“Won’t they return to their native land?” Patrick suggested.
The dowager’s eyes were afire. “To be slaves again?”
“No, no, they are both free men, Sybilla,” Ottilia reminded her. “Tom and Ben discovered as much from Hemp and he said so himself to Mrs Delabole. Indeed, Hemp has some sort of competence. And I cannot suppose Sir Joslin, or even Matthew Roy himself, will have forgotten to provide for Cuffy.”
Later, alone with Francis, Ottilia was more forthcoming when she broached a matter she had been turning over in her mind. “Fan, should you object to it if I were to offer Hemp a position with us?”
Her spouse stared at her. “A position? What in the world do you want him for?”
“He engages my sympathies, Fan. Only consider: he has spent his life in service to his father and his half-sister, for little or no gain. Now he will be adrift, with no purpose to fulfil and in a foreign country to boot.”
Francis appeared unconvinced. “Well, he may not choose to remain in England. Besides, he said himself he is independent. I don’t say he might take his place in society, but he may set himself up somewhere, if he so chooses.”
“How, Fan? A black, in the climate that persists in this country? He is an intelligent man, and deserves to succeed. Besides, what level of competence is this? Will it be sufficient to enable him to support himself here rather than in Barbados?” She came to him, laying her hands against his chest and smiling up into his face. “Dearest Fan, I feel for him, indeed I do. He will be grieving for some little time, and perhaps it would help him to have an occupation.”
“But what in the world is he to do for us? We don’t need another footman.”
“No, and I should not dream of asking him to take such a lowly position.”
“What, then? It seems to me, Tillie, you have not thought this through at all.”
“Indeed I have not. I freely confess it. I don’t know, Fan. He may be my personal steward or some such thing. I am sure I shall think of something suitable.” She read the condemnation in his face, and added on a coaxing note. “Pray indulge me in this, Fan.”
“But, why, Tillie? I dare say the wretched fellow will not in the least wish to come to us.”
“In which case, the matter will be instantly resolved.”
To her relief, he looked to be thawing. He slid an arm around her and sighed. “I wish I understood what you mean by this, my love.”
Ottilia stood on tiptoe to kiss him, and then leaned back into the circle of his arm. She tried to smile, but knew it went awry as her voice turned husky. “This has been a tragic episode, my dearest. I feel so badly, you cannot imagine.”
“Oh, can I not? As if I did not know you well enough to be sure you have by this persuaded yourself the whole thing has been your fault from start to finish.”
She gave a watery chuckle. “Not quite as bad as that, but you must see —” She broke off and drew a breath. “No, I will not tease you with my megrims. Only permit me to save a little something from the wreck.”
“More than a little, my dear one. Giles and Phoebe have a hope of coming out of it relatively unscathed, once we can bring Randal to his senses. Which may appease Mama’s temper at last. While as for my darling wife —”
She stopped him with a finger to his lips. “You need not say it. It has indeed served to divert me, despite the horrors we have endured. And if you will only allow me this one little thing, I swear I will not utter one word of complaint throughout the remainder of my pregnancy.”
He gave a shout of laughter. “If I believed that, Tillie, I should be taken at fault within a week!”
She was obliged to smile, but she did not lose sight of her objective. “And Hemp?”
He hugged her. “Do as you wish, my darling. I admit I like the fellow. It is a small price to pay and you deserve a reward, if only for enduring the hideous madness of Willow Court.”
Content to have won her point, Ottilia thanked him in a manner appropriate to the occasion. But her spouse seemed to have few illusions.
“Yes, it’s all very well to play off your cajolery on me, but I warn you I shall not be encouraging you in any more such enterprises, my Lady Fan.”
*****
Want to find out what’s next for Lady Ottilia Fanshawe? Read The Candelit Coffin — Book Four in the Lady Fan mystery series.
GET IT NOW!
Join our mailing list for the latest releases, eBook deals, author news, and much, much more!
SIGN UP HERE
A NOTE TO THE READER
Dear Reader,
Ideas are meat and drink to the writer. I’ve filled four notebooks with potential stories I am never going to live long enough to write. Those ideas I used I have crossed out, but mostly they have morphed into something else — which is just what happened with Lady Fan.
My sleuth Ottilia began life a long time ago as a character in the first of an intended sweeping historical series. The stories were supposed to revolve around a fan, an heirloom passed down the generations. I had ideas for such titles as The Fan Betrayed and The Fan Beguiled, always including this heirloom. The opening of this first story has echoes of the original.
The series never materialised, but when my brother suggested I should write a historical detective series, the whole fan idea popped into my head. Enter Lady Francis Fanshawe, aka Lady Fan. She would be (or so I naively thought) the real sleuth behind the front man who would take public credit for solving the crime. Ha! Let me tell you about characters.
We writers think we are in charge, but this is a fallacy. Before she became Ottilia, my original heroine was dubbed “wispy spinster”. She was going to be a retiring female, who kept to the background but who had a startling gaze and a trifle of mischief. She was companion to a dowager grandmother, and there was a husband with a secret mistress, and his younger brother for a hero. You can see there was some resemblance here.
As for Ottilia, she allowed me to keep the clear gaze and the mischief. But retiring? She was having none of it. The moment she walked onto the page, she morphed into this assured and confident personality, far more clever than I had bargained for and ready to take centre stage without a qualm. No power behind the throne for her, thank you very much. Never mind everyone else, she kept her author in line too. Fortunately Lord Francis proves more than a match for her and she could not do without him.
