A Different Sort of Perfect (38 page)

Beside her, Aunt Helen relaxed.

The battle for their hearts had been won.

And now it was time to complete the rout. As
unobtrusively as she could, Clara slipped across the library to the
little round table near the window, where the massive tome rested
in red-leathered and gold-leafed splendor. On the cover, two lions
rampant with spears and helms bracketed the title, the crown over
all. After all, both he and Staunton had mentioned that his brother
inherited the
estate
. With his patrician features, was it
too much to expect a title accompanied the property?

She opened the peerage and turned its crisp pages.
Past Bedingfield of Oxburgh Hall, Dutton of Sherborne Manor,
Elliott of Kellynch Hall. Not a baronet, then. Nor a knight, nor a
viscount. Her pulse pounded as she flipped to the next,
higher-ranking section.

And there it was, among the peerage of Scotland.

Fleming of Cumbernauld House.

Her beloved Alexander was the second son of the
eleventh Earl of Wigtown.

And the oldest son, James, married July 15, 1801, to
Barbara Hamilton, daughter of James Hamilton, first Duke of
Châtellerault, had a single child listed at the time the edition
had gone to print.

A daughter, Jane.

A lovely child, surely. And surely there would be
more children, including sons, to come in the years ahead. She'd
not desire it any other way.

Because that would leave her and Alexander free to
take
Topaze
back to sea for another cruise. And at the same
time, Alexander being the heir presumptive to a Scottish earldom
would not harm her uncle's opinion of him, not one bit.

He'd never learned of her need for a husband. Never
known of her inheritance, hanging by a legal thread. Had never
inquired about her portion, her fortune.

Because none of it mattered. Their home would be upon
the sea.

Together.

Beside her, a delicate hand shifted the volume into
the light, touched the page, froze. Aunt Helen gasped.

"My dear girl…"

Said in an entirely different voice. Clara hid her
smile.

"You've certainly changed your views regarding
marrying a member of the peerage, Clara."

She shook her head. "That's unfair. I never stated
any opposition to such a marriage, provided it was based upon
love."

The corners of Aunt Helen's eyes crinkled and her
lips curled. "But whatever became of that Frenchman you so ardently
admired? With great clarity do I recall your declaration that he
was your perfect husband and you'd settle for no one less."

Phillippe. Perhaps now wasn't the best time to
acquaint her guardians with that despicable man's dénouement. "Oh,
Aunt Helen, surely you can see for yourself this is merely a
different sort of perfect?"

As I'm sure all manner of historically-minded readers
are waiting to inform me, 1804 was a few years early for crochet in
England. Young ladies of the day worked embroidery, knitting,
needlepoint, tatting, and a predecessor of crochet called netting,
which used a stick plus a netting needle (similar to the sort used
for knitting) to create a mesh, in rather the same manner as
broomstick lace is made. The netted fabric was popular for
reticules, with gold thread especially sought for evening wear.

Another ancestor of crochet was tambour, a form of
embroidery, done with a hoop to support the cloth and a hooked
needle so fine it required a wooden handle. The hook was used to
work a delicate thread through material in a pattern very similar
to chain stitching, creating a surface design with a typically
crocheted look on gowns and other articles. Commonly used for
white-on-white work, where the pattern is all-important, tambour
could also be used for fine beading.

Not until 1819 did published crochet patterns begin
appearing in a Swedish magazine, but clearly the practice had been
around for a few years, as simple crocheted decorations (little
flowers and whirligigs) were being produced in Ireland by 1820. By
1840 instruction manuals for crochet were appearing, and Queen
Victoria crocheted baby blankets, not only for her nine children
and forty-two grandchildren but also for many other babies born
amongst her acquaintance. The image of that graceful lady, working
up a soft, warm wrapper for an infant during a cabinet meeting,
combining the traditional handiwork of a woman with the power
previously reserved for a man, is an appealing one for this member
of the gentler sex.

But alas, to create the image of Lady Clara as
gracefully ungraceful, she could not be permitted to excel at any
sort of fine needlework. Surely, no one would believe that a woman
capable of whipping a hooked bit of wire in and out of muslin
fabric's fine weave (tambour) would be so fumble-fingered as to
drop an inkpot? And so was born her interest in
shepherd's
knitting
or
tambour-in-the-air
, where a single hook
creates fabric from yarn sufficiently large for her to hold. This
in turn led to her wistful emulation of Irish fancywork, and the
subplot of the floral trellis lace was born.

Should your interest in crochet extend beyond this
brief and poorly detailed history lesson to actual practice, do
please note that Lady Clara's sedge stitch wrap and various other
crochet patterns and stitches can be found on my blog,
Take Two…
on Romance
(
www.TakeTwoOnRomance.Weebly.com
).

* * * *

Any story dealing with the Royal Navy and tall ships
of the Napoleonic Wars could easily become mired in technical
explanations of the many nautical terms necessary for the telling.
I chose not to burden the story with such explanations, and found
the story itself did not suffer from the lack. For readers who wish
to differentiate the mizzenmast from the fore and main, or who wish
to better understand stu'nsails, a good starting point can be found
in Wikipedia's Glossary of Nautical Terms
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_nautical_terms).

A more thorough grounding can be gleaned from the
multitude of wonderful sea stories written by those with true
knowledge in the field. Everyone knows of Horatio Hornblower's
adventures, given to us by the late C.S. Forester. But Napoleonic
War sea stories extend far beyond Hornblower, and it is with
delight that I can direct interested readers to the life's work of
Patrick O'Brian, author of the Aubrey-Maturin series of novels,
brought to the silver screen as
Master and Commander: The Far
Side of the World
. The historical details and the sheer raw
knowledge conveyed by O'Brian are breathless in their scope and
fascinating even for lay readers such as this poor Authoress.

