If you’ve read Waking to Mr. Darcy, then you know that at the end of that book we discover Mary Bennet has as secret crush. Nicholas Hammond is that crush. He’s also the Bennet’s neighbour, the eldest son of a spendthrift of a father, the older brother to a rather reckless brother, quite practical (perhaps to a fault?), and not uninterested in Mary.
Below is when we first get to meet Nicholas’s brother, Fred, and his friend, Whit. This excerpt tells of just one incident where the two of them cause trouble with a curricle and the first of four times they cause issues through racing.
Despite all that, they are two of my favourite troublemakers. 😉
Those are the sorts of scents and special foods that come to my mind whenever I write about Colonel Fitzwilliam.
He is my character who has a sweet tooth when it comes to biscuits and will drop whatever he is doing in pretty much any story for a gingerbread… and in this story, he’ll also drop what he’s doing (even hiding from Caroline Bingley) for a cup of cider.
I think he’d enjoy the mulled cider from the recipe in the short video above since it is a cup of mulled cider that Darcy uses to entice him to enter Netherfield instead of staying out in the cold.
Here’s how his journey to happily ever after (with Caroline — yep, Caroline) begins in One Winter’s Eve:
A young woman waiting in a garden by the gate. Photographic print after Kate Greenaway. See page for author, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
I thought the picture above of a young woman in a garden would go well with the excerpt of Elizabeth in a garden below from The Tenant’s Guest.
Elizabeth stood just beyond a low border, watching Cecily play with her children in the garden. The ball rolled toward the large tree that shadowed the far corner, and Lucas Abbot, the elder brother at nearly four years of age, ran after it while Aiden Abbott, the younger brother and just three months past his first birthday, swayed slightly and then took one wobbly step followed by another equally unstable step before falling with a plop to the ground. The action of dropping so ungracefully to the ground did not please the young child. His scowl before he took to crawling after his brother made Elizabeth smile. He was a determined young man. A little fall was not going to stop him from pursuing his goal, which at this moment was the ball with which his brother was taunting him.
Cecily waved to Elizabeth. “Come, join us.”
Elizabeth, having just returned from what had proven to be a rather disturbing call at the parsonage and wishing for some time to think about all Lucy had shared with her, would have made her excuses and gone into the house. However, the motion of his mother had turned Aiden toward Elizabeth, and the ball was seemingly forgotten in favour of the new arrival.
“Izabef!” Lucas, ball in hand, reached her before his brother could. “Will you play ball with me, Izabef?”
Elizabeth tousled the boy’s hair. “Of course. Do you wish to run before I throw it?”
The young man’s head shook furiously from side to side. “I want to race it.”
“Very well.” Elizabeth took the ball from his hands and squatted down. “Ready,” she warned. “Go.”
The ball rolled along the grass, passing just beside Aiden, who stopped and sat, looking first at Elizabeth and then the ball — clearly unsure which should get his attention.
The Tenant’s Guest is on sale until the end of this month, and And Then Love, the book before this book is free until the end of next month. If you don’t have these two books, now’s the time to get them.
The Saturday Broadsheet, with all my writing life updates, is now available at the link at the bottom of this short post.
In this issue of the Broadsheet you will find:
Info about what is posting on my blog. (As if you didn’t know, right? LOL)
An excerpt from my current work in progress, His Father’s Last Gift
Info about the two books I have on sale for $0.99 this month, a couple of other books that have been reduced in price, and one boxset that is on sale for this weekend only.
A link to a multi-author promotion I am taking part in
And in the something fun section at the end of the newsletter you will find, a music video that has been paired with an excerpt from one of the books in the boxset I have on sale this weekend. (It features one of my all-time favourite troublemakers. ;))
