A Regrettable Reputation takes us to Yorkshire in 1816 where the former Captain Nicholas Witham of the 110th Infantry is adjusting to civilian life as land agent on the Ashberry estate…
In the event it was several weeks before Miss Dorne made an appearance. It was a damp afternoon and Witham had spent the morning writing letters and doing accounts before joining the grooms as they exercised the racehorses. He rode back to the stables with the lads to find a post-chaise drawn up on the carriage drive with luggage strapped to the roof. Witham sighed and waved for one of the grooms to come and take his horse. He had no desire to converse with a spoiled woman with a lost reputation, but common civility demanded that he at least introduce himself. Giving the lad some brief instructions about the horse, he walked up to the house as the driver was lowering the carriage steps and opening the door. Mrs Hogan, the housekeeper was standing stiffly at the front door. The woman who climbed down from the coach was of medium height, clothed in a dark travelling dress with a dark green pelisse over it and a small bonnet trimmed with feathers. She paused for a moment, looking up at the red brick of the house which was to become her home for a while. Witham could see no sign of a maid although he could not believe she had been allowed to travel without one. The girl looked at Mrs Hogan and the woman bobbed a reluctant curtsey. “Miss Dorne. I am Mrs Hogan, the housekeeper.” “How do you do?” the newcomer said quietly. “I’ll try not to be a trouble to you.” “Not at all,” Mrs Hogan said. “In his letter, Lord Ashberry suggested I serve meals in the east parlour since you’ll hardly be wanting to use the big dining room on your own. Your room is ready, if you’ll follow me. Ah – Mr Witham. Miss Dorne, this is Lord Ashberry’s agent who runs the estate. He lives in the Dower House which you will have passed on the drive.” Witham approached the two women. Miss Dorne turned. “How do you do?” she said again. Witham held out his hand. “Welcome to Ashberry Hall, Miss Dorne. We’ll try to make your stay as comfortable as possible.” “Thank you.” Her youth startled him. He had been expecting an older woman given her unfortunate reputation but this girl could be no more than eighteen. She was slight and fair, with a pale oval face and expressive blue eyes. There were dark shadows under her eyes which looked like bruises. She looked painfully thin with a fragile delicacy which unexpectedly touched his heart. Whatever she had done wrong, somebody should be looking after this girl and she was here alone many miles from home and family. He realised he was staring and that he had failed to release her hand. With a laugh he did so. “I’m sorry, Miss Dorne, you must think me a half-wit standing here staring. Mrs Hogan will show you your room and get you some tea.” The well-shaped mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Don’t think of it, Mr Witham. Recently I have become very well accustomed to being stared at.” There was bitterness in her tone. Nicholas smiled. “I wouldn’t worry about it here, Miss Dorne, you’re in the middle of nowhere, you’ll find yourself an object of interest to the horses and sheep but not much else. You must be exhausted, so I’ll let you get within and rest and eat. When you’re ready in a few days, come to the stables and I’ll find you a horse to ride. The grooms are at your disposal.” “I prefer to ride alone, but thank you.” “Well take one with you at least until you’ve learned your way about,” Witham said. “Good day to you.” She disappeared inside the house and Witham stood watching as the servants began to unload her luggage from the top of the carriage. There was a sense of immense loneliness about her. It was hard to imagine her laughing and flirting with her lover before disaster had overtaken them. She looked defeated. Mrs Hogan reappeared at the door, watching the last of the boxes being carried inside. “A hussy if ever I saw one!” she said sharply. “God save us, Mrs Hogan, she’s a child!” Witham said shortly. “Not such a child that she couldn’t disgrace her poor family by behaving like a common whore! She says she needs little from me, which is just as well because it’s bad enough to have to have her in the house…” “You’ll show her the courtesy that’s due a guest of Lord Ashberry’s, ma’am!” Witham cut in sharply. “And if you don’t, I’ll see to it that he finds another housekeeper who will!” The woman took a deep indignant breath and opened her mouth. Witham held up a hand. “Enough! You’re a narrow minded woman, and that’s fine by me, but I’ll be watching you and if there’s a sign of rudeness to that young woman, you’re out!” He watched, amused, as she stormed back into the house, and then turned and walked towards the Dower House wondering with some sympathy how Camilla Dorne would cope with the lonely isolation of Ashberry Hall.
In 1816 war is over, Napoleon in exile and Regency England is at peace.
Mr Nicholas Witham, land agent at the Yorkshire estate of Lord Ashberry has found a haven of quiet, far from the bloodshed of war and the horror of Waterloo. With poachers and lost sheep his most pressing concerns, Nicholas is not seeking anything more exciting than the occasional trip to York and a game of cards with friends.
The tranquillity of Ashberry is about to be disrupted by the arrival of Miss Camilla Dorne, a young woman of doubtful reputation, sent away from London by her guardian to avoid the consequences of a disastrous and very public love affair with a disreputable officer which has broken her heart.
An army officer, past or present, is the last man Camilla wishes to spend time with. But she discovers that a lost reputation can bring unexpected freedom and possibly a second chance at happiness.
