Just now Penny was sitting on a high stool, her elbows propped on the gleaming sides of her mother’s favorite table, watching her parents play.
It was her mama’s birthday. Her father, the marquess, didn’t care for billiards nearly as much as her mama did, but he always agreed to play on special occasions. This was their third game, and so far they were tied at one each.
They were playing with new rules, which meant that they kept switching back and forth, and both of them got lots of tries to sink balls. It was her father’s turn now, so he rounded the table, stopping to kiss her mother on the way. “Last game,” he said.
Mama groaned, because she loved to play, almost as much as she loved being a mother to Penny and her brother.
Not quite, though.
“You need to rest,” Father said. It was only late afternoon but her mother had grown round with another baby, and Father kept dragging her away to nap. Actually, he did that even when Mama wasn’t carrying a child.
“But first we have to give you our present,” he added.
The marquess leaned over the table and sighted down the cue. Penny watched carefully as he lined up the billiard cue with the new leather cap that her mother adored so much.
The ball went thunk with a pleasing noise, ricocheted from one wall, hit another, and barely missed the pocket.
Penny frowned. Her father had shown Penny that stroke only a week ago, and he’d done it over and over and over, until she could trace the exact path in her mind. He never missed it, not once.
She opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, Papa scooped her off the stool. “Shall we give Mama her present?”
“Yes,” she said. “But Papa—”
“Our secret,” he whispered, putting one finger on her lips.
“Hmm,” Penny said.
She knew a losing argument when she saw it, so she skipped off to get the present instead. It was wrapped in silk. Her mother had seated herself in one of the widest chairs, and of course Peter had climbed in her lap and started sucking his thumb.
“Here,” Penny said, holding it out. “It’s from us. Me too.”
Papa sat down on one arm of the chair and wrapped an arm around Mama, so Penny climbed onto the other arm.
“I have such a wonderful family,” her mother said mistily.
“Open it!” Peter cried, popping his revoltingly wet thumb out of his mouth.
Inside the bundle was a tiny portrait, smaller than was really useful, to Penny’s mind. But she had to admit that it was pretty. It was painted in glowing, shiny paint by a friend of her mother’s. He was so old that his brush kept shaking when he painted it, but somehow it had turned out all right.
Her mother held it up.
Hardly bigger than her palm, Penny’s beloved grandfather, the late marquess, smiled from the gold frame, Penny nestled on his lap.
“It was finished just before he died,” the late marquess’s son said, touching his father’s cheek. “He loved Penny so much.”
“I know I shouldn’t cry,” her mother said, and then she burst into tears. “It’s just that I’m so lucky.”
Penny wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck, and Peter squirmed around and hugged her too. And her father wrapped his arms around all of them.
“Happy birthday, Queen Bess,” he whispered.
A Note about October Ale, Auction Houses, & PTSD
A romance author’s historical research clusters around questions of daily life. I need to know what kind of lamp could be carried from room to room in 1790, what kinds of ale a ducal brewhouse might have made and what that beer would have tasted like, as well as who was famous for painting miniatures (Samuel Finney, for one!).
Many of these questions are small, but they can make a large difference to a plot. For example, were women allowed to visit auction houses and bid on items? Many of the people who passed through Christie’s doors in the 1790s would have been art dealers or collectors. Christie’s Auction House kindly confirmed that women did attend their auctions, although they likely did not bid. Other auction houses may have forbidden women altogether, though I know of none with salacious cupids on the ceiling.
Sometimes, I deliberately go against historical fact, and for that, I apologize. The hymn “Amazing Grace” was published in 1779, and so my hero could not have heard it as a child. But I wanted Jeremy, in the dark and in the profound silence of falling snow, to suddenly hear his father sing, “I once was lost but now am found. Was blind but now I see.” Jeremy’s family was waiting for him, waiting for the moment when he learned to see once again.
Throughout human history, PTSD has been chronicled and described. The description that Grégoire reads aloud was written by Lucretius in 50 b.c. and translated by William Ellery Leonard. I want to add here that one of my readers kindly shared the symptoms that she faced and still faces after engaging in the war in Iraq. I am so grateful to her for revisiting experiences that are so painful.