Character Showcase: Lady Emilia Beaufort and Little Hat

 In DANCE WITH A DEVERELL, the hero’s little sister, Hatshepsut, is about to attend her first proper ball. She’s eighteen and has just completed her schooling at a modern, progressive ladies’ seminary, where she met Lady Emilia Beaufort, who has this to say about her:

“She’s the cleverest girl I ever knew. She speaks several languages, can identify all the parts of the human body and knows fifteen different ways to incapacitate a man. I suppose you’ll turn your nose up at her now though, just because she’s a Deverell and her father bought her mother at a bride sale for six pounds.

But I’m not going to stop being her friend just because of that name. She can’t help the family she’s born into, can she? Some of the other girls put their noses in the air and look down on Hattie. She says that Deverells don’t care what people say about them, although, I think sometimes it does make her sad and she tries not to show it. I shared my marshmallows with her and she showed me how to knee an offensive gentleman in the groin. That’s how we became friends.”

 All her brothers call her “Little Hat”, which she now finds exceedingly annoying. At her age she thinks they ought to drop the “little”, but as her protective, eldest brother says, “Hatshepsut, even when you are fifty, you will still by my little sister.”

Well, he might think her still too young and silly to know anything, but tonight Hattie has a surprise in store for her brother.

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Hatshepsut is the only daughter of Commodore Justify Deverell and his wife Anshula (“Sunny”). With four older brothers, she’s grown up having to shout to be heard and fight to be noticed, but her large, loud family is one full of love— even if it’s often shown in peculiar ways. She has been raised in an unconventional home, where she is encouraged to speak her mind; to be confident and fearless. She might lack a little feminine grace and polish, but she doesn’t particularly care about the rules that society tries to impose upon her in any case. She’s a woman with her own ideas and plans, and a few stuffy old men are not about to stand in her way.

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Lady Emilia Beaufort’s upbringing has been very different to that of “Little Hat”. Her father, the Earl of Beaufort, was already an old man when she was born. He was very strict, cold and often cruel: a man who believed there was no place for laughter or warm emotion in a “decent house and family”. He preferred his children to fear, rather than love him, and he believed in corporal punishment for anybody who dared question or displease him in any way.

Fortunately for Emilia, her father died when she was only six. Since then she has been raised, sheltered and cosseted by her devoted mother. She’s grown into a good-natured, but rather naïve girl. With only two, much older half-brothers, she has never had a real friend of her own age, so her bond with Hatshepsut has opened her mind and her life to new experiences. She is not yet as bold as her friend, but she’s learning how to be brave. She’s also learning how to shock her mother, who has no idea of the surprise Lady Emilia and Little Hat have in store for her tonight!

**** Find out what these two young ladies are up to in DANCE WITH A DEVERELL. Coming January 28, 2022! AVAILABLE NOW FOR PRE-ORDER**** CLICK HERE FOR AMAZON

(Image: Chatterboxes, by Thomas Benjamin Kennington, c. 1912)