Jude Knight's Blog, page 94

Spotlight on A Gentleman’s Promise

Congratulations to Penny Hampton on the publication of her debut novel. It is free until 27 August, so get in now!

It is 1810, and Richard has inherited a title, a neglected estate – and the attentions of a killer; then young Jamie Smythe and his older, independent-minded sister, Emma, turn up, claiming to be the rightful heirs. Suspicion, scandal and murder can’t be ignored, neither can this unsettling female, who is determined to sort things out on her own. Can Richard unmask the villain, hang on to his sanity, and keep headstrong Emma safe, all whilst trying to convince her that they would make an ideal couple?

Buy link with excerpt:

https://read.amazon.co.uk/kp/embed?asin=B07F6B28GT&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_0wYEBb4B1PBPW

Chapter One

There was no getting away from it; someone wanted him dead. The trigger had surely been the notice in the Gazette of his recently acquired title. But who begrudged him the title of Viscount enough to try and kill him? Richard Lacey’s mouth twisted, trying to fathom it out. Well, he was here now; come to see for himself what was so special about Easterby Hall.

He eyed the decaying façade of the house as he brought his curricle to a halt before the property’s front door. His gaze raked over pointed gables and large chimney stacks. No doubt at one time it had been an inviting house; now there was a definite air of neglect. The disappearing sun glinted off stone mullioned windows, and a lone curl of smoke ascended from one of the rear chimneys.

He dismounted to make a closer inspection; the horses snorted and pawed the ground, displaying their impatience. He turned and patted the nearside horse’s flank.

‘Steady, boys; soon have you rubbed down and watered.’

‘Shall I take them round to the stables, sir?’ his groom asked.

‘Yes, see what you can find.’

The front door at the top of the steps remained closed. Fool; obviously, he was not expected. What was he thinking? If the interior was in a similar poor state he would have to return to the inn at Minster Lovell. Not something he wanted to do; like his horses, he’d had enough of travelling for the day.

He stretched to ease his aching muscles; his hopes for a hot bath, a decent meal, and a warm bed were becoming obsessions.

Julia and David are right to tease me. I must be getting set in my ways if all I’m anticipating is a bath and an early night.

He smiled to himself and shook his head; this wouldn’t do. His boots thudded on the steps, jarring his stiffened knees. He tugged on the bell and chimes resonated through the house. Footsteps clattered over what sounded like a tiled floor; then a key grated in the lock. The door opened and a grey-haired gentleman peered out at him, a quizzical expression on his face.

‘Yes, yes, may I help you? I’m afraid the family are not at home to visitors at present.’

The man’s tone was querulous, as if he’d been disturbed from a far more pleasant activity than opening the front door to passing strangers.  Controlling his first vexed impulse – this was now his property after all – Richard replied with his own question.

‘And you are…?’

The old chap pulled himself up to his full height and announced, ‘I am Wrighton, butler to the late Lord Easterby. Who might you be, sir?’

‘Richard Lacey, Viscount Easterby. Your new employer.’

Meet Penny Hampson

I’ve been passionate about books ever since I first learnt to read. A common refrain at home was that I always had my nose in a book; things haven’t changed, even though I’m now somewhat older.

History is a passion too; it’s great that these two interests combine so well.

With degrees in history and historical research, I’ve spent my working life helping others to achieve publication; now I’ve decided it’s my turn.

My Regency stories are filled with mystery, adventure, and romance – my three favourite themes. I’ve enjoyed writing them and I hope you enjoy reading them.

Visit my website: www.pennyhampson.co.uk

Follow me on Twitter @penny_hampson

Wounds and scars on WIP Wednesday

Authors spend quite a bit of time talking about the emotional wounds that motivate and limit their characters. The Void, Damon Suede called it. The Void is what the characters spend the story trying to a-void. For our protagonists, facing and filling the void is the path to happiness. For the antagonists, the void will eventually suck them in, as their efforts to avoid it drag them into actions with consequences. (Don’t you just love fiction, where bad guys lose and good guys win?)

This week, I’m inviting you to share some scars with me — physical (but the real pain is the emotional impact) or emotional.

I’ve got a couple of pieces. One is from my Valentine story for 2019, The Beast Next Door. Eric’s void stems from his mother’s rejection. He was sent to the country as a baby, to hide the shame of his strawberry birthmark, then sent overseas for medical treatment when he was a boy.

When Eric had been sent to Italy, Nanny had been given a cottage in the village and a pension. “I will write, Nanny,” he had said. “I will write to you and you can tell Charis what the letters say.” They had already reluctantly agreed that Charis would not be able to receive letters from him directly, not just because he was a boy and a flawed one at that, but because no one in the Dalrymple household knew of Charis’s secret excursions and the friendship she and Eric had formed.

“My dear boy,” the old lady told him, fondly. “I never did learn to read, and now it’s too late, for my eyes are not what they used to be.”

