Jude Knight's Blog, page 72

Work in progress on Wednesday?

I haven’t forgotten you, I promise. I have To Wed a Proper Lady nearly ready to put out to as an advance reader copy, and I expect it to publish on time on 15 April. I’m working on getting the back matter of Paradise Regained up to date, and then I’m going to make it permafree as an introduction to the Children of the Mountain King series, and I’m writing a Paradise Lost companion piece to give away in my April newsletter.

But, in other news, I’ve just got back from a family holiday in Bali, and I have two and half weeks to pack up my house for moving, and less time than that to find a place to move to.

So, apart from what I’ve just listed above, the writing is going on the back burner, and I’m not going to be much around on the blog or online. Wish me luck, folks! See you mid-April.

 

First Kiss on WIP Wednesday

 

How about a first kiss post for this WIP Wednesday? I have one. It’s from To Wed a Proper Lady. Full disclosure. This seen hasn’t much changed since the novel was the novella The Bluestocking and the Barbarian.

Please share your own work-in-progress first kisses in the comments.

Sure enough, Sophia was alone in the room to which the doddery old butler directed James when he asked after the second parlour. He gave the room a quick and cursory scan before focusing his attention on the woman standing on a ladder and hanging garlands across the huge painting on the window wall. She leaned to her right to reach up to the carved pediment above the window, clutching at the draped maroon curtains to keep her balance.

James was across the room in seconds. “Careful,” he said, steadying the ladder.

Sophia looked down. “Lord Elfingham. What are you doing here?”

“I was looking for something useful to do, Lady Sophia. May I be of service?”

She examined his face and then nodded. “You are between Scylla and Charybdis, are you not?”

James laughed. “You have it exactly. On the one side, the ladies who think it worth the gamble to pull a possible future duke down into their watery vortex, and on the other, the multi-headed monster of innuendo and insult in the company of the gentlemen.”

“Neither ladies nor gentlemen by their behaviour,” his own lady said tartly. “Very well, Lord Elfingham, I will put you to work.” She put one hand on his shoulder to help herself from the ladder. “Bring the ladder, please. I have more garlands to hang.”

James lifted the ladder and followed obediently in her wake. “What are we doing, pray tell?”

“We are having a costume party tonight. You heard?”

James nodded. His wardrobe was limited to what he could carry in his saddlebags, but the duchess had ordered chests of costumes and fabric brought down from the attics, and he had found the means to replicate his festival clothes as a mountain prince, or at least close enough for the audience.

If they wanted a barbarian, he would give them a barbarian.

“We did not decorate in here on Christmas Eve, since we had so much else to do, so I am putting up Christmas decorations. See? The evergreen is a symbol of life in this most holy season. And the holly, have you heard the song about the holly?”

Sophia sang for him, in a light alto, all the verses his father had taught them when he was a tiny child. This European holly was not precisely the same as the holly he had grown up with, but it was similar. For the pleasure of hearing her voice, he kept his counsel.

She went on to explain the other Christmas customs, not just the foliage and ribbons and other materials used in the decorations, but the pudding that had been served at Christmas dinner, the Yule logs burning in various fireplaces around the house, and the boxes that the duchess had delivered the previous day to poor families around the district.

“Cedrica and I, and several of the other ladies, were her deputies,” Sophia explained. “It was wonderful to see the happy little faces of the children, James.”

James had stayed back from the hunt organised for the men in the hopes of spending time with Sophia, and had found out about the charity expedition too late to offer his services. “I am sorry that I missed it,” he said sincerely.

He noted one glaring omission in her descriptions. “Just a decoration,” she had told him, mendaciously, when he asked about the kissing boughs.

And now pretending to be ignorant of these English Christmas customs was about to pay off. One day, when she was safely his wife, he might admit to Sophia that he and the whole citadel had hung on his father’s tales of an English Christmas, that his mother and her maids had decorated high and low, and his father had led the troops out to find a fitting Yule log to carry home in triumph on Christmas Eve. A harder job in his dry mountains than in this green land.

But this was not the time for that story. Not when Sophia was relaxed and about to pass under a kissing bough that retained its full complement of mistletoe berries.

James suppressed a grin. “Look,” he said, at the opportune time, pointing up. “My kaka—my Papa—told me about these.”

