Resolute, determined, and an all but unstoppable force of nature, Isobel has a mission of her own—find her cousin Katherine and bring her safely home. And if, along the way, she can rid herself of the lingering dreams of a life with Royd that still haunt her, well and good.
Neither expects the shock that awaits them as they set sail aboard Royd’s ship, much less the new horizons that open before them as they call into London, then, armed with the necessary orders and all arrangements in place, embark on a full-scale rescue-assault on the mining compound buried in the jungle.
Yet even with the support of his brothers and their ladies and, once rescued, all the ex-captives, Royd and Isobel discover that freeing the captives is only half the battle. In order to identify and convict the backers behind the illicit enterprise—and protect the government from catastrophic destabilization—they must return to the ballrooms of the haut ton, and with the help of a small army of supporters, hunt the villains on their home ground.
But having found each other again, having glimpsed the heaven that could be theirs again, how much are they willing to risk in the name of duty?
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Author’s Note
I incorporated several of those “too good to pass up” historical facts into this volume, and as promised, I describe them more fully below. In addition, as usual, the streets I have my characters strolling, running, or skulking down are real to the time. The map I use as reference is by Cross, dated 1850.
So, to the nuggets of history buried in this book:
1) the Worshipful Company of Carmen
- is officially the 77th Livery Company of the City of London. Yes, it still exists today. The company was granted livery status in 1848, the only such grant made in Queen Victoria’s time. However, the company dates from 1517, although the controlling of carts and carriers (carrs) by the City first formally commenced in 1272. The Corporation of the City of London has exercised its rights over cartage since the corporation’s inception as transport is so obviously vital to commerce.
After 1655, all licensed vehicles had to carry the City’s arms on the shafts and a specific number on a brass plate—much like modern license plates. In 1835, there were 600 licensed carts. The “Hallkeeper” was/still is empowered to license and mark carrs and carts to “stand” at places known as “carrooms” and there to ply for hire in the City’s streets. I suspect these were the equivalent of modern taxi-ranks, but for carts. The criteria for a cart or carr to be licensed was that the owner had to be a freeman of the City and also a member of the Fellowship of Carmen (i.e. the Worshipful Company of Carmen). Once a year, every vehicle had to be brought to the Guildhall for examination and to be re-marked. This was necessary to enforce the rule that no cart could ply for hire within the City of London unless licensed by the Carmen. As noted in this book, this rule was not lightly or easily broken and was strongly enforced. Consequently, the carters who collected the gunpowder from Kent and drove it into London would have had to be members of the Worshipful Company of Carmen.
Plaisterers Hall, the building I have used to house the Worshipful Company of Carmen, is in fact their current address at Number1, London Wall. As far as I can determine, Plaisterers’ Hall existed in 1850, and the Worshipful Company may even then have had their offices there. However, London Wall did not exist in 1850. The location given in the book—the western end of Falcon Street where it runs into Aldersgate—is the equivalent location. The interior of Plaisterers Hall described in the book is entirely fictitious.
2) Gunpowder and the Manufacture of Fireworks
Much of the details of gunpowder itself and the difficulties of its storage and transport were given in the Author’s Note of the previous volume.
Fireworks were hugely popular in England from Elizabethan times on (Elizabeth I was a fan) and in 1850 there were numerous firework manufactories dotted around London. These included Brocks Fireworks, recently moved to Sutton from Whitechapel after an accident (detailed below), Madam Coton’s factory in Westminster Road, and Pains Fireworks in Brixton. Indeed, firework manufactories were located in inner London well into the 1900s—Wizard Fireworks were still in Shoreditch in 1949.
While I have hypothesized that warehouses supplying the firework manufactories existed and several were located in Morgan’s Lane in Southwark, it is possible, even likely that such warehouses existed. Their location in Morgan’s Lane, however, is entirely imagined.
Gunpowder was an essential ingredient for fireworks, along with saltpeter.
The explosive capacity of gunpowder is illustrated by the report of the accident (noted above) that in 1832 caused the removal of Brocks Fireworks factory from its then location at 11 Baker’s Row, Whitechapel, in a residential area and nearly opposite the London Hospital. A boy ramming gunpowder into a firework tube accidentally created a spark, which ignited the firework—in a blind panic, he tossed the tube aside and fled. Fifty pounds of gunpowder plus a large amount of saltpeter exploded, blowing off the roof, setting fire to the building, and breaking every pane of glass for several blocks around. In the late 1850s, Madam Coton’s factory in Westminster Road also went up rather spectacularly.
Given that our protagonists are chasing over one thousand pounds of gunpowder, it is pertinent to note the damage done by a mere fifty pounds.
3) the Chartists
Chartism was a working-class movement for political reform that was active in Britain from 1838 to 1857. The name derived from the People’s Charter of 1838 and in a nutshell, the aim was to achieve adult male suffrage.
The People’s Charter of 1838 laid out six simply-stated aims, the achievement of which would give working men a say in law-making—they would be able to vote, their vote would be protected by secret ballot, and by abolishing the requirement for owing property as a qualification for running for Parliament and introducing payment for MPs, working-class men would be able to stand for election. None of the demands were new, but the People’s Charter became one of the major political manifestos of the century.
Given that the Chartists wanted to participate in Parliament, their strategy was to influence Parliament via demonstrating the scale of support for their cause—primarily via massive “meetings” and peaceful demonstrations. Consequently, in 1839, the 1838 Charter was presented to Parliament with a petition backed by 1.3 million (male) signatures. The MPs of the Commons voted not to hear the petition.
In 1842, a second petition was presented to Parliament with 3.5 million signatures. Again, it was rejected.
