Some of you may recall when, last April, I was noodling a new story idea and posted a few paintings for you to choose between for my Regency heroine. We decided on this oh-so-breathtaking work by Frank Dicksee, his interpretation of Miranda from The Tempest.

Well, I’m stealing her. 😉 She fits even better my image of Gwyneth Fairchild, you see, and since I know I do in fact have to write Gwyneth’s story, but Arabelle’s is on the “maybe someday” list . . .

So allow me to introduce Gwyneth. Born and raised in England, she has spent most of her days in fashionable Hanover Square, London. Her grandfather is a duke, her father said duke’s third son, who has risen to the rank of general in the military. Bloodlines–impeccable. Dowry–sizable. Looks–beyond compare.

And so she is the perfect Regency miss. All things lovely and demure and witty, with a remarkable hand at drawing and painting to boot. At the opening of her story (the second book in my Culper Ring Series from Harvest House, which will come out in June of 2013), Gwyneth is in the midst of her first season, which was put off for a year because her mother fell gravely ill and passed away the season prior. Gwyn and her father clung to each other to get through the terrible loss of sweet Mama, and she finds some solace now in throwing herself into the social whirl that her matron had spent a lifetime preparing her for.

Which has obviously been worthwhile, for Sir Arthur Hart, Knight of the Order of St. Patrick and presumed heir to a marquessate, is surely going to propose soon.

There is only one problem. Her father, who is without doubt one of the best men in all England, who she adores and trusts implicitly, has told her she must leave. Leave London. Leave England. And go, of all places, to a country with whom they’re at war. And not even France, where at least they’re civilized, but to America. Maryland. To a family she met only once, when she was too young to remember.

Much as she wants to argue, especially when Sir Arthur does indeed intercept her before she can climb in her carriage and offer his hand in marriage, she can’t. Because minutes later she witnesses a crime that proves her life really is in danger–and that there’s nothing left for her here.

And so our little sparrow flies away, with only her pencils and paints with which to express the turmoil inside her, turmoil hidden within the paintings people would expect. And with a letter in hand meant to assure her safe delivery to Baltimore, even if she is set upon by American pirates.

Enter, of course, one dashing American privateer . . . 😉

With my latest book finished and simmering and edits underway on Ring of Secrets for my looming deadline, I’ve been dividing my time between reading/revising and developing a new idea. And oh, how much fun that is!

This new one will be set around the early-early days of the Revolution, in 1776. But as I launched into my oh-so-fun research, I discovered something in Jefferson’s account of the events leading up to the signing of the Declaration.

June 1, 1774. The Boston port was scheduled to be shut down by the British in retaliation for a certain episode of tea-dumping that you may have heard of. Politics between the colonies and England were fast deteriorating–so quickly that Lord North, the Prime Minister at the time, was happy to get sneaky. He came up with a “conciliatory plan” designed to divide us against ourselves. Said, basically, “Yo, any colony that sides with us rather than you neighbors won’t be taxed any more. Eh? Eh??”

But not everyone was paying attention to the events in New England. Not everyone could be bothered. Not everyone was convinced that independence was feasible, desirable, or right for the time. Not everyone was even considering it as a question to be discussed. Which, as you might guess, irritated those leading the movement.

So Jefferson and company decided to get their attention. How? By calling for a nation-wide day of fasting and prayer on June 1, 1774. “No example of such a solemnity had existed since the days of our
distresses in the war of ’55, since which a new generation had grown up,” Jefferson writes. He figures that this will “call up & alarm their attention.”

Now, knowing that Jefferson was a deist rather than a man of faith, a “moral liberal” if you will, I know well this was a manipulative move. He probably didn’t really fast and pray, he just knew that demanding everyone else do it would make them go, “What? Why? What’s going on? Is something wrong?”

And it worked. That’s what I really love about these days of prayer called for by our leaders. They are powerful, powerful things. I’ve heard amazing stories about the results of the one Churchill called for in England during WWII. And of others in American history. Because as we well know, when that many people take to their knees and pound the gates of heaven with their prayers, we’re in effect taking authority over the powers in our world. 

I had no idea until I read Jefferson’s account that such a day happened back in 1774, a year before the first shots at Lexington and Concord, two years before the signing of the Declaration. But that really does mark the time when people all through the colonies began to realize that something loomed on the horizon. 

Naturally, I had to toss in a prologue to  my new book . . . and naturally, it’s on June 1, 1774. 😉 This historic day of fasting and prayer only gets a passing mention, but I thought it a perfect day to begin my story. A day when no one would wonder why my heroine went off into the woods by herself to pray. When no one would think it odd that she wanted to be alone. When no one would suspect her many secrets . . . 😉