Charis gave her a hug. “I shall read them to you,” she promised. And so Eric wrote each letter for the two females who loved him, sending them good news and bad. Philip, the tutor assigned to instruct and care for him, who came to be his closest friend. The repeated operations to remove the strawberry growth that marred the whole left side of his face. The infection that nearly killed him. The new friends he made when he was well again and Philip took him into Italian Society. There, the scars became something of a passport to new friendships as he and Philip vied to make up more and more outrageous stories about their cause. His favourite cast him as a ruthless brawler who had met up with a bandit better than he at knife fighting. In the story, the bandit was so impressed with his courage that Eric stayed with the gang for six weeks, being trained by the bandit.

And then the letters stopped. Six years ago, the village rector wrote, expressing his condolences on the death of Mrs Parker, and enclosing the most recent of Eric’s missives, unopened. And since then, nothing.

Eric had stayed in Italy even after he reached his majority. This village had been his prison, not his home, and the only two people who had ever cared about him were lost, for surely Charis had forgotten about him as she moved into Society and acquired the suitors she richly deserved. Handsome men, men who were accepted by their families, men with their own fortunes.

But here she was, sitting beside him, her lovely eyes shining. “Oh Eric, I am so glad you are home,” she exclaimed.

And he was, he realised. Home for him had always been Nanny and Charis. “I never forgot you,” he told her.

Magnus appears in Magnus and the Christmas Angel (a short story in Lost in the Tale), which I’ve begun rewriting as The Tattooed Earl. His void also stems from family rejection and exile. In his case, it led to imprisonment on a Pacific Island, where he won the right to a warrior’s tattoo. This is from the new draft, and shows the scene mentioned in the short story, where Caroline is rescued from a loathsome marriage as she stands before the altar ready to make her vows.

She kept her back straight, her face calm; stilled the trembling of her hands by sheer force of will. No one would know she was afraid. No one but Lewis, who knew and was pleased.

When she was close enough, Lewis grabbed her hand and squeezed hard enough to leave bruises, digging in his fingers. She hid her wince, but the minister noticed and frowned, and frowned still further with Lewis instructed him to begin.

“She’s here. Get on with it man. Splice me to the damn chit. I have other engagements this afternoon, and a wife’s maidenhead to breach before I can get to them.”

“Sir!” The minister was horrified. “Your rudeness is not to be tolerated in this sacred place, and in the presence of a lady. Miss Thrushnet, such lack of respect does not bode well. It does not indeed. I urge you to consider carefully before you proceed.”

Callie shook her head. “I have no choice. Do it quickly, please.”

The minister  shook his head, but he began the words of the service. Callie barely listened, until he reached the point that he spoke to the congregation, almost, it seemed, begged the congregation. “If any of you know cause or just impediment why these two persons should not be joined together in Holy Matrimony, ye are to declare it.”

He fell silent and waited. If only someone would speak up! They would not, of course, but even so Callie turned to look at those witnessing this travesty of a wedding, ignoring Lewis’s foul words as the minister ignored his commands to proceed.

The door to the church crashed back, and a large angry man shouldered his way past Lewis’s footmen, beating them off with his walking stick and shouting, “Stop the wedding!”

His face. Callie knew that face. This was a man, and not a stripling boy, and barbaric black whorls and dots disfigured all of one side—forehead, cheek, chin, and half the nose. But she would have known him had the tattoos covered all, by his resemblance to his father and by the leap of her heart as he fought his way furiously up the nave of the church.

Magnus. It was Magnus returned from the dead to save her.

Her head felt light, and then the world spun around her and went black.

*****

The minister caught Callie as she fell, fainting at the horror his face had become. He would have to explain. The men on the ship that rescued him grew used to his tattoos during the long voyage home. Could Callie?

But no time for that now, with Lewis shaking his fist in Magnus’s face and demanding he be removed, not that anyone seemed anxious to oblige him. Lewis’s lackeys were unconscious on the ground at the back of the church; the onlookers eyed Magnus’s stick warily, and his grin with even more caution.

Magnus looked Lewis up and down and his grin broadened. The monster who had made his youth a torment was now six inches shorter than him, and showing signs of dissipation in his broadening girth, his soft jowls. While he indulged every vice in London, Magnus had survived shipwreck, fought to earn his entrance into the elite of a warrior culture, and worked his way home from the other side of the world on a naval vessel.

Lewis turned his shoulder, ostentatiously. “Get on with it,” he told the minister. “This madman has nothing to do with us.”

The minister had lowered Callie to the ground and now stood protectively over her. His words were addressed to Magnus. “Who are you, sir? And what cause or impediment do you bring?”

Lewis argued. “He is mad, I tell you. Will no one rid us of this violent lunatic?”

Magnus ignored his cousin, but raised his voice for the benefit of the onlookers. “I am Magnus Colbrooke, Earl of Fenchurch, and this lady is my betrothed.”

 

Tea with Mahzad

 

The garden was beautiful. It was a long rectangle, walled on three sides and on the fourth bounded by steps up to a house. Or perhaps a castle, though unlike any castle Eleanor had ever seen. A fort of some kind, its arches and domes giving it an exotic air entirely in keeping with the garden.

