To Reclaim the Long-Lost Lover

by

Bad family on WIP Wednesday

Someone in a review recently wrote that my characters have terrible families. I’d protest that some of them have lovely families. My James and his children — not his father and brother, though. The Redepennings, except for Rede’s sister. Candle Avery and his mother (but not his father). Okay, so the cap does fit, somewhat.

Of all toxic relationships, a toxic family relationship is one of the worst, and therefore gives huge scope for an author.

Does your work in progress have a jealous, selfish, mean, or plain nasty relative? Please share in the comments.

Here’s my hero from To Reclaim the Long-Lost Lover, with his father and stepmother.

“Go on, Libby,” he encouraged her. “What terrible flaw have you noticed that I must needs amend to be acceptable to a suitable lady?”

“Well…” she chewed on her lower lip, examining him with anxious eyes. “You have not been much in Society, Nate,” she offered, eventually.

Nate was trying to work out what she was driving at when his father spoke from the door to what he misleadingly called his study—a room in which he drank brandy and slept in front of the fire. “She’s right, for once. You are too free and easy, Bencham. You’ve no idea how to go on in the Beau Monde. And you don’t have the right connections. No friends from school or that sort of thing.”

No, because his father had tutored him at home, reneged on the promise to send him to Oxford in order to keep him as an unpaid secretary, and then connived with the Duke of Winshire to have him abducted and impressed onto a naval ship.

“I was at school with some of Society’s important hostesses, Westford,” Libby said, her soft voice meek and apologetic. “If we were to go to London with Lord Bencham…”

Lord Westford interrupted her with a rude snort. “I see your game,” he told his wife, scowling. “You think to jaunt up to Town, do you? And spend my money on fripperies, I suppose.” He began to shake his head, and Nate spoke quickly, before the old tyrant denied Libby what she clearly saw as a treat. Once he’d spoken, he’d not renege. Nate had hoped to escape his father’s presence, but he could hardly deny that Libby’s case was worse than his. She was stuck with the man until death did them part.

Nate smiled broadly. “What an excellent idea, Libby. Using your connections, I should soon have invitations to places I can meet my future bride, and I’m sure you can counsel me on my manners and dress, too.” Westford was purpling. Time to apply a little flattery. No, a lot of flattery—applying it with a shovel rather than a trowel would be no more that the earl considered his due. Nor would he note the barb Nate buried in the compliment.

“My lord, I know you will agree, for you have mentioned her ladyship’s useful connections to me before. What great foresight you showed in choosing a bride who could be of such assistance to your heir, especially since I was unable to complete my own education as a gentleman.”

The earl’s scowl deepened. For a moment, Nate thought he had misjudged Westford’s acuity, so he was relieved rather than annoyed when the earl grumbled, “You’d be married already, and likely have given me a grandson by now, if you’d paid more attention to your duties and less to making up to that girl. Instead, here you are, barely more than a savage, and now I have to go to the expense of a London Season for a woman who can’t even give me sons. You are a great disappointment to me, Bencham. Beyond a doubt I need to go to London to make sure you don’t marry to disoblige me.”

He turned his glower on Libby. “Lady Westford, you shall need to dress to reflect credit on me. You shall have a strict budget, and I shall expect an accounting.”

 

by

Conflict in WIP Wednesday

They met, fell in love, married, and never had a cross word or an angry thought from the first introduction until their death 80 years later. It would be a lovely life to live, but it isn’t my life nor that of anyone I’ve ever heard of. Conflict is part of life, and it certainly makes for more exciting stories. Conflict external to the main relationship, yes. But also conflict within the relationship. So that’s this week’s theme. I’m posting a bit from To Reclaim the Long-Lost Lover that gives the reader some strong clues about the conflict to come. Please add your own excerpt into the comments.

Sarah is choosing a husband. That thought dominated all others, and he had been escorted to the door by a footman and was out on the footpath again before he fully aware of being dismissed.