With the shadow of war firmly behind him, Nicholas is ready to move on, but poverty and rising prices bring rumblings of discontent and rumours of Luddite activity in the industrial towns, and as violence erupts, the land agent of Ashberry finds himself swept up in a new conflict where the enemy is hard to identify. Faced with a stark choice between love and duty, Nicholas is beginning to realise that he may not have left the regiment behind at all…
A Regrettable Reputation, a Regency romance, is the first book in the Light Division Romances which follow the varying fortunes of the men of Wellington’s elite troops once war is over. Now available on Amazon kindle and in paperback at the Amazon store.
Of all historical novels, Regency romances seem to be one of the most distinctive genres, and although their popularity has waxed and waned they have never completely gone out of style. Setapproximately during the period of the British Regency (1811–1820) they have their own plot and stylistic conventions. Many people think of Jane Austen when Regencies are mentioned and certainly her novels are set in the right period, but of course she was writing as a contemporary not as a historian.
It has always seemed to me that Georgette Heyer was the mother of the current Regency genre. She wrote more than twenty novels set during the Regency, between 1935 and her death in 1974 and her books were very much like a comedy of manners. There was little discussion of sex, understandable given the different views of her generation, and a great emphasis on clever, quick witted dialogue between the characters.
These days, Regencies seem to be divided into two sub genres. There are the traditional Regencies which are similar to Heyer’s originals, and a more modern Regency historical genre. Many authors do not seem to confine themselves to one of these two types but may move between the two. Both are currently popular.
Traditional Regencies emphasise the main romantic plot. They play close attention to historical detail and take care to replicate the voice of the genre. There is a good deal of research for writers of traditional Regencies. Heroes and heroines generally remain within the accepted rules and conditions of the period and although their may be some sex it is very likely that the action stops at the bedroom door, probably at the proposal of marriage.
The more modern Regency historical novels break more rules. They may be set during the time period but not necessarily in high society with an insight into life outside of the world of wealth and privilege inhabited by Georgette Heyer’s characters. They may also include characters who behave in a more modern way, particularly when it comes to sexual behaviour and moral values. The style can be very different to the more traditional works. There is another sub genre, the sensual Regency which has become very popular in recent years. These novels are far more explicit than the traditional Regency and the sexual relationship between the hero and heroine is key to the book.
There are some elements which are likely to crop up in all genres of Regency novels. Many are set in, or will refer to the Ton, which means the top layer of English society. They revolve around social activities such as balls, dinners, assemblies and other common pastimes. Men are often involved in sporting activities. There are detailed descriptions of fashion and a consciousness of social class and the rules of behaviour. The difference between them is that in traditional Regencies the heroine is likely to stick to them; in the modern genre pretty much anything goes.
The shift in the genre seems to have come about because of a slump in the popularity of Regencies in the 1990s. Some authors began incorporating more sex into their novels and while lovers of traditional Regencies disliked it, publishers and readers seemed to approve and the Regency novel got a new lease of life.
I grew up reading Georgette Heyer and owned every one of her books in paperback – I still have some of them and still read them from time to time. They are, for me, the ultimate comfort book – the only other series which comes close are P G Wodehouse’s tales of Jeeves and Wooster. These are the books I’ll turn to if I’m ill or miserable or sometimes just because my brain hurts and I can’t focus on anything else. They are written to entertain and with their quick dialogue and comedic moments they never let me down.
I wrote my first Regency novel for the Mills and Boon market during the years I was trying to find a traditional publisher. I’d tried several other novels, including at least two contemporary ones which are never going to see the light of day again, and had joined the Romantic Novelists Association new writers scheme. After very positive feedback on both A Respectable Woman and A Marcher Lord it was suggested that I try to adapt these to Mills and Boon. I did try, but it couldn’t be done. It appeared that I simply could not have a heroine who defended herself very capably against attack; it was the job of the hero to rescue her and Jenny Marchant simply wouldn’t wait. In fact she was more likely to do the rescuing. Philippa Maclay was even worse, she didn’t make it through two chapters without doing something so appalling that it put her beyond hope of redemption. If I rewrote these characters then I would be writing a different book. I gave it up and decided to start from scratch.
Out of that decision came Cordelia Summers and Giles Fenwick of The Reluctant Debutante. Once I got into the swing of it I really loved writing this book. It’s fun and fairly light hearted. I was already doing a lot of research into the period for my series set during the Peninsular war and that fitted very well with a Regency so it wasn’t that much extra work. And the fast paced dialogue and witty characters of the Regency genre exist in all my books, no matter which period they’re set in. I realise that those years of reading Georgette Heyer and Dorothy Dunnett have affected the way all my characters speak. They may have different accents and different levels of education, but most of them are smart mouths.
I had a lovely response from Mills and Boon on the Reluctant Debutante. It was a no, but a very detailed no. They liked the setting and the characters and even the plot, but once again my characters let me down. There was not enough internal conflict between them, it seemed; most of their difficulties were external and their way of overcoming them was not dramatic enough. Could I rewrite it to include more conflict between Cordelia and Giles?
I did try. I wrote a selection of scenes for them. The trouble was, trying to fit them into the book made no sense whatsoever. I’d already created these people and their responses to events grew out of their essential character. Cordelia might have flatly refused to see Giles after their quarrel and there could have been weeks of agonising and misunderstandings. But there wasn’t. Cordelia was as mad as a wet hen but once she saw him again, she didn’t have it in her not to listen to his explanation. She’s a practical girl with a wealth of common sense. She simply can’t behave like a drama queen.
