms, my hero has two close friends, both of them members of a group of investors that he founded.

Here they are, discussing railways. And then more.

The discussion continued even after the meeting was over and the other investors had left, the decision still on the table.

“Locomotives are unreliable,” Gary declared. Gaheris Fullerton was the first real friend Snowy had ever had, another scholarship student and one of the smartest men Snowy knew. The second son of a poor working family in the Midlands, he’d read law at Oxford and had overcome the disadvantages of his origins to complete his four years at an Inn of Court and be accepted to the Bar.

“If Murray and his ilk can overcome the difficulties with the steam locomotive, the canals are not going to be able to compete,” Drew countered. The fourth son of a duke, Lord Andrew Winderfield had been brought into the group by another investor because of his family owned a prosperous shipping company, but he’d soon become another friend. He was one of the few aristocrats Snowy trusted.

Gary scoffed. “A big if. Those machines are dangerous and unreliable. And too heavy. I’ve heard about the problem they’re having with the rails.”

Drew was adamant. “They’ll find solutions. And when they do, rail paths will be cheaper to build and much much faster than the canals. We should reject any canal project that will take more than ten years to recover costs.”

Gary was not convinced. “You think the collieries and others will prefer wagon rails to canals in less than ten years?”

“Some of the collieries do now,” Drew retorted. “Wales and Scotland are making great strides. My brother predicts that we’ll have them hauling passengers within a decade.”

Gary shook his head. “And who will want to ride in a carriage pulled by a locomotive? Not me, that is for certain.”

“What do you think, Snow?” Drew asked.

Snowy had been thinking about his own problem while the friends argued. “I’ll consider it between now and the next meeting,” he said.

His friends exchanged glances. “I don’t think he asked us to stay on after the meeting to debate the merits of locomotives,” Drew surmised.

“Out with it then,” Gary commanded. “The witness at the bar will present his testimony.”

Where to start? “I have learned something… unsettling.” Which was a hell of an understatement. Snowy’s world had been rocked on its axis. He focused on Drew. “You know a bit about where I came from, and what the Blossoms mean to me.”

Drew nodded. “Your foster mothers,” he said.

It was as good a description as any. “They gave me a present for my birthday. The true story of my origins. If it is true. The thing is, they would never lie to me, so they believe it. But it is just too fantastic.” He batted one hand at the air, as if he could knock away his own confusion.

“Go on,” Drew said, when he remained silent.

“No,” Gary protested. “Elucidate. If you are not Moses White, brothel bookkeeper and investor extraordinaire, who are you?”

Snowy’s huff of amusement was genuine. “I am, of course. But apparently, I started out as Henry Snowden, elder son of Edward Snowden, who was the third son of Richard, Viscount Snowden.”

His friend looked startled, though not as flabbergasted as Snowy himself.

“Lily and her sister Iris found me in an alley when I was six years old. I’d been stripped and beaten. They figured out who I was, and tried to return me, but my mother asked them to keep me, and to keep me hidden.”

Gary lifted his eyebrows. “Mrs Snowden suspected someone of trying to do away with you?”

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Different worlds meet in WIP Wednesday

My latest hero resides in a slum. Here’s the first part of the first scene of his book.

Seven Dials, London, April, 1819

“That there countess is back again,” Tommy reported. Pestiferous woman. Snowy had told her repeatedly that she risked her reputation as well as her life by venturing into the slums to visit the residents of a brothel.

Stubborn female. Had she not already found out that her high birth and fancy title would not protect her if some of the slime who polluted the streets she traversed decided to kill her fancy footmen and help themselves to a taste of noble flesh?

Snowy’s anger rose again at the thought of how they had met. He would never forget his first sight of the lovely young woman standing over her footman’s body and swinging a weighted reticule to keep six armed men at bay.

Snowy sent the boy back to his post in the entrance hall. He left his account books and locked the door of the office. He would escort her home again, once she had finished whatever errand of mercy brought her back to the House of Blossoms.

He sighed. If he had not brought her here for refuge after he rescued her, she would never have met his friends, never have begun bringing them herbal remedies from her still room. How did a countess become a gifted herbalist? No. He did not want to know. His only interest was in seeing the woman returned to her own world.

Blue, whose nickname was an ironic comment on his flaming-red hair, guarded the top of the stairs on the floor with the private apartments. He stood as Snowy approached. “Where is she?” Snowy asked.

Blue pointed along the passage to Lily’s suite, which took some of the wind out of his sails. If Lily herself had invited the aristocrat to visit, then Snowy’s objections were on shaky ground. The owner and mistress of the House of Blossoms had her reasons for everything she did, and would not have brought the countess here on a whim.

At his knock, Lily called for him to enter. “Snowy,” she said. “I am pleased you are here. You know Lady Charmain, of course.”

Snowy gave the lady his best court bow. “My lady.” Not only did Lily expect him to display the impeccable manners she had paid his tutors to beat into him, but it discomposed the Countess Charmaine, which was turnabout and fair play, for she had been discomposing him since the day he looked into her vivid blue eyes.