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This Stuff Will Sell Papers

By

On July 7, 2018

In Bluestocking Belles, Caroline Warfield, Teatime Tattler

Clemens, Editor
The Teatime Tattler
Fleet Street, London

Sam,

I don’t know if you can use this, but one of the Jarratt & Martinson tea clippers is leaving Macao in the morning. I’m coming back to London, but I can’t afford the clipper so I’m sending this ahead. It’ll get there faster. You know that favor I owed you? Consider it paid.

Your hunch was right. The Duke of Sudbury’s cub wheedled his way into the East India Company Factory in Canton. By all accounts, the worthless oaf spent more time prowling the flower boats where they provide all the delights he chased in London along with plenty of exotic local depravity tossed in. He either quit the Company or was tossed because he’s supposed to be working for Jarratt, though “work,” may not be what he’s doing. I know you don’t care about politics but Jarratt may be trying to use the pup to get to Sudbury. Bears watching.

Now you owe me because there’s more. It isn’t just the boy that washed up in Macao. A girl followed him—Sudbury’s oldest girl, the uppity one too proud to so much as dance with any gent lower than a duke, the one with the weird Arabic name. Superintendent Eliot and his wife put it out that they’re hosting her on Sudbury’s behalf, but I doubt Sudbury even knows where she is. I saw her myself going in and out of Eliot’s house as swanky and stuck up as ever she was in London, every inch the duke’s daughter, but I heard rumors.

I got myself an invitation to dinner by one of the China traders, Harold McIlroy.  It cost me a pretty penny in drinks at the club where they all congregate, but it was worth it. The ladies of Macao dig dirt with the best of them. I got an earful, I can tell you. I don’t see how it can all be true, but where there’s smoke, there has to be at least an ember or two.

Ingram, Dennison, and Dean’s ladies between them told me the girl:

~wears men’s clothes
~escaped torture and worse for her crimes by convincing some big Chinese official to let her off as the ladies said, “in the way of light skirts everywhere.”
~wormed her way into Jarratt’s house with nothing but a Chinese servant. The Dennison woman said Jarratt actually admitted he had his way with her.
~threw herself at the Duke of Murnane, a married man whose “poor abused wife,” lives in a dumpy little house in the native quarter
~uses opium tar
~sneaks into the house at night even with the man’s wife in residence

The Chit has nerve. All Macao knows what she is, but she parades around town while a little servant hops along behind her holding some fancy parasol on a bent handle to keep the sun off her like she’s some short of rajah’s female.  I cornered the little weasel, a Chinese boy who looks like at least one Portuguese tomcat got at his great-grandfather’s tabbies. Name’s Filipe. The boy talked about the trollop like she’s the queen herself. Calls her “Lady Zamb.” I think he’s half in love with her. Wouldn’t say a bad word. Talked about her like she’s some kind of saint, and I know for fact she isn’t that. He told me to ask the woman who runs the mission school. One of the Quakers. He had to be lying. I can’t see a prune-faced female missionary tolerating the sort those women at McIlroy’s described.

I’ve had enough of the mission crowd myself. That job my cousin promised in the newspaper here? Turned out to be the mission rag. Can you see me writing for some chapel-goers? They print it at a place they call Zion’s Quarter. Bunch of tea totalers. No thanks. I’m for home.

I hope you can use some of this because I need the money. If you print it you owe me. Just send the cash to Greaves at the Horse and Gander in Southwark. He’ll hold it for me. Sudbury will make your life hell if you do it though. I remember what he did to you years ago when he came back to London after he was trapped by the Barbary corsairs. He had a wife and suspiciously well-developed baby in tow. Wait, wasn’t that the one with the Arabic name? Apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

Don’t let him bully you. This stuff will sell papers.

See you in six months.
Garrett Mullins
___________________________________________

About the Book: The Unexpected Wife
Children of Empire Book 3

Crushed with grief after the death of his son, Charles Wheatly, Duke of Murnane throws himself into the new Queen’s service in 1838. When the government sends him on an unofficial fact-finding mission to the East India Company’s enclave in Canton, China, he anticipates intrigue, international tensions, and an outlet for his frustration. He isn’t entirely surprised when he also encounters a pair of troublesome young people that need his help. However, the appearance of his estranged wife throws the entire enterprise into conflict. He didn’t expect to face his troubled marriage in such an exotic locale, much less to encounter profound love at last in the person of a determined young woman. Tensions boil over, and his wife’s scheming—and the beginnings of the First Opium War—force him to act to rescue the one he loves and perhaps save himself in the process.

