the Marriage Mart

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Courtship rituals on WIP Wednesday

This is an excerpt from Maryanne and the Twelfth Knight, which is my story in the Bluestocking Belles seasonal collection A Christmas Quintet. Newsletter subscribers might remember this story–I’ve more than doubled it for this collection, but the essence remains the same. The father of the Versey family, who appear in various of my novels in A Twist Upon a Regency Tale, is not on the hunt for a bride.

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“Are all of your gowns the colour of mud?” Dell, fell into step beside Miss Beckingham and frowned at the offensive garment. It was a robe a l’anglaise, well made, well fitted, and not too distant from the current fashion. But it was all in shades of brown—although he supposed he had to conceded the cream of the underskirt and trim.
Dell would take it out and burn it if he could. If he had the dressing of her, he would pick jewel tones—a luminous setting for her porcelain skin and her dark curls.
“I thought you were playing bowls,” Miss Beckingham said. Scolded, rather. Her tone was discouraging, but she had known where he was. That must be hopeful, must it not?
“Your grace! Yoo hoo, your grace!” Bother. It was the sister, arm in arm with one of the other debutantes, both hurrying to catch up with him and Miss Beckingham.
“Were you looking for me, your grace?” Miss Lucette cooed, her smug smile suggesting she was certain of his answer.
“I was not, Miss Lucette,” he informed her, his irritation making his voice curt. “I was attempting to hold a private conversation with your sister, in fact.”
The girl gaped at him and then laughed as if he had made a joke. “Silly,” she commented. “Never mind. Miss Tollworthy and I will amuse you.”
Miss Beckingham took a step to the side to allow her sister to grasp his arm and Miss Tollworthy boxed him in on the other side. “I shall leave you, then,” Miss Beckingham said, her face suitably grave but her eyes dancing as they met his.
“You shall not,” Dell demanded. “Your sister requires your chaperonage.”
“Not when I am with you,” Miss Lucette cooed. “I am certain, your grace, that my Papa would have no objection to me strolling with you. And with Sarah, of course.”
Sarah Tollworthy giggled, which was her usual response to everything. In London, he had taken it for a pleasant nature, had perhaps that was true. But he was depressingly certain that another week of her giggles would drive him to homicide.
“Miss Beckingham?” Dell said. “If you abandon me now, I shall be forced to ungentlemanly measures.” He raised his eyebrows and gestured with his head in the direction of the lake. She fell into step beside her sister, and he gave an internal sigh of relief. He was not quite certain where he was with Miss Beckingham.
“I suppose you can come too, Maryanne,” Miss Lucette said, unwillingly.
Maryanne, Miss Lucette called her. A pretty name, and it suited her. Miss Lucette prattled and Miss Tollworthy giggled. Dell paid only sufficient attention to keep from committing to something he did not want to do. No, he did not think Miss Beckingham should take Miss Tollworthy back to the house to fetch a better bonnet. There would be shade enough under the trees, or alternatively, they could all go back together.
Yes, Miss Lucette’s gown was a pretty shade of blue, but no, he had not noticed that it matched her eyes.
No, he would not demand all of Miss Lucette’s dances at this evening’s New Year’s Ball. He must leave some dances for the other gentlemen, and besides, Miss Lucette needed to make allowances for his extreme age.
Miss Lucette assured him that he was not to mind being old. She thought older gentlemen were more interesting, and besides he was very fit, even if he must be all of forty.
Miss Beckingham was struck by a fit of coughing and Dell stopped to wait for her to recover, but every time she caught his eye she collapsed again, stuffing both hands over her mouth and coughing until the tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Really, Maryanne,” said Lucette. “I hope you are not unwell.”
“I must have accidentally swallowed something,” Miss Beckingham managed to say. “An elderly insect, perhaps.”
Minx.

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Fish out of water on WIP Wednesday

Part of the fun of writing is to put your characters into situations they don’t much like, and no one is more fun to torture than a hero who is usually in charge. Do you have an excerpt where your character feels like a fish out of water or the fox in a hunt? Please share in the comments. Here’s mine, from the beginning of To Tame a Wild Rake. It follows on from the piece I used a couple of weeks ago.

“Do not leave my side,” he whispered to Jessica, sternly.

She grinned up at him. “You already threatened the loss of half my dress allowance if I do.”

“Make it the whole dress allowance,” he growled, but she treated the threat with the contempt it deserved, and giggled. He’d never been able to resist any of his half-sisters, and had been putty in Jessica’s hands since she arrived in the nursery, a little infant, too thin for her age and too weak to do more than grizzle. He had put his finger into her little fist, and she had gripped it firmly, smiled at him, and made him her besotted slave from that moment.

“I mean it, Jessie. For your own reputation, even if you don’t care about feeding me to the harpies.”

Her smile slipped and became brittle. “My reputation was ruined before I was born. We cannot all be as fortunate as Matilda, Aldridge.”

He couldn’t help his wince, though the guilt was not his. Though no one risked the wrath of the Duchess of Haverford by shunning the sisters or gossiping in public, everyone knew her three wards were the base-born and unacknowledged daughters of the Duke of Haverford. As soon as Aldridge was duke, he intended to repair what he could, and acknowledge them. It wouldn’t satisfy the high sticklers, but it should help Jessica, and later Frances, to find a match.

At least his eldest sister, Matilda, was now happily married, her husband willing to ignore the scandal for love’s sake.

Jessica ignored his reaction, her mind on her own thoughts. “I will protect you, though, if only because I don’t want to live with a harpy.”

I should choose a wife and be done with it. Without his volition, his eyes scanned the room until he saw her. He had known she must be here; the hostess was, after all, her cousin. The musicale was a benefit to provide medical services in one of the poorest parts of London, or at least to provide the rental for rooms and a salary for a doctor. Lady Ashbury was rumoured to be a healer, and was certainly patroness of the proposed doctor’s clinic.

Lady Charlotte Winderfield sat with her sister, the pair of them somehow an island of serenity in the sea of ferment that was Society at its endless posturing.

“Lady Charlotte won’t have you,” Jessica observed. He glanced down into hazel eyes very similar to his own. She touched his hand. “She swears she will never marry, Aldridge. She has refused every offer, and resisted even when her father and grandfather tried to bully her.” A fact Aldridge well knew, since he had made one of the earliest of those offers, and reluctantly withdrawn it when he discovered the pressure she was under to accept.

He pulled back over himself the cover of the insouciant ducal heir. “There are others who may suit. But I am in no rush to put on shackles, Jessie. “ Not that he could fool Jessica with the part any more than he had deceived Lady Charlotte. She had been able to see through his mask since they first met. She had still been a child in the schoolroom, only fifteen. He had been twenty-seven and sozzled to the gills, nearing the end of three months of drinking and wenching that had failed to dull the edges of a loss he still shied away from considering.

He had known from the first time she scolded him for allowing his pain to make him stupid that he wanted her for his duchess. But by the time she was old enough to court, she’d grown past the friendship they’d forged that long-ago summer, and learned enough about him to reject him out of hand.

He needed to accept his dismissal like a gentleman. But that didn’t stop his yearning.

“They are about to start,” he pointed out to his sister. “Shall we find a seat?”

Lady Ashbury had hired professional musicians to entertain her guests, which was both good and bad. Good, because he didn’t have to suffer through the mediocre performances of debutantes hawking their accomplishments. Their proud mothers must all have cloth ears, or perhaps they hoped that some patron of the musical arts might marry one of them just for the right to forbid them from every playing or singing in public again.

Bad, because the dullards in the audience saw no need to pay the performers the courtesy of their attention, and insisted on chattering the whole way through.