Regency readers, if twenty volumes of Aubrey and
Maturin seem rather much, don't despair. Perhaps the most
accessible of these stories for the average reader, and certainly
the most delightful for those more interested in the romance than
the nautical knowledge, is the second in the series,
Post
Captain
. Do at least download the sample chapters of this story
and give O'Brian a fair trial; his delightful characters deserve
far more attention than they receive.

Finally, those readers already knowledgeable
regarding the naval adventures of the Napoleonic Wars have
doubtless noted that I dared not create ships of my own, but rather
borrowed them from real history without allowing myself to be
bounden by history's constraints. HMS
Topaze
was built in
1791 as a French
Magicienne
-class 32-gun frigate, captured
by the Royal Navy in 1793 off the coast near Toulon. She served
with distinction and flair throughout the French Revolution and the
Napoleonic Wars, was laid up in ordinary in 1812 as the wars drew
toward peace, and was broken into scrap in 1814, a fate which this
Authoress hopes saddens more than myself.

Armide
had the honor of being the lead ship of
her class, a 40-gun frigate launched in 1804 at Rochefort shortly
before our story begins. Like many another beautifully-built French
frigate, she was captured by the Royal Navy in 1806 and served with
honor as HMS
Armide
during the remainder of the Napoleonic
Wars and the War of 1812, before being scrapped in 1815.

Only two of the little 14-gun brig-sloops were built
in 1782, HMS
Speedy
as the lead ship of her class, and the
delightfully named HMS
Flirt
. Brig-sloops were built for
speed and like the larger frigates, they were too small to serve in
the line, and so
Speedy
and
Flirt
occupied themselves
for the most part with carrying dispatches and running errands.
However, when faced with bigger jobs these little ships proved
their worth, and in 1793 during the French Revolution,
Speedy
once found herself maintaining the blockade of Genoa
during a massive winter storm — alone. All the larger ships of the
blockading fleet were forced to shelter in Hyères Bay, leaving
Speedy
and her fourteen little cannons to prevent French
warships from exiting the neutral port. She succeeded, perhaps
because none tried to leave; but that fact does not negate the
honor of her service.

Vivian Roycroft is a pseudonym for historical fiction
and adventure writer J. Gunnar Grey. And if she's not careful, her
pseudonymous pseudonym will have its own pseudonym soon, too. Along
with an e-reader stuffed with Jane Austen and Patrick O'Brian, a
yarn stash, and a turtle sundae at Culver's.

You can find Vivian and her writing compadre, J.L.
Salter, at their shared blog,
http://taketwoonromance.weebly.com/
,
or follow her on Twitter as @VivianRoycroft. And start looking for
the second book in the series
Love in Na
poleon's War
in 2013!

Chapter One

Tuesday, December 8, 1812

The Fleet Street crowd thinned ahead, beside the
windowed front of the linen draper's shop, and there stood sweet
Dorcas, one of the most delectable morsels he'd ever chewed. A
stray beam of unexpected winter sunlight flashed off her golden
curls, and the sudden blaze reflected, sharp and multiplied, in the
many little diamond panes of the window beyond. Her gaze meshed
with his through the crowd, that split-second, undeniable flash of
recognition as bright as her hair in the sunshine. Her equally
brilliant smile flashed a moment later.

An indiscreet moment later, to judge by the scowl of
her new husband beside her.

And of course their swift, smiling recognition had
been spotted. Dear Lady Gower's hawk-like eyes, glittering beneath
an admittedly outré bonnet, glanced back and forth between them
from her perch aboard her high-flyer phaeton. When her glance
swiveled his way once more, he kissed his hand to her and gave the
twice-widowed and adorable predator his most seductive smile. The
matched greys smacked the phaeton's front wheel against the
sidewalk's edge before she returned to her own affairs.

And of course, by then the new husband had whisked
sweet Dorcas beyond the Temple Bar. She might be a merchant's wife
now — since March, that was, and her new husband was no longer all
that new — but as a former Wentworth-Gower, she was too well-bred
to glance over her shoulder at another man while leaning on her
husband's arm, and her fading presence plunged the street again
into a dull winter's day. Ernst Anton Oldenburg, His Grace, the
Duke of Cumberland sighed, but didn't bother to hide his satisfied
smile. Dorcas, now Mrs. Robinson, looked lovelier than ever, with
her hand resting unconsciously on her almost-done belly, her
complexion positively glowing, and Mr. Robinson glowering over her
shoulder.

Well, he'd done what he'd intended for her. His Grace
could honestly say, he'd made sweet Dorcas' dream come true.

Leaving him free for a new adventure.

Who sat with her mother in the coffee house across
the way.

In the table behind the window, the Honorable Anne
Elizabeth Henrietta Kirkhoven, youngest daughter of Baron Wotton of
Boughton Malherbe, Kent, sat straight as a sword blade over her
cup. Her deliciously delicate face wore the most perfect rose-hued
flesh and her eyes were downcast, but her Cupid's-bow mouth curved
in a smile both demure and knowing. Beside her, Lady Wotton
chattered away in the superior manner some still-beautiful matrons
claimed as a birthright. As well they should, of course, as much as
their daughters' mischievous innocence allowed.

And yes, there in the deepest shadows of the room's
corner, lurking out of Lady Wotton's sight, sat the young solicitor
the daughter admired and the mother scorned.

Time to play.