So Giles and Cordelia remained as themselves and I published the book pretty much as I’d originally written it, with the removal of one or two completely gratuitous sex scenes which didn’t seem to add anything to the plot. I’ve been delighted with people’s response to it. So far it’s the best selling of all the books although the others are starting to catch up and readers seem to love it.
The amount of sex in my books varies a fair bit and for me that reflects reality. Everyone is different in how they feel about sex both in books and in real life. It’s not hard for me to write about sex; I used to be a relationship counsellor so I’m difficult to shock. At the same time I need my characters to develop their own attitudes towards sex and it needs to fit within the social norms of the time and one of the most important things to remember is that there was no reliable form of contraception available to any of my heroines which meant that there was an enormous risk involved in illicit sex.
Jenny and Will in a Marcher Lord are very compatible. He’s around thirty, never been married although knows he should be for dynastic reasons, and likes women. You have the sense he had a good relationship with his mother and adores his younger sister, so he’s likely to be fairly respectful around women although given his age and status there have definitely been a few adventures along the way. He’s not particularly a womaniser despite some of his cousins jokes about it and he knows how to behave. Jenny on the other hand grew up in a loving family where marriage wasn’t really an issue which has given her a very untraditional view on marriage and sex. Circumstances rather than morality dictate the progress of Jenny and Will’s relationship and they understand each other very well.
For Philippa and Kit, sex is a very different issue since at the start their entire relationship is based around his attempt to persuade her to be his mistress and her steadfast refusal. Their stances on this are very traditional for the time but there are a lot of other reasons why a sexual relationship is complicated for this couple and it was quite hard to write about at times. Certainly this was not a couple who were going to fall into bed every five minutes, that’s not what their story is about.
Giles and Cordelia are also fairly traditional. Giles might forget his manners from time to time but he understands what is expected of him. They are strongly attracted to one another but their relationship takes a fairly traditional course, for the first half of the book at least.
Book 1 in the Peninsular War Saga
Paul and Anne are very different. Technically, An Unconventional Officer could be considered a Regency given the period but it is not; it’s a love story but it’s also the story of two very individual people and their experiences in the army during Wellington’s Peninsular wars and the Ton and Almack’s don’t really feature. When Anne and Paul meet there is no question of a romantic relationship between them; he’s married and she’s going to be soon. But of all of my characters, Paul and Anne are by far the most openly physical in their relationship. He is a shameless womaniser with a string of broken hearts behind him and she is young and inexperienced but neither of those things really matters. For Paul and Anne the chemistry is instant and undeniable and completely irresistible. It is also really obvious to everybody around them. It isn’t hard writing love scenes for Paul and Anne, the difficulty is trying to get them to behave with any degree of propriety at all.
I suspect The Reluctant Debutante falls somewhere between the old and the new when it comes to Regency. I do like my heroines to have something more about them than a pretty face and good manners, but on the whole I’ve allowed Cordelia to be fairly well-behaved in public although privately she’s a little different. She’s very grown up but she’s also led a sheltered life in comparison to all three of my other heroines and she behaves accordingly. It was nice to write something normal for a change…
My new Regency has the working title of A Regrettable Reputation and it’s early days yet but at least some of it is likely to be set in Yorkshire. Sophia Dorne is very different to Cordelia both in circumstances and in character. Nicholas Witham is nothing like Giles, having neither his fortune nor his arrogance although they do have some things in common. I’m looking forward to seeing how things work out for them.
Writing with Labradors, and Blogging with Labradors came about as something of a joke when I was first setting up my website. It’s proved popular and I’ve stayed with it…hence the presence of Toby and Joey in our local newspaper this week.
Anybody looking at this post is going to work out from the title that I’ve a few things on my mind this morning. One of them is recovering from my birthday yesterday. Not, as you might think, a wild night out on the town, but a rather lovely meal at home (main course courtesy of my son and his girlfriend, cake courtesy of my daughter) followed by Prosecco and Trivial Pursuits. You can tell that I know how to live…
I spent some time thinking about publicity yesterday now that An Unconventional Officer has been published. There was a nice article in our local paper the Isle of Man Examiner about the release and I’ve been asked to do Manx Radio as well.
I can remember one of the first posts I wrote on this blog talked about my concerns regarding publicity. I’ve never been much of a self-publicist and I honestly thought I’d struggle more than I have, but I’ve made myself do it because once I had taken the plunge and published the books it seemed pointless just to let them sit there and take their chances. And I’ve actually quite enjoyed it. For anybody interested in psychology, marketing and reaching the right audience is a nice little challenge. I’m still learning but I think I’m getting better.
It helps that the books are selling – not in their thousands, but steadily. It also helps that I’ve had one or two nice reviews and some four and five star ratings on places like Goodreads and Amazon. There’s something very encouraging about knowing that people are reading and enjoying the books enough to review them. All my reviews are from complete strangers, I hope they have some idea how much it makes me smile.
One of the interesting things I’m learning is what people like. I grew up with Regency novels and loved them, and I’ve read a few more recent ones. The Reluctant Debutantewas my tribute to those and I’ve been astonished at how popular it’s been. I had already thought I would write another Regency just because they’re so much fun, but I’m already planning it.