She stopped, as he had intended, and with a single stride, he had reached her, wrapped her in his arms, and captured the lips that had been haunting his dreams this past three months.

And she kissed him back. For a moment… for one long glorious moment, while time stood still and the world ceased to exist, Sophia Belvoir kissed him back.

 

Tea with the enemy

 

Today, I have an excerpt post, lifted from To Wed a Proper Lady, which is on pre-order and coming out in April. The younger James Winderfield, Lord Elfingham, meets the lady he desires in a bookshop, and is having tea with her when our duchess arrives. Who has she been having tea with? And what does it all mean?

“Would you join me for a pot of tea, Lady Sophia,” he asked. “I understand they make excellent tea cakes, here.” If she agreed, he could hide his most recalcitrant body part beneath a table, which would mean he could take off the overcoat that currently concealed the direction of his thoughts. He had dropped into the bookshop to spend a half hour between appointments. The one he’d just attended with the thief taker who was investigating the inn fire had given him a lot to think about, and he did not want to arrive at his father’s club before the earl got there, for fear he would be turned away.

He hadn’t planned to find Lady Sophia, but he wasn’t about miss the opportunity. He sent up another prayer, this one of thanks, when she agreed. He took the stack of books from her, and allowed her to lead the way to the room set aside for patrons to take refreshment.

“Oh, look,” his lady said, changing direction as they came through the arched doorway, “Cedrica is still here. Come, and I will introduce you.”

So much for a few minutes of private conversation to further his courtship. He found himself being presented to a Haverford scion whom he’d seen in the duchess’s company. Miss Grenford, a colourless little dab of a female, was some sort of cousin of the Duke of Haverford, and acted as companion and secretary to the duchess.

“I thought you and Aunt Eleanor had gone,” Lady Sophia said to her friend, after they had given their order to the maid.

“Her Grace sent me to have a cup of tea,” Miss Grenford explained. “She had a few things to tidy up, she said, and would be perhaps half an hour.”

Lady Sophia turned to James to explain. “We have been using a room here for a planning meeting, Lord Elfingham.”

“For a charitable benefit,” Miss Grenford added.

They were in the midst of telling him about the house party to be held at Christmas, when Cedrica stopped in mid-sentence and gave a tentative wave to someone behind him. James looked over his shoulder, and rose to his feet as the newcomer reached the table. Her Grace, the Duchess of Haverford was an elegant and still lovely woman who looked in no way old enough to have a son in his thirties.

“Lord Elfingham, is it not?” she said, inclining her head graciously.

James bowed. “It is an honour to finally meet you, Your Grace.”

Her Grace surprised James by directly addressing the barrier between them. “Let us hope for an end to the hostility between our families, Elfingham. My son speaks highly of you, and I would be pleased to know you, when it can be done without garnering the kind of attention we currently attract.”

The tea shop had hushed, all conversation stopping, all eyes on the Duchess of Haverford in pleasant conversation with the duke’s heir her husband planned to have declared a bastard.

James returned the duchess’s smile. “I will look forward to that, Your Grace.” He bowed. “Miss Grenford, Lady Sophia, thank you for the pleasure of your company.”

As he turned away, he heard the great lady say to her companion, “Cedrica, dear, would you be kind enough to tell one of the footmen to call the carriage, and the others that they can collect our papers and desks, and return them to the house?” The little lady bobbed a curtsey and hurried off on the errand. Looking back over his shoulder, James saw the duchess take a chair and engage Lady Sophia in conversation.

It must be nearly time for his appointment with his father. He should be preparing in his mind his report on the thief taker’s findings; not going over every word his lady had said, trying to invest it with a richer, and more favourable, meaning.

If he headed out the side door, through the hall that led to the meeting rooms upstairs, he’d avoid the need to thread through the warren of shelves in the book rooms between him and the front door.

In the hall, he cast a glance each way, then stopped. His father was standing to one side on the stairs as footmen in Haverford livery passed him with boxes. He noticed James, and for a moment his face was shuttered. Then he continued down the stairs, pulling on his gloves as he came.

“Have you been shopping, Jamie?” he asked, his voice betraying nothing but casual interest.

James’s curiosity was a blazing fire, but he matched the earl’s calm tone. If Father wanted him to know what he was doing in this place and with whom, Father would tell him.

