A snippet of Grace and Gideon.

I’ve been thinking about how I can make my blog more interesting, so if anyone here can think of suggestions, I’d welcome them. One suggestion was to try a “Snippet Saturday” so here’s one to start with. Let me know if you enjoy this kind of thing or not.

I’m doing an on-line Q&A with a writers’ group at the moment, and I was talking about how minor characters can spring up, and readers can bond with them and ask for their story. This small exchange in THE PERFECT RAKE — the first book of my Merridew Sisters series — led to the writing of the 4th book, which was not in the original contact. But after reading this so many people asked for Grace’s story. Which I hadn’t intended or expected.

Grace is around 10 years old. Gideon has fallen for her oldest sister Prudence, the plain one of the family — all her sisters are beauties. But Gideon doesn’t notice them. And Prudence is resisting him.

* * * * *

Gideon grinned. He would now find out the truth about Miss ImPrudence’s so-called betrothal. He looked thoughtfully at Prudence’s little sister. She stared back at him with open candor, a small, solemn angel with strawberry blonde curls and celestial blue eyes. He’d never had much to do with young girls, having no sisters or female cousins, but he flattered himself he could handle females of all ages.

“Er, do you have a doll, Miss Grace?”

“I used to have a doll, but Grandpapa burned her.”

“Ah,” Gideon did not know how to reply to that. It occurred to him there might be an opening there for bribery. “Would you like to have a new d–”

“My sister was worried about being alone with you. She made me come with her instead of going for a drive.”

Gideon was nonplussed by such plain speaking. “Oh well—“

“You’re the man who pretended to Prudence that you were really a duke, aren’t you?” The angelic blue eyes were fixed on his face.

Gideon made a careless gesture. “A small misunderstanding—“

“But you did, didn’t you? You pretended to be the Duke of Dinstable.” The small angel smiled up at him seraphically.

“Well, yes, I did,” admitted Gideon, “but it was a mere–Ouch! What the devil!” He bent down, rubbing his shin, and stared at the angel in shock. “What the dev–er deuce did you do that for? It hurt!”

“Good,” said the angel. “I was afraid these new shoes would not be sturdy enough.”

“Good?” Gideon repeated indignantly. “Look here, I don’t know what you did in the country, but in London you can’t go around kicking people on–”

“Why not?” demanded the angel, a pugnacious tilt to her chin.

“Well, er, it’s just not done!”

“But if people deserve kicking, what else can I do?”

Gideon rubbed his bruised shin and considered this fraught path. “In what way did I deserve kicking?”

“You played a horrid trick on my sister Prue. And–”

“Your sister is chock-full of tricks herself–Ow! Will you stop that!” He rubbed the other shin.

“My sister Prudence is not full of nasty tricks! She looks after us all and protects us from Gr–people. And she is good and kind and always tries to help everyone, and nobody ever helps her. She risked everything to get us to London and had a perfectly splendid plan to save us and then Great-uncle Oswald ruined everything, and poor Prue blames herself, but she cannot help being plain and—“

“Plain? Why the devil does everyone keep saying she is plain?” declared Gideon in exasperation. “Do you all need spectacles?”

Grace’s diatribe stopped. She stared at him as if considering something. Gideon edged back, mistrusting the look in her eyes.

“You don’t think Prudence is plain?” she repeated.

“Of course I don’t! Rash, yes. Mercurial, certainly, but plain?” He snorted.

Grace frowned. “But you’ve seen her with the others, haven’t you?”

“What others?”

“My sisters,” She gestured in the direction of the long departed landau.

“Oh, those yellow-haired chits? Yes, I saw them. What about it?”

Grace tilted her head and eyed him with solemn consideration. “So, you think Prudence is pretty . . . “

Gideon gave her a severe look. “You’ll not distract me so easily, miss. When I have something to say I’ll say it to your sister, not to some brat who goes around kicking people.”

She seemed to find this a satisfactory answer. “Grandpapa used to call me a limb of Satan,” she confided.

He eyed the offending foot pointedly. “Perfectly understandable. And that would be the limb he meant, I’m sure.”