Is it ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’? Or ‘out of sight, out of mind’?

You may have noticed I haven’t been around much. We’re selling our house and buying a new one, and my life is teetering on the edge of out of control. I’ve been proofing the Bluestocking Belles’ next anthology, Fire & Frost so we can get the ARC out. Add to that, I’ve other books to finish, grandchildren to cherish, and a day job.

Furthermore, we’re off on a road trip (organised months ago) a week today, so things are unlikely to improve for a while.

Received wisdom in the writer community is that we need to be constantly engaged on social media to keep people thinking about us, and buying the books we’ve written so we can afford to pay our bills for the books we want to write. If that’s true, I’m in trouble!

However, I won’t disappear entirely. I’m still promoting the Bluestocking Belles’ next anthology, Fire & Frost. I’ve written a short story for my newsletter, and will get that out before I go away. I’m about to put up the publication date for my novel The Darkness Within. (I’ll do a preorder on Smashwords which will feed back to the retailers it serves, but leave Amazon till I’m confident, because their punishment for getting it wrong is a year without preorder, and my life could spiral completely out of control at any moment.)

I also need to decide whether I’m going to publish something on 15 December. I’ve done so every year since Candle’s Christmas Chair came out in 2014, and I hate to miss a year. Options are a version of Chasing the Tale, my collection of newsletter subscriber short stories, and Paradise Regained, the prequel to the series I’m publishing next year, Children of the Mountain King. Let me know what you think!

Meanwhile, here’s an excerpt from the next newsletter subscriber story, which may (or may not) be called The Delinquency of Lord Clairmont. My heroine has waited years for her husband to return to England. When she learns from the gossip columns that he has done so, but is remaining in the south instead of coming home, she decides to retrieve him.

She would not apologise for making sure he came home to lands and investments that were more profitable and in better heart than when she took them over. Surely, even the most selfish of men must see that she had a vested interest in securing the future of her children.

Which brought Seffie to the reason why she, Anna, and the servants were about to descend from their coach at a manor owned by one of Clairmont’s dissolute friends. Children. She would be twenty-four in a few days, and she was not waiting another twelve years for her errant husband to at least make the attempt to get her with child. Not another year, nor a month.

Given what she’d heard about the nature of the parties held in this rather pleasant-looking country manor house, Clairmont may have one or more other entertainments already at hand, but Seffie was prepared to do whatever she needed to oust them and take their place. Surely a man whose name had been linked with women all round the world would not refuse to bed his lawfully-wedded wife?

Seffie nodded to her footman, giving him the signal to rap the door knocker. Let battle commence.

The footman knocked twice more before the door opened a cautious crack to allow an elderly maid to poke her beaked nose around the edge of it.

Seffie stepped forward, and footman pushed the door fully open, overcoming the maid’s brief resistance. Not a maid. The bundle of keys at the woman’s waist indicated the housekeeper. She stepped backward at the aristocratic advance and curtseyed.

“I am Lady Clairmont,” Seffie said. “Announce me to your master.”

The housekeeper shook her head, cringing as if she expected a blow. “’is lordship be asleep,” she whined. “Them all be asleep. Even Mr. Barton, who be the butler. All night they was up, and be as much as my life to wake ’uns.”

Seffie gave a short nod. She should have expected this. “Show my cousin and my maid to a parlour where they can wait, and send someone to conduct me to Lord Clairmont’s room,” she commanded. She added instructions for refreshments to be brought to her and her cousin, and told William to stay with the other two women. They might need a stout defender in this house, though perhaps they could all retreat to a nearby inn before the other denizens woke up.

“Should you be alone, ma’am?” Polly ventured, and Anna agreed. “We could send for another of the men to go with you.”

What Seffie had to say to her husband was best said in private. “I shall be safe in Clairmont’s room,” she insisted, and followed another servant, this one still straightening her cap and tying her apron, up the long curve of the stairs.

It wasn’t until the housekeeper put a hand up to knock on the door that it occured to Seffie that her husband might not be alone.

“Don’t knock,” she said, hastily. Should she enter, or not? She had come this far, and she did not like to retreat.

She tried the handle. Locked. “Open it,” she insisted.

The housekeeper frowned but obeyed.

“That will be all, Mrs… ?”

“Barton, my lady. I’ll bring thy tea.”

“Do that.”

Seffie waited until Mrs. Barton retreated back towards the stairs before opening the door enough to slip silently into the bedchamber. A large four-poster bed dominated the room. To Seffie’s relief, the man sleeping in it was alone. She was less comfortable with his attire—or lack thereof. He lay sprawled on his front, his face turned away from her, the sheet pushed down to show his bare back from his broad shoulders to his narrow waist.

Seffie froze in the doorway. He was no longer pudgy; nor was the glorious expanse of skin marred by pimples or any other blemish. She gave herself a shake, stepped inside, and closed the door. She might be a virgin, but she hadn’t lived in a box for all the past years. Being married didn’t stop her from admiring a male form, and she knew desire when she felt it. She had never acted on it, and she could ignore it now. She wasn’t here to lust after her husband. Actually, that wasn’t quite accurate—if they could resolve the distance between what she wanted and what he apparently wanted, lust would be appropriate and useful in gaining her the children she yearned for. Provided he felt the same about her.

For a wild moment, she was tempted to undress and climb under the sheets with him, but she resisted the impulse. The maid would return with the tea. Besides, they should talk first; negotiate a way forward. In truth, despite her unexpected physical response, she was a little afraid. He was a stranger, and she had only the most general of ideas about what to expect of the marital act. It sounded like something better done with a friend, or at least a more than casual acquaintance.

She took a seat in the window bay, and pulled the book she had been reading from her reticule. From here, she could see his face. She would have walked past him in the street, except that she was very familiar with certain elements of his face. That square cleft chin appeared in a number of paintings at Clairhaven; that strong nose and those arched eyebrows in others. The boy of fifteen was still there, too, when she examined him closely, pared down, toughened, more square and decidedly formidable. In repose, he was not classically handsome, but he was attractive.

Her husband. She whispered it, to see if it felt more real when voiced aloud. “My husband.”