Zambak Hayden seethes with frustration. A woman her age has occupied the throne for over a year, yet the Duke of Sudbury’s line of succession still passes over her—his eldest—to land on a son with neither spine nor character. She follows her brother, the East India Company’s newest and least competent clerk, to protect him and to safeguard the family honor. If she also escapes the gossip and intrigues of London and the marriage mart, so much the better. She has no intention of being forced into some sort of dynastic marriage. She may just refuse to marry at all. When an old family friend arrives she assumes her father sent him. She isn’t about to bend to his dictates nor give up her quest. Her traitorous heart, however, can’t stop yearning for a man she can’t have.

Neither expects the epic historical drama that unfolds around them.The Unexpected Wife, will be released on July 25.

https://www.amazon.com/Unexpected-Wife-Children-Empire-Book-ebook/dp/B07FGGC918/

Here’s a short video about it:

About the Author

 

Carol Roddy – Author

Traveler, would-be adventurer, former tech writer and library technology professional, Caroline Warfield has now retired to the urban wilds of Eastern Pennsylvania, and divides her time between writing and seeking adventures with her grandbuddy. In her newest series, Children of Empire, three cousins torn apart by lies find their way home from the far corners of the British Empire, finding love along the way.

She has works published by Soul Mate Publishing and also independently published works. In addition, she has participated in five group anthologies, one not yet published.

For more about the series and all of Caroline’s books, look here:
https://www.carolinewarfield.com/bookshelf/

Too Hurriedly Matched?

By

On July 4, 2018

In Guest author, Teatime Tattler

scandal

‘People are sitting in opera boxes using them for many activities. Etching by George Cruikshank.’ . Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY

We are reliably informed that hussy, Harriette Wilson, was seen parading on the arm of the Regent at the opera last night. No doubt, she expected the punters would be more interested in her scandalous doings than in watching Edmunde Keane’s faultless performance of the gloomy Hamlet. Alas, her grand moment was eclipsed by the presence of Lord Rogan Windermere and his brand new bride, the erstwhile Miss Jassinda Carlisle.

The pair were recently wed in the old chapel at Windermere Abbey, the Earl’s country seat in Hampshire. Why we ask, when Windermere waited so long to come up to scratch, was the thing done with such haste? Even more intriguing was their being accompanied at the opera by Windermere’s cousin, Dominic Beresford, the Duke of Wolverton.

It is common knowledge the Duke twice laid his heart at Miss Carlisle’s feet and had it rejected. What scandal is that lady now courting by spending the entire evening closely attended by her new husband and her rejected lover? And I do wish someone would tell how she brought an obviously besotted, but just as obviously reluctant, Windermere to his knees. I’m guessing they were desperate measures indeed for the lady is fast approaching the quarter century!

scandalPerhaps she will give a hint to the Heavenly Iceberg, Lady Sherida Dearing, who was also in attendance, though left to the questionable attentions of that handsome scapegrace, Lord Baxendene. One can only surmise the Great Bax is losing his touch for no hint of a thaw was noted. Lady Sherida should consider that even icebergs of the heavenly variety lose their freshness if left too long in the ice house!

Although the gentlemen are frequently seen together it is unusual for any one of them to attend the opera. It is to be hoped that now Miss Carlisle is finally off the marriage market the Duke of Wolverton will allow his heart to engage elsewhere.

(Now there’s a man whose boots would look well under a lady’s bed!)

But we digress! Our informant noted neither gentleman appeared particularly happy nor communicative with the other.

And since I have information from another source hinting at Windermere’s absence from the country for several weeks following the marriage, one suspects all is not charity in Chez Windermere.

Lady Verity Nonesuch, Purveyor of Truth & Treachery

About the Book

The Earl of Windermere Takes a Wife

(Regency Romantica – Sexy Romance with a hint of Erotica.)

How long, and why, must a woman wait for a man to make her his when she knows his love is as great as her own?

Jassinda Carlisle was always to have been his, but by the age of twenty Rogan Wyldefell, Earl of Windermere, knew he could never be hers.

At her 16th birthday, he’d slain her dreams of becoming his wife and had maintained a strictly platonic friendship ever since.

At twenty-five, Jassie had waited long enough.

Her desperation and a small push from fate force Rogan to a point of honor. To save her reputation they must marry, but who will save Jassie from the vengeful monster unleashed within him when the woman in his arms begins to beg?

Is Rogan strong enough to withstand the woman he loves?

Is Jassie strong enough to be his redemption?

~Excerpt~
‘Do you know how old I am, R—Rogan?’

