Sneak Peek

In lieu of (and apology for the abscence of) actual finished content, here's a sneak peek at the project that's been consuming my write brain lately. It's sort of a tame beginning, but don't be fooled. My plans for this story have been inducing a *lot* of evil, hand-rubbing, cackling glee. I blame Alan Moore. Enjoy!


On his ninth birthday, Neville Erstwhile decided which type of woman he would someday marry.

It should come as no surprise; young Neville had spent his entire life surrounded by - one might say *eclipsed* by - women; from his mother, the benignely eccentric scholar, to his four sisters, each exceptional in their own way. In the years to come, the Erstwhile girls would scatter to their own households, spread to the four winds: somber little Bliss, scholar and wife to a scholar in Cambridge; delicate, fierce Agathe an actress (though her letters would turn disturbingly political in time) in Paris; golden amazon Juliette who crossed the sea to North America and found herself wed into an oil baron's fortune, of all things; and Constance...who seemed to belong not in this place or that place, but to the entire world at once.

Raised in the shadow of such glories, such independent and frighteningly *modern* women - Neville grew quiet and contemplative, a little gentle knight sprung from an earlier century; and he knew that *his* chosen lady would embody every virtue of the perfect maidens described so ardently in song and story handed down from his grandfathers' day.

She would be soft as mist, pale as cream; her voice would be as quiet and soothing as the sound of his mother singing lullabyes to her first grandchild, songs heard faintly through a closed door. She would listen when he spoke and nod with solemn amazement at the brilliance of his ideas, praise his sketches, bake his favorite sweetmeats and join him in playing with his puppy. (He was, after all, only nine.)

In short, she was Phoebe, the daughter - the sheltered and beloved only child - of his father's business partner, the widower Lord Tullivale.

She attended his birthday celebration that year in a frock of palest lavender, spoke barely three words to him with terribly shy courtesy, gave him a collar of engraved Indian kidskin for his spaniel puppy Bess - obviously obtained by her father, but never mind - and entirely enchanted him before half an hour had passed.

A week later, her father sent her away to a prestigious school for young ladies in Westchester. Neville did not see her again for almost eight years.

Not quite six months past that reunion, they were married, and that is where Neville's troubles began.