Author: Caroline Warfield Page 1 of 8

Salacious Rumors from Ashmead

On January 29, 2022

An item from the Nottingham Vigilant sent to The Teatime Tattler

Ashmead Gleanings for Saturday June 20, 1818

The Village continues to enjoy a quiet June. Weather to date has been favorable for a good harvest, and the Saint Morwenna Ladies’ Guild has kept the church awash in flowers.

Fletcher Hadden, village bootmaker, welcomed a fine son last week. The father reports mother and son are fit as can be. Walter Simmons announced the betrothal of his daughter Penelope at the assembly Saturday night. Folks were pleased for the girl, but a few ladies couldn’t help commenting that her older sister Bernice appeared none to pleased to be left on the shelf.

Ignatius Browning’s prize sow delivered of twelve piglets, causing much local interest. Due to an accidental over shipment of summer muslin, George Denman wishes folks to know it can be had at bargain prices at Denman’s drapery.

The most interest in Ashmead this week, however, centered on the whereabouts of Eli Benson, land steward to the Earl of Clarion. The end of May a woman turned up at Clarion Hall seeking help. Folks there report the woman had Caulfield hair and eyes, as do all of the old earl’s by-blows. We speculate she hoped to get part of the will where he left them all bits, but everyone knows Benson already settled the will. Made good on every promise. Is she a fake?

Edward Lamson Henry (1841-1919)

Soon after, Benson hied off to Manchester with the woman. Supposedly to settle some legal problems for her. A few folk took particular notice that they went off alone together. We’ve not verified that, but in any case he hasn’t returned. Work on road improvements around tenant cottages has all but stopped waiting for Benson’s input, and the repairs to the stables haven’t done much better.

This reporter asked the man’s father, Robert Benson, the innkeeper at The Willow and the Rose, about it over a pint of ale. He repeated that Eli is simply managing some legal problems and will be home soon. If that is so, why did he send his other son to investigate?

We have it on good authority that Sir Robert Benson, the one that’s a hero, galloped off to see to his brother. Trouble is brewing in Manchester. Count on it.

About the Book

Frances Hancock always knew she was a bastard. She didn’t know her father was an earl until her mother died. The information came just in time. She and her mother’s younger children were about to be homeless. She needs help. Fast. What she wants is a hero.

Eli Benson, the Earl of Clarion’s steward, took great pride in cleaning up the mess left behind by the old earl’s will. When a dainty but ferocious young woman with the earl’s hair and eyes comes demanding help, his heart sinks. She isn’t in the will. She was forgotten entirely. And the estate is just getting its finances back in order. But he knows a moral obligation when he sees one. He may not be her idea of a hero, but people count on him to fix things. He’s good at it. Falling in love with her will only complicate things.

Eli will solve her problems or die trying. It may come to that.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09PGSYJ3Q/

About the Author

Caroline Warfield – Authorr

Award winning author and Bluestocking Belle Caroline Warfield has been many things: traveler, librarian, poet, raiser of children, bird watcher, Internet and Web services manager, conference speaker, indexer, tech writer, genealogist—even a nun. She reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows where she lets her characters lead her to adventures in England and the far-flung corners of the British Empire. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart.

Website: http://www.carolinewarfield.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/caroline.warfield.1422/

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Book Bub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/caroline-warfield

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CaroWarfield

Book Page: https://www.carolinewarfield.com/bookshelf/the-forgotten-daughter/

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Caroline-Warfield/e/B00N9PZZZS/

The Ashmead Assembly

By Caroline Warfield

On June 12, 2021

In Teatime Tattler

Special to the Teatime Tattler from Eunice Norton and the Monday Tea Circle of Ashmead on Afan.

We gathered as is our habit on Monday afternoon to review the news of the week here in the valley, and ran so far over our time that Bessy Grigg’s husband took umbrage at the delay in his supper. We had much to discuss.

The Benson family put up an entertainment for all and sundry at the Assembly Rooms on Saturday evening to celebrate old Robert’s sixtieth birthday. There were many who thought that appropriate, him being a fixture in the village, but some of us questioned use of the large room over the village offices for a family party, that space having run to shabby and disrepair in recent years, and the Benson family being in possession of a inn with a perfectly fine dining room, but Emma Corbin—she as was Emma Benson—insisted.

