Jude Knight's Blog, page 155

Royal Regard – a book to revisit

Royal Regard is a five star book. The characters are well drawn, the plot exciting, with many twists and turns, and a building sense of suspense, and the dialogue excellent.

Bella returns from overseas with her elderly husband Myron, who has come home to die after 15 years representing England in many foreign lands. The couple are friends of the recently crowned King George IV. Bella is painfully shy, but has learnt to hide her insecurities behind a mask of competence. Myron and the King are worried about how she will cope as an extremely wealthy widow.

Two dukes woo her, both with ulterior motives. One is a rake with a fear of emotional commitment, and one is a fortune hunter who hides some grim secrets behind a charming facade. Bella must cope not only with the vicious tongues of society’s gossips and her own unpleasant memories of England, but also with the determined assault on her senses of two practised seducers.

Royal Regard gripped me from the first. I particularly enjoyed the interchanges between Bella and her dukes – Marianna Gabrielle writes clever, witty, and thoroughly convincing dialogue. As the rake begins to grow up and realise what Bella means to him, the fortune hunter decides to take decisive action. To avoid spoilers, let me just say that I had to put the book down at that point and wait till I could finish it in one sitting, because I could see that Bella had invited a traitor into her house and I was fast approaching the point where I had to know what happened next.

In the last part of the book, Gabrielle – having resolved the external conflict – is able to zero in on the internal conflict. Both the hero and the heroine grew through their experiences and gave me a satisfying ending that totally convinced.

I have one minor quibble, and it may yet prove to be nothing. The heroine’s brother turns up three quarters of the way through the book and stays for 100 pages before disappearing again. He seemed unnecessary to me. On the other hand, he could be good for a sequel. I did want to know what had happened to him in the years he’d been estranged from his sister, and what would happen to him next, which is a credit to Gabrielle’s deft outline of his character.

So I’ll be watching with interest to see where Gabrielle goes next. Meanwhile, Royal Regard goes in my to-be-read-again pile, for books I’ve enjoyed and want to one day revisit.

200 years today

200 years since the events commemorated in this New Zealand Christmas song.

The service (by Samuel Marsden) marked the beginning of the first Christian mission to New Zealand.

Joseph’s lullaby

Merry Christmas

 

If you are celebrating the birth of Jesus in the coming day, may the blessings of Christmas be with you and your family. And if you are celebrating some other festival, or simply enjoying time with those important to you, may this season give you all you wish for yourself.

Candle’s Christmas Chair – news

Two reviews on Amazon (both five-star), two ratings on Goodreads (one five star and one four), and nearly 1,600 copies downloaded.

And Mari Christie, who–as Mariane Gabrielle–wrote the excellent Royal Regard, features Candle’s Christmas Chair in her New Title Tuesday blog post.

I’ll be home for Christmas

I’ve joined a Facebook event called A Story for Christmas, and I thought you might enjoy the story I’m telling there. It is set at the other end of the 19th Century, and on the other side of the world to my novella and current WIPs. Here’s the first excerpt.

“I’ll be home for Christmas.” That’s what Rick had said, three months ago when he’d left their farm up in the high country. Since then, all Molly had had of him had been his letters. He wrote faithfully every day, and she wrote back, adding to each letter until they ran to pages and pages, and saving them until her monthly trips down into town, when she could collect his fat package and send her own.

Then she would drive the 15 miles home, and–between guiding the tired horse and refereeing the tired squabbling children in the cart behind her–sneak peeks at his precious words.

Sarah, Michael, and Charlotte missed their Papa, but not as much as she did.

“I’ll be home for Christmas,” he finished the entry for each day, as if it was a mantra that, repeated often enough, would come true.

Molly couldn’t understand the goings on in far off Auckland, where lawyers squabbled over which of the competing heirs owned the estate left by Rick’s distant cousin.

“It would be a good thing for us,” Rick insisted. “We could afford servants to help you with the work. We could even move into Christchurch, where you could be near your family.”