“Looking, merely. It seems a popular place.” He smiled, remembering Lady Sophia’s errand. “I might return to look for Twelfth Night gifts.”

“In October?” The earl shot him a sharp look. “You are well organised indeed, my son.”

Dastardly villains on WIP Wednesday

 

I do love a dastardly villain, and I quite like what I’ve done with Weasel Winderfield, one of the villains in my To Wed a Proper Lady. How about you. Do you have an excerpt about a villain that you’d like to share? Pop it in the comments.

Mine is at the tail end of a duel, brought about because my villain called my hero’s mother an oriental whore. He’s back in the next book, too, still causing trouble. In fact, I’ve just realised that he had a part to play in the backstory of book four, when he seduced the woman who was quickly married off to my hero’s father as his second wife.

“Good shooting, brother,” James said, clapping Drew on the shoulder.

“Idiot would have been fine if he hadn’t moved,” Drew grumbled. Weasel had shot before the final count and missed. When Drew had taken his turn, he had announced his intention of removing Weasel’s watch fob from the chain that drooped across his waist, and ordered the man to stand still.

At the other end of the field, Weasel was carrying on as if death were imminent. His second, the Marquis of Aldridge, after a brief examination, sent the Winderfield men a thumbs up before leaving Weasel to the ministrations of the doctor. Aldridge was now giving orders to the servants by the carriage that had brought him and Weasel to the duelling grounds.

“Breakfast?” James suggested.

“Good idea,” Drew said. “Let’s collect Yousef and…”

As if his name had conjured him up, their father’s lieutenant appeared from the trees and stalked towards them. Something about his posture brought James to full alert, and Drew sensed it too, stiffening beside him.

“Trouble?” James asked, as soon as Yousef was close enough.

“An assassin in the woods, armed with a pistol like these.” He gestured to the gun that Drew had replaced in its case until he had time to clean it. “You were not meant to walk from this field, Andraos Bey.”

Tea with an ally

Hollystone Hall, July 1790

Thomas Oliver Fitz-Grenford watched his hostess as she poured his tea. Even after his very public split with the duke, he had retained his friendship with the servants at the main Haverford properties, but they had been able to tell him little about her health or her state of mind. Only the bare facts. That she had been sick. That on her recovery, she had argued with the duke. That she had then packed her bags and retreated to this lesser estate, the one place in the vast Haverford holdings that belonged to Her Grace and not His Grace. No doubt she would tell him soon why she sent for him.

“There, Tolly. Milk and no sugar. Is that not correct?”

The Grenford heir, the Marquis of Aldridge, had come up with the shortened form of his name. ‘Uncle Tolly’ had been a favourite of the little boy when he had been the duke’s steward and secretary, perhaps because he found time to talk to the child. His Grace had no interest in or patience for children, and the duchess had suffered a succession of miscarriages before successfully carrying her second son, Lord Jonathan, to term. Also, His Grace had decreed that his heir have his own extensive suite, staffed by his own personal servants, and that the duchess was neither to visit nor to interfere in Aldridge’s care.

Tolly took the cup. “Yes, Your Grace. Thank you.”

She smiled. “We are brother and sister, Tolly. Will you call me ‘Eleanor’?”

Tolly’s face heated. His relationship to the duke was not precisely a secret, but he had never been acknowledged. The father they shared had brought the son of a favourite mistress to be raised on the estate, and had even kept on his half-brother’s tutor to train Tolly in the skills he would need to serve the duchy. Still, he had not been encouraged to show any familiarity, and the duke liked Tolly no more than Tolly liked the duke. “His Grace…”

The duchess’s eyes flashed and she scowled. “I do not mean to concern myself ever again with the opinions of His Grace, except as I must for my safety and that of my children and the servants. Will you not call me by my name, Tolly, when we are not in company? Will you be my friend? For I stand in great need of one.”

He could see that for himself. She had always been slender, but was now gaunt, with dark shadows under her eyes.

The sickness had confined her to her rooms, with everyone, even the children, refused entry. Only the doctor came, so Tolly had been told. Before that, she had very low after Jonathan’s birth, as she had after the birth of Aldridge. Birth seemed to take some woman like that, as if being married to Haverford wasn’t depressing enough.