Most of us admitted she did the rooms justice. New paint. Waxed floors. Clean windows. Flowers sprucing it up, and greenery too for all it is summer and not Christmas. She even got that Welsh colonel staying at the inn—him who is some engineer they say—to repair the musicians gallery so it was safe to use. They brought some group of players down from Nottingham, too, for the dancing.

As you may expect every man and woman in Ashmead came, and the tenant farmers from round about as well. Some seemed to find children appropriate, notably the Corbins, but most of us don’t approve of little ones where there is drink and dancing. A bigger surprise was the arrival of the Duchess of Glenmoor, Lady Madelyn Caulfield that was. She rarely socializes with common folk and keeps to herself since the old duke she married died.

Of course, most folk came for a glimpse of Wee Robbie Benson himself, the innkeepers wild son gone these many years. Went off to war and came back a baronet. Emma Corbin claims he was a hero at Waterloo, too. Now he’s come to take ownership of Willowbrook, left to him by the old earl. Most folks claim they always knew he was the earl’s get. You only had to look at him to know, but don’t tell old Robert the innkeeper that. Took him as his own and won’t hear otherwise.

The biggest news was the arrival of the Earl of Clarion himself late into the evening. Come up from London straight to the assembly, though no one knows whether it was the only reason he came. Walked in proud as a lord—which of course he is—walked up and congratulated old Robert as bold as you please as if the innkeeper was a peer when everyone knows he started life as a footman at the Hall.

Then Wee Robbie came from the corner he’d been lurking in. When he stood next to the earl and the duchess stood to join them, you could hear a pin drop. Same eyes. Same hair. Same tall frame (though Robbies is a bit, er, sturdier than the earl.) Same proud tilt to the head. Folks in London ought to be aware that the man they know as Sir Robert Benson is naught but an innkeeper’s charity case and the Earl of Clarion’s bastard brother. No question about it. Don’t know what was said, but Sir Robert left right after.

The earl stayed. He even led Emma Corbin out, and she looked like she was going to burst. Then the duchess danced with that Welsh colonel. It was certainly a night to remember.

About the Book

When the Earl of Clarion leaves a will with bequests for all his children, legitimate and not, listing each and their mothers by name, he complicates the lives of many in the village of Ashmead.

One sleepy village. One scandalous will. Four beleaguered heirs.

One is The Wayward Son.

Rob Benson returns to Ashmead reluctantly, determined to stay briefly. He never expects a shocking bequest and a termagant with flashing eyes—and a musket—to bind him to the place. Lucy Whitaker wants what she can’t have, Willowbrook. If she must turn it over to the heir, she can at least make sure he loves it and its people like she does. His life is London; hers is Ashmead. How can they forge something lasting when they are torn in two directions?

Pre-order link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09484DC1D/

Watch for the duchess and the colonel in The Defiant Daughter in October.

About the Author

Caroline Warfield, proud Bluestocking Belle, has been many things: traveler, librarian, poet, raiser of children, bird watcher, Internet and Web services manager, conference speaker, indexer, tech writer, genealogist—even a nun. She reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows where she lets her characters lead her to adventures in England and the far-flung corners of the British Empire. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart.

Gossip Spreads Through Fenwick on Sea

By Caroline Warfield

On April 10, 2021

In Teatime Tattler

Kitty Smothers, youngest and newest of the girls in service at the Queen’s Barque, swung her broom with more enthusiasm than skill. It didn’t much matter. With the inn bursting at the seams and all the paying rooms full of well-off travelers, Mrs. Brewster sent them to clean out the old wing, the one with more cobwebs than heat and more mice than usable furniture. They needed it for all the refugees coming up from the beach, didn’t they?

The storm, the fiercest in all of Kitty’s fourteen years, rattled the windows where there was still glass, where they hadn’t been papered over. She listened wide eyed while Nelly Jones chattered a mile a minute while she swatted at the cobwebs hanging from the ceiling and giggled with Annie Burke.

