Jude Knight's Blog, page 22

Spotlight on Weave Me a Rope

He is imprisoned. She is cast out. But neither will give up on their love.

When the Earl of Spenhurst declares his love for a merchant’s niece, he is locked away in a tower. Spen won’t get out, the marquess his father says, until he agrees to an arranged marriage.

After the marquess unceremoniously ejects Cordelia Milton from his country mansion, she is determined to rescue her beloved, but it all goes horribly wrong.

She needs time to recover from her injuries, and Spen has been moved across the country under heavy guard. It seems impossible for two young lovers to overcome the selfish plans of two powerful peers, but they won’t give up.

Published 26 January 2023

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CP72WDH8

Book 5 in A Twist Upon a Regency Tale

Drugs, Sex, and Music

Once again, this time in Hold Me Fast, I’m writing about the use of drugs in the early 19th century. In this case, my heroine has fallen into the hands of a fast set who combine their love of music, poetry and painting with drug abuse and sex.

My heroine is a musician—she sings and she plays the harp. She is also, by the time my hero comes to find his childhood love, solidly addicted.

So what drugs?

Laudanum was legal and easily available. It was sold as the answer to all sorts of things, from sleeplessness and sorrow to toothache in babies. Laudanum is a mix of opium and alcohol. It mightn’t fix what ails you, but you won’t care any more. It is brutally addictive, as many users found to their cost.

The market also contained other “medicines” that contained opium. Dover powder was a mix of opium and ipecacuanha, to be taken in a sweet drink such as a white wine posset. Godfrey’s cordial combined opium with treacle and spices in water.

Opium itself was also readily available, to smoke, chew, or otherwise consume.

In all those forms, the benefit was a euphoric “rush” followed by relaxation. And in all these forms, people became addicted with regular use.

Ether was a new toy for the idle in search of a thrill, too. Sold as a medicine called Anodyne, liquid diethyl ether gave users dissociative effects and a sensation of happiness. Warming it and smelling the vapours worked faster, but ether is highly flammable, which could be problematic in the hands of those high on the effects. Burns were common.

Cannabis and its derivatives weren’t readily available from the neighbourhood apothecary, but its likely that my villain could have found majoun or charas—blocks of cannabis resin—in the docklands, where sailors might well have imported such products for their own use and for sale.

Nitrous oxide parties also fall within my time period, with gatherings to inhale the product held as early as 1799. The idea that laughing gas might have medical applications wasn’t picked up for another forty-give

Spanish fly, a preparation made from blister beetles, was used as an aphrodisiac. It caused a rush of blood to the sexual organs, and was highly toxic. As was Fowler’s preparation, a solution using arsenic for the same purpose.

Were psychotropic mushrooms in use in England at the time? We know that in 1799 a family picked mushrooms in Green Park, cooked them up, and ate them. The father and four sons experienced spontaneous laughter followed by delirium. This was in the news at the time. You can, if you wish, take the view that idle dilettantes like my heroine’s patrons would read about such an event and decide that mushrooms were a step too far. But I’d be willing to bet that some of them had a go. Certainly, my rotten lot did so.

And when all else fails, there’s always alcohol. I’ve written before about the huge quantities consumed as a matter of course at all levels of society. Yes, glasses were much smaller than they are today, and so were bottles. But still, the reported volumes downed in a night are astounding.

The folk tale that inspired Hold Me Fast is Tam Lin, in which a faithful sweetheart is determined to rescue her love from the fairy queen. She is told that she can get him back if she recognises him when the fairy horde parade by, pulls him from his horse, and turns into one horrible and dangerous creature after another.

As soon as I began to think about the mechanics of a fairy tale world with the underlying viciousness and cold-hearted hedonism of the fairies in the oldest tales, I knew I had a group of selfish entitled aristocratic men with too much money and too little conscience. And what is more likely than that a person recovering from drug addiction is going to be changeable, near mindless, and dangerous?

Introducing a villain (or two) on WIP Wednesday

“Good day, Lord Hardwicke,” called Rose across the garden wall. The elderly neighbour had been rolled out in his bath chair and parked on the terrace, just across the wall from the herb pots she had on the terrace of her brother’s townhouse.

The gardens near the house were narrow, and shaded by neighbouring trees. Pauline’s roses were further down the garden and got the sun most of the days, and Rose had a patch for her herbs down there, too. The terrace was out of the shade of the trees and caught the full afternoon sun. The plants that needed most of her care flourished here within a few steps of the house.

