The Trials of Alaric, inspired by The Princess and the Pea, is now on preorder. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DJ9WB9WQ
The Princess and the Pea
Kissing on WIP Wednesday
I’ve just sent The Trials of Benedict back to the editor. It should be published in a couple of months, so I thought you might like a first kiss. Here you go.
Lady Stowell looked rather dazed, and well she might. Alaric had simply assumed she would comply and left her to choose between being the gracious lady he assured her she was, and showing herself to be self-centred and petty. “Well. Yes. They are such good causes, after all.”
They had arrived at the drawing room door.
Alaric bowed again, and Bea curtseyed. “Thank you again,” they chorused. Lady Stowell inclined her head, but one last thought made it all the way to her mouth before Alaric could head it off. “This means I will have to wait between contests. I shall not wait with servants and farm workers, Lady Beatrice. You cannot ask it of me.”
“Of course not, Lady Stowell,” Bea assured her. “My cousin Beverley has a tent set up just for you and the gentry. I shall ensure suitable refreshments are waiting for you.” Alaric had opened the drawing room door, and was holding it for the viscountess.
“Hmmph,” said Lady Stowell. “That will do, then. But I shall be expecting the schedule to be better organised for next year, mind.”
With that final word, she sailed into the drawing room and, in the moment before Alaric shut the door, Bea could hear her saying, “Dear Lady Claddach. And Lady Lewiston, too. How splendid to see you.”
“Will the schedule change for next year?” Alaric asked Bea.
“I should put her on the organising committee,” Bea grumbled, “and leave her to figure it out. Except we would very likely finish up without an organising committee.”
He touched her hand. “We achieved what we needed,” he pointed out. “Time enough to worry about next year after this year is over. Thanks to you, Bea. You were brilliant.”
“And you were charming,” she pointed out. “We make a good team, do we not?”
He leaned closer. “The best.” His eyes seemed to darken as his pupils expanded.
Had his mind gone to the same place as hers? There was a simple way to find out. “What are you thinking, Alaric?”
“I am wishing I could kiss you,” he admitted.
“Not here, where anyone might come upon us,” she replied. “Follow me.” Was she really going to do it? She was. She had been thinking about it for days, and they might not get another time when most of the servants and all the younger house guests were out of the castle, as well as Papa, Uncle Lewiston and the other gentlemen.
Just beyond the head of the stairs was a linen closet. No one would have any reason to enter it. It was perfect for their purposes. She opened the door and led Alaric inside, then shut the door behind them.
Shelves full of household linen, sorted by type, quality, size and colour, lined both sides. Light filtered in from the direction of the back wall, which had a high round window above a table for folding linen before putting it away and a basket for anything that required mending.
Bea turned to face Alaric. Now what? She hoped he knew what he was about, for she had never before been kissed.
“Are you sure?” he asked her, his voice husky. He was certain, it seemed, for he was holding his arms out to her.
She nodded as she stepped closer to him. His hands came to rest on her waist, and he gazed into her eyes. After a moment, she asked, “Are you going to kiss me?”
“I am,” he assured her. “I am just deciding where to start.”
Bea frowned. Surely one simply pressed ones lips to the lips of the other person. Was that not the whole point? But she had no time to ask, for he used one hand to persuade her head to one side and placed a kiss on her neck, just below her ear. A shiver ran down her neck and through her body.
He kissed her again, this time on her jaw, less than an inch from the first kiss, and followed along her jaw line. Not just kisses, either. He scraped his teeth over her skin then soothed it with his tongue. By the time his kisses reached the other ear, she was plastered against him, her knees too weak to hold her up.
Then he came back across her cheek and at last reached her lips. Now he would settle his mouth over hers, as she had seen men do with their wives or lovers when they thought themselves unobserved. Good. His ministrations so far had set her whole body tingling, and particularly her womanly core. She could not wait to find out what his lips felt like on hers.
But no. The rain of kisses continued. She tried to object, but could manage nothing beyond a moan. An indignant moan, but hardly a clear request for more. Still, he responded, settling his mouth over hers. It felt amazing, but she still needed something else.
He opened his mouth and ran his tongue along her lips. No. That wasn’t what she was waiting for. Not quite. Then, he nipped her lower lip with his teeth and she opened with a gasp. Alaric slipped his tongue into her mouth.
A long interlude of learning one another followed. When she pressed her tongue against his, he hummed with pleasure, and when she chased his tongue into his mouth, he hummed even more loudly, then he followed her back, and their tongues tangled and danced while his mouth moved and his hands held her firmly against his body, one in the middle of her back and one grasping her behind.
She had no idea how long they kissed. The need for more returned, more urgent than ever. Her breasts felt heavy and sore, and so did that area in her lower torso, between her legs.
Eventually, Alaric withdrew his mouth, sighed, and moved his hand from her buttock to her head, holding her in place while he rested his cheek against her hair. He was breathing heavily, she was pleased to note. She was panting, as if she had run from the castle to the beach.
She stood leaning against him, waiting for her breath to settle while all the thoughts that the kiss had driven from her head came crowding back into it.
“I must go,” she said at last. Her voice shook, and she was still not certain her knees would hold her up. “I do not know the time, but the girls setting out the food on the castle stall will be looking for me.”
“And the contestants for me,” Alaric admitted. “I ought to warn you it would have been a bad idea to remain here together, even if we could. That kiss…” He shook his head, slowly. “It was a promise of more, dearest Bea. And we cannot take more. Not without being wed. I would not dishonour you or your father. Not for the world.”