“I think Mr. Simon is the handsomest,” Annie said.

“He don’t hold a candle to Captain Rousseau—Jasper,” Nelly sighed dramatically.

“Looks more like a pirate to me, him with that ship stuck out on the shoals,” Annie argued. “Mr. Simon has that mysterious air…”

“Sneaky more like,” Nelly said. “and besides, he’s married.”

“Shows what you know.” Annie dropped her voice and beckoned Nelly closer. Kitty moved nearer to listen. “Those girls Mrs. Fullerton sent over from Morphew Manor told Mags and Alice in the kitchen that there’s folks from London staying at the manor.”

“So what’s that to us?” Nelly said out loud.

Annie shushed her. “Mags told me they’re here for that so-called Mrs. Simon. Says she’s really betrothed to the dandy staying at the Manor. Simon isn’t married at all.”

Kitty tilted her head, puzzled. “But he and Mrs. Simon are sharing a room.”

Annie and Nelly laughed at her. “You think every pair that puts up at an inn claiming to be married really are?”

“How about that Lord Stanton. He’s as handsome as can be,” Kitty said.

“He’s a lord, ain’t he? No point in mooning after a lord,” Annie said. “Besides, have you seen how he looks at his lady? Honeymooning those two—for sure.”

“But you said not every couple who claim to be married…” Kitty still thought he was handsome.

“Some are, you ninny. The real question about those two is what are they doing in Fenwick on Sea? Folks like that go to Paris. Or Brighton. Odd if you ask me,” Nelly said.

“I’ll tell you who’s odd. That Cosistas fellow. Slimy fish. Have you seen how he looks at that Fynlock woman? Gives me the creeps.” Annie shivered just to show them.

“I—” Whatever Kitty would have said was interrupted by an arrival.

“How is this room coming? Can I send in the men with the straw bedding?” Patience Abney, she that teaches at the charity school above town, stood in the door waiting for an answer.

“Will do in a few more minutes, Miss Abney,” Annie said.

Patience smiled at them. “Good. Mr. Somerville the vicar came with word there are more folk on their way. We need every room. Hurry it up.” She swept out.

Nelly made an ugly face after her.

“I like Miss Abney; she’s always kind,” Kitty said. “It’s generous of her to help out.”

“She’s only working here to pay so her boys can stay out in the stables,” Annie said.

“Thinks she’s better than us, her with her fancy school. Peter told me their roof caved in. We’ll see how high and mighty she is now,” Nelly said.

“High enough. I heard talk,” Annie said.

“What do you mean?” Kitty asked, finishing up her sweeping and picking up the dust pan.

“I heard those two high nosed ladies in the big suite on the first floor talking. Patience Abney isn’t what she looks like. She’s an earl’s niece.”

“Gol. Come on hard times for sure, emptying night soil like the rest of us and sweeping up this ruin of a wing,” Nelly said.

“Got that right,” Annie agreed.

The girls finished the room and picked up their rags and brooms to move on. When they squeezed by Patience Abney in the hall directing footmen to bring straw bedding to the room they just finished, Nelly dipped a mocking curtsy behind her back and Annie giggled.

They handed all the dirty rags and dust pan to Kitty, sending her to the kitchen. As Kitty walked away, she heard Nelly’s last pronouncement.

“I’ll tell you what else I heard. Some folks think there’s a reporter from that Teatime Tattler staying here, taking notes on all these folks. What do you think of that?”

Kitty continued downstairs, dumped the dirt and picked up new rags. She nodded greetings to Alice, Mags, and the girls from Morphew Manor who waited tables and worked in the kitchen. On her way out something caught her eye, lying on the work table. It was The Teatime Tattler folded up to a headline, “Storm ravages Great Yarmouth and the coast.”

“Get on with it, Kitty. This isn’t a library,” Mrs. Brewster snapped pointing to the door.

Kitty smiled on her way up the servant stairs. “We’re going to be famous.”

***

A Reporter Snooping Around? We can’t have it. There’s an award for the person that figures out who it is. The answers are buried in Storm & Shelter.