An Unconventional Officer is also set in Regency times and although it’s a far cry from the London Season of Cordelia and Giles, it is about the war which affected everything during those years. It’s a longer book than any of the others and is the first in a series which follows the men and women of a fictional regiment through the years of the Peninsular War. I loved working on this book; it’s a bigger canvas with a large cast of characters and the best part is that I don’t have to say goodbye to them at the end of the book.
I’ve done a lot of research for these books. Earlier I saw an article in the Guardian which caught my attention about the relationship between academic historians and historical novelists which I found really interesting. I’m sure there are a lot of academics who dislike historical novels, particularly where they take very obvious liberties with history. Equally there are non-academics who don’t like them much either. And there are people who like science fiction and chick lit and thrillers and even, so I’m told, those who love Fifty Shades of Grey. It takes all sorts.
I think I can understand the frustration of an academic historian. After publishing a book which took years of painstaking research, gained excellent academic reviews and sold very few copies it must be infuriating to see a novelist selling thousands of books which claim to be based on history but which to a serious historian could seem poorly researched, wildly inaccurate and full of mistakes.
I do have a history degree so I’ve a little understanding of both sides of this argument. The truth is that some historical novelists are not trying to be accurate, they’re just trying to entertain, putting characters in old fashioned clothing but not caring about period detail or anachronisms or accurate timelines. It doesn’t mean people don’t or shouldn’t enjoy their books. It just means that they’re not intended to teach people anything about history.
I’ve read some of these and personally they drive me up the wall. I can cope with honest mistakes but in some cases I think writers might do better to turn to fantasy where anything goes. Still, I refuse to be a snob about it. There are also some very well respected historical novelists whose work is clearly painstakingly researched but I just don’t enjoy their style. Many people do, it’s a matter of personal taste.
I’ve recently come across an author called Jacqueline Reiter, who has written both a biography and a historical novel about the life of John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham, the elder brother of the Younger Pitt who spent much of his life in the shade of his more famous father and sibling. I’ve now read both, and it’s confirmed what I’ve always suspected that it’s very possible to be both and excellent historian and an entertaining historical novelist. I would defy anybody on either side of this debate to be snobbish about Earl of Shadowswhich is the novel or to complain that the biography the Late Lord is anything other than a well-written and very scholarly work. Both historians and novelists could learn a lot from this writer and I hope she goes on to write a lot more.
The books I’ve written so far are period specific and most of them include some real historical characters alongside my fictional ones. I try to research as well as I can. For A Respectable Woman I used a lot of primary sources and for “An Unconventional Officer” I read endless accounts of the war written by the men who fought it. The problem with these is that they are frequently contradictory in themselves; they were written years after the war and people forget.
Wellington’s letters and despatches are a goldmine of information for the Peninsular War books although they’ve obviously been edited for publication. Even so, given the immense stress Wellington must have been under during those years, did even he remember everything?
In the end, it only matters if you want it to matter. I love reading history, both novels and non-fiction, as long as it’s well written and enjoyable to read. I can sift through either and find what I want and the very obvious disagreements between academics over the interpretation of events means that I don’t feel guilty about putting forward my own interpretation in a novel. My characters might well have their own views about why something happened which contradict modern historians’ thinking, but then they’re not modern historians, sifting the evidence, they’re supposed to be ordinary people living their lives in a different time and like us they’re entitled to their opinions.
I think I’ve done enough musing about marketing and the meaning of life for a while. Now it’s back to the writing, which in the end is what I love doing most and the reason that all this is happening.
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Twenty three years ago today I got married and the anniversary has made me think about love and marriage, an important issue in all of my books.
Inevitably it was in a castle. Dalhousie Castle on the Scottish Borders is a beautiful place, converted into a hotel with a small chapel which as far as I know still does weddings. Ours was a small affair with only close family and two or three friends. We went on honeymoon afterwards and then came back and had a huge party with all our friends to celebrate.
I write historical fiction with a strong element of romance so relationships and how they develop are of interest to me. I also spent years working as a relationship counsellor which meant I saw the ups and downs of more couples than I can remember. And I’ve been in a relationship now for around twenty seven years. Believe me, I’ve thought about love and marriage during all this.
It’s the aim of a writer of romance, even if the romance is only part of the theme of the book, to try to make it realistic while still retaining the magical element of falling in love. A lot of romantic novels end with wedding bells, or at least with the couple falling into each others arms and admitting that after all their trials and tribulations, they want to be together. There’s something very satisfying about reading the last page, closing the book, and knowing that the couple that you have become attached to (hopefully) have worked it out.
Of course they haven’t. They’ve just worked out the first bit. There’s a whole lot of work still to come which a lot of the time we don’t see. But because I do get attached to the characters I write about, I do wonder what happened to them next.
In historical fiction, the drama of divorce would have been less common. Certainly before the Victorian era when divorce became slightly more realistic, although still very difficult, only the very wealthy could afford divorce which had to be confirmed by an act of Parliament. And it was only available to men.
This didn’t mean that couples didn’t separate. For many it was a quiet affair, simply drifting apart and living separate lives. There was not always the same pressure for couples to spend all their time together as we have now. These days, if one partner takes a job which keeps them away for weeks, months or even years at a time, there is often an expectation that the marriage is going to fail. In the early nineteenth century, married officers and men in the British army might not see their wives or families for years. Some marriages did end during that time but a surprising number succeeded, helped along by endless letter writing and a determination to keep the relationship alive.