On April 10, 1848, in the spring during which political uprisings occurred throughout Europe, the Chartists held a massive meeting on Kennington Common. They planned to march on Parliament to present the latest petition, this time signed by 6 million men. The authorities had recruited 100,000 special constables to bolster the police force, and the crowd was not permitted to cross the Thames. Subsequently, the petition was delivered by a handful of leaders, and Parliament once again rejected it.
After the “defeat” of 1839 and again in 1842, uprisings of various sorts were planned and some occurred, but were ineffective and were severely repressed.
The Chartist leadership was diverse, but over time, Feargus O’Connor, owner and publisher of the Leeds’ Northern Star newspaper, became the ultimate leader. He was devoted to achieving reform through peaceful parliamentary means, and was eventually elected to Parliament in 1847.
The “defeat” of 1848 lead to a significant rise in Chartist plots and insurrection, led by so-called “physical force” Chartists, but none of these plots or uprisings were supported by the established Chartist leadership and were, once again, suppressed by the authorities.
Gradually, Chartism as a movement faded into obscurity. However, while the movement did not directly achieve any reform, all of its six stated aims eventually became law. Many ex-Chartists swelled the ranks of the Reform League which campaigned for manhood suffrag
e and partially succeeded with the passage of the Reform Act of 1867, which granted the vote to urban working men.
While the hotbeds of Chartism lay in Wales and the north of England, from 1836, London was established as the home of Chartists in the southeast of the country. More on the London Chartists in the next volume.
The third volume of this trilogy incorporates further historical facts. For your interest, I will describe those in a similar note at the back of that volume.
Stephanie.
Also by Stephanie Laurens
Cynster Novels
Devil’s Bride
A Rake’s Vow
Scandal’s Bride
A Rogue’s Proposal
A Secret Love
All About Love
All About Passion
On A Wild Night
On A Wicked Dawn
The Perfect Lover
The Ideal Bride
The Truth About Love
What Price Love?
The Taste of Innocence
Temptation and Surrender
Cynster Sisters Trilogy
Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue
In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster
The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae
Cynster Sisters Duo
And Then She Fell
The Taming of Ryder Cavanaugh
Cynster Special
The Promise in a Kiss
By Winter’s Light
Cynster Next Generation Novels
The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
A Match for Marcus Cynster
The Lady By His Side
An Irresistible Alliance
The Greatest Challenge of Them All (coming July 13, 2017)
Lady Osbaldestone’s Christmas Chronicles
Lady Osbaldestone’s Christmas Goose (coming October 19, 2017)
The Casebook of Barnaby Adair Novels
Where the Heart Leads
The Peculiar Case of Lord Finsbury’s Diamonds
The Masterful Mr. Montague
The Curious Case of Lady Latimer’s Shoes
Loving Rose: The Redemption of Malcolm Sinclair
Bastion Club Novels
Captain Jack’s Woman (Prequel)
The Lady Chosen
A Gentleman’s Honor
A Lady of His Own
A Fine Passion
To Distraction
Beyond Seduction
The Edge of Desire
Mastered by Love
Black Cobra Quartet
The Untamed Bride
The Elusive Bride
The Brazen Bride
The Reckless Bride
The Adventurers Quartet
The Lady’s Command
A Buccaneer at Heart
The Daredevil Snared
Lord of the Privateers
Other Novels
The Lady Risks All
Novellas
Melting Ice – from the anthologies Rough Around the Edges and Scandalous Brides
Rose in Bloom – from the anthology Scottish Brides
Scandalous Lord Dere – from the anthology Secrets of a Perfect Night
Lost and Found – from the anthology Hero, Come Back
The Fall of Rogue Gerrard – from the anthology It Happened One Night
The Seduction of Sebastian Trantor – from the anthology It Happened One Season
Short Stories
The Wedding Planner – from the anthology Royal Weddings
A Return Engagement – from the anthology Royal Bridesmaids
UK-Style Regency Romances
Tangled Reins
Four in Hand
Impetuous Innocent
Fair Juno
The Reasons for Marriage
A Lady of Expectations
An Unwilling Conquest
A Comfortable Wife
Medieval (writing as M.S. Laurens)
Desire’s Prize
About the Author
#1 New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Laurens began writing romances as an escape from the dry world of professional science. Her hobby quickly became a career when her first novel was accepted for publication, and with entirely becoming alacrity, she gave up writing about facts in favor of writing fiction.
All Laurens’s works to date are historical romances, ranging from medieval times to the mid-1800s, and her settings range from Scotland to India. The majority of her works are set in the period of the British Regency. Laurens has published more than 60 works of historical romance, including 37 New York Times bestsellers. Laurens has sold more than 20 million print, audio, and e-books globally. All her works are continuously available in print and e-book formats in English worldwide, and have been translated into many other languages. An international bestseller, among other accolades, Laurens has received the Romance Writers of America® prestigious RITA® Award for Best Romance Novella 2008 for The Fall of Rogue Gerrard.
Laurens’s continuing novels featuring the Cynster family are widely regarded as classics of the historical romance genre. Other series include the Bastion Club Novels, the Black Cobra Quartet, and the Casebook of Barnaby Adair Novels. All her previous works remain available in print and all e-book formats.
For information on all published novels and on upcoming releases and updates on novels yet to come, visit Stephanie’s website: www.stephanielaurens.com
To sign up for Stephanie’s Email Newsletter (a private list) for heads-up alerts as new books are released, exclusive sneak peeks into upcoming books, and exclusive sweepstakes contests, follow the prompts at Stephanie’s Email Newsletter Sign-up Page
Stephanie lives with her husband and two cats in the hills outside Melbourne, Australia. When she isn’t writing, she’s reading, and if she isn’t reading, she’ll be tending her garden.
authorstephanielaurens
www.stephanielaurens.com
[email protected]
An Irresistible Alliance (Cynsters Next Generation Novels Book 5) Page 35