‘What? Of course I know how old you are. Twenty-five. And I know how old I am too. Thirty-six, in case you’ve forgotten,’ he snarled, almost sarcastically. He’d sensed she was off-balance and that what she wanted to discuss with him was, doubtless, even more so. ‘What does that matter to the point?’

Jassie breathed deep and fixed her attention on their hands gripped so tightly their knuckles had whitened. This was her moment, her only chance. She might as well just spit it out, as Philip would have said.

‘I’m never going to marry but—but I—confound it, Rogan, I just have to know—just once—what it’s like to—to make love—no, I’m not asking that—I know the mechanics but I want to know how it feels to—you know—lie with a man!’ He never blinked and her own gaze danced across his face, desperately searching for a reaction, an emotion. Anything but the impression of horror that looked out of his eyes! She swallowed. ‘There is no one else I can ask. No one else I would want to ask—’

Breathing no longer a priority, Jassie wrenched her hands from his and jumped to a spot about three feet away and stared blindly down at Brantleigh Manor, lying like a toy model in the shimmering distance.

Then she closed her eyes and focused on the pain flowering in her chest and spreading to her belly. What had she done?

Links for The Earl of Windermere Takes a Wife

Amazon US:  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01ENSMA2A
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01ENSMA2A
Amazon CA: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01ENSMA2A
Amazon AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B01ENSMA2A

About the Author

Jen Yates has always called New Zealand home, though she grew up with stories of her mother’s great-grandfather who came from England in the 1840s, to ‘drill the first militia’. Thus, England has always called even though Jen is a 4th generation Kiwi. Discovering the Regency era was like coming home, Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer ranking as her two favorite authors.

With a fair bit of life behind her, Jen spent thirty-three years as a primary school teacher, then retired and realized a dream of owning an antiques shop. It would still be one of her favorite things to do – after writing. But while learning the craft, income had to come from somewhere!

Jen now lives with her husband in Piopio, a small rural village in the North Island of NZ, and writes full-time. When she is not writing, she is keeping track of her family now spread through NZ and Australia, wandering about with camera in hand, or hanging out with friends, many of whom are writers!

Social Media Links for Jen YatesNZ

Amazon Author Page – https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B009MSEA7U
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/JenYatesNZ/
Website – https://www.jenyatesnz.com
Twitter – @JenYatesNZ

Pah-Ute War: in A Long Trail Rolling!

By

On June 30, 2018

In Bluestocking Belles, Lizzi Tremayne, Old West (19th Century USA), Teatime Tattler

“Oh my goodness, Edith, will you look at this?” Mabel said, as she rushed through the garden gate.

“What is it?” Edith picked up another of her husband’s shirts from the basket and shook it out.

“Wasn’t your sister coming west from St. Joseph by stage?” Mabel’s voice rose as she spoke.

“Yes?” Edith paused, a clothespin in her mouth.

“Says here,” Mabel went on, “the Pah-Utes are on the warpath again.”

Edith swallowed hard and bit her lip. “Do you blame them, after those idiots in Williams took those poor Indian girls captive?”

“Yes, well, you’re one of the only ones feeling sorry for them. No stage’ll be coming this way for awhile—it says nearly every stage and Pony Express station has been attacked, station keepers killed, and stock run off or taken—for nearly a hundred miles!”

“Where?” Edith peered over her friend’s shoulder at the Deseret News. “Which stations are they talking about?”

“Says from Schell Creek nearly to Carson Sink.”

Edith let her breath out. “Oh, thank God for that. That’s west of us. No stage runs west out of Salt Lake.”

“Oh,” Mabel said, visibly deflating. “But it’s still bad news, nonetheless,” she said defensively.

“But bound to happen,” Edith said, her mouth a firm line.

A Long Trail Rolling

Long Trail Rolling

She didn’t expect to become a target…but she is one now.

In the Old West’s Utah Territory of 1860, Aleksandra is trained by her father in the Cossack arts. She finds herself alone, disguised as a Pony Express rider, running to keep her pa’s killer from finding their family’s secret. And that was before she galloped full speed into the middle of the Paiute Indian War.

Xavier isn’t about to let anyone get too close, especially a woman, while he bides his time as a Pony Express Station Manager in the middle of a desert, evading his heritage as the eldest son of an old Spanish Californio family. His history taught him women are not to be trusted. Letting this slip of a stroppy, yet alluring, girl get under his skin is not on the cards.

The villain is coming closer, with his sights set on Aleksandra. Thrown together in an ever-worsening situation, despite their own agendas, can Aleksandra and Xavier overcome their differences before the ever-increasing odds overtake them?

