According to the handy weather gadget on my phone, it’s 32 degrees and sleeting in London. Sounds about right for February. As  Gilbert and Sullivan said about the month

For some ridiculous reason, to which, however, I’ve no desire to be disloyal,

Some person in authority, I don’t know who, very likely the Astronomer Royal,

Has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February, twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty,

One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and twenty.

It’s isn’t a Leap Year. Thank God: no Olympics and no Presidential election and only twenty-eight days till we hit the balmy month of March.

Lady B: I like that rhyme. Is it being be performed at Drury Lane?

Miranda: Not yet. Wait around a few decades, Lady B., and you will be able to enjoy the glory that is The Pirates of Penzance. I almost didn’t make it today because we’ve had a lot of snow.

Lady B: Monty was one caught in a snow drift. I believe the dear boy was racing to the rescue of an unsuitable young woman. As usual he made a muddle of things.

Miranda: Isn’t it unfair to blame him for the weather?

Lady B: It’s his own fault for traveling by mail coach. I would never do such a thing. And to be entirely safe I rarely leave the house during the winter. Who knows what frozen horrors lurk in Bond Street?

Miranda: Speaking of frozen horrors, my next book takes place during the winter. I thought you might like to hear about it.

Lady B: Another? Goodness me, you Authoresses are all so busy. As the Duke of Gloucester said to Mr. Gibbon: “Another damned thick book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble!”

Miranda: My book isn’t nearly as long as Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but there is a Roman aspect to the work. The heroine is the heiress Anne Brotherton, whose greatest ambition in life is to dig up a Roman villa. In this she is both helped and hindered by Marcus, Viscount Lithgow, a man in great need of reform and cold baths. In this little snippet (unedited and subject to change) they are looking for the hypocaust – which every schoolchild knows is the underground chamber used in Roman central heating. The English, alas, managed to lose this very desirable technology for the best part of two millennia.

Digging in ground softened by rain was easier and dirtier. Working side by side–Anne’s shovel technique had improved–they cleared the accumulated earth from around one column of bricks, about three feet tall.

 

“Remarkable,” Marcus said. “Very similar to ones I saw at Pompeii, though some of those still had the floor above them. Which way now?”

 

“Mr. Bentley speculated that the furnace was over there. I’d like to find it and see if we can work out how the hot air was projected between the columns of the hypocaust.”

 

“You’re in charge.”

 

Anne fussed about causing damage and her care was proven necessary when Marcus’s spade dislodged a small metal object, caked in mud.

 

“Let me see,” Anne cried, too excited to chide him. She knelt beside the hole he’d made, leaning in precariously. “There’re other things here. Perhaps we’ve found a rubbish heap.” From her voice he gathered she couldn’t imagine anything more thrilling. He admitted to some excitement himself.

 

“Careful there!” Too late. Scratching at a protruding knob with her fingers she lost her balance and toppled forward. His body stopped her descent. They ended up in the mud, with her half prone between his bent knees, her arms around his neck.

 

Her body heat seeped through their damp, filthy garments. Her floral scent, subtle and costly, pierced the ambient odor of earth and rain and rotting leaves. Her breath was warm on his chin.

 

“Uh…” She interrupted a long fraught moment and he wondered if she was as stunned and incapable of coherent speech as he was. Was that his heart hammering or hers?

 

He freed a hand to touch her cheek, pink and tantalizingly smooth, and she shifted a little, stirring his desire. The fact drew a low crack of laughter from him. It was impossible to imagine less propitious circumstances for love making.

 

“What?” Her lips parted. By God, she was a lovely thing.

 

“I was thinking how much I’d like to kiss you, and how ridiculous that is.”

 

“Why?

 

“Because we are lying in a mud hole and it’s raining.”

Will they find the furnace or will they be distracted doing other thing? You’ll have to wait until August 27th for the publication of THE RUIN OF A ROGUE. Meanwhile, have you ever dug up anything interesting? Speaking for myself, my garden yields nothing but rocks and the occasional rusty tool.

Under miranda, WIPs