There was probably a different attitude to adultery in some quarters, for men at least. It was not considered so shocking for a man to have relations with a mistress as long as he was discreet. In an age where many marriages, particularly among the middle and upper classes, were arranged for reasons other than love, one wonders how often both partners were unfaithful at times. Some of these marriages worked very well. Others did not. There are examples of both of these in the books I’ve written.
I do wonder, though, if some couples pushed through their difficulties and came out stronger when divorce and separation were more difficult. Some, we know, lived in misery, and I wouldn’t go back to the days when divorce was seen as shocking. But relationships are tough at times and there’s a feeling of satisfaction in coming out the other side of a difficult patch and feeling close again.
A Marcher Lord – a story of the Anglo-Scottish borders
I’ve been thinking about the couples in my books so far and wondering how they’d do. Jenny and Will fromA Marcher Lordwill do well, I suspect. Both had parents who made successes of their marriages; Will’s had an arranged marriage and Jenny’s was a runaway love match but both worked. Jenny and Will would have led a busy and active life keeping castle and estates running successfully and they have already proved they make a good working team. They’ll argue, but they have shared values and interests and I think they’ll be fine. I’m planning a second book featuring this couple some time next year and I’m looking forward to catching up with them.
Cordelia and Giles from The Reluctant Debutante come from different social backgrounds, but she’s already proved that she can make the shift into the Ton very well. I think both of them enjoy country life. They might argue about social obligations; she’s probably always going to be more social than he is, have better manners and be nicer to people. But they share a sense of humour and a love of the ridiculous and I think for Giles there will always be an enormous sense of gratitude to her. He was in bits after Waterloo and she’s a big part of his rehabilitation. There is a planned series of books set around the lives and loves of some of the men and women of the third brigade of the Light Division after the war, of which this is the second, so I think we will meet Cordelia and Giles again.
Kit and Philippa from A Respectable Womanare the most interesting in some ways. Somebody who has just finished the book and loved it asked about a sequel and it has made me think how this marriage is likely to work. Of all of them the gap between these two is the widest. Philippa has a lot to learn about how to be a Countess and for all his protestations that she can do as she likes, Kit is going to need to learn to let her be herself. I think the key to this one is going to be for both of them to find something to do outside of the marriage so that neither of them feel smothered. They’re both used to being busy and having a job to do. The big advantage that they have is Kit’s mother, a very wise and understanding woman who is going to be a big help to Philippa. I think they’ll be all right but I suspect there might be a few fireworks along the way.
Book 1 in the Peninsular War Saga
Then we have Paul and Anne who began their journey in An Unconventional Officer. There is a lot about relationships in this and the subsequent novels in the Peninsular War saga. There’s no point in speculating about Paul and Anne because their story doesn’t end with the book, it continues through the series. We’re going to see how Paul and Anne and the other characters cope with trying to be together in the middle of a war and it’s not always likely to be easy.
I’ve been lucky enough to see an example of a very happy marriage with my parents. They’d been married for over fifty years when my Dad died and there were definitely ups and downs. But they stayed devoted to one another. Theirs is a story I’d like to write one day
In the meantime, Happy Anniversary to the man I married. 23 years and we’re still here. It feels like something to celebrate…
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Welcome to a short biography of Giles Fenwick, hero of the Reluctant Debutantewhich is my bestselling book so far.
At the age of thirty two, Giles Fenwick, Earl of Rockcliffe had earned himself a reputation in the polite world as a dangerous rake, adept at seduction and quick to boredom with the women he pursued. The matchmaking mammas had welcomed him with open arms three years earlier upon his return from Waterloo, a professional soldier come unexpectedly into the ancient title and accompanying fortune. These days, the Earl was aware that the same ladies eyed him askance and warned their delicate charges to avoid him if possible. There seemed no prospect of him doing his duty and marrying to secure the succession, and few mothers would have wanted to entrust their daughters to the scarred, cynical Earl with his unpredictable temper, his reputation for seducing married women, for keeping low company, having expensive mistresses in his keeping and for saying whatever outrageous thing should enter his head on any occasion. The nobility of his birth and the size of his fortune ensured his continued welcome in the houses of the ton. Rockcliffe, who had returned from the army reluctant to be in any kind of society, was sardonically amused at how easy people found it to ignore his behaviour when dazzled by his title and money. But he had little in common with most of the well born people who saw themselves as his equals, and at times found their company stifling and overwhelmingly tedious.
Rockcliffe knew that the nature of his military service had a good deal to do with that. For many years he had served in the Peninsula under Wellington. Initially an excellent junior officer of light infantry, his intelligence, his talent for languages and his initiative had brought a transfer and he had served for much of the war as an exploring officer. These officers in Wellington’s army were under the command of the Quartermaster General. They operated on their own or with one or two local guides and their task was to collect first-hand tactical intelligence by riding to enemy positions, observing and noting movements and making sketch maps of uncharted land. The work was highly dangerous and required physical fitness, good horsemanship and a willingness to take risks. Captain Giles Fenwick had been a legend in Wellington’s army, his exploits talked of and laughed over in mess and over campfires.