Lord Hardwicke, not so much. He looked more and more frail each time she saw him. “Miss Ransome,” he called. “A pleasant day for a spot of gardening.”

At least, that was what she understood him to say. His speech had recovered a lot—it had been almost gone altogether after the apoplexy he had suffered a couple of months ago. It was still garbled and hard to understand.

“I am cutting back the peppermint before it runs to flower, Lord Hardwicke,” she explained.

In answer to a garbled question, she agreed, “Yes, I will use it in tinctures at the hospital, to bring down fevers.”

In their conversations before his apoplexy, she had learned he had a personal interest in military hospitals. His grandson was a soldier, currently stationed in Ireland with one of the Highland regiments, and Lord Hardwicke worried about him.

Poor Lord Hardwicke. He had been lonely before his apoplexy and things were worse now. Before, he had few visitors and went out seldom. Now, he went nowhere, and the trickle of visitors had dried up to nothing, perhaps because they were turned away at the door, as Rose had been in the early days after the apoplexy, when she had become worried at his continued absence from his garden.

However, since his body failed, his wife had begun to entertain frequently. She had guests now. Rose could hear the tinkle of tea cups and the buzz of conversation, drifting through the windows that were open in the heat of the day.

That was probably why the poor old man was out on the Terrace. Lady Hardwicke would not want her guests to see him. That was another thing that had changed since Lord Hardwicke was struck down. Lord and Lady Hardwicke used to stay home together, she busying herself with redecorating the house, he with his books and his garden.

Before, Lady Hardwicke was all sweet words and flattery. “Yes, my lord. You are so clever, my lord. It must be as you say, my lord.” Not after. Rose had heard her talking to her poor husband. She obviously had not seen Rose, who was kneeling down to weed the pots, for Lady Hardwicke did not measure her words.

“You useless lump of meat. Why could you not have died in your fit? I’d be a rich widow. Well. The doctor says the next one could kill you, so we live in hope, Phillip and I. I can’t wait for the day I can dance on your grave. Perhaps I won’t wait. Phillip says it would be a kindness to hold a pillow over your face.”

“Na i’ ma will.” Lord Hardwicke forced out the words, and Lady Hardwicke slapped the poor old man’s face.

Phillip, Rose had discovered through the medium of the network of servants in the surrounding houses, was Phillip Wolfendale, Lord Hardwicke’s valet. Rose had seen him. His hair was white, though he was at least ten younger than Lady Hardwicke, in years at least. Rose put his age in the mid-twenties.

His skin was pale, too, and his eyes were a startling pale blue. He had seen her peering over the wall, though Lady Hardwicke never noticed. Seen her and challenged her, for he had come close to the wall and stared into her eyes.

“The Ransome bastard, isn’t it? Mind your own business, Lady Rosalind Ransome. There is nothing to interest you on this side of the wall, and people who interfere are liable to come to bad ends.”

Rose still felt a shiver of fear when she remembered the look he gave her.

Tea with Cordelia

The Duchess of Haverford had formed the habit of holding an afternoon tea early in the Season for the current year’s debutantes. It gave the girls an opportunity to meet one another away from the endless manoeuvring of the marriage mart and out from under the thumbs of their mothers and chaperones, who were having tea in another room down the hall.

It also allowed Eleanor, the duchess, to discover likely protégés and possible problems. Every year-group of debutantes had them. The girls who had the potential to join the ranks of the ladies whose work for diverse charities contributed so much to the wellbeing of the country their husbands governed. The girls whose sole focus was themselves, and who would tear others down in order to promote their own interests.

Eleanor circled the room, attempted to speak to each girl in turn. “Let me see,” she said to the latest, a very pretty young little lady with light brown curls. “You are Miss Cordelia Milton, are you not.”

The lady lifted her chin proudly and somewhat defensively. “I am, Your Grace. I am the daughter of Josiah Milton.”

Eleanor nodded. No shrinking violet this one. “I am acquainted with Mr Milton. We serve on some of the same committees.” Mr Milton was a self-made man, rising from humble beginning to become one of the richest men in the United Kingdom. Miss Milton was his only child.

Miss Milton’s face lit up with a lovely smile. “My father has mentioned you, Your Grace. He has nothing but praise for your influence as a trustee of the orphanages he also supports. Also the asylum for women.”

A safe haven for wayward women, facing the consequences of the lifestyle many had not adopted out of choice. The world they lived in was not kind to women who had children out of wedlock, no matter how they arrived at that unhappy state.

