Character Showcase - Mr. Frederick Hathaway

In The Bounce in the Captain's Boots, the hero's father is Frederick Hathaway, an ambitious gentleman you may remember from the first book in the series, where he was the father, on that occasion, to the heroine.

     

       Frederick is a restless man of many children, many worries and many desires for the future. In the words of Lady Bramley, he is "A parvenu. An ambitious grasper who thinks breeding may be bought."

            He would agree with her, no doubt. Few folk argue with Lady Bramley and he certainly would never dare.

            Mr. Hathaway brought his family from the Norfolk countryside to the busy metropolis of London some years ago, in hope of improving their social status, as well as expanding his fortune.

Although he started out as a gentleman farmer with a small printing business on the side, he now owns a large publishing business and a successful newspaper, "The Gentleman's Weekly". Where once he and his family lived in a small but cozy farmhouse with drafty rooms and smoking chimneys, where his children learned to work on the land and enjoyed running about barefoot, the Hathaways now live in a grand house on (fictional) Allerton Square - an upwardly striving part of London.

            On the surface it would seem as if everything is going to plan for Mr. Frederick Hathaway. But, unfortunately for him, his children have not quite followed the path he'd hoped. His eldest son, Guy, went into the navy as a boy of fourteen, which completely crushed his hopes for that child. His second son, Edward, became a curate and moved back to Norfolk, and his eldest, prettiest daughter, Maria - who, at one time had hoped to marry a viscount - has settled for an unprepossessing solicitor.

            To top it all off, his second daughter, Georgiana - whose story you may have read in the first book - married a naval hero who happens to be an eccentric recluse! With one son-in-law that he has no fancy to exhibit about town and another who refuses to be shown off, poor Mr. Hathaway is at the end of his tether.

            It will be a while yet before his younger sons are of an age to marry and the children by his second wife are all under the age of five. He begins to think he will never live long enough to see his grand plans to fruition. Will none of his children think of raising the family status when they marry?

            In a house crowded with children from two marriages, with a wife who can barely bring herself to get out of bed most days and harried servants forever resigning, Frederick feels his life turning out very differently to the way he'd envisaged.

            As for Guy, his eldest ingrate of a son, what is he doing home again on leave? Was he not home two years ago? He's come home now with a black eye - more scandal for the neighbors. Frederick can only hope Captain Guy Hathaway has not come home with another wife abruptly acquired during a drunken evening in a Spanish port. They were lucky to get the last one annulled before any further damage was done. But Guy seems drawn to dangerous women and precarious situations. There is no hope of him making a respectable marriage now.

* * * *

            When it came to his eldest son, Frederick Hathaway had always maintained the view that he was better off not knowing anything that went on. Consequently there remained between father and son a cautious distance. They might as well be two slight acquaintances that once met at a dinner party and, ever since, felt obliged to nod to each other when they crossed paths, even though names had been forgotten.

            "How long do you plan to stay in London?" his father muttered, returning to the brandy decanter, his tone dreary.

            Guy exhaled a sigh. "Oh, only a week or so. I must report to the ship in the new year and I'll be at sea by march. Don't worry. I shan't get in anybody's way or embarrass you. Too much."

            "Good. See that you don't. Pity you can't get yourself a half-way decent, respectable wife, but I suppose we might as well give up on that idea."

            And then, in that moment, as Guy watched his father turn away yet again, those slumped, weary shoulders bent over the decanter, he felt the sudden urge to light the fuse of a gunpowder barrel. He'd always been the mischievous son and on this day, with rain rattling the windows like battle drums and his father being so ambivalent to see him, he wanted to wake the whole house, the entire square, out of its pompous complacency. Give them all something new to talk about.

* * * *

copyright Jayne Fresina 2017

            Find out what Captain Guy Hathaway has up his sleeve on September 13th!

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 (illustration above is "Portrait of a man and his dog" by William Owen 1815)

Character Showcase - Lady Bramley 2.0

            Several characters in the third and final installment of my regency series The Ladies Most Unlikely will already be familiar to readers of the first two books. Some of them you'll be pleased to see again - others not so much. But every story has to have its villain and every story has to have its voice of reason.

            Well, Lady Bramley would like to think she's the latter. She's certainly not the former, but she can be a bit of a trial at times for the young people she attempts to guard and guide through life. Lady Bramley is the sort of woman who knows everything - specifically the "proper way" to get anything done. As she likes to say, "Of course, I'm right. I always am."

She can sometimes be stuck in her ways, but she loves a good challenge and is beginning to see that change is not necessarily a bad thing. By the end of this third book, I like to think she is a showing her softer side more often, but she is still intrinsically that same Lady Bramley of whom there can be no other and no equal.

I cannot imagine the busy lady being willing to sit still long enough for a portrait and I think she would consider it a foolish vanity at her age, so the portrait I chose to represent her here is of a younger woman. I can see her, in her youth, obliging her beloved husband by curbing that restlessness just long enough to pose for a painting. From the look in her eye and the set of her lips she's at the end of her patience, don't you think?