A promise of more. Bea had sensed that. And while her body was perfectly willing to explore that more immediately, her mind knew better. “It was a beautiful kiss,” she told him. “My first. I shall never forget it.” She stepped backwards and he dropped his arms and let her go.
He looked alarmed. “Your first? And I kissed you in a closet among the linens? You deserve better than that.”
“I think a kiss any better than that would kill me, Alaric,” she replied.
Earning a bride on WIP Wednesday
Painting by Joseph Appleyard -1947
I’m having fun with the trials my heroine’s father has set up. In The Trials of Aleric, my hero is one of seven men competing to win the hand of a considerable heiress, and a place at her side as consort when she ascends to the title of Lady of Claddach. One of the trials is to co-ordinate and supervise the yearly fete. Here’s my hero, whose job it has been to supervise the contests. One of the other suitors has changed the schedule without telling anyone, and Alaric must persuade the chief judge to change it back:
One hiccup followed another all morning. Alaric and Luke found themselves solving problems in every corner. Howard, who was managing the parish stalls and those raising money for other charitable purposes, complained that several visiting merchants had taken over more than their allocated space, squeezing into the space taken by the charities.
Meadowsweet, who was meant to be managing the merchants, instead wilted under their complaints and abuse, and the pair of them came looking for help.
Alaric borrowed a measuring stick from the estate carpenter and he and Luke went and remeasured each disputed space. The encroaching stall holders grumbled, but Luke glared at them and Alaric joked with them until the stalls were in their correct position.
A farmer bringing his prize rams into the animal pens managed to lose one between his cart and the pens. While he was searching for it, it found itself in a pen with another farmer’s ewes, and had covered two of them before the two owners chanced upon the activity.
The ram’s owner cried theft and the ewes’ owner cried assault.
“How did he get in the pen?” demanded the ram’s owner? “This blaggard opened the gate, that’s how!”
“He can’t keep track of his own ram, and now he accuses me of letting it into my ewes? Why would I want lambs from that old wreck?” The ewes’ owner enquired, plaintively.
“Old wreck? I’ll have you know that’s the finest ram on Claddach. The old blaggard is too mean to pay my fee, and that’s a fact. Why else would he bring ewes in heat to the fete?”
It took Alaric and Luke a while to calm the pair down and the incident wasn’t done until the ram had been dragged out of the pen and herded to its proper place. Neither Alaric nor Luke felt qualified to handle any repercussions from the stolen mating, so they told the men to put their dispute to one side in front of foreigners from the mainland, and, if they must, bring it up with Claddach’s steward after the fete.
The morning flew by, and Alaric was yearning for a pie, an ale, and a rest when the stable clock struck twelve. He was meeting Bea in half an hour. In fact, if he was to wash and tidy before he met Lady Stowell, he had better hurry.
He arrived still damp but clean, and Bea was already waiting for him in the courtyard. She didn’t make any more sense of it than Alaric, but at least they would both be thinking of it. And watching out for a tapestry or a painting with water in it.
“How are preparations going?” Bea asked, so Alaric told her about the ram. She immediately named the two farmers. “Those two are always trying steal a march on one another,” she explained. They will curse and call names and insist that they are going to see the magistrate, but next week they’ll be at it again. The advantage goes back and forth, and they entertain the entire island.”
Alaric laughed. “I wish I’d known that. Luke and I thought we might have a murder on our hands. How Luke will laugh when I tell him. And you, Bea? I suppose you have been as busy as we are, preparing for the guests tonight.”
Bea’s mother, Alaric had noticed, spent most of her time with the ladies her own age, and otherwise in retreat in her room. It was Bea who hurried from housekeeper to cook to butler to keep the castle running, and organising the dinner and the ball appeared to have largely fallen onto Bea, though she had some help from her aunt—her father’s sister, Lady Joan. Not her mother’s sister, who was Viscount Beverley’s mother.
“You seem to be doing it all yourself,” he observed.
“Reina and Christina have been a great help,” she assured him naming her two friends from the town. “So have Sarah and Ellie.” She chuckled. “And today we persuaded Dorrie and Lucy, my cousins, that it would be fun to make garlands to hang in the ballroom. The other girls are all there now, either making garlands or arranging flowers. Look, Alaric, I think that is the Stowell carriage now.”
Alaric could see it, just coming up the hill from the outer wall.
They had been strolling away from the carriageway along the wall, but they turned back to the gatehouse and hastened their steps so that they could go through the arch into the inner courtyard before the carriage arrived.
They were in place before the footman opened the door and put down the steps.
“Good day, Lady Stowell,” Bea greeted the lady. She was a little plump woman richly dressed in a silk afternoon gown, fussy with flounces. She wore a spencer despite the warmth of the day, and her face glowed with the heat, but she had not removed her bonnet, which, Alaric thought, must weigh a ton, given all the decoration that covered it.
“Who is that? Ah, it is Lady Beatrice. Good day, Lady Beatrice. I have come to have lunch with your dear mother. Are you here to take me to her? How sweet of you, dear.”
“Lady Stowell, may I present Alaric Redhaven? He is a guest in the castle, and is helping to organise the fete.”
Lady Stowell fixed Alaric with a shrewd eye. “One of the suitors, are you? Who is your father, boy?”
Alaric bowed. “The Earl of Elsmouth, ma’am.”
“You must be the scapegrace who was sent to Brazil because of a fight with his brother. Over a woman, wasn’t it? One hopes you have learned your lesson if you are competing for the hand of our Lady Beatrice. So odd of Lord Claddach. A competition! But I suppose, since you refused to go to let your mother and aunt present you, Lady Beatrice, you need to find a husband somehow.”