A pool divided the garden in half; no, in quarters, for it had two straight branches stretching almost to the walls from the centre point of the walled enclosure. Eleanor had woken to find herself in one quadrant of the garden, surrounded by flowers in a myriad of colours, some familiar and some unknown. Not woken. She could not possibly be awake. Nowhere in England had the mountains she could see over the walls, and nor was this an English garden.

She must have spoken the last thought, because a voice behind her said, “Not English, no. Persian, originally, though I am told they are found from Morocco to Benghal. It is a chahar bāgh; a Paradise garden.”

Eleanor turned. Behind her, a lady as exotic as her garden stood on the steps of a pavilion, raised to give a sheltered place from which to enjoy a view over the garden. “I am asleep and dreaming, I think,” the lady said, “for it is afternoon by the sun, and at such a time my garden is full of my children and my ladies.” She waved to indicate the deserted space, her lips gently curved and her face alight. “We should enjoy the peace while it lasts. Will you join me for coffee, or perhaps tea?”

Eleanor nodded and mounted the stairs to join her, following her into a space as alien as the garden, the stone-paved floor almost invisible under brightly coloured rugs and cushions. “Is it your dream or mine? For when I went to sleep, I was in Haverford House, in London. And this is not England.”

The lady raised both brows, and then let them drop, her face suddenly bland. “You are, perhaps, the Duchess of Haverford?”

“Forgive me, I should have introduced myself. Yes, I am Eleanor Haverford.”

If Eleanor had any doubts that this was a dream they were dispelled in the next instant, when a small table appeared from thin air, laden with a tea pot, a long full-bellied coffee pot, two cups, and plates of small delicacies.

The lady gave a brief huff of amusement. “The dream reminds me of my manners. Please be seated, duchess. Your Grace, is it not? I am Mahzad.”

Now it was Eleanor’s turn to wipe all expression from her face as she inclined her head. “Your majesty. Is that the correct form of address? Cecily McInnes spoke of you when she returned to England.”

“Please call me Mahzad. After all, we have a lot in common, you and I. Tea? Or coffee?”

“Coffee, and please call me Eleanor. Cecily said he was well, and very much in love with his wife.” And Eleanor was happy for the man she had once loved with a maiden’s ardent passion. Of course she was.

Mahzad smiled and placed a protective hand over her belly, where a slight rounding indicated yet another child on the way to join the already large family. “You have a generous heart, Eleanor. You have not been as fortunate as James and I, I think.”

Eleanor waved away the sympathy. “I have my children and my work. I am content. But tell me about your family. Who knows how long the dream might last, and I wish to know all about them.”

In her youth, Eleanor loved James Winderfield, who was exiled for his temerity in aspiring to her hand. This year, the Bluestocking Belle’s box set includes Paradise Regained, a story from me about James and his Persian wife, Mahzad. For more about the box set, keep an eye on the Belles’ website. We’ll be putting the details of the book up on the Joint Projects part of the site as soon as we reveal the name and cover. Or come to our cover release party, on Facebook on the 8th September 2pm to 9pm Eastern Daylight Time. And I’ll put Paradise Regained up on my book page once the cover is released and we have the buy links.

Oh, and for those who remember The Bluestocking and the Barbarian from nearly two years ago, Mahzad is the mother of the hero of that novella, which is soon to be rewritten as a novel. (It is still available as part of Holly and Hopeful Hearts, the Bluestocking Belles 2016 collection.

Promises to keep

One of my takeaways from the Romance Writers of New Zealand conference had to do with the cost and the value of books.

There’s an old joke about people who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. It’s a trap for those who give away their books or sell them cheap. Hands up those who have an ereader full of free and 99c books they’ll possibly never read?

I guess it’s way too easy, as an author trying to be noticed in a bazillion book market, to focus on the financial cost of an ebook and think that tweaking price is going to help with sales. We know that our book has cost us many hundreds of hours to write and edit. We probably know to the cent how much we’ve spent on professional services to produce the book, and on marketing to get it in front of you. What we maybe don’t think about is how much our readers commit when they buy our books.

The money people pay for a book is the smallest part of their investment. When you buy a book, you’re making a commitment to invest time — anything from a lunch hour to weeks of spare minutes, depending on the length and how fast you read. In return, you expect an emotional payback. You want the story to suck you in, let you live in the shoes of the characters while you’re reading, and leave you at the end feeling satisfied with the experience.

I’m still thinking about whether this insight might change my view on pricing. But I know it’s going to change some of my marketing. I want readers to know the promises I make when I put a book on the market.

First, I promise that things will work out, that my protagonists will have a happy ending (whatever that means to them), that villains will eventually be defeated (and punished even if not in this book). I also want you to have enough information to decide whether my kind of slightly dark and often convoluted story is your preferred type of read.

Second, if you like to read the kind of story I like to write, I promise to take you out of the everyday world into the one I’ve created. I don’t promise that things will go smoothly. They won’t. I don’t even promise that bad things won’t happen to good people. All I can say is, enjoy the roller-coaster. By buying my book, you’re asking me to play with your emotions and I promise to do my best to make the ride worthwhile.