“Do you also have an interest in such causes, Miss Milton?” Eleanor asked.

The girl nodded with another of her delightful smiles. “My father says that we have been blessed with more than our share of riches, and that we ought to share what we can in a way that will do the most good.”

An excellent attitude, and one that was rare among the aristocracy. Mr Milton clearly intended his daughter educated to marry into the upper sort. She certainly had had the education, and was ladylike in appearance and manners. No one would sniff, either, at her dowry or her beauty.

But whether the young men currently on the market could get over the young lady’s working class connections was another matter. Perhaps someone from the gentry would be less likely to look down on Miss Miller for her antecedents.

Eleanor resolved to do what she could to smooth the girl’s path.

***

Cordelia is falls in love with the son and heir of a marquess, and their road to happiness is marred by the snobbishness that Eleanor derides.

 

Two preorders for your reading pleasure

Have you heard about these two preorders? Both are part of multi-author series, and both are coming out later this year.

The Blossoming of the WallflowerBook 21 in The Revenge of the Wallflowers

As a gardener, Merrilyn Parkham-Smythe, was happy to be called a wallflower. Wallflowers were tenacious, long blooming, colourful and reliable plants, easy to care for as long as they had a fair share of sun. Like them, Merrilyn had no objection to providing providing background to the showier and more troublesome ladies of Society. She did object to being slighted and bullied by those highly praised blooms and their male counterparts.

The gentleman next door, for example. He had killed an entire herbacious border, pruned all the flowers off her magnolia tree, refused to see her when she called, and failed to reply to her letters of complaint. He richly deserved what he had coming. Didn’t he?

Justin Falconbridge hadn’t meant to offend the lady next door. He supposed he should have known that treating his carriageway with lime and sulfur to kill the weeds might affect the plants next door, but they would grow again, wouldn’t they? And wasn’t he entitled to cut off the flowers that dropped onto said carriage way and made it slipperly underfoot?

It was a pity she only spoke to him to abuse him, because he could think of a better use for those perfectly shaped lips than to hurl abuse at him. Since he couldn’t be in her presence without thoughts that were inappropriate in the presence of an innocent lady, he had to ignore her. Sooner or later, she would give up and leave him alone. Which is what he wanted. Wasn’t it?

***

This one is out in July. You can preorder it from most major retailers: Books2read https://books2read.com/TBotW

If you’d like to see the other books in the series, check here. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CKHNCQ6T

The Widow’s Christmas RogueBook 30 in The Wicked Widow’s League

Jessica Lady Colyton has no intention of being a wicked widow and has no time for rogues.  No time for men, in fact. Her father and her brothers were rogues enough for a lifetime, and her deceased husband was a scoundrel of quite a different type. However, she has joined the Wicked Widow’s League, and is grateful for their help to get her back on her feet after her husband’s will proves to be just one more blow from a controlling and manipulative man.

They have even organised for her to have a week’s holiday in the country. She blesses them right up until she finds a naked rogue in her bed.

Benjamin Lord Somerford is no rogue, unlike the father and brother whose deaths brought him a title and a barrow load of responsibilities that give him little time to play. He refuses an invitation to his sister’s Christmas house party because he has no time for the beauties she has undoubtedly invited to tempt him into matrimony.

When he wakes up in a strange bed, naked and tied down, he has no idea how he came to be there and wants no part whatever plot is underway. Thankfully, the lady who finds him is of the same mind. When a snowstorm prevents them from leaving, they must work together not just to survive but to avoid scandal.

***

This one will be a treat for next Christmas. Again, you can preorder from most major retailers: Books2read https://books2read.com/u/m26zvd

If you’d like to see the other books in the series, check here. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BFJ29XQ2

The Regency Marriage Season

Another video from Ellie Dashwood.

Inauspicious first meeting on WIP Wednesday

They came from the shadows, half a dozen men in layers of dirty rags, with knives or broken planks in their hands and hunger in their eyes.

Reuben, their footman, moved in front of Rose, who was a step ahead of Pauline. Harris, the groom, passed the sisters to join Reuben. He muttered, for their ears only, “Get back, my ladies, and if you see an opportunity, run.”

Rose would have stepped up beside him, ready to fight, but Pauline grabbed her arm and pulled her back. “We have to help them,” she objected.

Pauline did not agree. “The biggest help we can be is to stay out of their way, and escape when we have the chance. They can make his own escape if they do not have to worry about us.”