His childhood sweetheart, his first love, was still unwed but planning to choose a husband. His reaction—the sheer revulsion at the thought—had been unexpected. Yes, he had wanted to meet her again, let her know what had happened to him, make peace between them. He had even hoped to find out whether the grown Sarah and the grown Nate might be able to find some sparks of the fire that once burned when they touched.

A third of a lifetime had passed, and he had changed. He must assume she had, too. Perhaps they would meet and dislike one another, or meet and agree to part as friends. But his immediate reaction when Lady Charlotte mentioned that damnable list was to claim his long-lost love as his own.

Nate had walked seven blocks and had passed the street he was meant to turn down. He backtracked to the missed corner. Nothing had changed and everything had changed. He still could not move on with his own life until he knew whether the unbroken connection between him and Sarah Winderfield was all on his side, or whether she felt it too. But now he knew that the clock was ticking.

He needed to meet Sarah, clear up her misconceptions about his disappearance, find out if he still wanted the role that had once been his greatest ambition, and convince her to love him again. And all before she chose another husband.

A thought occurred and stopped him short. She had a short-list. He wasn’t, then, competing against a love match. He stepped out towards his father’s townhouse, a smile spreading as he considered that fact. He’d put the next two weeks to good use, using Libby and her contacts to find out who was courting Lady Sarah, who she favoured, and what they were like. The clubs, too. He’d buy horses and play cards—whatever it took to be accepted into the conversation men had when women were not around. By the time he saw her again, he’d be armed for the battle ahead. He’d know what she looked for in a husband, and also what was wrong with the suitors she was considering.

by

Again with the first meetings on WIP Wednesday

 

I gave you Nate’s impressions of his love eight years after he last saw her, so I thought I’d give you the next scene. By all means, feel free to share one of your meetings in the comments.

It was Nate. Sadie kept assuring herself that she must be wrong. He had changed so much from the slim boy she had once loved. She smiled and nodded, allowed Lord Hythe to escort her around the room, made cheerful nonconsequential comments. And all the time, she was conscious of the man, watching him out of the corner of her eye, wondering what it was about him that screamed his identity.

He was a lot taller and broader; that was to be expected. He had been shooting up like a weed when she knew him, but had not yet reached his adult size. His face had squared off. Once, he had been a beautiful youth—a dark-haired Ganymede, her brother called him, with a smirk she didn’t understand until her Aunt Georgie explained that the Trojan prince had been stolen by Zeus who desired him because of his beauty.

Poseidon would fit him better than Ganymede, now. Strength, barely-leashed power, serious and forbidding, except when he smiled at the woman with him. Who was she? His wife? They knew one another well, staying within reach of one another as they moved around the room.

He was breathtaking when stern. The smile transformed him. Even the scar that crossed one cheek in a ragged line added to his beauty; a contrast to perfection.

The eyes were the same, she decided. The same colour and shape, at least, though the cynicism with which he regarded the company was new.

Before they had reached the group that included Sadie, Hamner’s butler called dinner, and Lady Hamner began pairing people off to go to the dining table. Nate, Sadie noticed, was paired with another lady, and the one he had arrived with happily accepted the escort of one of the lords Sadie had on her list.

Lola guided her own dinner partner over to Sadie, and asked, out of the corner of her mouth, “What is the matter?” Her twin might not know what was wrong, but she always knew how Sadie felt.

“No time. Can we go straight home after dinner?” Sadie whispered back. The line passed through the doorway, and the sisters had to peel off in different directions, but Lola would make their excuses when the time came. Sadie couldn’t face Nate until she had time to absorb the fact of his return.

by

First Meetings on WIP Wednesday

In fact, in my next two Works In Progress (To Reclaim the Long-Lost Lover and To Tame the Wild Rake), the first meeting in the book is not the first meeting of my couple. But that’s the one I’m sharing, since that’s the one on the page. Can you share one of yours in the comments?

First, To Reclaim the Long Lost Lover. Nate has come to London to find Sarah. Sarah has decided to marry at long last, eight years after she lost Nate.

Nate smiled and nodded, keeping his reservations to himself. Not unless my Sarah is present. But she is not yet in town, so it won’t be tonight. And even if she was in town, she would surely not be visiting the Hamners. Lady Hamner had been a ward of the Duchess of Haverford, and the Dukes of Haverford and Winshire had been feuding since Winshire arrived back in the country with a whole quiverful of foreign-born children.

