the Return of the Mountain King

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Villains on WIP Wednesday

I’ve been having fun with the last surviving villain from the group of them that have hounded my Haverfords, Redepennings, and Winshires through a dozen books. My WIP excerpt today is from Paradise at Last, the last novella in Paradise Triptych, which I plan to publish in March. My Duchess of Haverford puts her trust in the wrong employee. Please share an excerpt that includes your villain. Just pop it in the comments.

“How could you, Marigold?” Eleanor asked her former secretary. Not that she had fired the treacherous female, but conspiring with a criminal to disable her servants and abduct Eleanor herself was surely tantamount to a resignation.

“I am merely seeking a better position, Your Grace,” Marigold sneered. “One your money will buy me.”

“Us,” said her collaborator. “You will buy us a future, Ellie. Do your friends call you Ellie? Your son took everything I have and you owe me. My first idea was to kill you, Haverford’s wife, and all three of his sisters. Let him feel what I felt when he took everything away from me.”

He slipped his arms around Marigold from behind and fondled both her breasts. She tipped her head back, and he bent to kiss and then lick her neck, which made the girl groan.

Marigold surrendered utterly to the sensual spell the boy wove, but he was watching Eleanor the whole time, his eyes cold and alert.

She gave no reaction—to his words, or to his behaviour.

One of his hands crept down Marigold’s body to the cleft between her legs. Eleanor steeled herself to show nothing.

Marigold’s words stopped his hand. “But you have me, now, Kit. And when we get our money, we will be able to run far away. We will have everything, you and I.”

Kit nuzzled her neck again, before letting her go. “Everything,” he said. Including my revenge. You should be grateful, Your Grace. Marigold’s idea was much better than mine. Have you written the letter, darling?”

Marigold nodded. “Ten thousand pounds, in gold. It will take them a while to get that much, Kit. Could we not settle for less?”

He rounded on his accomplice, snarling. “I am already settling! They owe me their lives!” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly then visibly forced a conciliatory smile. “We will give them time, darling. I have it all planned. You have done a wonderful job, and no one will know where we have gone.”

He turned his attention back to Eleanor, his smile gone. “Now. I can untie you, and you can walk out of here yourself, keeping your mouth shut, and climbing into the carriage like a good little dowager duchess. I will have a gun and a knife on you at all times. I warn you not to make any fuss! I really did like my first plan.”

He sighed. “But I have promised Marigold not to hurt you as long as you behave, so if you cannot give me your solemn promise that you will not attempt to escape or to attract attention, I will just have to knock you out, gag you, and take you out the back door rolled up in a sheet.” His smile was stretching of the teeth without an iota of humour.

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Authorly devices in WIP Wednesday

Part of the fun of writing is coming up with solutions for ways to tell the story that keep the reader engrossed while giving them the information they need. My current Work in Progress, To Tame the Wild Rake, depends on the past history of the protagonists, both as a couple and as individuals. Managing this in conversation and reflection proved tedious, and I’m not fond of flashbacks. So I’m adding the occasional interlude, taking the name from music to mean a short scene set in a different place and time to the story in the chapters. Here’s the first. (If you have an authorly device you’d like to share, pop it in the comments.)

Applemorn Hall estate, July 1807

“Mathematics is truth,” the girl told Aldridge, her thin face glowing with passion. “It is beauty. The world is patterns of logic and shapes, and the task of mathematicians is to understand those patterns, Lord Aldridge.”

Aldridge was drunk, but not so much that he didn’t know he was in dangerous territory. He should not be trespassing on the wrong side of the pond that marked the boundary of the estate he was visiting. He should not be alone in this quiet folly with a girl who was both younger and better born than he had at first assumed. He should not be listening, enraptured, to her explanation about why she was beguiling her convalescence from an embarrassing childhood illness by solving puzzles.

Richport’s house was hidden from their sight by a small tree-covered hill that rose on the other side of the pond. It was filled, as Richport’s houses tended to be, with willing women, good liquor, wagers of all kinds, and countless inducements to forget the sins and follies that haunted him.

Yet he had been here for nearly an hour, in peaceful conversation—intellectual conversation—with a chit not yet out of the schoolroom, and he was already planning to return tomorrow.

“You know my name, my lady. May I know yours?”

She blushed, then, and cast her eyes around as if a suggestion might be written up in the rafters of the folly. “I am called Charrie.” 

