Part 53 (1/2)

”He's learned cliff climbing well enough. Won the contest back in May.”

”There, you see?”

”It could confuse things nicely. Maybe we can create a Hydra. Is Captain Drake the earl, or maybe the earl's secretary? If I hire the right kind of estate manager, maybe him, too, and I can build up Aaron Bartlett in the mix. We'll have too many heads to cope with.”

”And you'd be in a better position to protect everyone.”

”Reliably, unlike the Mad Earl. You think aright, Lucy Potter.”

”I hope I always do,” she said, as the jeweler came out himself to try the ring on her finger. ”Perfect,” she said, touching it, smiling.

Everyone around was smiling, which made her blush. But she kissed David quickly, making everyone smile even more.

They left the shop to walk along the busy gaslit street.

”You'll miss this,” he said.

”I'll miss shops to hand, yes, but only when I need something and can't get it instantly. Patience is a virtue, they say.”

”And antic.i.p.ation makes the reward greater. As with our wedding night.”

She smiled. ”It does seem a long time to wait, so I expect a very great reward.”

”And me without an Ouroborus room or a splendid bath.”

”You'll just have to do your dragonish best without, Lord Wyvern, and I have complete faith in you.”

That night Lucy took out her pretty pink journal and turned the pages, glancing at lines that began with descriptions of the beau monde, and recorded her increasing absorption with Lord Wyvern, and then with David. She smiled at the way it wandered into sc.r.a.ps and flowers, and lastly to sketched but very practical plans for her new home.

She didn't expect to have further need of faux poetry to record her thoughts.

She considered for a while and then wrote, Love and Horror. That's where this story starts.

But horror flees, leaving only happy hearts.

Love is a power of awe-inspiring might, But love is a blessing and my true delight.

She smiled as she closed the book. She'd never be a true poet, but she'd ended with rhythm and rhyme, which seemed as good an omen for her future as any.

Author's Note

A Shocking Delight follows a story first told in a novel published in 2001 called The Dragon's Bride. That was about Con and Susan and took place nearly a year before the events in A Shocking Delight. At the beginning of The Dragon's Bride, David was just getting used to being Captain Drake; by the end he was adding the earldom to his responsibilities. Some characters grab the reader's attention and he is one. Ever since the publication of The Dragon's Bride, my readers have been asking for his story.

The Dragon's Bride was a finalist for the RITA Award for Best Historical and is available in print and as an e-book. The connected novella, ”The Demon's Mistress” (which is about Van and Maria), was also a RITA finalist, and is available as an e-book.

The Dragon's Bride is the sixth book in a series about the Company of Rogues, which are now all available as e-books, and mostly still in print as well. There are fourteen in all, so if you like them, there's a feast. Many readers are now enjoying reading them one after the other and following the long story arc. There's a list in the front of this book and more information on my Web page at /reghist.html.

It was on a research trip to the Devon coast in 2000 that my husband and I fell in love with the area and decided that if we moved back to England from Canada, we'd look for a home there. We did that in 2010, but not in the area used in this novel, but further west, on the coast beyond Exeter.

Dragon's Cove and Church Wyvern are very loosely based on the town of Beer in east Devon, very near to the border with Dorset. Beer was a major smuggling area in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and continued so, but as indicated in the book, the glory days were over. Increased enforcement and better communications as the nineteenth century progressed made smuggling more and more difficult. In the end, however, it was the lowering of taxes on many goods that undercut it. By the mid-nineteenth century the old smuggling world had ended, though as we know, smuggling itself never does. It simply changes to different locations, methods, and goods.

Even though Beer was an important smuggling location at the time of the book, I couldn't use it as a location for two reasons. One was that I was going to significantly alter reality, and I try not to do that to real places. The other was that at that exact time a real, and famous, person was in charge of smuggling in the Beer area. Jack Rattenbury is mainly famous because he left an autobiography, almost certainly written by someone else on his behalf, and first-person accounts of smuggling are rare. He's a fascinating character, but there'd be no place for him in my novel.