A Bluestocking Belles with Friends Collection

When a storm blows off the North Sea and slams into the village of Fenwick on Sea, the villagers prepare for the inevitable: shipwreck, flood, land slips, and stranded travelers. The Queen’s Barque Inn quickly fills with the injured, the devious, and the lonely—lords, ladies, and simple folk; spies, pirates, and smugglers all trapped together. Intrigue crackles through the village, and passion lights up the hotel.

One storm, eight authors, eight heartwarming novellas.

Available on Amazon or various other vendors,

More about each story here.

Join the Hunt

There are three big prizes. Enter the contest!

How to enter

Read the book.
Send your guess about the identity of person writing the reports for The Teatime Tattler to teatimetattlereditor@yahoo.com

Details are here!

The Peculiar Coachman

By Caroline Warfield

On February 27, 2021

In Teatime Tattler

Rumford, March 1815

Dunno if you can use this, Clemens, but here’s a bit from the tavern last night. It’s about Fred Newell’s peculiar nephew. Fred runs a first class coaching operation. Bit above hisself—don’t much mix down at the public house—but honest. Mostly keeps the good jobs for his boys, so no chance for a local but to muck out his stables. Th’ nephew come home from fighting Boney three years ago, limping and all, and boys at the pub figured him for a charity case. Next thing we know, he has the plum job driving one of the high-class carriages, and him with only part of a leg on the left.

But that isn’t what I have for you. The man comes to the tavern now’n again like I said. Between trips, like, and not often enough to be a regular exactly. Bit tight with his coin. I mean, he’s been known to buy a drink for a body now’n again, but no one has ever seen him buy a round for the whole place like his cousin Paul did when one of Newell’s horses won that race over near Doddinghurst. Ostlers from Fred’s say he don’t spend a penny he don’t have to. Saves it all, but for one thing—books! Have you ever known a coachman who bought so many books his little room over the stables is floor to ceiling three deep in books?

But that isn’t what I have for you. The man came to the tavern last evening, because he’s between trips. Harry Simmons, the keeper, likes him, so at least we know he pays his shot. Damned if the man didn’t start singing! Started out with a ballad and Marion the wench that serves most nights went into raptures about his voice. Moved on mostly soldiers stuff; he said he had passengers for morning that put him in mind of the war. But he got bawdier as the night went on, and none of the girls seemed to mind judging from the sighs.

So that’s it, Clemens. A singing coachman who lives with naught but books for company—is that peculiar enough for your paper? I grumbled to Harry that I wouldn’t want to ride out with a coachman who spent the night before in a tavern. Harry laughed and said then I probably don’t want to ride with the mail or post. Told me the damn fool was drinking straight cider anyway.

About the Story

Neither battle nor loss of his leg destroyed Zachery Newell. Working as a coachman, he tries to build a life in spite of his injuries while he plans for the sort of life he knew in childhood, happy and content above his father’s print shop, but when a woman races out of the storm and into the stable yard of The Queen’s Barque with a wagon full of small boys, puppies, and a bag of books, he is enchanted.

Dismissed by a charity school, Patience Abney struggles on her own to create a school that gives every boy a happy and productive life. Now the roof has caved in. Though she managed to get her boys to the safety of an inn, she has no idea how she will rebuild.

Zach knows Patience, the granddaughter of an earl, is far above the touch of shopkeeper’s son. He tries to keep his distance, but when the two of them make their way across the flooded marsh to her damaged school in search of a missing boy, attraction grows toward passion, complicating everything.

Excerpt

Before she could speak, he crossed the room and pulled her into a crushing embrace, taking her mouth with his until her knees failed and she had only his embrace to rely on. Insanity born of hope. Zach could think of no other explanation for his behavior.

About the Book

One storm, eight authors, eight heartwarming novellas.