Third, I promise to keep learning and innovating. I’ll work on my writer craft. I’ll try not to write the same story over and over, just changing the names and places. I’ll try new things, some of which might not work, but I hope we’ll have fun, you and I.

Thank you for your investment in me. You cannot know how much your appreciation motivates me to keep writing.

Plot bunnies and research rabbit holes

 

Have I mentioned recently that I love research, and have never seen a plot bunny hop into a rabbit hole without wanting to follow it into wonderland?

My browsing history is eclectic, to say the least. At the moment, I have six stories at various stages. Take a look at some of the interesting facts I’ve gone rabbiting after, and tell me what you’d like me to write about here.

I’m close to finishing Abbie’s Wish, my contemporary for the Authors of Main Street Christmas set. In just the last few days, I’ve looked up:

classic motorcycles, and what model my hero, my villain, and my second lead might have a bonding moment over
electronic listening devices that wouldn’t be easy for someone to detect
exercises used in Riding for the Disabled classes
what dirt bike riding feels like, and how the bikes differ from street bikes
ideas for costumes for a parade float with the theme ‘summer solstice around the world’.

Paradise Regained is on its final proofread before publication in November as part of the Bluestocking Belles box set. My research days for that are well over, but included Silk Road caravanserais, trading routes north of (or over) the Caspian Sea, the best place in Europe to buy edged weapons, words in Turkmen and Persian, Paradise gardens, Sufi saints and their relics, and  the civil war in Iran during the change of dynasties in the late eighteenth century.

Also on the final run to publication is the novel House of Thorns, which Scarsdale Publishing is bringing out as part of a Marriage of Inconvenience collection. I’ve got the edits back from the publisher and am working my way through them. Research included:

Wirral Peninsula and the steam ferry services that connected it to Liverpool
1816, the year without a summer
Regency property developers, including failed property developments
exploring officers in the Napoleonic Wars.

As soon as I clear the work for these three off my desk, I need to get back to The Beast Next Door, a rewrite of the Bluestocking and the Beast, which was originally a short story. The Beast Next Door is going in a Valentine box set for the Bluestocking Belles, and has had me looking up Regency treatments for severe strawberry birthmarks (and what happens without treatment), assemblies at Bath, and distances from Bath that would keep my heroine stranded in the country by bad weather for a crucial length of time at the start of the book.

And my mind still keeps going back to Unkept Promises. I’m over 25% of the way through Mia’s and Jules’s story, the fourth in the Golden Redepenning series. I’m continuing to research the Regency navy, particularly that arm of it that policed the seas off the Cape of Storms. Other rabbits I’ve chased to their lairs include:

tuberculosis — what it looked like and how it progressed before antibiotics, and tuberculosis treatments in Regency times
the British presence in Cape Town in 1812
Cape Town streets and houses in 1812
the history of the Cape Colony, and specifically the history of slavery in the Cape Colony
Ceylon in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century
the Far East fleet of the British navy in the wars with Revolutionary and then Napoleonic France.

The ongoing saga of Never Kiss a Toad keeps on throwing up challenges, being outside my normal research period. I’m cowriting it with Mariana Gabrielle, and we’re publishing it on Wattpad one episode a week. Our heroine is off in the Pacific, on an island group where her father has been appointed governor. Diplomatic, Polynesian, settler, whaler, and other history needed. She has a new suitor, who is a scientist and a balloonist. Two more rabbits. She has been to Alexandria, Cairo, and Madras — all of which required description.

Meanwhile, back in Europe, the intrepid hero of Never Kiss a Toad is running a shipping enterprise. New countries and also travel times, which are always fraught. This week’s episode has him preparing for his sister’s debutante ball, events that had changed a little by the time Victoria was on the throne.

It’s a good thing I love research.

Family traditions on WIP WEdnesday

I love to build a bit of family history into my characters by giving them a seasonal traditional that brings back fond memories. It could be jam-making, or a special recipe for a feast, or an activity that only happens occasionally. Do you do that? Show me yours, and I’ll show you mine! As always, just post your excerpt into the comments.

Claudia began the run up to Christmas on the first of December, when she put up the Jesse Tree, a painted tree branch, fastened to a stand, that Grandma had made the year after Abbie was born. Grandma had made the felt ornaments, too, one for each day until Christmas. Each ornament had a story from the Bible, for the Jesse Tree was an old traditional way of tracking the salvation story from the creation of the universe to the birth of Jesus.

“But I don’t believe what you believe,” Claudia had explained, her father’s rigid form of Christianity having put her off religion of all kinds. But Grandma said the stories were part of her cultural heritage, and she — and Abbie too, as she grew older — could enjoy them without putting any more weight on them than on tales of King Arthur and his Round Table or Maui fishing up the North Island of New Zealand.

When Grandma died and Claudia moved to the city, she’d packed the branch and the ornaments away, but they’d come out again to decorate Abbie’s hospital room after the accident. Claudia had whiled away the days and nights spent waiting for Abbie to recover consciousness, by looking up the story to go with the ornament of the day, telling it in simpler words to the child lying still and white in the clean bed, writing it down, and illustrating the page. The pages, now bound, still recalled to her mind the long hours in the hospital, and the joy when, a few days before Christmas, a nurse had interrupted the story of Gabriel’s visit to Mary to take Abbie’s pulse, and Abbie had wrenched her hand away and demanded that the story continue.