 

Excerpt from A Long Trail Rolling

In A Long Trail Rolling, due to circumstances best left unsaid until you read it, Aleksandra rides the Pony Express—as a boy. Things went from bad to worse and she rode through some of the worst part of the attacks of the Pah-Ute war. Here’s an excerpt from the story. Aleks is just about to leave a Pony station in to the west of Salt Lake City in Utah Territory.

Enjoy!

‘You take care out there through the canyon. Horses and riders don’t just disappear by themselves.’ Peter shook his head, his lips a firm line below his furrowed forehead.

‘I promise.’ Thanking him, she vaulted on and the mare laid back her ears and fairly flew on toward Overland Canyon.

The trail entered the canyon from the flat valley floor, meandering gradually upward in a wavelike fashion, sage-brush and early sprouts of grass growing along the creek next to the trail. Aleksandra was just wondering why everyone thought Overland Canyon was so dangerous when the trail became abruptly steeper and began to twist and turn tightly as the hills closed in. Sitting straighter, the blood beginning to pound in her ears, she picked up her reins and scanned the mountainsides flanking the track as they rose higher and higher, ensnaring the pathway within a narrow gorge of exposed strata and tumbled stone bluffs.

Bluffs just meant for ambuscade, with caves big enough to shield a man.

Aleksandra gulped. Giving the little mare her head, they raced on through the canyon.

She glanced left up the mouth of a small ravine as they surged past it.

Blood Canyon.

She shuddered, remembering its name from stories in the Indian village, glad she didn’t have to ride through that even narrower defile winding its way to the top of Blood Mountain.

The trail finally opened up into rolling sage-brush covered flats, Canyon Station dead ahead.

Feeling faint, Aleksandra gasped for a breath, wondering how long she’d held it through the last gauntlet. Laughing shakily, Aleksandra leaned forward, giving the puffing mare a heartfelt hug, then sat up and mumbled sweet nothings to her, scratching her withers as they trotted slowly into the station.

Aleksandra left there on a gray colt, keen and ready to run. The keeper, his jaw set and a frown deeply embedded in his lined face, hadn’t seen the Eastbound Express rider either.

The trail ran gradually uphill ahead of her along the little creek, then left it, rising up the center of a long, open valley. On her left, two prospectors looked up from working their rocker in the creek to wave at her. She reined in for a moment.

‘Good afternoon gentlemen!’

‘And to you! Safe through Overland, are ye?’ shouted a big bear of a man.

‘Yessir!’ she shouted. ‘You haven’t seen an Eastbound rider in the past few days, have you?’

‘No.’ He turned to the other, who shook his head. ‘No, we haven’t, sorry, lad!’

‘Okay, thanks. Having any luck?’ She smiled at the pair.

‘Luck’s all good, Boy! All good!’ the other one added in a shrill voice.

‘What are these workings, please?’ Aleksandra remembered to lower her voice this time.

‘This here’s Clifton Flat, best gold workin’s in the territory!’ He puffed up his chest. ‘Major Egan found gold here a few years ago and we’re in his employ, workin’ it for him!’

‘Excellent, thank you, enjoy your day!’ she replied with a wave and loosed the reins. The colt, needing little encouragement, shot off like an arrow from a bow.

‘Hold on to your hair!’ The burly prospector bellowed over the wind in her ears, as the horse bolted on up the valley, then over the top of the next ridge.

Hopping off at the top, Aleksandra looked out over the expanse spread out before her in awe. The track arced steeply down the mountainside for several miles, with good visibility in every direction, before coming to rest in a huge, fertile-looking wash that seemed to go on forever. Her papa had called the place by its Indian name, Ibapah.

‘Guess we’d better start down that hill,’ she said to the colt, and began running down the track beside the colt, who snorted and skittered beside her until he became accustomed to trotting alongside her.

The Deep Creek Station keeper had no word of the missing rider either. Feeding her well, he sent her out on a pinto Mustang, who loped across the flat valley floor, heading for Prairie Gate. Only four more stations until she was done for the day.

On a keen horse and free to enjoy the day.

She finally let her mind wander back to Xavier and her heart sank, the only shadow in her day. She wondered how he fared with his family and if he missed her as she missed him.

With a gulp, she realized was time to face it. Ahead was a good three hours of open and clear trail to ride. It was time to work through it.

She took a deep breath to try to dispel the anxiety that immobilized her when she thought too hard about their relationship. Every time they seemed close, it all slipped away. She feared nothing she could do would ever hold it together.

Her thoughts circled throughout the day as they traversed the dry sage-brush flats, passing Prairie Gate and Antelope Springs Stations. She repeatedly gripped the buckskin bag beneath her shirt, desperate for guidance.