Release Date: April 13, 2021
Special Preorder price of $0.99
Buy Links:

Amazon US | Apple Books | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

Amazon AU |BR |CA |DE |ES |FR |IN |IT |JP |MX |NL |UK

Angus & Robertson or Books2Read

About the Author

Bluestocking Belle, traveler, adventurer, writer of historical romance. Caroline Warfield is enamored of owls, books, history, and beautiful gardens (but not the actual act of gardening).

https://www.carolinewarfield.com/

Scandal in Venice

By Caroline Warfield

On December 5, 2020

In Teatime Tattler

Baden, Baden 1818

My Dear Mr. Clemens,

I have another tidbit that may be of interest, you darling man. This one is a bit more explosive than some of the other bits I’ve gathered in my travels. I count on you to mask the lady’s name when you publish in your delicious newssheet, for she is young and may yet require the tattered remnants of her reputation.

I reached Geneva in September and to my delight encountered my dear friend Lady Florence Tyree. She fell on me, relieved to have a sensible companion in which to confide. The poor woman had been dragooned into accompanying her niece, Lady Charlotte Tyree when the girl imposed herself on her brother, the Earl of Ambler who by rights ought to be completing his Grand Tour accompanied only by his tutor free to do whatever it is young men get up to on the continent (I don’t need to be explicit with you, dear friend!).

Lady Florence had reached utter weariness with the boy’s behavior, it being as wild as may be expected, abetted by his tutor no doubt. The dear woman fears for the girl who seems to have attempted to absorb every work of art or culture to be found on the continent, in an excess of learning that we all know can only bring feverish distress to a young lady’s mind, causing who knows what enfeeblement of her faculties.

No amount of begging on the part of dear Lady Florence convinced the girl to take her ease at some of the more pleasant gardens or porticoes of the city. When the young people announced they were preparing to move on over those daunting mountains into Italy, Florence reached the end of her patience. She and I decided we needed the restorative spa at Baden, which we are entirely in agreement is precisely what Lady Charlotte needs.

Alas the young woman prove intractable in this matter as well. When Lady Florence forbade her Italy and announce she herself would accompany me to Baden, Lady Charlotte informed her she would leave for Venice with her brother.

Venice! I need not tell you Bryon himself is there. Who knows what sort of immorality goes on, and the young woman insisted she would travel there without a chaperone. Lady Florence declared she would report this to the guardians of this pair of young people who would undoubtedly demand she return to London (leaving the boy on his own to continue his tour, of course). What did Lady Charlotte declare but that she didn’t care. By the time any such demands from the guardians reached her she would be in Rome at last. She has some notion that her life will be poorer forever if she doesn’t see Rome.

I tremble to tell you, good sir, that the following morning we awoke to find the young people gone. My beloved Lady Florence was prostrate. She came to this lovely spa with me to recover. Word reached us yesterday via friends traveling north from there that Lady Charlotte is indeed in Venice, and that the young earl is running with the wildest of crowds exposing his sister to no end of debauchery. We disregarded hints she has taken residence with an Italian gentleman.

Be kind in your publication. She is young.

Your good friend and supporter, Lady Horsham

About the Book: Lady Charlotte’s Christmas Vigil

Love is the best medicine and the sweetest things in life are worth the wait, especially at Christmastime in Venice for a stranded English Lady and a handsome physician.

Lady Charlotte clings to one dream—to see the splendor of Rome before settling for life as the spinster sister of an earl. But now her feckless brother forces her to wait again, stranded in Venice when he falls ill, halfway to the place of her dreams. She finds the city damp, moldy, and riddled with disease.
As a physician, Salvatore Caresini well knows the danger of putrid fever. He lost his young wife to it, leaving him alone to care for their rambunctious children. He isn’t about to let the lovely English lady risk her life nursing her brother.
But Christmas is coming, that season of miracles, and with it, perhaps, lessons for two lonely people: that love heals the deepest wounds and sometimes the deepest dreams aren’t what we expect.

https://www.amazon.com/Charlottes-Christmas-Vigil-Caroline-Warfield-ebook/dp/B0758NLYV2/

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lady-charlottes-christmas-vigil-caroline-warfield/1127062287

and for other formats:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/745607

About the Author

Caroline Warfield – Authorr

Award winning author of family centered romance set in the Regency and Victorian eras, Caroline Warfield has been many things—including a Bluestocking Belle. She reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows where she lets her characters lead her to adventures in England and the far-flung corners of the British Empire. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart.

Find her here: