To Wed a Proper Lady

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Tea with youthful memories

The Duke of Haverford slammed the door on his way out, but it wasn’t his temper that left his duchess trembling in her chair, her limbs so weak she could do nothing but sit, her chest hurting as she tried to force shallow breaths in and out. She had grown so used to his tantrums that she barely noticed.

“Your Grace?” Her secretary held out a hand as if to touch her then drew it back. The poor girl — a distant cousin just arrived from Berkshire — was as white as parchment. “Your Grace? Can I get you something? Can I pour you a pot of tea?”

Brandy would be welcome. A slight touch of amusement at Millicent’s reaction to such a request helped soothe Eleanor’s perturbation. “I should like to be alone, Millicent,” she managed to say. A lifetime of pretending to be calm and dignified through grief, anger, fear, and desperate sorrow came to her rescue. “Can you please send a note to Lady Carew to ask her to hold me excused today? Ask her if tomorrow afternoon would be acceptable.”

Once the girl left the room, casting an anxious glance over her shoulder, Eleanor stood and crossed to her desk, stopping before the mantel when her reflection caught her eye. If Millicent had been pale, Eleanor was worse — so white that dark patches showed under her eyes, eyes in which the pupil had almost swamped the iris.

It was the shock. Perhaps she would have that cup of tea before she fetched the box.

She poured it, and then added a spoonful of sugar. Two spoonfuls. She normally took her tea unsweetened, with just a slice of lemon, but hot sweet tea was effective in cases of shock, was it not?

With the cup set on the table by the chair, she spent a few minutes moving panels of wood in her escritoire, until the secret compartment at the back opened. She had not taken out the box inside since the afternoon of the day Grace and Georgie had told her — oh, some 15 years ago — that James still lived.

James.

Haverford could shout as much as he liked about Winshire’s heir being an imposter, about all the world knowing that the youngest son of the family had died in Persia three decades ago and more. But Eleanor had known almost as soon as Winshire’s daughter and daughter-in-law knew that James still lived. Of course he would come home now, when Winshire’s other heirs had died. She should have expected it. Why had she not expected it?

Words from Haverford’s rant came back to her as she sipped her tea and looked through the few treasures she had kept all these years, sacred to the memory of their doomed courtship. The ribbon she wore in her hair the first time they danced. Winshire says the man is his son. A dried rose from a bouquet he had sent her. The man has a pack of half-breeds that he claims are his children. Several notes and two precious letters, including the one in which he asked her to elope. Barbarians as Dukes of Winshire? Over my dead body! A handkerchief he’d given her to dry her eyes when she cried while telling him that they must wait; that her father would come around. Better to see the title in the hands of that idiot Wesley Winderfield that handed over to some clothhead.

If she had said ‘yes’, what would have happened? He had a curricle in the mews. They could have left that night, straight from the garden where they’d slipped out for a private conversation. Haverford would not have assaulted her on her way back inside. James would not have challenged him to a duel, wounded him, and been exiled a step ahead of the constable. Eleanor would not have been left with her reputation in tatters, refusing to marry Haverford and unable to marry James.

Or if she had stayed true to her memories of him, and had not finally given way to her sister’s pleadings, for Lydia had been set firmly on the shelf because of Eleanor’s scandal. But they told her James was dead, and what did it matter what became of her after that?

They lied. And now James was back in England, and she would need to meet him and pretend that they hadn’t broken one another’s hearts so many years ago.

A few tears fell onto the letters, and then the Duchess of Haverford packed everything away, dried her eyes and returned the box to its compartment.

She had children who loved her, friends, important work in her charities, and a full and busy life. Weeping over the past and fretting over the future never helped.

Her reflection in the mirror showed her complexion returned to normal, and if her eyes were sad? Well. That was normal, too.

James Winderfield senior and his family are introduced in Paradise Regained. His return to England as a widower and heir to the Duke of Winshire, and the subsequent love story of his son and namesake, James Winderfield junior, is in To Wed a Proper Lady, coming in March or April. The stories of his other children and his nieces are in the following books in the series The Children of the Mountain King.

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First impressions on WIP Wednesday

 

We try to make an emotional connection between our protagonists and our readers as soon as we can in the story. We also need to show the character flaws that make our protagonists interesting. Balancing these two, especially when the characters have personality aspects or life histories that are going to upset some readers, is crucial. So we try to show them doing something nice early on. I’ve just been reading a book where the hero is a drunken cad when he is 20, and frightens heroine, who is only 15. He goes on to turn his life around, and comes back to court her. Ella Quinn manages the empathy by starting the story before he got drunk, making the reasons for his state of mind clear. You could say the story has two sets of first impressions — those the protagonists make on the reader, and those they make on one another.

How about you? What first impression do your characters make? Pick an excerpt that shows the first appearance of the hero or heroine, or what one of them thinks about the other on first meeting.

Mine this week is a newly written passage from To Wed a Proper Lady, which comes immediately after the rescue of the little boy that has already been published as part of The Bluestocking and the Barbarian (you can read it here).

“Oh my,” Felicity said. Sophia had not even noticed her until she spoke. All of Sophia’s attention was on the rider. Oh my, indeed.

“So that is what all the gossip is about,” her sister added. “No wonder he has ruffled the feathers of the biddies and the sticklers. He looks very exotic, does he not? And yet, he speaks like one of us and has the most elegant manners.”

“We must be glad he was there, and in time to help,” Sophia said, struggling to keep her voice calm when the thud of her heart must be audible throughout the village. “Tommy might have been badly hurt.” She managed to drag her eyes away from the retreating horsemen. Undoubtedly, Lord Elfingham had forgotten her already. He did not look back.

She turned towards the Children’s Sanctuary. Felicity fell into step beside her, still talking.

“I must say, he was not at all what I expected. To hear Hythe, one would think him a wild barbarian, uncouth and fierce, without manners or education.”

Sophia repressed a snort with some difficulty. “Hythe has been listening to the wrong Haverford. Our Godmama knew Lord Sutton, his father, when he was only a third son, before he left England to seek his fortune. Aunt Eleanor says that Lord Sutton was married to a Persian princess, and his children were raised as royalty, as well as English ladies and gentlemen. They were, Aunt Eleanor says, given the finest education.”

“His Grace of Haverford has forbidden Her Grace and Lord Aldridge to attend any event at which they might meet Lord Sutton or any of his children. Is that because she and Lord Sutton were once acquainted?”

Sophia knew that look on Felicity’s face. With the least encouragement, she would be interrogating the dowagers and the old maiden aunts, and increasing the storm of scandal around Lord Sutton and his family even further.

“Hythe says that the Duke is incensed at the dilution of another duke’s blue blood.” Felicity gave a little skip at the horror of it all. Hythe did say that, but Sophia was sure Haverford’s virulent enmity was more personal than a distaste for miscegenation.

“Apparently, Haverford believes that English dukes should marry only English ladies of an appropriate rank,” Sophia replied. “Foreign princesses need not apply.”

“If, in fact, Sutton did marry the foreign princess.” The scandalous nature of the conversation was delighting Felicity.

Sophia looked back over her shoulder. The horsemen were visible in the distance, just cresting the hill beyond the village. One of them had stopped — his horse gleaming golden in the sun. It was foolish to think she could feel his intense gaze from this distance. She couldn’t even see his features. But she did see one hand raised in salute before he wheeled the horse to follow his companions.

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Tea with memories of Eleanor

 

Now for something different — the scene is about the Duchess of Haverford, but she only makes a brief appearance. This is an excerpt from the rewrite of what used to be The Bluestocking and the Barbarian. In To Wed a Proper Lady, the Earl of Sutton meets the woman he once loved at a ball, and afterwards thinks about the days of their youth.

The muttering of the assembled guests swelled and then stopped abruptly when the Duke of Haverford crossed the floor, and stopped in front of the Earl of Sutton.