His autobiography is Memoirs of a Smuggler, and is available online. There's also plenty of other information about him on the Web. I did use him a bit for my idea of Melchisadeck Clyst.

Beer is a fascinating place to visit if you're in that part of England. The old town still runs down the steeply sloping road to the beach, and boats are pulled up onto the sh.o.r.e. There are also extensive quarries nearby that go back to Roman times and can be visited. There was significant boat building there in the past, and Beer luggers were very popular smuggling s.h.i.+ps. Modern versions are still raced.

I've set many books in the fas.h.i.+onable parts of Regency London, but I enjoyed exploring the City of London for this book. That is a clearly defined area to this day, leading to much confusion. The huge London area is not a city. If you're ever asked if London is one of the largest cities in the world, that's a trick question. The only city there is the square mile of the old walled City of London. Greater London is a metropolitan area.

The Lord Mayor of London, of d.i.c.k Whittington fame, is a largely ceremonial post, whereas the Mayor of London-currently Boris Johnson-is a position of great responsibility and power.

That's why, particularly in the past, people talked of going to Town, or being in Town. Town also came to mean the western part of London, the fas.h.i.+onable part, the ”west end,” as it's still called. And yes, the population of ”greater London” had reached a million by the Regency. I was surprised by that. It's wonderful what one finds when researching a book!

If you're new to my books, I hope you'll explore the rest of my work. There's a bit of everything! Most of my fiction is set in the Georgian and Regency periods, but I have published four medieval novels. I've also written a lot of novellas, and in some of those I've gone to the wild side. ”The Dragon and the Virgin Princess” is set in a fantasy Middle Ages with, of course, dragons. ”The Raven and the Rose” is in the real twelfth century, but involves the Holy Grail. ”The Trouble with Heroes” is a science-fiction romance set on a colonized planet far, far away. They are all now available individually as e-books, and some are still available in their original print anthologies. You can find out more on my Web site, .

On the Web site you can also sign up for my occasional newsletter, which will keep you up to date with new and reissued books, and any other news. I also keep in touch with readers through my Facebook author page, so if you're on Facebook, check it out and ”like” it.

You can always contact me at

All best wishes, Jo The characters featured in A Shocking Delight made an earlier appearance in Jo Beverley's The Dragon's Bride Here's a preview of how their story began. . . .

May 1816

The south coast of England

The moon flickered briefly between windblown clouds, but such a thread-fine moon did no harm. It barely lit the men creeping down the steep headland toward the beach, or the smuggling master controlling everything from above.

It lightened not at all the looming house that ruled the cliffs of this part of Devon-Crag Wyvern, the fortresslike seat of the blessedly absent Earl of Wyvern.

Absent like the riding officer charged with preventing smuggling in this area. Animal sounds-an owl, a gull, a barking fox-carried across the scrubby landscape, constantly reporting that all was clear.

At sea, a brief flash of light announced the arrival of the smuggling s.h.i.+p. On the rocky headland, the smuggling master-Captain Drake, as he was called-uns.h.i.+elded a lantern in a flas.h.i.+ng pattern that meant ”all clear.”

All clear to land brandy, gin, tea, and lace. Delicacies for Englishmen who didn't care to pay extortionate taxes. Profit for smugglers, with tea sixpence a pound abroad and selling for twenty times that in England if all the taxes were paid.

In the nearby fis.h.i.+ng village of Dragon's Cove, men pushed boats into the waves and began the urgent race to unload the vessel.

”Captain Drake” pulled out a spygla.s.s to scan the English Channel for other lights, other vessels. Now that the war against Napoleon was over, navy s.h.i.+ps were patrolling the coast, better equipped and manned than the customs boats had ever been. A navy cutter had intercepted the last major run, seizing the whole cargo and twenty local men, including the previous Captain Drake.

A figure slipped to sit close to him, one dressed as he was all in dark colors, a hood covering both hair and the upper face, soot muting the pallor of the rest.

Captain Drake glanced to the side. ”What are you doing here?”