In the distance ahead stood the Antelope Range. The pass they needed to traverse wasn’t particularly high, but the rocky divide lined by cedars and piñón pines was still challenging. The fresh scent of the evergreens tingled in her nostrils when she brushed them in passing, clearing her head.

At Spring Valley Station, the worried keeper handed her two thick sourdough muffins filled with salt pork.

‘Hope it don’t spoil yer supper over at Schell, but it’s a long slog over that mountain.’

‘Always enough room for more food,’ she said with a grin.

‘Anyways, I’m givin’ you the best little horse I’ve got, Aleks.’

‘Thanks, Patrick.’ She took a deep breath and looked at the little black Mustang. Her eyes shone with a quiet intelligence. She was evenly muscled and solid, her legs clean.

‘She’s the toughest horse I’ve ever known. She’ll take good care of ye over Shellbourne Pass and get ye to Schell Creek in no time!’ He puffed his chest out as he stroked the mare’s neck.

‘I’m thankful for all the good horses and the men of the stations. They’ve always got a smile for me and a pat for the horses when we ride out.’

His brows drew together and he tried for a smile. ‘You take care out there, won’t you? We don’t want another missing rider.’

‘I’ll see you on the way back. We’ll be fine.’ Aleksandra gripped his hand firmly, then vaulted onto the mare and set off for Schell.

Aleksandra wasn’t sure which of them she was trying to reassure.

Her heart sang as the nimble mare climbed up through the trees to the top of the 7000-foot high pass. As the sun neared the horizon, the air began to cool and she hopped off, jogging down the descent to warm up and get some feeling back into her feet.

As she prepared to mount again, a movement back down on the flats caught her eye. Spinning toward it, she saw only a herd of antelope, now motionless, eyes staring and ears perked to scrutinize her passing. She gave a shaky laugh and the antelope disappeared into the dusk.

Aleksandra swayed and jerked back upright, coming awake from drowsing.

Not a good idea.

A station showed, about a mile away.

Must be Schell Creek. Think about something to stay awake.

Her mind flicked back to Xavier and she cringed.

And stop avoiding the challenge with him. Think it through, focus. Try to resolve something, before we get to Schell.

She shook herself.

It finally clicked. In her impatience, she’d driven him away by asking for more closeness than he could give. The emptiness in the pit of her stomach overwhelmed her, and the thought she might never have a chance to see him again, much less get the opportunity to make, no, let this relationship work.

Life is indeed short in the West.

As they neared the station, her choices suddenly became clear as a mountain lake.

How did I miss them before?

It was as if they were written on a wall before her.

You can’t make someone love you,

you can’t fix anyone,

and there’s nothing you can do to change it.

Fervently she vowed to offer Xavier, and others in her life, the time they needed to learn to trust, fully knowing she might never get the chance to try again with Xavier. Her desolation ran deep and tears poured down her cheeks as she rode into Schell Creek Station.

It might have been the mare that did it, stopping dead in her tracks, nearly dropping Aleksandra over her shoulder, or maybe it was the flies that buzzed around the blood pooling beneath the butchered man in the Express station doorway. Whichever it was, it got her full attention.

I hope you enjoyed that!

Long Trail Rolling

To read more, you can find it here

 

To read more about the rest of the series or Lizzi’s other works, stop by her website here

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Refugee from the Indian Mutiny arrives on English shores

By

On June 27, 2018

In Guest author, Teatime Tattler

Bristol Docks, by William Matthew Hale 

Mrs. Kittridge, mother of the recently titled Viscount Glyndon for his service in the Crimean war, reports to the best circles of London that her neighbor Mr. Cameron, who saved her brother the Baron Canmore during the peninsula campaign, has himself died in the rebellion gripping the Indian peninsula.

The news has reached our ears with the arrival of Mr. Cameron’s daughter, Mrs. Tara Montague. Her mother, we are informed, was one of the famous courtesans that entertained the courts of Lucknow even now laid siege to by the mutineers. Her father, while an agent for the Trowbridge Shipping Company whose office in Madras he ran, met the accomplished dancer while on a trading mission to the famed city.

Tara, we are told, means star in Sanskrit and Mrs. Kittridge informs us she has completely captivated the Princess of Kapheira who runs Trowbridge Shipping. Her daughter-in-law, the future Princess, has invited Mrs. Montague to spend the season with her in London.

A young widow of a private of the Madras Army, Oliver Montague, she will be certain to enchant the ton this spring. She is not unconnected in these parts; her father was first married to the aunt of Sir Thaddaeus Meredith the MP from Totnes. They went out to India when their finances failed in the well-reported collapse of the Longfield Bank in 1821. When Jane died shortly after Mr. Cameron never returned to English shores, marrying Tara’s mother some decades later.