The Jesse Tree had been part of their Christmas last year, too, as part of keeping things normal for Abbie while Claudia worried about what her former lover might do, now that the police had been convinced he was not responsible for what happened to Abbie. He was not stupid enough to attack either of them while he was under investigation, but now he was free to carry out his threats.

But as the year drew to an end, Abbie finished the intensive courses of physio, occupational, speech and psychotherapy prescribed by the hospital. Claudia was free to go anywhere she wished. So the day after Christmas, she loaded everything they owned into the back of her old station wagon, and they drove south, meandering through the country, stopping when they felt like it, until they reached Fairburn.

It had been a refuge when she’d flown into New Zealand, pregnant with Abbie, fleeing an angry boyfriend and a controlling father. It became a refuge again. They were welcomed back into the community, and not just by those who remembered them from the three years they lived here with Grandma.

Carly had found them this little studio, on the back of the property belonging to her parents, who were warmly welcoming. It was very private, hidden behind hedges and overlooked only by the main house — currently unoccupied, since Carly’s parents were on an extended overseas holiday.

Claudia wished they were home. Since the note three days ago, she had been very conscious of how isolated the building was. There had been nothing more, though. It must have been someone’s idea of a joke.

She shook off her sense of impending disaster, repeating one of the sayings taught to her by the counsellor she’d seen while Abbie was recovering. “I am in charge of how I feel and today I choose happiness.”

“Abbie,” she called. “I have the tree up. Are you ready for your story?”

Tonight, the story was just about the tree and its name. Abbie listened intently to the explanation.  A tree would grow from the root of Jesse. “Jessie,” Abbie commented.  “Jessie is at my riding.  Differen’ Jessie. Not Jesus’s granddad.” She began laying out the decorations from the shoebox that held them. “Which one comes next, Mummy?”

Claudia was picking through looking for the star that would go at the top of the tree to symbolise creation when a flicker of red caught her eye, and she leapt up to rush to the window.

“Edward!” The rabbit hutch stood in the corner of the paved patio, in its own little caged enclosure.

Abbie pressed her nose up against the glass. “It’s burning,” she observed. Flames licked all the way along the bottom and shot from the interior.

Tea with granddaughter’s mother

 

Her Grace has a mission, as explained in the following passage. I’ve changed a couple of names to keep the secret of who has Aldridge’s baby, which is revealed part way through the novel where this excerpt appears.

The entrance and public rooms of Haverford House were designed to impress lesser mortals with the greatness of the family—and their own lesser status. Maud was ushered to a room just off the lofty entrance hall. Small by Haverford standards, this waiting area nonetheless dwarfed the people waiting to see the duchess.

Two women, one middle-aged and the other a copy some twenty years younger, nervously perched on two of the ladder-backed chairs lining one wall. Next to them, but several chairs along, a lean young man with an anxious frown pretended to read some papers, shuffling them frequently, peering over the tops of his spectacles at the door to the next room. Two men strolled slowly along the wall, examining the large paintings and conversing in low whispers. A lone woman walked back and forth before the small window, hushing the baby fretting on her shoulder.

Maud took a seat and prepared for a wait. She would not tremble. She had nothing to fear. Both Tolliver and George said so, and Aldridge, too. But how she wished the waiting was over.

It seemed a long time but was only a few minutes, before a servant hurried in and approached her.

“Miss Kenyon? Her Grace will see you now.”

Maud gave the other occupants an apologetic nod and followed the servant.

The duchess received her in a pretty parlour, somehow cosy despite its grand scale. Maud curtseyed to her and the woman with her. Were all petitioners waved to a seat on an elegant sofa facing Her Grace? Addressed as ‘my dear’? Asked if they should care for a cup of tea?

“Miss Kenyon takes her tea black, with a slice of lemon,” the duchess told her companion. Or was the woman her secretary?

“Miss Kenyon, my companion, Miss Grant. Miss Grant, Miss Kenyon has been of great service to me and to those I love. I am always at home to her.”

Was Miss Grant one of the army of relatives for whom Her Grace had found employment, or perhaps one of the dozens of noble godchildren she sponsored? The young woman did not have the look of either Aldridge or his brother, nor of their parents. Prue murmured a greeting.

“I was not expecting you, Miss Kenyon, was I? Is anything wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong, Your Grace. I just… I have some questions, Ma’am.”

“You should have sent a note, my dear. I will always take time to see you. I was happy to give a good report of you to my friend Lady Georgiana, of course.” As she spoke, the duchess took the tea cup from Miss Grant and passed it to her.

“Your Grace, I would like to speak with you alone, if I may. I beg your pardon, Miss Grant. I do not mean to be discourteous.”

The duchess stopped her own cup partway to her lips and put it carefully back into the saucer, examining Maud’s face carefully.