She did not say, but Rose knew, that it was Rose’s fault they were on London’s streets in this unsavoury area after dark. But how could she have left the hospital earlier? Private Brown had asked for her. He was not expected to survive the night. Rose could do little but hold his hand, but that helped, or so Mr. Parslow, the superintendent, believed.

So Rose sent home the carriage her brother had sent for her, and her maid. She could not see any reason why they should sit up all night. Which had brought them here, in the early hours of the morning, facing murder or worse for the sake of the clothes they stood up in and whatever price she and Pauline might fetch in the brothels, for neither of them was foolish enough to carry valuables with them on an errand into this part of town.

Harris had a two-barrel pistol, which was making the footpads think twice.

“Is it worth being shot?” Reuben was arguing, persuasively. “Harris is a good shot, so at least two of you will not survive. Just let us go our way and no one needs to be hurt.”

“I am sorry, Pauline. I never meant for this.”

Pauline squeezed Rose’s hand. “You did not ask me to bring the carriage back to get you, and you did not arrange for the carriage axle to collapse.” Which it had done five streets from the hospital and only three from the broader streets patrolled by the watch.

The footpads’ leader had a counter offer. “How ’bout you gie us all the morts’ glimmers and you can go your way?”

Glimmers, Rose guessed, must be jewelry. “I am not wearing any jewelry,” she told Pauline. “Are you?”

“No, and I do not have money with me, either.”

I would rather die rather than be sold into a brothel, Rose decided. She put her hand into the pocket she wore under her gown, a slit in the side seam giving discrete access. At least Private Brown would not be disappointed when she did not return tomorrow. He had breathed his last some fifteen minutes before Pauline arrived with the carriage.

She unfolded the object she retrieved from the pocket, extracting the blade from the bone handle to give her a small but perfectly serviceable dagger. “I have this,” she announced. “If I kill my sister and myself, will the clothing you can retrieve from our bodies be enough to compensate for this area being overrun with Red Breasts for the next few weeks, until they find every last one of you? For we will be missed, and my brother knows where we went.”

The footpads went into a huddle, most of them still keeping an eye on their annoyingly uncooperative prey.

“I’m not sure you should have done that,” said Pauline, and Harris, the groom, groaned. “Not a good idea, Lady Rose.”

In the next moment, Rose found out why, as the footpads’ leader shouted, “Take the skirts alive, especially the mouthy one!” Four of them hurled themselves towards poor Reuben and Harris, and two began skirting around the fight that ensued to grab Rose and Pauline.

Rose had no time to spare a glance for the servants, though she heard a shot. She was determined not to be taken. The man who attacked her jerked back, screaming imprecations, his hand spraying blood. The second man took advantage of Rose’s distraction to seize Pauline, who hit him with her umbrella. He grasped the umbrella and ripped it from her hands, then stumbled backwards.

Rose took a moment to realise that a large someone in dark clothes and a cape had dragged the man away from Pauline and swung him head first into a wall. A meaty hand landing on her shoulder was her only warning that the assailant she had cut had gone back on the attack. Before she even had time to struggle, the caped man had punched him hard enough to hurl him backwards.

One of the other footpads shouted, “It’s the Wolf!” In moments, three of them were running. The two that had attacked Rose and Pauline lay where the caped man had put them. One of the servants’ attackers was also down, presumably shot, but so was Harris. Reuben was picking himself up from the ground. As far as Rose could see in the poor light, he was unharmed.

She hurried to Harris, kneeling to feel for his pulse. As she did, he groaned. Thank goodness! He was alive. “Harris, can you hear me?” she asked.

“Lady Rosalind.” He caught back a yelp as he rolled to get his legs under him. “Reuben, lad, a hand,” he begged.

As she got up from her knees, Rose caught back her objection to him moving. She could not examine him in the dark, and they needed to get off these streets as quickly as possible.

Harris said out loud what she had been thinking. “We need to get the ladies out of here before they come back to get their men.”

The footpads! She had forgotten them. She took two steps towards the one who had been punched, and who was now groaning. The man they called the Wolf stopped her. “Stay back! If he can he will use you as a shield, and your servants suffering will be for nothing.”

Oh dear. “But they have been hurt,” she pointed out. “I do not like to just leave them.”

“We will leave them to their own kind,” Pauline decided. “We cannot risk Harris and Reuben for the sake of men who would have killed us or sold us without a second thought. Come along, Rose.”

“You are right,” Rose agreed, falling obediently into step with her sister. Reuben came behind, one arm around Harris to support him. The Wolf ranged around them, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, and sometimes walking beside them for a few paces.