He felt a wave of compassion for the poor lady, and leaned forward to pat her hand. “I will always stand your friend, Eleanor,” he told her.

“Good, for I need your help. Can you find me information with which to blackmail Haverford?”

Tolly blinked. Whatever he had expected, it wasn’t that.

“Blackmail?” he stuttered in response. “Is he… Has he…” Tolly struggled with a kaleidoscope of mental images. Haverford beating Eleanor. Haverford berating Eleanor. Worse.

Eleanor pursed her lips as if considering how much to tell him, then nodded decisively. “I shall be frank, Tolly. You shall not be shocked, for you know the duke even better than I do, in some ways. He gave me a loathsome disease he picked up from one of his intimate companions. I am recovered, the doctor says. He tells me that many people remain well for their lifetimes, but that continuing to allow Haverford in my bed will make it more certain that the disease will eventually kill me. It may also kill or deform any further children we have.”

Tolly was reduced to stammering again. “I am sorry, Eleanor. Are you safe from him here? How can I help you?”

Eleanor waved off his questions. “I need to broker a truce with him, Tolly, for he has the power to keep my children from me. I wish to live apart, but in the same house. Will you find me the ammunition to bend him to my will?”

Tolly sat back. He had always admired Haverford’s wife; always seen the strength of spirit with which she bore the trials of her marriage. The willingness to fight the duke was new, and he admired her more than ever. It would not be easy. The Duke of Haverford was one of the most powerful men in the country. He feared little and was embarrassed by nothing. Still… “I think I may be able to help, Eleanor. I have a couple of ideas.”

Eleanor’s smile broadened. “I have in mind to be a proper mother to my children; one who spends time with them as real mothers do, and also to do good for others with my position and my wealth. I can build a good life, Tolly, if I can just keep Haverford at arms’ length.”

Tolly narrowed his eyes as he thought. “Entertainments,” he said. “Eleanor, build alliances with the other great ladies of the ton and become a formidable hostess. You have it in you. If you have the support of the ladies, Haverford will have to think twice about acting against you.”

Her eyes lit up. “And if I host his political cronies and support his public life he will have far less objection to my removing myself from his private one.”

“You will have to fight him for influence over Aldridge,” Tolly warned.

“I know,” Eleanor agreed. “But I have an advantage there, my friend. I have never bullied or beaten my son.” She lifted her cup as if it was filled with port or brandy rather than tea. “To my freedom, Tolly.”

He grinned and returned the salute. “To your freedom.”

 

 

Will you be my Valentine?

https://judeknightauthor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/FF-VDay-video.mp4

The St Valentine we remember on this day was probably a Roman martyred for being a Christian sometime in the 3rd century. (There are at least two other candidates: one a bishop in Terni, and one who lived in Africa.) Legend has it that St Valentine performed secret marriage ceremonies for soldiers during a time they were not permitted to marry, and that he sent a letter to his jailer’s daughter signed ‘From your Valentine’.

February 14th has been associated with St Valentine since at least the 5th century. February 14th was also considered the start of Spring in Europe, and one tradition holds that it is the day the birds choose a mate. This tradition may go back to a Roman Spring Festival, celebrated from February 13th to 15th. Whichever came first, by the Middle Ages, when the French and English became devoted to the concept of courtly love, St Valentines became a day for people to declare their love.

In parts of Sussex Valentines Day was called ‘the Birds’ Wedding Day’ until quite recently. In Hamlet, Shakespeare mentions the tradition that the first man an unmarried woman sees on Valentine’s day will be her husband, when Ophelia sings:

Good morrow! ‘Tis St. Valentine’s Day

All in the morning betime,

And I a maid at your window,

To be your valentine!

Other traditions and superstitions associated with  Valentine’s day include:

if the names of all a girl’s suitors were written on paper and wrapped in clay and the clay put into water, the piece that rose to the surface first would contain the name of her husband-to-be
if unmarried women pinned four bay leaves to the corners of their pillow and ate eggs with salt replacing the removed yokes on Valentine’s day eve, they would dream of their future husband
if a woman saw a robin flying overhead on Valentine’s Day, it meant she would marry a sailor. If she saw a sparrow, she would marry a poor man and be very happy. If she saw a goldfinch, she would marry a rich person.
in Wales wooden love spoons were carved and given as gifts on February 14th. Hearts, keys and keyholes were favourite decorations on the spoons. The decoration meant, “You unlock my heart!”