When she spoke, it was to Miss Grant. “Celia, my dear, will you let those waiting know that I will be delayed…” she consulted her lapel watch, “…thirty-five minutes, but I will see them all today? Perhaps you could arrange refreshments for them? Return on the half hour, please. That is all the time I can spare, Miss Kenyon. If you need longer, I will ask you to wait or return another day.”

Maud shook her head. “The time will be ample, Ma’am. Thank you.”

As Miss Grant left the room, Maud was silent, collecting her thoughts. The duchess waited.

“You knew about my daughter. You have known all along.” Maud shifted uneasily. She had not intended to sound accusing.

The duchess inclined her head, her face showing nothing but calm. “Since shortly after her birth.”

Maud did not know how to ask the questions that crowded her mind, but the duchess had exhausted her noble patience, which was, after all, on a schedule. “What is it you wish to know, Miss Kenyon? Why I said nothing?” Her voice softened, and her eyes were compassionate. “I read your sister’s letter, and thought to write back and offer you and the child a place with me. I did not think a home filled with such… such judgement could be happy for either of you. But family is best, if it can be contrived. And there was Aldridge. I was unsure how things had been left between you. He seemed to feel a genuine fondness; I thought he might… He has more charm than is helpful in such situations, and I did not want my granddaughter raised… Well. That is not to the point now.”

She took a deep breath. So she was not as calm as she seemed, either. “I sent someone I trust to check whether you needed my intervention, and found you had left the letter writer to live with another sister. A more hospitable environment, my agent thought.”

Maud knew who the duchess’s trusted messenger was. “Tolliver.”

Her Grace nodded. “Yes. Thomas and I have an equal commitment to protecting and championing those to whom the Grenfords owe a duty.”

“You and I have met since, Your Grace.”

“Your secrets are yours to keep or share, Miss Kenyon. I have often wished to ask after your daughter, but I did not wish to intrude. My son’s carelessness changed your life in ways for which I can never compensate. The Grenfords have responsibilities here, but no rights.”

Maud felt suddenly dizzy as her tension drained away.

“I was afraid,” she admitted. “I knew about the three girls: the young ladies you are raising. I thought you might… I feared you would take my daughter. Aldridge told me you would not, and so did George and Tolliver.”

The duchess leaned forward to pat Maud’s hand. “Oh, my dear. I am so sorry you were worried. Matilda, Jessica, and Frances had no one else, and at the time we found them I did not understand that a quieter life in a less prominent household would have served them better. Frances was the last I took into my own home, and that was nearly ten years ago. Now Thomas and I do better by those we find. But there, done is done, and the girls and I love one another dearly.”

She had kept Maud’s hand in hers, and she now gave it a comforting squeeze. “I can assure you, Miss Kenyon, I have never taken a child from a mother, or from relatives who cared. The future those little girls faced,” she shuddered at the thought, “was unutterably grim.”

She sat back, and picked up her abandoned cup to take a sip. “You say Aldridge reassured you. He knows about his daughter, then?”

“He has met her, Your Grace. He saved us from a dastardly villain. It was quite heroic.” Maud found herself telling the duchess about the attack .

A discreet knock at the door warned the duchess their time was nearly up. The Duchess of Haverford stood and walked Maud to the door, and folded her in a tight embrace. “I shall continue to rely upon you for your professional services from time to time, my dear, and will be pleased to say a good word if ever it can help you. You will let me know if there is anything else I can do,” she commanded. “Should the opportunity arise, I would dearly love to meet your daughter, entirely at your discretion.” She turned her head away, but not before Maud had seen the glistening eyes.

Maud curtseyed. “My association with you has always been to my benefit, Your Grace; I am certain such acquaintance with the House of Haverford can only be to my daughter’s advantage.”

David was the first by-blow saved by the Duchess of Haverford. The story of his journey to his new sponsor, with a brief introduction to Her Grace’s confederate, is told here.

Sunday Spotlight on Brainstorm Your Book

I was a beta reader for this practical workbook, and it’s impressive. I expected no less from Mari, who for sure knows what she’s doing as a writer, as a writing coach, and as an editor. I’ll be using the worksheets and other ideas in my future planning sessions for my own books, and I recommend it to those who want a robust way to improve and shorten their planning process (before, during, and after that crucial first draft).

Brainstorm Your Book: Planning the Parts of Your Next Novel

Brainstorm Your Book: Planning the Parts of Your Next Novel is a hands-on, pen-to-paper, rubber-to-road workbook to help you generate ideas for all the elements of your next fiction book—character, setting, plot, and theme—to produce a more robust first draft more easily, and improve on your later versions. Whether you are writing your first book or your fifty-first, no matter your genre or personal process, Brainstorm Your Book will spark creativity, increase productivity, and make writing your novel a whole lot more fun.

In a series of questions, prompts, and exercises, Brainstorm Your Book probes your imagination, pulling small and large details from your creative mind and the world around you. The workbook will introduce you to your characters and help build solid friendships with them, show you both a bird’s-eye and closeup view of your settings, generate action to drive the plot forward, and enhance the underlying messages in your manuscript. It will walk you, step-by-step, through choices you might never have considered, act as a catalyst driving progress through the whole first draft, and increase your chances of ending with a high-quality finished novel.