In the moonlight, filtered as it was through London’s fog, she could not see more of him than she had from the beginning. A large man, broad and tall. Dark clothes covered by a thigh-length cape. Try as she might, she could not see his face, even when he turned his face towards her to deliver a disparaging remark. He had an arsenal of them.

“This is no place for ladies of your kind.”

“What would your family do if you were killed or worse?”

“You put your servants at risk. Did you think of that before you planned your little jaunt?”

All said in the accents of a gentleman and in a pleasant voice that sounded as if he might sing tenor.

Watch out for Inviting the Wolf, due to Dragonblade Publishing at the end of this month. It is inspired by Little Red Riding Hood. (With a Jude Knight twist or two)

Tea with a would-be rescuer

November 1793

“Is it dangerous?” Eleanor asked her husband’s unacknowledged brother.

They had been friends for close to a decade, since he first rescued a drunken Haverford from footpads one evening, and dragged him home to Haverford House.

He had said, in exasperation, “I do not know why I bother. He never changes. I should have left him in the gutter to rot.”

She had replied, “I wish…” and then had caught the rest of the words back. They were not true, in any case. She wished her husband at the other end of the country. She wished him on a five year diplomatic mission to Asia. But she did not wish him dead. She had not descended to that level.

Tolliver had somehow understood all of that without her saying it, and after that often kept her informed about her husband’s activities. He had taught her how to use this information to manage the distance that she needed to keep from Haverford in order to stay sane.

She was mother to the duke’s two sons, his official hostess, the chatelaine of his houses, an asset to him in his political campaigning, but other than that, he largely left her alone. She owed much of that to Tolliver.

He was testing her gratitude now. Bad enough that he risked his own life in missions into the horror that France had become now that the Committee for Public Safety was sending dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of people to the guillotine.

But he wanted to take David. The boy she had taken into her house and into her heart was twenty, barely a man. She would fear for him every day he was over the channel. He was eager to go, and Eleanor had no power to stop him.

“Is it dangerous?” Tolliver asked. “I will not lie to you, Eleanor. It is. We take every precaution, but there is always danger. I can promise you that I will watch over David. He is my nephew, after all.”

That was true. Tolliver, the base-born brother of Haverford, and David, Haverford’s base-born son. “He is very young…” she began, but David answered her from the doorway.

“Not so young. I am a man, Your Grace.” He stepped cautiously into the little parlour, as if he expected Haverford to emerge from a corner to berate him. Haverford had got it into his head that David was a danger to Aldridge, his eldest legitimate son. It was ridiculous, but Haverford had made the claim and would not back down.

Still, he had come to Haverford House at her request, bless the boy.

“The duke is away in Brighton with the Prince of Wales,” Eleanor assured him. “Yes, David, I know you are a man. I hope you will forgive me for worrying about you.”

“I shall be as careful as I can, Your Grace,” David assured her. “But this has to be done, and I am able to help do it. Wish me well, Your Grace, and let me go with your blessing.”

“You have my blessing, David, and I shall pray for you every day until you return to England,” said Eleanor.

Spotlight on “Moonlight Wishes and Midnight Kisses” in Under the Harvest Moon

by Collette Cameron

Chronicles of the Westbrook Brides

Time can heal most wounds. Only love can heal what remains…

A wounded veteran with no future…

There was a time when Cortland Marlow-Westbrook wanted little more than to marry the Scottish lass who stole his heart and build a life with her. But that was before the war left its mark on his body and soul. Now, scarred and disabled, all he wants is to be left alone. Unfortunately, fate—and the only woman he ever loved—have another plan in mind…

An heiress who mourns the past…

Avery Levingtone was heartbroken when Cortland went off to war and never responded to a single letter she sent. But now he’s back, and she refuses to waste the second chance they’ve been given. She’ll do whatever it takes to win back her wounded warrior’s heart and prove they were meant to be together—or she’ll remain a spinster forever. On this there can be no compromise…

Can Cortland overcome the pain of his past and embrace a loving future with Avery? Or will he deny his happily ever after…and hers?

***

“Moonlight Wishes and Midnight Kisses” is the first story in Under the Harvest Moon, now on preorder at the special pre-release price of 99c.

Traditional skills: shoeing a horse

When researching old skills, modern practitioners are great to watch. My heroine in the Under the Harvest Moon is a farrier, and here is how a farrier shoes a horse (then, and now, bar the forge and the portable sander).