Valentine cards have been made since at least the 17th century, though the explosion in the number waited till the invention of printing and the penny post in the mid 19th century.

Happy Valentine’s day.

Do enjoy it with five tales of a love to warm your heart in the Bluestocking Belles’ latest collection, Fire & Frost.

Fish out of water on WIP Wednesday

Part of the fun of writing is to put your characters into situations they don’t much like, and no one is more fun to torture than a hero who is usually in charge. Do you have an excerpt where your character feels like a fish out of water or the fox in a hunt? Please share in the comments. Here’s mine, from the beginning of To Tame a Wild Rake. It follows on from the piece I used a couple of weeks ago.

“Do not leave my side,” he whispered to Jessica, sternly.

She grinned up at him. “You already threatened the loss of half my dress allowance if I do.”

“Make it the whole dress allowance,” he growled, but she treated the threat with the contempt it deserved, and giggled. He’d never been able to resist any of his half-sisters, and had been putty in Jessica’s hands since she arrived in the nursery, a little infant, too thin for her age and too weak to do more than grizzle. He had put his finger into her little fist, and she had gripped it firmly, smiled at him, and made him her besotted slave from that moment.

“I mean it, Jessie. For your own reputation, even if you don’t care about feeding me to the harpies.”

Her smile slipped and became brittle. “My reputation was ruined before I was born. We cannot all be as fortunate as Matilda, Aldridge.”

He couldn’t help his wince, though the guilt was not his. Though no one risked the wrath of the Duchess of Haverford by shunning the sisters or gossiping in public, everyone knew her three wards were the base-born and unacknowledged daughters of the Duke of Haverford. As soon as Aldridge was duke, he intended to repair what he could, and acknowledge them. It wouldn’t satisfy the high sticklers, but it should help Jessica, and later Frances, to find a match.

At least his eldest sister, Matilda, was now happily married, her husband willing to ignore the scandal for love’s sake.

Jessica ignored his reaction, her mind on her own thoughts. “I will protect you, though, if only because I don’t want to live with a harpy.”

I should choose a wife and be done with it. Without his volition, his eyes scanned the room until he saw her. He had known she must be here; the hostess was, after all, her cousin. The musicale was a benefit to provide medical services in one of the poorest parts of London, or at least to provide the rental for rooms and a salary for a doctor. Lady Ashbury was rumoured to be a healer, and was certainly patroness of the proposed doctor’s clinic.

Lady Charlotte Winderfield sat with her sister, the pair of them somehow an island of serenity in the sea of ferment that was Society at its endless posturing.

“Lady Charlotte won’t have you,” Jessica observed. He glanced down into hazel eyes very similar to his own. She touched his hand. “She swears she will never marry, Aldridge. She has refused every offer, and resisted even when her father and grandfather tried to bully her.” A fact Aldridge well knew, since he had made one of the earliest of those offers, and reluctantly withdrawn it when he discovered the pressure she was under to accept.

He pulled back over himself the cover of the insouciant ducal heir. “There are others who may suit. But I am in no rush to put on shackles, Jessie. “ Not that he could fool Jessica with the part any more than he had deceived Lady Charlotte. She had been able to see through his mask since they first met. She had still been a child in the schoolroom, only fifteen. He had been twenty-seven and sozzled to the gills, nearing the end of three months of drinking and wenching that had failed to dull the edges of a loss he still shied away from considering.

He had known from the first time she scolded him for allowing his pain to make him stupid that he wanted her for his duchess. But by the time she was old enough to court, she’d grown past the friendship they’d forged that long-ago summer, and learned enough about him to reject him out of hand.

He needed to accept his dismissal like a gentleman. But that didn’t stop his yearning.

“They are about to start,” he pointed out to his sister. “Shall we find a seat?”

Lady Ashbury had hired professional musicians to entertain her guests, which was both good and bad. Good, because he didn’t have to suffer through the mediocre performances of debutantes hawking their accomplishments. Their proud mothers must all have cloth ears, or perhaps they hoped that some patron of the musical arts might marry one of them just for the right to forbid them from every playing or singing in public again.