He looked at the basket that held cherry pits, all that was left of the fruit they had been sharing, and raised one eyebrow. 

“Not Cherry,” she told him. “Charrie.” 

“Cherry suits you better,” he told her, though he was by no means drunk enough to explain why. The alcohol must be clearing from his system, though, for an errant memory surfaced. Didn’t Elfingham refer to his twin sisters as Charrie and Sarrie? And didn’t Elfingham’s grandfather have an estate somewhere in this area? 

She was Lady Charlotte Winderfield, then, and the granddaughter of the Duke of Winshire. Highly eligible, then. Still too young, but she would be marriageable in a year or two.

And if he was thinking such foolish thoughts, it was high time he found another drink. He had not been sober for more than a month, and he had no intention of starting now. He stood.

“I must take my leave, Cherry, but I will visit tomorrow, if you will admit me. I shall present my card at the door.” He gestured to the open side of the structure.

She giggled at his fooling, but said, “If we are to be friends, and if you are to call me Cherry,” the blush deepened, “then I shall call you Anthony. That is your name, is it not?”

Hardly. It was one of several names that had been bestowed on him at baptism, but no one had ever addressed him by anything but his title. He was Aldridge even to his closest relatives, and would remain so until his father died and he became Haverford. If she called him Anthony, he would look around to see who was being addressed.

Still, fair was fair. If he insisted on calling her by a name he had selected, she had every right to choose what to call him.

“Then we shall be Anthony and Cherry. Friend.”

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Paradise is a garden

The Paradise Garden at Hamilton Gardens

Creative inspiration is a strong and wonderful thing. Artists — storytellers in particular — are often asked where their ideas come from. The answer ‘everywhere’, though true, is unhelpful. What questioners really want to know is ‘why did this idea strike you at this time’.

The Greeks credited the muses — nine goddesses who inspired the arts. The Jews spoke of Holy Wisdom. My friend Caroline Warfield calls inspiration the girls upstairs. I tend to blame an infestation of plot elves.

Stories and the elements that enrich the weave of a story are all around us all the time. Most people notice one or two of the hundreds of possible ideas that pass them every day. An author might pick up a dozen. Knowing what to do with them matters more.

Several years ago, Caroline and her beloved visited New Zealand. On the day they arrived, we had lunch at Hamilton Gardens, which has more than a dozen themed gardens: Japanese, English cottage, Chinese, Maori vegetable, formal Italian.

We were both writing novellas for the coming Belle’s Christmas collection, Follow Your Star Home, and in the Mughal garden, I found a unifying idea that later became the inspiration for the title of the book, the name of the kingdom my hero and heroine rule, and one of the locations for the story. My photos of that garden also appear on the cover.

The hero and heroine were the parents of the lead characters in my current series, The Return of the Mountain King, and the novella is now published as a prequel. It is called Paradise Regained. I’m currently publishing the companion volume, about the girl James left behind when he left England, on Mondays. It is called, of course, Paradise Lost. Once I finish the fourth novel in the series, which will be within the month, I’m going to write a happy ending for my poor duchess, call it Paradise Attained, and publish it in a volume with the other two novellas.

Paradise is a garden

The garden we found in Hamilton was a chahar bagh. The term means ‘four gardens’. It’s a quadrilateral layout, with the quarters divided by walkways or flowing water into four smaller parts and a pavilion at one end raised on a terrace. One of the world’s most famous tombs, the Taj Mahal, was originally a chahar bagh, though only two of the gardens remain.

Gardens divided by watercourses first appeared in Mesopotamia, and were later adopted by the followers of Islam. It may have been the Islamic influence that fixed the shape to four, referencing the four gardens of Paradise that are mentioned in the Qur’an. Genesis, too, mentions the central spring that feed four rivers, each flowing into the world beyond. The concept travelled with Islam, so charar bagh gardens are found from India to Morocco.

“In  Chahār-Bāghs,  terraces symbolize  the  cosmic mountains,  the  creation of  the  edifice  or throne  at  the highest level represents the position of God. A great pool is placed in front of the edifice representing the cosmic ocean as the source of all waters which can irrigate the whole garden. The presence of trees, flowers and animals around the edifice complement the figure of the universe” (Farahani, Motamed & Jamei, 2016 — from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321014499_A_discourse_on_the_Persian_Chahar-Bagh_as_an_Islamic_garden).