She had shaken her head at that. She loved their land. She loved the high still bowl of plains, ringed by mountains with their caps of snow even now as summer crept over the land. Here, sitting on their front verandah on the morning before Christmas, she could look out over the nearby fields where the grain ripened. She couldn’t see the braided river that snaked through the valley, but she could hear it. In Spring, when the snow melted, it roared, but today it used its summer voice, chuckling over the stones.

Their grain. Their hens in the yard, their cows in the small field behind the house with the patient horses, and their sheep dotting the mountainsides all the way up to the snowline.

She couldn’t imagine exchanging the peace of their own farm for the leafy suburbs of Christchurch and the pleasures of colonial society. And she knew Rick loved this farm even more than she.

Inside the house, she could hear the children talking from their bed. She tucked the doll’s dress she was making back into her sewing basket. Time to serve breakfast. As she stood, she looked once more down the valley to where the road came over the pass. And stopped. There, just cresting the hill, was a far off figure.

I’ll post the next excerpt once I’ve written it.

Beginning to think about edit for Farewell to Kindness

I asked those beta-reading my novel to come back with feedback by the end of December, but I’m already beginning to get some responses. What amazing people those beta readers are. I’m getting lots of affirmation, but also some really useful advice. Thank you so much, you wonderful people.

If I’m to have Farewell to Kindness up by 1 March for pre-orders, I have a great deal to do in January and February–and I just worked out yesterday that Encouraging Prudence will need to go to beta readers in mid-May to give the same kind of timeline. So the pressure is on, and the excellent feedback from the beta readers is going to be really useful in helping me focus my attention in the final edit.

Because I work in a writing business where everything must be peer reviewed before it goes to clients, and because my commercial writing is for people who ‘own’ the content, I’m used to accepting reviews. But serving the criticisms with a healthy dollop of praise certainly helps!

I absolutely love that each reader so far has become engaged enough with the characters to discuss their motivations. And every single one has commented on the death of one of my hero’s buddies in the final showdown.

K.M. Weillard has written a useful post for beta readers and authors. My beta readers so far have not needed any of her tips, bless them, but I’ll certainly follow her pointers for authors.

An Advent hymn for the 4th Sunday in Advent

And, in honour of today’s Gospel reading, here’s another photo of my Jesse tree, with the angel of the annunciation to the left between the ten commandments and David’s heart of love for God.

Christmas at Avery Hall in the Year of Our Lord 1804

The Christmas Season 

(whatever your belief or religion)

 is the time for merry-making and parties…

So come and join some wonderful authors 

(and their characters)

for an Online Virtual Party!

Browse through a variety of Blogs 

(hopping forward to the next one on the list)

for a veritable feast of entertainment!

(And as with any good party, you’ll find  a few giveaway prizes along the way!)

Today, I’m officially launching my Christmas novella, Candle’s Christmas Chair. It’s available as a free download from Smashwords. They’ve been distributing to other ebookstores, and I’ll add links as the ebook hits the shelves of Barnes & Noble, Apple, and the rest. (Please note: Amazon insist on a charge of at least 99c, but you can download a mobi file for free from the Smashwords bookstore.) Merry Christmas. I hope you enjoy my novella.

 

Now join me in Avery Hall on Twelfth Night, 5th January 1805, and let’s play a few party games

Mary, Lady Avery looked around the large ballroom with great satisfaction. Everyone was enjoying themselves.

At the head table, the Bean King, her son Randall’s guest Lieutenant Beckett, was conducting a game of snapdragon. Randall was currently trying to snatch raisins and almonds with his teeth, ducking his hand in and out of the shallow bowl of burning brandy. Beckett had ordered the candles and lamps doused, and the flickering flames of the snapdragon bowl lit Randall from below, making him look strangely sinister, particularly costumed as he was.

All of the party wore costume of one kind or another, in the character that they’d drawn earlier in the day.

The chant of the other players came to an end, and they cheered Randall’s haul, calling out the silly nickname he’d worn since he was a tall skinny redhead just entering Eton.

“Candle, Candle, Candle!”

Randall gave his place to Miss Petherick, daughter of the local squire, and the chant started again as she darted her hand at the bowl, shying away before the flames could nip her fingers.