It was a solitary life, and bred independence and impatience with rules and conventions. Hardly the best training, the Earl thought wryly, swinging himself out of bed, for an Earl entering polite society. But he could have done better if he had tried harder. He had not wanted to. The years of danger and excitement, the fights and the killing had culminated in the horror of Waterloo where he had seen friends and comrades cut down around him. He had expected to die from the wounds received on that day. But he had lived, had come home to be courted and feted by the polite world who would have petted him and made a hero of him if they could. He could not bear it – and made no attempt to hide the fact.
I’m delighted by how many people seem to be reading and enjoying The Reluctant Debutante which is now also available in paperback.
By the time we meet him in a humble tavern on the London road in 1819, Giles has inherited a title from his uncle and is the Earl of Rockcliffe. It has been a difficult transition for Giles who was, for many years, a penniless young officer in Wellington’s army, initially in a line regiment and then as one of Wellington’s exploring officers. He returned to regular service for the battle of Waterloo where he was seriously wounded and lost Simon Carlton, one of his best friends.
For anybody who would like to know more about Giles’ early years before he met and fell in love with a merchant’s daughter, you’ll be glad to know that the opportunity will arise during the course of the Peninsular War Saga as the regiment that young Ensign Fenwick joins is the first battalion of the 110th Infantry, commanded by the young and flamboyant Major Paul van Daan.
I wrote The Reluctant Debutante as a standalone novel and when I began writing the first of the Peninsular Books some time afterwards, the connection did not immediately occur to me. Giles was an exploring officer who operated away from the main army. However, as I spent more and more time researching Wellington’s army, it became clear to me that Giles would have started out in an ordinary regiment before being seconded to that post. We already know that he was poor, with no money to join the guards or an expensive cavalry regiment, and we also already know that his uncle, whom he visited, had an estate in Leicestershire, the home county for the 110th.
Giles is a few years younger than Paul van Daan. When Paul joins the 110th in 1802 he would have been just fifteen, still at school. But it did not seem unreasonable that when he was looking to join the army, he might have found a commission in the local regiment, the 110th cheap to buy, just as Carl Swanson did some years earlier. Moreover, I had a strong feeling that the young Giles Fenwick was probably the sort of lad who would catch the attention of Major van Daan and his clever wife. They like young officers with a strong personality and a lot to offer and Lord Wellington was always looking for men who might be suitable for his Corps of Guides.
After that the connection was obvious. Giles does not appear in the first book, although he joins the 110th in 1805 when he is eighteen. But he has the misfortune to be commissioned into the seventh company of the first battalion under the disaster that was Captain Vincent Longford, which means it is going to be some years before he finds himself under the command of Major van Daan. What happens then and how he becomes an exploring officer will be told during the course of the series.
I love connections like this, and having realised that I was going to be able to explore Giles’ back story as part of my saga, I realised that thanks to having unintentionally used the same surname in two of my books, I could create another connection, this time with the gallant Major Kit Clevedon of A Respectable Woman Kit is another officer who comes late into a title unexpectedly, but at twenty he gained financial independence from his bullying father when he inherited a small estate from an uncle. It didn’t take me long to work out that the character from An Unconventional Officerwho shares his surname would have been 68 had he died that year. It would appear that Gervase Clevedon, one of Paul’s most reliable officers and very good friends, was the uncle from whom Kit inherited. I wonder if it was his idea for Kit to join the army to get him away from his unhappy home life? I rather suspect that it was; Gervase was a very good soldier and would have approved of the life for a favourite nephew…
Giles Fenwick also makes a cameo appearance in A Regrettable Reputationwhich is now the first book in the Light Division Romances, a series which follows the stories of some of the supporting characters from the Peninsular War Saga back into civilian life after the war.
My third standalone novel, A Marcher Lordis from a different time period entirely. However, the Scottish borders have provided fine soldiers to His Majesty’s armies for many hundreds of years. I have a strong suspicion that although nobody would know it, some red haired descendent of Will and Jenny Scott would have been fighting alongside the Van Daans, the Fenwicks and the Clevedons on Wellington’s front line. I’ll let you know if I run into him at some point.
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As an author of historical novels, and specifically historical romance, I will own up to being a bit of a romantic.
A lot of people who know me would be surprised at that. I don’t come across that way at all, but I like a good love story. I love the classics: Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice and Jamaica Inn. I love a happy ending and I’m not averse to a couple walking off into the sunset holding hands.
But what happens after that?
My three first novels are all standalone historical romances so far and I enjoy each of them for different reasons. In A Respectable Woman, Kit and Philippa are fighting against the rules of society which says that marriages need to be made between social equals. In A Marcher Lord the conflict between Will and Jenny is that of patriotism and national loyalty during a time of war. And for Giles and Cordelia in The Reluctant Debutante we have a comedy of manners, a couple from very different backgrounds whose courtship is beset by difficulties.
And then we come to An Unconventional Officer, the first book in a series set during the Peninsular War. For Paul and Anne nothing is simple apart from their feelings about one another, feelings which prove impossible to fight or to hide. They are are about to create one of the big scandals of Wellington’s army, to upset the social norm and shock the officers and their ladies. And quite simply, neither of them gives a single damn.
The challenge of Paul and Anne is that on this occasion, the story doesn’t end when he picks her up and carries her to bed. The story carries on, and it is happening during wartime when fighting and dying and burying comrades leaves little time for romance. In writing the story of Paul and Anne, I have had to adapt what I intended to fit around the relentless and exhausting pace of Wellington’s war. There is no time to pause and reflect, no time to hold hands and gaze into one another’s eyes, no time to plan.