Coromandel House outside Falwood, that great estate of the Kittridge family, was fortunately still here to provide refuge to his daughter in fleeing the chaos that afflicts her homeland. With such patronage as the Princess of Kapheira we can only imagine her time will be productive and with Mrs. Ferrell already working on her wardrobe well dressed indeed.

The Secrets of Coromandel House

Tara Montague arrives on the Bristol docks 4 months after her father pushed her on a cargo ship…the day the Sepoy Mutiny started in India. The first word she receives from home is her father is dead; and the second, the aunt she was supposed to live with has died two years before. Not the best start when living in two worlds. The horrors of Cawnpore and Lucknow are filling the papers and she had an Indian mother. Both sides have reason to want her dead.

Why has her father sent her to a country she has never seen? Feeling betrayed yet again after he already arranged a disastrous marriage, on the verge of being a penniless widow, Tara is alone. Her main concern is survival in a strange country where most look at her with suspicion. Tara has questions and suspicions of her own…but who can she trust?

https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Coromandel-House-Jennifer-Mueller-ebook/dp/B07DDPSLX2/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Excerpt

There was a reason she was on a ship of theirs: her father worked as their agent in Madras, having left the East India Company decades ago, for the new office Trowbridge Shipping had opened in one of their towns. Well, they stole him, offered him twice as much if he would start the office in Madras from scratch. He hadn’t gone native at that point, that was a decade before she was born, she wasn’t sure what they would say at her sudden appearance.

“How can I help you?” A clerk said the moment she stepped through. His mutton chops were impressive indeed. There was little in the way of grandeur there, walls of cubbies holding each ship manifest that spread around the world, like a vast web. America, Africa, Europe, Asia, and Australia. They covered the world. Her father’s office in Madras had the same setup, he only handled the ships going in and out of that office though. Not hundreds, not the thousands that surrounded her there.

“I was told you could change rupees. I wanted to get a paper to see what is happening in India. Has the mutiny ended?”

He turned away in the dim office, the faint light of daybreak didn’t reach that far yet. “Sorry, we don’t help your kind. There’s usually some punters down the dock. What makes you think you can come in here to a place of business?”

Tara felt her stomach hurt at hearing such words. They were the insults that the women threw at her. The fishing fleet that came from England looking for husbands among the rank and file saw her as a threat. Her kind, as if it was her fault her father went native. Or worse yet, her kind that married one of their prospects. The insults truly came thick when that man married her, that too not her fault. “If that’s what I asked, I can assure you I still wouldn’t give you business, no matter how much you paid.”

“Sawyer!” A voice yelled from the back.

“It’s a black woman—with a ring in her nose even, you know what her kind did in Cawnpore.” The way he said woman was as much an insult as any other.

She looked no different than those around her in wide skirts, not even more colorful. Just a dark red cotton dress with a paisley border, long sleeve of course to hide the scars. Maybe if she was wearing her sari, but this was only her skin giving her away, the nose ring was hardly noticeable unless close. Her father had forbidden her from wearing one of late, but the hole had never closed up and her father wasn’t there to see anymore. The only thing was her skin.

“Yes, and we had a boat arrive from India not 20 minutes ago. How exactly does a woman stepping in our door make her a prostitute, no matter her color. Do you ask the same of every woman that walks in?” A head appeared from the back room frowning, female shockingly and dressed in black. She was probably in her 50’s, her blond hair shot with white. A lovely woman still. “Get out, Sawyer!”

“What?”

“Get out! I will not have employees that cannot treat everyone with respect no matter what shite is in that head of yours. Even less one that is our customer. Miss…”

“Cameron, Ma’am,” Tara said quietly. “Sorry, Mrs. Montague. He died so quickly I hardly feel it.” If that were the only reason she wanted another name.

“I apologize for my former employee… Cameron? Our Madras agent is a Cameron and his daughter is reported missing. Are you she perhaps?”

“Yes, but I can hardly be missing.”

The sigh said everything. “Get out Sawyer! You have your notice without a reference.”

“My lady, you can’t let me go!” He shot out of his chair… hands poised, Tara didn’t need to see anymore. The pistol came from her pocket and touched his forehead, a Colt Dragoon Revolver. The sort of gun men carried when they went tiger hunting, a wounded animal was the one to worry about. Howdah pistols, named for the guns carried in the baskets on elephant backs, a howdah, the gun itself didn’t matter. Just big. They were .60 caliber in some cases. There was a reason the sailors on the Eliza Anne left her alone once they knew she had it. Inches was all that separated the woman from the air being squeezed out of her body.