He allowed day dreams about their next meeting to while away the carriage ride and the wait in the street for other carriages to move out of the way. Libby continued to chatter, but she seldom required a response beyond ‘Is that right’ and ‘If you say so’.

It must have been a good thirty minutes before they were being announced by Lord and Lady Hamner’s butler. Libby led him over to the Hamners to be introduced, and Nate looked around as he crossed the room.

A profile caught his eye. He shrugged it off. He had been Sarah wherever he went for the past eight years, and a closer look always disclosed a stranger. This stranger turned towards him, and he stopped in his tracks, cataloguing changes. The hair was slightly darker. The heart-shaped face he remembered had matured into a perfect oval. The slender body of the long-remembered girl had ripened to fulfill its promise. But, beyond any doubt, Lady Sarah Winderfield stood on the other side of the drawing room, a smile on her lips as she talked with her friends.

Her gaze turned toward him just as Libby tugged on his arm. “Bencham! Are you well?” He let her pull him along, and Sarah’s gaze drifted away. He wanted to cross the room to her; accost her; demand that she recognise him and all they’d once meant to one another.

Some modicum of sense kept him stumbling after his step-mother. Men change between seventeen and twenty-five, he reminded himself. And people who have been through experiences like mine more than most.

Still, of all the meetings he’d imagined, he’d never thought of one in which she didn’t know him.

And then To Tame the Wild Rake.

Aldridge stood as she entered the parlour. He’d chosen a seat on the far side of the room for the door, and he now ordered the footmen to wait outside. “I require a few moments of privacy with my betrothed.” After a moment’s hesitation, they obeyed, leaving the door wide open.

As she took a chair, he murmured, “Are there servant passages near us? Can we be heard if we keep our voices low?”

So that is why he’d chosen a seating group by the outside wall. “Not if we are quiet,” she confirmed.

He was examining her in the way that always made her restless — a steady look from intent hazel eyes, as if he could see her innermost thoughts. “You asked to see me,” she reminded him, to put an end it.

That broke his gaze. His lids dropped and he laughed, a short unamused bark. “And you would like to see me in Jericho. Straight to the point, then, Lady Charlotte. Your mother told my mother that you are being threatened with dire consequences if you do not marry me.”

He leaned forward, meeting her eyes again, his voice vibrating with sincerity. “I have never forced a woman, and I don’t plan to do so. I will not take an unwilling wife.”

Lola tried to hide the upwelling relief, but some of it must have shown, for he sighed as he sat back, his shoulders shifting in what would have been a slump in a less elegant man. “It is true, then. Given a choice, you will not have me.”

Lola had not expected his disappointment, the swiftly masked sadness. Before she could measure her words, she leapt to reassure him. “It is not you. I do not plan ever to marry.”

He grimaced. “So my mother tells me. Is there nothing I can say that would change your mind? You would be an outstanding duchess.”

No. She really wouldn’t. Like everyone else, he only saw the duke’s granddaughter, not the woman within. Perhaps, if he had been a man of lesser estate, if he had spoken about affection and companionship, she might have risked it. Not love. Lola didn’t trust love.

Again, he read something of her mind, for he sighed again, and gave her a wry smile and the very words she wanted. “We were friends once, my Cherry, were we not? Long ago?”

Her resolve softened at the nickname he had given her that golden summer, before it all went wrong.  “I was very young and you were very drunk,” she retorted.

He huffed a brief laugh. “Both true. Still, we could be friends again, I think. I have always hoped for a wife who could also be my friend. Is it my damnable reputation? I am not quite the reprobate they paint me, you know.”

Lola shook her head, then rethought her response. His reputation might outrun his actions, but he was reprobate enough, and the lifestyle he brushed off so casually had destroyed her brother. “Not that, though if I were disposed to marry, I would not choose a rake. Marriage is not for me, however.” Should she tell him? “I cannot be your duchess, Aldridge.”