Because of that, they are people of action. Both of them have their part to play in the conflict and both, over the years, will suffer and struggle. The challenge of writing a series is to follow their love story through the ups and downs of war without any possibility of closing the door and setting the violins playing before it all gets too difficult. I’m looking forward to seeing how Paul and Anne cope with the challenges which lie ahead.
When Anne was not busy at the hospital or working with Paul’s quartermaster she rode up to watch training. Her husband and his officers became accustomed to her presence, and took turns to spend time with her explaining what was being done and why, and she was fascinated to watch the process which had made a legend of the 110th. She suspected that very few of the other regiments were working quite so hard with no immediate prospect of a battle and she began to realise with some amusement where Paul’s reputation for perfectionism had come from.
In the relative comfort of their billet she had time to settle in to the life of the regiment and to get used to being married to Paul. Up and down the lines the officers hunted and gambled and attended parties, and she watched her husband rise each day to join his officers and men on the training field, observed his watchful eyes scanning the lines for mistakes and inefficiencies, and laughed at their grumbles as they left the field, knowing that what had already been good was expected to be perfect. “Every other bloody officer in this army is applying for leave!” she heard Carter commenting, after a particularly gruelling afternoon of skirmish drill. “What the hell is wrong with him? Can’t he take furlough and give us a break? Or even a day off!” He caught sight of Anne’s laughing face and grinned. “Sorry, ma’am. Didn’t see you there. You sure you aren’t due a honeymoon?” Anne laughed. “Not sure what my chances are, although I hear that even General Craufurd is going home to see his wife for a while. You’re just unlucky that I’m out here, Danny. But it’s looking good.” “It is bloody good, ma’am. But according to him, it needs to be bloody perfect!” “It does,” Paul’s voice said, coming up behind Carter. “Stop complaining to my wife, Carter, she doesn’t care.” In the relative isolation of the convent, the 110th maintained it’s usual level of informality. The officers ate together in the main convent building, but during the evening most of them drifted down to the field behind one of the barns where the men tended to congregate on fine evenings. Two of the women had set up informal grog tents there, and Private Flanagan of the light company was often to be found playing his fiddle, sometimes accompanied by one or two of the drummer boys. Anne would perch on a hay bale at the edge of the barn sipping wine and laughing and talking with Paul and his officers and men. It was a very different experience to life in the army with her first husband. She was busy and challenged and realised, when she gave herself time to think about it, that she had never been so happy in her life. (From An Irregular Regiment, book 2 in the Peninsular War Saga by Lynn Bryant)
It’s cold and wet and there is a mountain of laundry. Welcome to the end of a holiday.
Usually I’m in a completely foul mood by now having left both the sunshine and the relaxed feeling of no responsibilities behind but this time I’m still surprisingly cheerful. I have a feeling that is because I’ve come back with so many new ideas that I can’t wait to get started.
I need to rein in on diving straight in to the Peninsular Books as I still need to finish getting The Reluctant Debutanteready for publication. I had visions of working on that while I was away but that went out of the window on the first day. We managed to cram so much into nine days that I was falling asleep in the evenings almost before I’d finished dinner.
I want to go back to Portugal and Spain. Perhaps next year I can come up with another list of battles and locations. We missed Talavera and Porto, and I’d like to travel up to Vitoria and perhaps even on into the Pyrenees and into France. Those books aren’t even started yet although I’ve a fairly good idea how some of them will go.
We have a huge collection of fantastic photographs, courtesy of Richard, and we need to go through them and make sure they’re properly labelled before we find ourselves struggling to work out where they were taken.
It was an amazing trip and I loved every minute of it. In the chaos of trying to pick up the various threads of my life again, I’m aware that being busy suits me. Perhaps that’s why I’ve passed that particular trait onto several of my favourite characters.
Just as well, when I look at my to do list…
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My next book to be published, ‘The Reluctant Debutante’ was originally aimed at the Mills and Boon market. A number of people in the publishing world who had said fairly complimentary things about what they’d seen of my writing had urged me to try to make my books more marketable by aiming them at a specific market, and Mills and Boon were one of the places suggested, notably by the readers on the amazing Romantic Novelists Association New Writers Scheme.
I took a long, hard look at the Mills and Boon historical fiction line and read a fair few of them before I decided to make the attempt. I will be completely frank when I say I hadn’t read a Mills and Boon since I was a teenager, and I’d always assumed that I’d grown out of them, but I have to say I did them an injustice. The point about Mills and Boon is that although they have the reputation of writing to a formula, actually there’s a huge variety of styles and published authors, some of whom I quite liked and others not so much. There are very definite conventions about the structure of the books and what is and is not considered a good idea. When I decided to take advice and try to write a Mills and Boon historical, I did a lot of research into this.
My first two attempts were complete failures. I had already written ‘A Respectable Woman’and ‘A Marcher Lord’, and I tried hard to adapt both of these to fit the Mills and Boon requirements, but it became fairly clear early on that I wasn’t going to manage it. ‘A Marcher Lord’ is very much a historical novel, set in a specific place and time. There is a lot going on which is crucial to the plot and try as I might I could not adapt it enough. ‘A Respectable Woman’ seemed like a better prospect, but I ran into difficulties immediately because I was told that it was important for the hero and heroine to meet early on in the book and then to spend most of the rest of the novel either in each other’s company or at least thinking and talking about each other. It’s fair enough. Mills and Boon readers have come looking for love, and that’s what they expect to get.