That was not the thing to do. The woman went into a fury. “I know I am just a lowly woman. But, last I knew I owned Trowbridge, not my dead husband, last I knew at the very least when I say get out you get out, you do not attack me like I am some slattern you want to bed who has turned you down.”

Owned the company? If she did, then the woman was the Princess of Kapheira. Working in an office of all things? Her father had mentioned the woman who owned the shipping empire. Tara had pictured anything but a slight woman who must have been a great beauty when she was young. For she was still, truthfully, a beauty. Despite that, no one would mistake her for 20.

A man appeared at the door. “Mother?” He was in his 40’s. She didn’t look old enough for a child that age even if Tara knew it had to be true. The woman, herself, had hired father in 1821 and she was married with a child then. Surely not this one though. There had been no talk a child hired him. Sawyer cowered at that. A man made him cower the way a woman never would, even with a gun to his head. Granted he was an impressive man. One that could hurt a woman he was married to. “Why do we have a revolveress in the office?”

“Sawyer is discharged, get him out of here. I will not run a company with offices around the world when the man greeting them treats my business associates or clients like they are dirt. Nor one that has such little concern for life that he would dare to choke me, eliciting our guest here to defend my life. Miss Cameron has come.”

The son straightened up.

“What has happened? Every time you say Cameron, everyone acts…?” It sank in as she said the words. “The steamer route across the Suez has brought word faster than I arrived? The mutiny has gotten worse, something at Cawnpore by his comment.”

Meet Jennifer Mueller

As a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya a few years back I traveled quite a bit and now I just wish I was. A lot of the places I’ve written about I’ve been to, a lot of them I haven’t. Rafting on the Nile in Uganda, living in a Montana ghost town, Puerto Rican beaches, African safaris, Mayan ruins, European youth hostels, forts on the Ghana coast all fill my scrapbooks. I still travel in my head every time I write even if I don’t get out as much as I wish. I currently live in the Pacific Northwest and look forward to filling many more pages.

http://www.jennifermuellerbooks.com

Whispers in a Closet

By

On June 23, 2018

In Bluestocking Belles, Caroline Warfield, Teatime Tattler

Information comes to the Tattler from many sources, whispers among servants being one of the most fruitful…

Mary Fisher went about her business as her mistress directed, even with the house in an uproar and the mistress preoccupied with worry.  The whole staff had more work than usual, what with a wedding the day before. She carried her bucket and rags carefully up the servant stairs to the third level with great care so as not to spill a drop, an effort that proved futile when a hand snaked out, grabbed her free arm, and pulled her into the linen closet. The door slammed shut.

“Ow! You made me slosh water on the floor. Are you trying to cost me my position?”

In the gloom, she could just make out the gleam in Lizzy Smith’s smug expression.  “Pish posh. That countess is too soft-hearted to fire either of us over some spilled water.”

Mary leaned down to wipe up the spill. “Y’ought to be working, not lurking in closets,” she muttered. “You planning to pounce on that green-eyed footman again? That will get you dismissed if you keep it up.”

Lizzy pulled her up. “Don’t be daft. I just want to talk. Did you hear what went on in the Countess’s sitting room? The Family is in a state and that’s the truth.”

“Everyone knows Mister Rand disappeared last night. Rob Portman heard it all serving the breakfast. His bed wasn’t slept in and—”

“But I know what happened in the countess’s sitting room.” There was no mistaking Lizzy’s self-satisfied smirk now. She knew something. No doubt about it.

Duty warred with curiosity in Mary’s heart. Servants oughtn’t to gossip, her mam taught her that early. The family had been good to Mary, though and she hated all the running about and the countess’s worried expression. Curiosity won out. “What’d you hear?”

“Well, you know as how Mr. Rand’s stayed at Cambridge after the duke, his cousin came to down two months ago?”

“’e just come in three days ago, though he was supposed to stand up with the duke. Rob said they never spoke, even yesterday at the wedding. Like somethin’ happened tween the two o’ them as used to be stuck like burrs one to the other.” It distressed Mary to see two young men that always seemed like good folk be against each other that way. “Never saw one without the other ever—”

Lizzy waved a dismissive hand. “So we know there’s bad blood now, but over what I ask you ?”

Mary shrugged. “Young men fight. They’ll come around.”

“Lurking at keyholes, more like,” Mary muttered.

Lizzy ignored the jab. “I heard the countess crying her eyes out, and the earl, he’s trying to comfort her. He says, ‘Cath…’ (did you know he calls her that?) ‘Cath,’ he says, ‘the whole world knows that woman is carrying a baby, except for maybe Charles, the young fool.’”