This had, perhaps, been the best Christmas ever. In the six weeks since Stir-up Sunday on the 25th of November, when the whole household had gathered in the kitchen to take turns in stirring the Christmas pudding, she had thrown herself wholeheartedly into every Christmas tradition she knew, and embellished them as far as she could.

She and Myron had only had the last three Christmases together in their lifetime. Myron had gone to India before she left the nursery, and in any case, Christmas was never celebrated in her father’s house. It was, in his view, a work day like any other. Partying was frivolity, and decorating was pagan.

The snapdragon game was drawing to a close, and several of Randall’s guardsmen colleagues were pouring wassail for the young ladies. She would have to watch their consumption. She had, herself, enjoyed a warming bowl from the wassailers when they came carolling up to the Hall earlier in the evening. Theirs was based on cider, but Mary was fairly certain that the guardsmen had added brandy to the wine, apples, and spices in the Hall’s wassail bowl.

Beckett was ordering that the lamps be relit. Some of the guardsmen did his bidding. After the wassailers and the mummers finished their entertainment, accepted their figgy cake pudding reward, and went on their way, the houseparty had split, with the gentry to the ballroom and the servants to the servants hall. They were enjoying their own Twelfth Night party, around a wassail bowl that was the counterpart to the one in the ballroom.

The young people were organising a game of Blind Man’s Buff. She moved closer to her brother Myron, out of the way of the players. Myron smiled as she came as close as she could without scorching herself. He sat almost on top of the fireplace where the remains of the giant yule log burnt. He said his years in India made him feel the cold, but she feared he was wasting away from the illness that he had not yet admitted to her.

Randall had led the team that brought the yule log in on Christmas Eve. It was Viscount Avery’s job, as head of the household, but her husband had not spent Christmas at Avery Hall for many years. Though this year he had joined them on St Nicholas Day, the 6th of December, and surprised her with a gift of bulbs for her garden. Myron had given her a length of Indian silk, and Randall, still on duty in London, had sent a ring cut in the shape of a rose, and a bottle of rose-scented perfume.

In many houses, the greenery and other decorations went up on Christmas Eve, too. Mary couldn’t wait. As soon as the first O Antiphon was sung, heralding the Christmas Octave, she and the servants dressed the house with evergreen branches, holly, rosemary, ivy, and mistletoe.

Yes, and ribbons and paper flowers, and cut-outs of dolls, and apples and oranges, and candles.

Every available surface was garlanded or framed, and every room had its own kissing bough, most now sadly denuded of mistletoe berries, one taken in payment for each kiss. The males in the household, of high and of low estate, had certainly done their duty this season!

Yes, it had been a wonderful Christmas; the best since Myron returned home three years before. Since Randall and his friends arrived on leave from London, the young men and women of the neighbourhood had flocked to the house every evening, and most afternoons. They had filled this Christmas season with laughter, music, games and dancing.

They had moved onto a game of Courtiers now, with the Bean King and  the Pea Queen making ridiculous gestures, while the rest of the party copied them and tried to keep their faces serious. To laugh was to be disqualified.

Mary helped herself to a Twelfth Night pie. The food had been wonderful this year. Cook and her team had outdone themselves, filling the tables at every meal with festive dishes, such as goose, Christmas pudding, gingerbread, butter shortbread, trifle, and a whole host of vegetable, meat, and fruit dishes.

All too soon it would be over. Already, some of the parents were making moves towards leaving. And tomorrow, on the Feast of the Epiphany, the greenery would come down, the decorations would be put away, and the last of the yule log would be doused (and carefully saved to rekindle next year’s log). After church tomorrow, and an exchange of Epiphany gifts, Randall and his friends would head back to London and the new year.

Mary wondered what 1805 held for them; for the brave young men and the pretty girls; especially for her dear son.

(To find out what happens to Randall in 1805, please download Candle’s Christmas Chair.)

Thank you for joining my party

now follow on to the next enjoyable entertainment…

Helen Hollick : You are Cordially Invited to a Ball (plus a giveaway prize)
Alison Morton : Saturnalia surprise – a winter party tale  (plus a giveaway prize)
Andrea Zuvich : No Christmas For You! The Holiday Under Cromwell
Ann Swinfen : Christmas 1586 – Burbage’s Company of Players Celebrates
Anna Belfrage :  All I want for Christmas
Carol Cooper : How To Be A Party Animal
Clare Flynn :  A German American Christmas
Debbie Young :  Good Christmas Housekeeping (plus a giveaway prize)
Derek Birks :  The Lord of Misrule – A Medieval Christmas Recipe for Trouble
Edward James : An Accidental Virgin and An Uninvited Guest
Fenella J. Miller : Christmas on the Home front (plus a giveaway prize)
J. L. Oakley :  Christmas Time in the Mountains 1907 (plus a giveaway prize)
Jude Knight : Christmas at Avery Hall in the Year of Our Lord 1804 (you are here)
Julian Stockwin: Join the Party
Juliet Greenwood : Christmas 1914 on the Home Front (plus a giveaway)
Lauren Johnson :  Farewell Advent, Christmas is come – Early Tudor Festive Feasts
Lindsay Downs: O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree (plus a giveaway)
Lucienne Boyce :  A Victory Celebration
Nancy Bilyeau :  Christmas After the Priory (plus a giveaway prize)
Nicola Moxey : The Feast of the Epiphany, 1182
Peter St John:  Dummy’s Birthday
Regina Jeffers : Celebrating a Regency Christmas  (plus a giveaway prize)
Richard Abbott : The Hunt – Feasting at Ugarit
Saralee Etter : Christmas Pudding — Part of the Christmas Feast
Stephen Oram : Living in your dystopia: you need a festival of enhancement… (plus a giveaway prize)
Suzanne Adair : The British Legion Parties Down for Yule 1780 (plus a giveaway prize)

Thank you for joining us and:

Candle’s Christmas Chair – in which various people receive a surprise

And here it is, the last chapter of Candle’s Christmas Chair. Tomorrow, at the Christmas Party Blog Hop, I’m giving the novella its official launch. Please join me for a Christmas at Avery Hall in 1804, and then tour time and space with my 24 author colleagues.

Candle’s Christmas Chair excerpt 1

Candle’s Christmas Chair excerpt 13

 
Chapter eight: A Christmas present

The chair was done. It was, perhaps, the best Min had ever made. It was wrapped in protective blankets and secured to the top of the carriage that would take her and Mama to Avery Hall the following day.

As she sat with Cara in the tea rooms at the Roman Baths, waiting for Lady Cresthover to return from the retiring room, Min was thinking about the answer she would give Ran. She had done a great deal of thinking in the last two weeks.

She was no longer afraid of going into Society. Oh, the high sticklers and the bullies might never accept her. But enough of her old schoolmates had become friends that she need not fear isolation. She would never be a darling of the ton, but neither did she wish to be.

And she had learned that she could ignore any nasty remarks made to her. They no longer had the power to crush her, even without Ran’s support. If he stood at her side, she could face anything.

Ran at her side. That was the biggest lesson of all. Whether he meant what he said about her chairs or not, she was going to accept Ran. If she had to make a choice between her work or her love, she chose love. With him, she felt complete. His absence felt like a gaping hole in her personal universe. She could, if she must, do something other than build chairs. She could not contemplate facing the rest of her life without Ran.

“You are thinking about Lord Avery again, are you not?” Cara said.

“Is it so obvious?”

“You are just like Henrietta Millworthy. She loved the man she married, too. And before the wedding she used to drift off into nowhere, just like you.” Cara reached across the table and grasped Min’s hands. “Marry him, Min. Do not let cats like my cousin stop you.”

Min laughed a little. “I plan to, Cara.”

“And you will still be my friend, will you not?” Cara looked a little lost. “I will miss you when you move away from Bath.”

“I will write, and I will not be far away. I imagine we will be able to visit, you and I.”

“Well, is this not sweet? My cousin and her little shop-girl friend.” Lady Norton, her voice pitched to carry across the room, sneered down at them.