The wall is a crucial design feature in making this a Paradise Garden. Indeed, the words para daisa mean walled garden — pairi = around, daeza = wall or brick.

As a gardener myself, I appreciate the protection a wall can offer a garden, and I also think of Francis Bacon’s quote as I garden.

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

Paradise Regained

In Paradise Regained, you’ll find the heroine, Mahjad, relaxing in the chahar bagh her husband built for her as a wedding present. Mahzad and James have called their kingdom, built high in the Kopet Dag mountains between Iran and Turkmenistan Para Daisa Vada — Paradise Valley. And the story is about temptation — particularly for James.

In discovering the mysteries of the East, James has built a new life. Will unveiling the secrets in his wife’s heart destroy it?

James Winderfield yearns to end a long journey in the arms of his loving family. But his father’s agents offer the exiled prodigal forgiveness and a place in Society — if he abandons his foreign-born wife and children to return to England.

With her husband away, Mahzad faces revolt, invasion and betrayal in the mountain kingdom they built together. A queen without her king, she will not allow their dream and their family to be destroyed.

But the greatest threats to their marriage and their lives together is the widening distance between them. To win Paradise, they must face the truths in their hearts.

Find buy links at Books2read https://books2read.com/paradiseregained

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This video shows the Paradise Gardens section of Hamilton Gardens. The chahar bagh is on from 3:12 to 3:46, but the rest are lovely, too.

https://youtu.be/OmbwDsBF7y4

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Excerpt

The courtyard had been designed to catch and hold the fickle warmth of the mountain sun. Even in early winter, Mahzad and her ladies chose to settle in the pavilion, out of the direct heat, though the children and their nursemaids played on the paving by the cross-shaped pool at the centre of the garden.

James had ordered it built: a paradise garden on the Persian chahar bāgh model, centred on water and divided into four quadrants, each richly planted in vivid colours. It had been her wedding present, and somehow, their tribe had managed to keep it a secret from their queen, though the qaḷʿa, the citadel, buzzed with intrigue until James had brought her here, blindfolded.

It had been full summer, and the garden had been glorious but not as beautiful to her eyes as the face of her husband, eyes alight with mischief, with love, and with a promise for later that night when the court was asleep. They had crept down when the qaḷʿa fell silent, giggling when the patrolling guards politely averted their eyes. Mahzad was confident their eldest son, Jamie, had been conceived that night.

She had been so in love, had been convinced that James had forgotten the English woman for whom he was exiled from his home and had fallen in love with her.

Eleven years and eight children later, her love was deeper and stronger than ever, but she no longer believed that James returned the feeling. He was fond of her, yes. He respected her as his wife and queen, katan to his kagan, but the passion of the soul? No. She reached for it with her own and met only the barrier of blank civility with which he armored himself from the world.

When he was home, he was distant if polite, and he had not been home in more than seven months. His trips away had become longer and longer, his letters home more and more formal. He was about the business of their kaganate, which prospered under their rule, but he had never before failed to be home for a birth of one of their children.

Mahzad dropped a kiss on baby Rosemary’s dark hair, handed the sleeping baby to the hovering nursemaid, and sent one of her ladies to summon her secretary. She had work to do. She was co-ruler of their people and did not have time to waste mourning the fickleness of men.

The messenger was only halfway down the long side of the garden when Patma came hurrying down the steps from the zenana, the women’s section of the palace. Even from the other end of the garden, Mahzad could see that her secretary was agitated about something. She had lost the calm she had adopted as chief of Mahzad’s scribes, her usual elegant glide abandoned for a walk that bordered on a run, her eyes wide with excitement. She was not surrounded by the bevy of undersecretaries who carried her desk and writing tools, prepared her ink, ran her messages, and made copies of lesser documents.

No. There they were, just stepping out of the long doors onto the zenana’s terrace. Patma must have hurried some distance to have so outstripped them.

The secretary did not pause when she passed Mahzad’s messenger, speaking over her shoulder as she skirted a small child pushing a toy pony and hurried up the steps to the pavilion. She stopped at the top of the steps to kick off her footwear before venturing on to the rugs that lay everywhere and then composed herself enough to offer a polite greeting, bowing as she said, “Peace be upon you, my queen.”

“Peace, most excellent of scholars,” Mahzad responded, inclining her head as she waited for the younger woman to burst with whatever news she carried.

(The original version of this post was written for Highlighting Historical, Caroline Warfield’s blog, in 2019.)