As I had been writing historical romance set in much the same period for years, the background detail was not a problem for me. Most of my research revolves around determining the cause of death, which means I have to know what doctors knew at the time. Add to this the policing methods, the ramifications of the Georgian and Regency underworld and the judicial system. All of which I find fascinating and thank Google for uploading all those invaluable old books onto the web.
When I penned The Gilded Shroud, I knew I wanted to take the story onward, but I really hadn’t much idea where I was going to go with it. Ottilia and Francis would be married by then, of course, but how was I going to drop my sleuth into a brand new adventure? Then I remembered an old plot intended for a historical romance.
Here, I realised, were the perfect ingredients for a mystery. A young girl with second sight whom the villagers think is a witch. A vicar who provides sanctuary and champions her cause. And, of course, a corpse supposedly killed by witchery and magic. Add a collection of village eccentrics and a gaggle of maids-of-all-work and the scene is set for mayhem.
In fact, setting the story in a village was a boon because everyone knows everyone and it makes for a great deal of interwoven drama amongst the characters. In those days, it was common for the working classes never to move out of their home environment during their lifetime, and likely not to travel more than 10 miles from it. Thus they will have established bonds. They are also likely to talk in dialect and I had to find out just what sort of accent that would be in Warwickshire. An interesting part of the general research.
Writing mysteries is a learni
ng curve, I find. Throwing up suspects and scattering clues through the narrative becomes a little easier with each story. But I’ll tell you a secret. With this book, I actually didn’t know who the murderer was when I started. As the story evolved, it began to grow clearer until at last it became obvious in a sudden realisation of how the final showdown would materialise. Fortunately that happened early enough for me to steer the story in that direction. Otherwise I might have written myself into a corner!
That taught me I don’t need meticulous planning to write a good mystery. Indeed, if I surprise myself as I go along, I am more likely to surprise the reader. Ottilia is proving a rewarding character to write as she has surprises up her sleeve with her unusual qualities, including that doctor brother who has given her the knowhow to be able to judge what is going on with a corpse.
The idea for The Opium Purge was a snatch of something I thought would be the start of a romance. A girl comes over to the new neighbours and pleads for sanctuary, but a brother comes to fetch her and tells the neighbours she is mad. In that scenario, the girl was being held against her will and was perfectly sane. That, as you have now read, did not materialise when it turned into Ottilia’s next adventure.
Research for this one proved wonderfully satisfying. I needed a suitable poison that would have been easy to get hold of at the time. Google led me to Google Books where I found the most amazing contemporary source from the later eighteenth century. The book was digitized so you could read it online. It was a lengthy treatise written by a doctor on poisons and covered absolutely every possible poison you could think of, particularly poisonous plants and their derivatives.
Not only that, this doctor gave exact descriptions of the symptoms in several cases, explained how and in what timeframe the person might die, and went on to describe what the post-mortem would show and how tests might be made. For example, the contents of the stomach could be given to a frog and if it died, they knew the poison had been in the body.
I ploughed through a number of possibilities before I settled upon opium. That immediately led me to research about opium-eaters, and I found another digitized book about the confessions of an opium-eater. The data here augmented what I had already found out and gave me much information about how much opium would kill, depending how it was taken, whether as liquor or grains, or as a laudanum sweet. The symptoms of being high on the narcotic were described, and how it felt afterwards. A tremendously revealing read.
Of course I then had to put this all together, using only what was pertinent to my story, and making sure it all made sense and worked. A fascinating exercise, I can tell you.
What I enjoyed most about this story was creating the Willow Court household – literally a madhouse – with their cross-currents of passion and secrets. Like Ottilia, I found myself pitying the unfortunate Tamasine, condemned to a terrible malady in spite of her extraordinary beauty.
I hope you are enjoying the development of Francis and Ottilia’s marriage, which, without giving any spoilers, is inevitably going to have its ups and downs. If you would consider leaving a review, it would be much appreciated and very helpful. Do feel free to contact me on [email protected] or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads or my website www.elizabethbailey.co.uk.
Elizabeth Bailey
ALSO BY ELIZABETH BAILEY
The Lady Fan Mystery Series
The Candlelit Coffin
Brides by Chance Regency Romance Series
In Honour Bound
A Chance Gone By
Knight for a Lady
A Winter’s Madcap Escapade
Marriage for Music
Damsel to the Rescue
Widow in Mistletoe
His Auction Prize
Disaster and the Duke
Taming the Vulture
Georgian Historical Romance
A Fragile Mask
A Lady in Name
An Angel’s Touch
An Undesirable Liaison
Fated Folly
Friday Dreaming
Hidden Flame
Just Deserts
Mademoiselle at Arms
Seventh Heaven
Sweet Sacrifice
The Conqueror’s Dilemma
The Viscount Besieged
Short Romances
Mad, Bad and Dangerous
Out of the Desert Sands (historical)
To Catch a Thief (historical)
Edgy Women’s Fiction
Fly the Wild Echoes
For One More Tomorrow
Silence of a Stranger (suspense novella)
Non-Fiction
What’s Wrong with Your Novel? And how to fix it
Musings from the Writer’s Desk
Published by Sapere Books.
11 Bank Chambers, Hornsey, London, N8 7NN,
United Kingdom
saperebooks.com
Copyright © Elizabeth Bailey, 2019
Elizabeth Bailey has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events, other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales are purely coincidental.
The Lady Fan Series: Books 1-3 (Sapere Books Boxset Editions) Page 104