Coming soon: Brainstorm Your Book Workbooks for Memoir and Nonfiction!

Buy link: https://mariannechristie.com/brainstorm-your-book/

Contest:

Win a Kindle Fire 7 and free extra brainstorming worksheets for life!

For the entire month of August on Mari’s blog, you will find daily brainstorming prompts from the book. If you follow the prompts and comment with some of the writing that results, you will be entered to win.

Follow Mari on the web:

Author Website www.MariAnneChristie.com

Facebook  www.facebook.com/MariChristieAuthor

Twitter  www.twitter.com/MChristieAuthor

Pinterest  www.pinterest.com/MariChristie

Goodreads  www.goodreads.com/author/show/5055425.Mari_Christie

 

And, for more tools to improve your writing and your novel, find Mari on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/MariAnneChristie

The French Disease

(This is a rerun of a blog post I wrote for Jessica Cale’s Dirty Sexy History.)

In 1494, France was at war with Naples when the French camp was struck by a terrible disease.

It began with genital sores, spread to a general rash, then caused abscesses and scabs all over the body. Boils as big as acorns, they said, that burst leaving rotting flesh and a disgusting odour. Sufferers also had fever, headaches, sore throats, and painful joints and bones. The disease was disabling, ugly, and terrifying. And people noticed almost from the first that it (usually) started on the genitals, and appeared to be spread by sexual congress.

The Italian kingdoms joined forces and threw out the French, who took the disease home with them, and from there it spread to plague the world until this day.

Where did it come from?

Syphilis. The French Disease. The Pox. The Great Imitator (because it looks like many other illnesses and is hard to diagnose). The French call it the Neopolitan Disease. It is caused by a bacterium that is closely related to the tropical diseases yaws and bejel.

Scientist theorise that somewhere in the late 15th Century, perhaps right there in the French camp outside of Naples, a few slightly daring yaws bacteria found the conditions just right to change their method of transmission. No longer merely skin-to-skin contact, but a very specific type of contact: from sores to mucus membranes in the genitals, anus, or mouth.

They’ve found a couple of possible sources.

One was the pre-Columban New World, where yaws was widespread. Did one of Columbus’s sailors carry it back? It would have had to have been the first or second voyage to be outside of Naples in 1494.

The other is zoonotic. Six out of every ten human infectious diseases started in animals. Was syphilis one of them. Monkeys in Africa suffer from closely related diseases, at least one of which is sexually transmitted.

Mild is a relative term

At first, syphilis killed sufferers within a few months. But killing the host immediately is a bad strategy when you’re a bacterium. Especially when you’re a frail little bacterium that can’t live outside of warm moist mucus membranes.

So syphilis adapted. Soon, few people died immediately. The first sore (or chancre) appeared between 10 days to three months after contact. About ten weeks after it healed, the rash appears, and the other symptoms mentioned above. These symptoms last for several weeks and tend to disappear without treatment, but reoccur several times over the next two years.

For more than half of sufferers, that’s it. The disease has run its course. But it is a sneaky little thing. It is still lurking, and a third or more of those who contract the disease will develop late complications up to 30 years after the original chancre. These are the ones to fear. During the latent phase, the disease is cheerfully eating away at the heart, eyes, brain, nervous system, bones, joints, or almost any other part of the body.

And the sufferer can look forward years, even decades, of mental illness, blindness, other neurological problems, or heart disease. And eventually the blessed relief of death.

How was it treated?

Until the invention of antibiotics, the treatment was as bad the cure. Physicians and apothecaries prescribed mercury in ointments, steam baths, pills, and other forms. Mercury is a poison, and can cause hair loss, ulcers, nerve damage, madness, and death.

Syphilis was the impetus for the adoption of condoms, their birth control effect noticed later and little regarded (since conception was a woman’s problem). The first clear description is of linen sheaths soaked in a chemical solution and allowed to dry before use. Animal intestines and bladder, and fine leather condoms also appear in the literature.

They were sold in pubs, apothecaries, open-air markets, and at the theatre, and undoubtedly every wise prostitute kept a stock.

Not having sex—or at least not having sex with multiple partners—would have been a more effective solution, but it appears few of society’s finest took notice of that!

Syphilis in romantic fiction

Those of us who write rakes would do well to remember how easy it was to catch the pox. Indeed, in some circles it was a rite of passage!

“I’ve got the pox!” crowed the novelist de Maupassant in his 20s. “At last! The real thing!” He did his part as a carrier by having sex with six prostitutes in quick succession while friends watched on.

The mind boggles.

We can, I am sure, have fun with the symptoms and the treatment, though we’d do well to remember that it was not an immediate death sentence, and suicide might be considered an overreaction to the first active stage, when most people got better and were never troubled again.

Scattered across a few of the books I’m writing, I have my own syphilitic character in the final stage, suffering from slow deterioration of his mental facilities and occasional bouts of madness, though his condition is a secret from all but his wife, his doctor, and his heir.