Sutton inclined his head, his face impassive.

Haverford sneered and turned on his heel. Sighting his wife at one side of the room, talking to their hostess, he marched twelve paces and spat out, “Lady Finch, that man is an imposter. The duchess and I will not visit any home where he and his devil-spawn are welcome. Duchess!” He beckoned to Aunt Eleanor, as Sophia called her godmother, and stalked off up the stairs.

The duchess followed, hesitating for a moment as she passed Sutton. Their eyes met. Sophia could have sworn that his had a question. If so, the duchess didn’t answer. She hurried up the stairs after her husband. Most of the room watched the earl’s party crossing to Lord and Lady Finch, but Sophia continued to watch the duchess, and may have been the only person who saw her stop at the top of the stairs, to look after the earl.

***

“It went well,” Georgie proclaimed, once Drew and the girls had retired and only the older members of the household remained to consider the evening. “Haverford was a horse’s rear end, but that was to be expected.”

Yousef, the head of Sutton’s household staff, had been leaning against the back of his wife’s chair, but he came alert like the old campaigner he was. “What happened?” They had all agreed only the family would attend the ball, the first social outing from the house of Winshire since Sutton and his children arrived in England. Sutton’s closest friend and advisor had clearly been fretting the entire evening.

Sutton answered before his sister or one of the other ladies could. “Nothing much, Yousef. He left when we arrived, after announcing that the Haverfords and Winshires were at odds.” He took a sip of his drink. “I agree the evening was a success, Georgie.”

“Our girls made an impression,” Grace commented. Her smug smile at Lettie hinted at the hours the two women had spent concocting the scene that began the evening: the four Winderfield cousins at the top of the stairs, each beautifully coiffed and dressed in vibrant colours that contrasted and complimented each other.

“Keeping young Jamie in reserve was a good idea, Patience.” Georgie raised her glass to Yousef’s wife, who made a return salute with her teacup. “It worked just as you suggested,” Georgie continued. “They are intrigued. If I had one person ask me if the heir was as good looking as Drew, I had twenty. And I told the biggest gossips in the ton how glad I was that you were so wealthy!” She grinned at her brother. “When Jamie arrives back from the errand you sent him on, make sure he knows not to be alone with any marriageable female, anywhere, at any time.”

The others continued to dissect the evening, prompted by questions from Yousef and Patience. Haverford’s claim that Sutton was an imposter could be ignored, they all agreed. If recognition by his father and sister was not enough, at least a dozen people at the ball last night had known him as a young man. Sutton did his best to pay attention, but his mind kept drifting back to the encounter with Haverford and the glimpse he’d had of Haverford’s duchess.

The old man, he’d called him when he was twenty-four and a fool. “You can’t marry her to that old man,” he’d screamed at Eleanor’s father when his own suit had been rejected because she was already promised. Haverford was thirteen years his senior, and that seemed old to him then, especially compared to Eleanor’s seventeen. The man would be in his seventies now—an old man in truth, gnarled and bent as an old tree, the once handsome face withered and twisted into a peevish mask.

Eleanor, though… Sutton would have known Eleanor anywhere, as soon as her lovely eyes met his. Through a long and happy marriage to the mother of his children, the bittersweet memory of the young Eleanor had lingered in a corner of Sutton’s heart, and seeing her had brought all those memories flooding back.

She was older, of course, though if he’d not known she was approaching her fifty-second birthday he’d have guessed her no more than forty. Time had delivered on the promise of great beauty and grace.

From what his sister-in-law said of her—they were dear friends, it seemed—time had also honed the strength under the softness that made her submit to her father rather than run away with Sutton. His Eleanor had become the Duchess of Haverford, a grande dame known for her works of charity, her kindness to those who fell afoul of Society’s censure through no fault of their own, and her generosity to her husband’s poor relations and a whole tribe of godchildren.

Such a pity that the feud with Haverford would mean they could not meet. He would have liked to know the woman his Eleanor had become.