“He called the duke a fool? He’s ever so smart.”

“A man can be smart about business and a still let a woman pull wool over his eyes.”

Lizzy would know, Mary thought glumly. The import of Lizzy’s other words hit her. “Wait, are you saying the new duchess is pregnant?” Her jaw hung slack.

Lizzy pursed her lips. “Don’t be a slow top. Of course she is. That isn’t the good part.”

Good may not be the word, Mary thought, but she suspected she was about to hear whatever it was.

“The earl said as how it was too bad Mr. Fred didn’t come to the wedding because he could talk some sense into them both, but the countess says something like, ‘Rand had no idea.’ It were kind of muffled like. The earl, he says Mr. Rand couldn’t know nothing since he stayed away and the countess says—listen up Mary!”

“What did she say?” Mary dreaded hearing it, but couldn’t help listening.

Lizzy dropped her voice, “Clear as a bell, she tells the earl Mr. Rand said the duchess is so far along it had to have happened while he was still walking out with her.”

Mary blinked rapidly, trying to understand.

“Don’t be a booby, Mary. The duke got Mr. Rand’s lady with child while she was still supposed to be with Mr. Rand. No wonder those two are at each other’s throats. No man wants his cousin—much less best friend or any other man—poaching on his preserve. Ran off he did. Said he isn’t never coming back.”

Mary shook her head and picked up her bucket without talking.

“Earl said, ‘That woman will make Charles miserable, mark my words,’ and the countess she said, ‘She already heaped misery on all of us,’ and went on back to crying.”

Mary stopped listening. She went back to work, her heart heavy. Family oughtn’t to treat one another badly. They ought to come together in time of troubles, that’s for certain, she thought.

_________________

About the Book, The Renegade Wife

Reclusive businessman Rand Wheatly finds his solitude disrupted by a desperate woman running with her children from an ugly past. But even his remote cabin in Upper Canada isn’t safe enough. Meggy Blair may have lied to him, but she and her children have breached the walls of his betrayed heart. Now she’s on the run again. To save them he must return to face his demons and seek help from the family he vowed to never see again.

It is available in Kindle format free with Kindle Unlimited or for purchase as ebook or in print:

Amazon US
Barnes and Noble
BooksAMillion
Amazon UK
Amazon CA
Amazon DE
Amazon IT
Amazon FR
Amazon ES
Amazon IN
Amazon AU


The Renegade Wifeis Book 1 in Caroline Warfield’s Children of Empire Series.

Three cousins, who grew up together in the English countryside, have been driven apart by deceit and lies. (You may guess a woman was involved!) Though they all escape to the outposts of The British Empire, they all make their way home to England, facing their past and finding love and the support of women of character and backbone. They are:

  • Randolph Baldwin Wheatly who has become a recluse, and lives in isolation in frontier Canada intent on becoming a timber baron, until a desperate woman invades his peace. (The Renegade Wife)
  • Captain Frederick Arthur Wheatly, an officer in the Bengal army, who enjoys his comfortable life on the fringes until his mistress dies, and he’s forced to choose between honor and the army. (The Reluctant Wife)
  • Charles, Duke of Murnane, tied to a miserable marriage, throws himself into government work to escape bad memories. He accepts a commission from the Queen that takes him to Canton and Macau, only to face his past there. (The Unexpected Wife)

Who are their ladies?

  • Meggy Campeau, the daughter of a French trapper and Ojibwe mother who has made mistakes, but is fierce in protecting her children. (The Renegade Wife)
  • Clare Armbruster, fiercely independent woman of means, who is determined to make her own way in life, but can’t resist helping a foolish captain sort out his responsibilities. (The Reluctant Wife)
  • Zambak Hayden, eldest child of the Duke of Sudbury, knows she’d make a better heir than her feckless younger brother, but can’t help protecting the boy to the point of following him to China. She may just try to sort out the Empire’s entangled tea trade–and its ugly underpinning, opium, while she’s there. (The Unexpected Wife)

Book 3, The Unexpected Wife, will be released on July 25.

Here’s a short video about it:

https://www.facebook.com/carolinewarfield7/videos/924791187669849/

For more about the series and all of Caroline’s books, look here:

https://www.carolinewarfield.com/bookshelf/

About the Author

Caroline Warfield grew up in a peripatetic army family and had a varied career (largely around libraries and technology) before retiring to the urban wilds of Eastern Pennsylvania, where divides her time between writing Regency and Victorian Romance, and seeking adventures with her grandson and the prince among men she married.

 

 

 

 

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