“I suppose you think you are so smart, Mini Bradshaw, trapping a peer. But you will never fit in. Do you hear me? Never.”

“Lady Norton, this is a private conversation,” Min said.

“He will not be faithful to you, you know. His father was notorious for his affairs. Ask her mother.” Lady Norton pointed a gloved finger at Cara. “Everyone knows her mother was one of his amours, when she was just plain Sally Hemple. He had a taste for a bit of the common, just like his son.”

Min met Lady Cresthover’s shocked eyes over Lady Norton’s shoulder and attempted to stem the flow. “Lady Norton, that is quite enough.”

Lady Norton took no notice. “Sally Hemple. My mother told me that she trapped my uncle. Just like you are trapping poor Lord Avery, Miss Bradshaw.” She gave her cousin a poke with one finger. “You should try it, Carrie darling. Before you crumble to dust on the shelf, you poor old thing.” She swayed a little. “Ooops.” She caught herself by grabbing the back of a chair, and laughed her tinkling laugh.

Lady Cresthover was whispering to a footman, who nodded and hurried away.

“He is not very good in bed, Miss Bradshaw. You should not hope for much. Perhaps you could get my Auntie to give him a few pointers?”

The footman was back, with a colleague. Lady Norton yelped as they took an elbow each.

“How dare you! Unhand me. Do you know who I am?”

She was continuing to protest as they half carried her out of the room. “A very sad case,” Lady Cresthover said in a carrying voice. “A sad unsteadiness in her mother’s family, you know.” She dropped into a piercing whisper that could be heard in every corner of the room. “It is said that her grandfather thought he was an elephant.”

“Come, Cara, Miss Bradshaw.” Ignoring the embarrassed titters, she sailed out of the room, Min and Cara in her wake, and Polly the maid scurrying behind.

In the foyer, Lady Cresthover ordered Lady Norton into a sedan chair. “It will keep her out of the public eye,” she said, her voice back at its normal volume. “Miss Bradshaw, do not be concerned about my niece. She will retiring to a quiet place in the country.” She turned away to follow her daughter and the chair, then turned back again. “And I can assure you that young Lord Avery is nothing like his father.”

~*~

The men worked all night by lantern light to finish Candle’s surprise. He was tempted to wait until she had given him her answer and then show her. He would love her to choose him without his gift. But no. He wouldn’t play games, and wouldn’t take the risk she’d turn him down and then refuse to change her mind.

He would show her first, and then propose to her again.

He checked the surprise for the third time that morning, ran inside again to see if a message had arrived from the gate yet, stopped to ask his mother how she was, and went back out to the steps to see if he could see their carriage.

The weather was cold, with gusty showers that hinted at sleet in their future. He hoped Bradshaw’s carriage was warm. What was he thinking! The man was the king of carriages. He would send his womenfolk in the best he had.

Returning inside, Candle looked around the entry hall. Yes. It looked splendid. Mother loved Christmas, and took no notice of the tradition that decorations must wait until Christmas Eve. As soon as the Christmas Octave started on the 17th of December, she mobilised the entire household to transform the house into a Christmas paradise. The servants had outdone themselves this year. Every surface sported ivy, holly, and greenery. More greenery was tied to the stair balustrade with bright ribbons, and ribbons festooned the kissing balls of holly, ivy, rosemary, and mistletoe. Mother had made enough kissing boughs to put one in every room, upstairs and down.

“My Lord, she be here! Her carriage be coming down the hill.”

Candle waited impatiently at the bottom of the steps, and was at the carriage door as soon as it rolled to a stop. The door swung open before he could grasp the handle, and Min tumbled out into his arms.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Ran, yes. I will marry you.”

Later, after he had kissed her, been kissed on the cheek by Mrs Bradshaw, and escorted them inside to his mother for congratulations and more kisses, he managed to detach Min from the admiring group around the new chair.

“I have something for you, beloved. A surprise present for Christmas. Mother, Mrs Bradshaw, I am taking Min to show her her present.”

The mothers waved them away.