My problem was that both my heroes and heroines flatly refused to cooperate. Jenny was better behaved in terms of showing up and being in the right place to fall in love with Will, but he was completely uncooperative and cleared off to fight a war almost immediately. It probably wasn’t his fault because the English had just invaded, but it rather left the poor girl hanging about, and far from waiting eagerly for his return, the wretched girl was still dreaming of the man she left behind her. That was a complete disaster in terms of Mills and Boon, by the way. They were not happy about Jenny’s adolescent crush and needed him gone. I did try, but it immediately took out a huge chunk of my plot, and that left me stranded.
Philippa and Kit were even worse. They barely met for five minutes before taking off at speed to do other things. He went off to fight the Crimean War: soldiers are completely unreliable when it comes to location, by the way, the only way you can keep them in one place is to injure them. As for Philippa, not only did she put herself firmly beyond the pale by killing a man – in self defence, admittedly, but it’s still not okay for a Mills and Boon heroine, I’m told – but she then took herself off and got a job, and not a particularly glamorous one. Once again, I did my best to make the necessary changes, and I think I could have got Kit under control, but Philippa was having none of it. I either had to change her behaviour so much that she turned into a different person, or I needed to think again.
Out of this frustrating process, was born ‘TheReluctant Debutante’. I grew up reading Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer and Jane Aiken Hodge books and I loved them, so when I decided to try a Mills and Boon historical from scratch, the Regency was the first period that came to mind. The stylised tradition of the genre would hopefully make it easier to keep my somewhat wayward characters under control, and I rather liked the idea of a bit of glamour and sparkle for a while after struggling with the blood and gore of sixteenth century battles and the slums of Victorian London. I was very strict with my characters, I moved the action firmly to post-Waterloo London and gave Giles a very good reason to have sold out, and I gave Cordelia a fairly conventional background with no incentive to go taking off saving lives or earning a living. This time, I thought I had cracked it.
Sadly not. Once again, the novel came back with a selection of very complimentary remarks about style and characters, but it was not for Mills and Boon. This time, although my characters were in the right place, doing roughly what they were supposed to be doing, it appeared that there was not enough conflict between them. Reading between the lines, I think Cordelia was simply too down to earth and sensible. I tried a few rewrites on this, but every plot device I came up with to heighten the sense of drama in this relationship was immediately shot down in flames by my alarmingly level-headed heroine, who raised a supercilious eyebrow and simply picked up a book. It wasn’t happening and I put Cordelia and Giles sadly to one side and accepted that despite my huge admiration for the women and men who write for Mills and Boon, I’m simply not one of them.
Still, I admit I had a lot of fun trying and it was very good experience. It made me practice sex scenes, since a lot of Mills and Boon books are very keen on those, and that’s been useful since. It did make me think very seriously about the kind of books I write. I wasn’t sure at the time if I would write another Regency romance, but it did make me do a lot of research into the period and it reminded me how much I enjoyed it.
The Reluctant Debutante has changed a good deal since it’s first incarnation. Once I realised that Giles had fought at Waterloo, and knowing the type of person he is, I felt very strongly that fighting under Colonel van Daan in the 110th would do him a great deal of good. The Reluctant Debutante has proved my most popular book so far and from that has come my other
Regency, A Regrettable Reputation, about another of Giles’ old Light Division comrades. For those who have read neither of these, A Regrettable Reputation comes first in the series and there’s a cameo appearance from Giles. Several of these characters also appear in the Peninsular War saga.
of style. Set
genre. She wrote more than twenty novels set during the Regency, between 1935 and her death in 1974 and her books were very much like a comedy of manners. There was little discussion of sex, understandable given the different views of her generation, and a great emphasis on clever, quick witted dialogue between the characters.
Out of that decision came Cordelia Summers and Giles Fenwick of 
Jenny and Will in a Marcher Lord are very compatible. He’s around thirty, never been married although knows he should be for dynastic reasons, and likes women. You have the sense he had a good relationship with his mother and adores his younger sister, so he’s likely to be fairly respectful around women although given his age and status there have definitely been a few adventures along the way. He’s not particularly a womaniser despite some of his cousins jokes about it and he knows how to behave. Jenny on the other hand grew up in a loving family where marriage wasn’t really an issue which has given her a very untraditional view on marriage and sex. Circumstances rather than morality dictate the progress of Jenny and Will’s relationship and they understand each other very well.
For Philippa and Kit, sex is a very different issue since at the start their entire relationship is based around his attempt to persuade her to be his mistress and her steadfast refusal. Their stances on this are very traditional for the time but there are a lot of other reasons why a sexual relationship is complicated for this couple and it was quite hard to write about at times. Certainly this was not a couple who were going to fall into bed every five minutes, that’s not what their story is about.
Kit and Philippa from 
I’ve been lucky enough to see an example of a very happy marriage with my parents. They’d been married for over fifty years when my Dad died and there were definitely ups and downs. But they stayed devoted to one another. Theirs is a story I’d like to write one day
As an author of historical novels, and specifically historical romance, I will own up to being a bit of a romantic.