            When Lady Bramley encountered our "Ladies Most Unlikely" in the first book, her ladyship had been a widow for some years, was often ignored by her two sons, frustrated by an anti-social nephew, and had turned her energies into gardening. Lady Bramley is an expert grower of vegetables, gourds and melons. And there is not a person left in London who is ignorant of the fact. She's made certain of it.

 

* * * *

            "I grow prize-winning marrows, Captain Hathaway. Did your sister not tell you?"

            "I'm afraid Georgiana neglected to mention it, madam. I cannot think why for she knows how fond I am of marrow."

            Lady Bramley waved her lorgnette. "My glasshouse produces the biggest gourds and best fruit in Mayfair. My marrows are notorious, although I must say my melons are also magnificent this year."

            Emma felt it incumbent upon her to interject, "Melons are not of the gourd family, of course, but botanically of the berry genus." And then she blushed hotly again as all eyes turned to observe her.

            The lady continued as if Emma had never spoken. "Everybody remarks upon the size of my melons whenever they are exhibited. My melons have, in fact, received a mention in The Gentleman's Weekly."

            "I see," the Captain muttered, looking down and pressing his lips hard together as if he had a pain somewhere. "You must have your hands full, madam."

            "Indeed. Lady Fortescue-Rumputney is lime green with envy over my success. She, of course, leaves the tending of her melons to the hands of her gardener, which is, in my opinion, a mistake."

 

* * * *

             But after Georgiana Hathaway, Melinda Goodheart and Emma Chance ruined her garden party and murdered one of her prize-winning marrows, she decided to take them under her wing and give them the polish they so clearly lacked. In one way it was a sort-of punishment for the young ladies she took on, but mostly Lady Bramley just wanted to meddle, mould and nurture them in ways her own sons and nephew would not allow. It gave her a new purpose, a new challenge, a new zest for life.

            And for Georgiana, Melinda and Emma, it all turns out very well.

            By the end of The Bounce in the Captain's Boots, that decision to play Ovid's "Pygmalion" with these three young ladies has not only been a good deed. It has also given Lady Bramley the nearest thing she has to daughters. She might even love them more than her gourds and melons.

In her words, "They are, like most young girls, despicably riotous and needlessly excitable on occasion, but they have promise. I like to find pearls in my oysters and to see pretty things grow to their full potential."

In the final book of the series, Lady Bramley gets to see her fledglings take flight into the world and you will get to find out what happens to all the characters you've come to know.

 

The Bounce in the Captain's Boots will be available on September 13th.

Happy reading!

Portrait above is of Mrs. Davies Davenport 1782-1784, by George Romney.

Coming September 13th...

The third and final installment of The Ladies Most Unlikely - The Bounce in the Captain's Boots - brings you Emma Chance's story at last.

If you haven't caught up with the series yet, you might want to gobble up the first books before we say goodbye to our favorite miscreants from The Particular Establishment for the Advantage of Respectable Ladies.

Emma and her story will be here on September 13th. I'll  have a teaser excerpt for you next week and some character showcases. Happy reading!

* * * *
When Emma Chance met her best friend's elder brother, she knew instantly that he needed somebody to put the bounce back in his boots.

            But it couldn't be her, of course. She wouldn't know where to start.

            Against the odds, Emma Chance survived a childhood of cruelty and neglect. She's never had time for fairytales or Prince Charming and, as a young woman with a logical mind, her preference is for tidy facts over messy feelings. But with one glance from his dark eyes, Captain Guy Hathaway causes poor Emma a bundle of the latter and turns her cautious world on its head.

            To him she is nothing more than his little sister's shy, awkward friend, and she wouldn't know what to do with herself, in any case, if he ever looked at her as anything more than that.      

 

But there's something about Captain Hathaway...

 * * * *

            The charismatic captain has a reputation for trouble. Brawls, duels and dangerous women litter his past. With a mischievous sense of humor, a hot temper and a reckless impulse to leap in with both feet, he has always sailed along at a steady clip, determined never to be anchored too long in one place and never risking his heart. But lately he's felt a strange emptiness, a yearning for something he cannot identify. It began a few years ago, about the time he escorted his younger sister and two of her friends to a ball. Did he lose something there, or did he find it?

            Until he gets to the bottom of this mystery, he knows he won't be whole again.

            In the meantime, while he seeks out the source of this discontent, he can make himself useful, initiate some changes in his life and do a few good deeds for once. Why not? For instance— timid, plain little Miss Chance, his sister's droopy best friend, could surely benefit from a helping hand.

            The first time he met her she was a bundle of nerves, covered in a red rash and itching as if riddled with fleas. But he can't help feeling there is more to the strange creature than meets the eye.

            Yes, indeed, there is something about Emma Chance...

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