~*~

Ran refused to tell her what the surprise was, but he took her outside, and to a building behind the stable. “Stop.” he commanded. He rushed ahead and opened the door, then returned and covered her eyes with his hands. “I’ll guide you. Take three paces forward. Now turn slightly and take one more pace. Now feel forward with your foot for the step. There are three steps. One; two; three. Two more paces. Stop.”

He removed his hands.

Min stared. Then turned her head. Then turned in a complete circle.

“Ran? Ran, it’s my workshop.” She ran forward and brushed her hand over the draughting table, picked up and put down the pens and pencils waiting for her, straightened the blotter. Next, the workbench, where racks waited for her tools, still back in Bath in the racks he’d duplicated. The shelves of supplies were mostly empty, too, but she could imagine them filled.

“Ran.” She smiled at him and his dear features wavered as her eyes swam with tears.

He looked concerned. “Min? Is it alright?”

“It is the most wonderful thing anyone has every done for me. My workshop.”

“How else are you going to keep inventing your wonderful chairs, my love?”

“Ran.” That seemed to be the only word she could say, but she invested it with a wealth of meaning. Then she melted into his arms, and neither of them spoke for some time.

~*~

Candle Avery was climbing the hill track in the rain. He was cold, wet, and thoroughly happy.

He and his companions had refused a lift on the cart taking the freshly cut yule log back to Avery Hall. The hill track was the quicker way. And at the Hall Min waited for him. Min Avery. His wife of three days.

He’d be hard put to pick the happiest moment of his life. When she tumbled out of the coach and accepted his proposal? When she agreed to using the special licence he’d obtained, and to marrying him as soon as her family could come from Bath? When he’d turned from his place before the altar and seen her walking towards him in a cloud of lace, or a few minutes later when she’d given him her hand and her trust with her vows? When she welcomed him into her embrace and her body later that night? When he woke up the next morning to her shy suggestion that they should make love again?

Each day, he fell in love a little more.

They crested the top and Daniel said something Candle didn’t catch. Michaels gave Candle a friendly punch on the arm. “No point in talking to him,” he told Daniel. “The man walks around in a daze.”

“To be fair, we are intruding on his honeymoon,” Daniel noted.

To be fair, they were mostly being careful not to intrude. But it was Christmas Eve, and it was his job as master of the house to collect the yule log. “My wife and I want you to enjoy your Christmas in our home,” he said. As well as Min’s family, Michaels and Miss Cresthover had come for the wedding, and were staying for Christmas.

“Preferably without disturbing you and your wife. Yes, we understand,” said the irrepressible Daniel.

Michaels gestured ahead. “Who, if I do not mistake, is coming to meet us.”

Below, two women waited in the shelter of the summerhouse.

Sure enough, as the men drew level with the structure, Miss Cresthover and the new Lady Avery dashed down the steps under their umbrellas.

“So do we have a good yule log,” Min asked.

“An excellent one,” Daniel said, “but I’m sorry to say we failed in one mission.” He let his eyes, lips and shoulders droop.

“What was that?” Cara could be depended on to ask the questions that set Daniel up for whatever punchline he intended to deliver.

Candle held Min back, letting the others go on ahead, but they could still hear Daniel’s reply as the three in the lead turned the corner of the path.

“We couldn’t find any mistletoe to replace all the berries Min and Candle have used, so nobody else in the Hall can be kissed, Miss Cresthover.”

“But Mr Whitlow, you kissed me this morning!” replied Cara.

“I kissed you this morning,” Candle told Min.

“Really? I am not sure that I remember. Perhaps if you do it again?”

After several minutes, he drew his head back. “Min, the yule log won’t be here for another hour. Shall we go up to bed?”

“Up the stairs in front of our friends and family? Ran, I could not.”

He thought for a moment of suggesting the back stairs, but through the kitchen full of servants wouldn’t appeal to her, either.

“However,” said Min, “your study has a sofa and a warm fire, and I unlatched the window before I came out.”

“Ah, Min,” Candle told her, “how lucky I am to have a clever wife.”

THE END

Thank you for reading my novella. For a copy of your own, please choose one of the retailers linked from my Candle’s Christmas Chair page.