Lady Serena's Secret published!

Well it's been a while coming, but Lady Serena's Secret is now available as an e-book on Amazon. It was not an easy book to write as Lady Serena is basically a very nice person. And nice people are trickier to write about, as they tend not to offend or do outrageous things. In short - they can be a bit boring. So, whilst being true to the nature of one's chief protagonist, a writer has to dig a little deeper into her subject. No-one is really perfect after all - are they?

And Serena, I am glad to say, is not quite the perfect 'Diamond of the First Water' - a model of upper class beauty and perfection, that she first appears to be. No, Lady Serena has been flouting quite a few of those unspoken rules that dictate the rather restricted lifestyle of Upper Class Virgins. 

Bored with yet another London Season, Serena and her friends, Lady Millie and Lady Fliss are, instead of devoting their energies to finding suitable husbands, relieving their ennui, by helping out at a Girl's Charity School (which is acceptable), and supporting it financially by secretly producing a Lady's Periodical, 'La Dernier Cri' (which is not quite so acceptable). Their involvement in this kind of enterprise would, if it ever became known publicly, bring not only scandal to them, but also to their families. However, so far, they have eluded detection, and are quietly proud of the results of their efforts.

Serena, not content with sailing close to the wind with her publishing activities, secretly designs clothes and jewellery (though the latter she has not indulged in recently, as the danger of detection is considerably higher). However, she still provides her modiste, Madame Tiffany with the odd dress design when she feels inspired and cannot resist her muse any longer. The haute ton would be shocked and outraged if they knew that Lady Serena had designed some of the most admired dresses of the Season.

Hew d'Arras, Earl of Blencathra has returned to English shores reluctantly, due to the necessity of taking over the reins of the family Estate and businesses, and to avoid an almost certain demise from illness, if he had insisted on remaining in India. He is also looking forward to the challenge of extending the gem and jewellery business he started in India, and building up the family shipping business to be a global enterprise.

When he left England ten years previously, he had sworn never to return. However, embracing the inescapable, he looks up his sole remaining close relative, his cousin Isabel, who has recently married Theo Brockworth, Marquess of Norcombe - Serena's eldest brother. On being introduced to the Brockworth family, Hew discovers that Serena is everything he despises in females - a beautiful blue-eyed blonde, and despite his instant attraction to her physically, immediately raises all his defences. 

Far from the usual stunned admiration that she is used to receiving when introduced to any male on the right side of the grave, Serena is totally dumbfounded when Hew views her with stony disdain, bordering on outright hostility. Somewhat miffed that he appears to have taken her in instant dislike for no apparent reason, Serena delights in thwarting his efforts to put her off, when Isabel invites her to help in Hew's quest of finding a new home in London.

And so begins the on-off, up and down relationship between Serena and Hew. As Serena goes about her life helping friends and acquaintances whenever she can, Hew starts to realise that there may be more to Lady Serena than first appearances might suggest. Indeed, far from the ambitious, avaricious and manipulative heartless siren he expected, he has to admit that she is warm, generous, talented and soft-hearted, amongst countless other virtues. Likewise, Serena starts to realise that far from being the stony-faced, one dimensional businessman that he likes to portray himself as, Hew is a closet Romantic with an artistic side that he keeps very carefully concealed. 

Running the gauntlet of scandal, intrigue, fortune hunters and the malicious harpies of the ton, enjoy the trials and tribulations of love within the Ruling Class during the 1820's with Hew and Serena, in

Lady Serena's Secret

now available as a e-book at Amazon, here.

Home thoughts from Abroad

 

Damson trees in blossom in the Lyth Valley

Home thoughts from Abroad

by Robert Browning

Oh, to be in England

Now that April's there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

In England—now!

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!

Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge

Leans to the field and scatters on the clover

Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge—

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,

Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,

All will be gay when noontide wakes anew

The buttercups, the little children's dower

—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! 

I'm currently proof-reading what I hope is the final edit of 'Lady Serena's Secret' and this came to mind when I was reading one of the key chapters in the middle of the book. Our hero, Hew d'Arras waxes somewhat lyrical about the joys of an English Spring when he notes the charm of nature emerging slowly in the garden whilst attending his friend's wedding. These glorious changes reach their peak in April and May in this country, just as it says in the poem. Hew has been living in India for the last ten years and has forgotten the subtle pull of the English countryside, and the wonder it evokes in the English soul. It is one of the things that has persuaded him to make his home here once more, when he had previously thought he would probably eventually settle somewhere warm and dry in Europe.

An orange tip butterfly (getting rarer by the day) on Honesty flowers

In the 1820's, when the book is set, there was a lot more countryside than there is now, but there remain a few corners where you might be justified in thinking that it probably looked pretty much the same two hundred years ago as it does now. And of course, it is these corners that I particularly treasure. The picture at the top of this post is a case in point - well sort of. I have cropped out the telephone wires of course, and the tarmacadam road, and avoided the passing cars. But one can imagine....!

Primula hiding in the hedgerows

Spring in this part of England (the North West) is probably the most colourful of our seasons (though I may change my mind come summer and autumn (fall). It probably feels so good because it follows on the bleak months of winter, but then the Romantic poets did wax lyrical too. 

'Home thoughts from Abroad' was a standard text when I was a child of ten or so. We learned it by rote, but unlike 'Daffodils' by Wordsworth, it struck a chord with me. Maybe it was the romance of the Browning's story - Robert and Elizabeth Barrett-Browning eloped, and went off to live in Italy to escape her tyrannical father (who disinherited all his children who married). They were both poets of the Romantic era, and Elizabeth was almost stereotypical of the doomed poetess, in that she suffered from poor health (possibly tuberculosis), which was probably another reason why they chose to live in Italy.

The Pear tree, in dire need of a good pruning!