Bad, because the dullards in the audience saw no need to pay the performers the courtesy of their attention, and insisted on chattering the whole way through.

Tea with the dowager Lady Hamner

“And just like that,” the Countess of Hamner said, with a contented sigh, “I am now a dowager.”

The wedding was over, the wedding meal eaten, the wedding guests gone home, and the wedded couple on their way to one of Aldridge’s smaller estates, which he had placed at their disposal for the next month. The Duchess of Haverford echoed her friend’s sigh. “I thought it went off very well, Clara, do you not agree?”

“Very well, Eleanor. They will be happy, I think.”

They shared a smile. Clara’s son and Eleanor’s ward had exchanged their vows at Haverford House, before the Haverford chaplain and a small congregation of close friends and family. The bride had been even more beautiful than usual, her joy as her half brother escorted her to her groom illuminating the old chapel for more effectively than the hundreds of candles deployed for the occasion. As for Hamner, his love for his new bride was in every movement, as he took the hand she offered him with gentle reverence, and angled his body towards her, offering himself without words as her shelter and support for the rest of their lives.

Eleanor poured her friend a cup of tea. After the last few weeks of working together to organise the wedding, each knew the other’s preferences without asking. “If I can just get Jessica settled,” Eleanor said, “I can relax for a while. It is another five years before I need to consider launching Frances.”

“What of Aldridge?” Clara asked. “He will need a bride.” Since news leaked about Haverford’s impending demise, the poor Marquis had been looking ever more and more hunted.

Eleanor shook her head. “I have been told, in no uncertain terms, that I am to offer no help unless it is asked for.” She looked down at her hands, her hesitation so obvious and so out of character that Clara raised her eyebrows.

“I am a safe listener, if you would like one. Or we can speak of something else, if you prefer.”

Eleanor clasped the hand Clara offered. “It is just that I have interfered before, my dear, and Aldridge feels that I put the duchy and its welfare ahead of his happiness. I cannot say he is wrong. I fear that I have hurt him, though all I intended was to protect him. You do believe that, do you not?”

“No one can doubt that you love your son, Eleanor,” Clara insisted.

***

The wedding follows (by a matter of six weeks) the end of Melting Matilda, a novella in the newest Bluestocking Belles collection,  Fire & Frost. Aldridge’s love story is slowly coming together inside my computer as we speak.

 

Waltzing the night away

When we Regency writers include a waltz in our stories, I believe our readers see something like this — the Victorian variety, which is fairly close to how we dance it now.

 

In fact, it was a lot closer to this (by the 1820s):

Or even this (when couple dancing really got going after about 1810 — 30 years earlier on the continent):

Before that, the term waltz referred to a long dance to a piece of music with three beats in the bar, or to the music itself.

Then, of course, there is a modern waltz.

 

Setting the scene on WIP Wednesday

Today I’m thinking about how to provide information without doing an information dump. How much do people need to know? Can I get it out in action or conversation? Show don’t tell, but then, if it is important but would be boring at length, tell it and get on. How do you set the scene? Do you have an excerpt you can share? Here’s a rather raw piece from To Tame a Wild Rake.

Why on earth had he agreed to escort Jessica to a musicale?

In the vicious hunt most debutantes and their mothers made of the marriage mart, a title, wealth, acceptable looks and amiable disposition marked a gentleman as a prime quarry. The Marquis of Aldridge, heir to a duke since birth, regarded the scene before him in near despair.

He would retire to the country to become a hermit, if he could. The business of the duchy required him to be social and in London, but the risk of being saddled with a wife he hadn’t chosen required constant vigilance.

He defended himself with his abysmal reputation, constant watchfulness, and the willingness to be ruthless when required. Even so, the inevitable gossip about his father’s swift decline and approaching demise sent the hunt into a frenzy.

He went nowhere without first considering how to avoid any traps that might have been laid. If forced to attend a ball, he eschewed the dance floor for the card and billiards rooms. He ventured outside of these rooms, and to other entertainments, only in the company of his mother or one of his sisters. He’d not been to a house party in over a year, and the last one was under his mother’s own roof, and had required him to administer a sharp lesson to a particularly rapacious debutante.