Watch this space!

References

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27983483-history-sex-and-syphilis

http://www.infoplease.com/cig/dangerous-diseases-epidemics/syphilis-sexual-scourge-long-history.html

http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/contagion/syphilis.html

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/38985/title/Syphilis–Then-and-Now/

When Syphilis Was Trés Chic

Consequences on WIP Wednesday

In Greek tragedy, the terrible events that unfold have their source in some wrongful action of the protagonist. The sense that ‘if only I had taken this action or avoided that one’ haunts literature still, perhaps because it haunts our lives.

Today, I’m thinking about consequences in romance. To me, the suffering is even more tragic if they in some way could have avoided it by being more careful or more kind. Do you have such a moment in your stories? A thoughtless, impulsive, or even cruel action that results in some learning experience for your hero or heroine? Share either the mistake or the consequences in the comments.

Mine is from Unkept Promises. Captain Julius Redepenning has been a careless man, and is about to meet an ex-lover in the presence of his wife and his children by his mistress. The meeting is both a consequence of previous actions and a trigger for further consequences.

Jules and Dan retreated to one corner of the room to stand over their packages, sending Fortune back to the house for the buggy.

It was there Gerta van Klief found Jules, mincing over using her parasol as a walking stick, and standing far too close. When had he discovered a preference for small slender ladies, who kept their charms discreetly covered, thus letting his imagination supply what his senses could not provide? He had been celibate for far too long, but Gerta did not set his pulse pounding the way it did at one glance from his wife.

“Why, Captain,” Gerta hummed, the musical tones that had once intrigued him now sounding forced and artificial. “I did not expect to see you here. Are you planning presents, perhaps?”

She tipped her head coyly to one side and smiled sweetly, an expression at odds with her calculating eyes. What had he ever seen in her?

“Mrs van Klief. I was not aware you intended to travel to Cape Town.”

She laughed, another practiced and false sound. “That doesn’t sound at all welcoming, dear Captain.” She walked her fingers up his chest and dropped her voice half an octave. “Let us find somewhere more private to… chat, Captain.” Her whole demeanour changed as she half turned to address a glowering Dan. “Boy! Watch your master’s packages. And be sure not to lose anything.” She dropped her voice to a purr again. “You must count your packages before we leave, dear Captain, so the boy here doesn’t sell some of them.”

Jules’s distaste turned to active dislike. They’d had an off again—on again affair for three years, and the woman still didn’t know the first thing about him. Mia’s disgust at his fornicating was well deserved.

“Good day, Mrs Van Klief. I am not free for a… chat. My son and I are attending our ladies.”

Before she could voice the spite he could see forming in her eyes, they were interrupted by his daughters, converging to take a hand each. Hannah and Mia then passed the widow, one on each side, turning to flank the girls.

“ But Jules, darling, you are here with your family,” Gerta crowed with every evidence of delight. “Aren’t they charming?” She narrowed her eyes at Mia, elegant in London fashions that made every other lady in the room appear poorly dressed. “But you didn’t tell me you had an English daughter, Jules. Do introduce us.”

Mia’s smile managed to be both gracious and feral. “Yes. Do present your acquaintance, dear Captain.” In the last two words, she reproduced Gerta’s tone and accent precisely, showing she had heard more of the conversation than was comfortable.

“The woman is of no account, Mrs Redepenning,” Jules replied. “Have you finished your shopping?”

Gerta flushed scarlet at the rude dismissal.

After one swift look of compassion, Mia answered Jules. “Not quite, Captain. Our daughters need your arbitration. They both want the same ribbons, and they insist only you can make the decision.”

“Please, Papa,” Ada begged, and on the other side, Marsha echoed the plea.

“How dare you?” Gerta’s loud voice silenced the room, as people craned to see what was going on. “After all we have been to one another? How can you treat me like this, Jules. I have given you…”

Mia interrupted before Jules could blister the infernal woman. “A word of advice, Mrs van Klief. In British society — and the Cape colony has become British — a woman of breeding does not confront her lover in public, and certainly not in front of his wife and children.” Her own voice was pitched to reach the avid onlookers. At some level beyond his anger and his embarrassment, he admired her strategy.

“It is a matter of self-protection,” she explained, kindly. “However unfair it might be, going public with revelations about irregular relationships always leads to more censure for the woman than for the man.” She dropped her voice, but not enough to prevent the audience from hearing every crisp word. “Believe me, I understand why you feel bereaved, but you must have known your lover was a married man, Mrs van Klief. Your arrangement was never going to last.”

Was Gerta bereaved? Jules looked at her sharply. It had just been about the physical encounter, had it not? For both of them? And, for Gerta, the value of his gifts, of course. Her husband had left her with little, and the presents of her lovers made up the shortfall between gentile poverty and comfortable living.

But the widow met his eyes, her own bleak.

“Goodbye, Mrs van Klief,” he said firmly, unwilling to give her any reason to think he might soften.

She looked from him to Mia and back again, and seemed to wilt. Without another word, she turned and walked away, beckoning as she left to a coloured maid who had been standing by the door and who hurried to followed.