It's not a particularly cerebral poem, but it does catch something of that subtle glory that I was speaking of above. The elms may have all been destroyed by Dutch Elm Disease in the 1970's, but what a joy it is when one morning you notice those first intense green shoots emerging from any native tree. And, yes, the birdsong is more intense (sometimes too intense at 5.30 in the morning!). And the pear blossom! So bountiful this year - but so beautiful (if only I had pruned the tree properly last year)!

But my favourite lines of all are :

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!

Oh those last two lines - the number of times they have sprung to mind when I have seen, felt or heard something beautiful and ephemeral, and paraphrased it: He/ she/it never could recapture, that first fine careless rapture! It reminds me also of those wondrous moments of first young love! Ahh, that fine first careless rapture, indeed!

I am a scientist by training, and I suspect by nature. But deep down somewhere inside of me, I like to think there is a bit of a Romantic. Not a poet for certain, but maybe a storyteller?

Enjoy your Spring, wherever you are!

Detta x

 

 

 

Welcome to my new blog!

 

My idea of Lady Serena - The heroine of my latest novel 'Lady Serena's Secret' to be published on Amazon very soon!

Hello and welcome to the new location for my blog. This site is dedicated to my novels, how I research them, and why I am so fascinated by history. 

I grew up in a very average home in Lancashire, a three bedroomed semi-detached house with small front and rear gardens. However, only a hundred yards away or so, were some very nice middle class houses and one very 'posh' house, separated from the rest of us, by a field, a very high wall, and a long gated drive. In my mind's eye, it was a Jacobean style manor house (I'm not going back to find out if this rose-tinted image is untrue - I would be devastated!), and this fired my curiosity and interest. I never saw the occupants of the house, but had very clear ideas what these upper class people's lifestyles would be like. 

They would have horses, and dine at a very highly polished mahogany large dining table complete with silver candelabra; they would have a servant or two, and they would have a silver Rolls Royce car. They would speak with 'received pronunciation', the men would all be tall dark and handsome, and the girls would be beautiful blondes with sapphire blue eyes. The children would, of course all go to private schools, and this being Lancashire - they would all be old school Catholics. (Think Brideshead Revisited type of posh Catholics!) And of course they would be invited to exclusive Hunt Balls every Autumn!

The problem was of course that I was reading the sort of books that were populated by these types  of people. This was due to the fact that the Council had seen fit to build me (yes, I actually sort of thought that they had built it with me, personally in mind!) a brand new library just in between the nice middle class houses and the really posh house. And though, I couldn't aspire to these middle and upper class ways of life, I could acquire knowledge of them for free at this holy of holies. 

The chief librarian soon realised that the children's section was totally inadequate for my needs, and I acquired an adult's reading ticket aged ten. (I don't know how he fiddled that - I didn't ask). He was very good in directing me to read some useful non-fiction as well as the historical fiction that I devoured like a starving woman. So by the time I was twelve I had read about the life of Lenin, Das Kapital in translation, had a budding fascination with astronomy, and could bore for Britain on nuclear physics.

 

Sezincote House - inspiration from an Orient Inspired English Stately Home

 

 

It also helped, I suppose, that I was now attending a very posh Ladies Convent School, where our brains were fed by an odd mix of excellent teaching in Science, Maths, French and German (with native speakers sometimes, to make sure that our accents were correct) and lots of Catholic Propoganda. We were also taught how to be 'Ladies', had deportment lessons, dancing lessons (Ballroom and country dances), and were constantly warned on the unspecified dangers of the OPPOSITE SEX, especially those of Mediterranean Origin. I use the capitals advisedly - remember that most of these warnings came from nuns, whose personal experience was pretty limited in most cases, I suspect! 

So, I emerged from this somewhat rareified academic atmosphere to go to University armed with the classic products of a good Catholic Education: Good A levels and Guilt. I was also incredibly naive, curious and had unrealistic expectations - a very dangerous mixture! I enjoyed University very much, and London did, to some extent, continue to feed my appetite for wider learning. In particular I enjoyed the relatively cheap opportunities to attend the Opera, go to musical concerts, attend art exhibitions, museums, and rub shoulders with quite a few foreign elites via a broad range of friends within the international student body. On the whole they were, as the cliche has it, some of the best years of my life.

However, they had also been a reality check and my starry-eyed view of the world had dimmed somewhat, but had not been entirely extinguished. So, though subsequently I was much occupied by work, the lure of history never quite left me - do you ever really fundamentally change? and whenever the opportunity presented itself, I might be found noseying around a Stately home, a museum, a grand old church, or some historic romantic foreign city - Venice still remains my favourite!

Various periods and places have obsessed me over the years - medieval Central Europe, Scotland in the Late Seventeenth and early Eighteenth Century, the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, especially in relationship to embroidery and textiles - I could go on - but you get the idea! Of course now it is the late Georgian and Early Victorian period that interests me. In some ways it's quite a dark period, in that the Industrial Revoltion was just beginning to affect the lives of the masses in significant numbers - not always for the best. However, it is also the period where the franchise (the right to vote) was expanded significantly, and the issue of corrupt political practices started to be addressed. 

Lord Nathaniel's Nemesis book cover

I'm grappling with the politics of the 1820's at the moment, as it forms the backdrop to my next book 'Lord Nathaniel's Nemesis' which I will be getting down to properly around Easter time. 'Lady Serena's Secret', is now on its last edit (I hope) and should be published in the next week or two, fingers crossed. I let you know here when that happens.

Book cover for 'Lady Serena's Secret'

 

So now I have the time to indulge my interests, and to write! I am off to Northumberland soon and hope to find some interesting and inspiring things there, to report here. I hope you enjoy my little rambles around Britain and sometimes beyond.

Regards D.