PRISCILLA

"Priscilla offers a gripping and refreshingly subversive take on a society rigidly bound by convention. 

At its center is Priscilla, a heroine whose gypsy heritage and darker complexion set her apart in a world preoccupied with lineage and appearances. Though her position within society appears predetermined, her modest dowry and lack of prestigious ancestry render her an outsider, subtly exposing the hypocrisy of social hierarchies. 

The narrative gains momentum as the Season unfolds—a backdrop ripe with expectation, alliances, and quiet betrayals. Even lifelong friendships, such as that with Dahlia, prove fragile under the weight of ambition and social pressure. Priscilla’s chance encounter with Charles, who is already engaged to the highly sought-after Emilia, ignites a series of events that challenge both personal loyalties and societal norms. What follows is not merely a romantic entanglement, but a deeper exploration of love’s defiance against rigid expectations.

Yet the novel does not rest solely on romance. A darker thread emerges as Priscilla finds herself in peril, uncovering a troubling pattern of secrecy, violence, and disappearances. These elements lend the story an undercurrent of tension, elevating it beyond a conventional period drama.

Ultimately, Priscilla is a story of courage and moral conviction. Its richly drawn characters and layered conflicts invite readers to question tradition and champion authenticity. Though set in the 19th century, its themes resonate strongly with contemporary audiences, making it both an engaging and thought-provoking read that lingers well beyond its final pages," 

The International Review

SAMPLE

 Chapter 1

Paris 1848

This definitely wasn’t his cup of tea. Charles had discovered Agatha on the Ile de la Cité, living in a fire-trap apartment in the medieval maze of streets surrounding the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. He stood hesitating on the crooked cobblestone pavement that hadn’t changed since the 12th Century. A wealthy man’s carriage stopped. Two prostitutes stepped out and, holding each other for balance, entered the building. A minute later, a pox-scarred mother and father and their six skinny, bedraggled children followed. Space there apparently was rented by the yard and day, not by the room and month. Charles began pacing the sidewalk, debating whether this meeting was necessary. His task was merely to find Agatha, which he had done, not to confront her.

Agatha disappeared four and a half years ago, leaving a scribbled note saying she would return when she was appreciated. Her parents, the baron and baroness, hid the shameful secret, telling the world that a friend had invited Agatha to accompany her family on a Grand Tour. They invented correspondence and hired investigators who took advantage of the worried parents’ pocketbook. They finally confessed their inexplicable want of a daughter to the baron’s younger brother, Mathew Evers, who happened to be Charles’s father, and asked for help. Mathew asked his son if he had any ideas where to find Agatha. Charles had.

The autumn air nipped. An unkindness of ravens strutted along the gutter five stories up. A row of chimneys spewed black smoke. Loose leaves and papers carpeted the congealing mud. Charles shook his head at an approaching prostitute. She sneered and went on her way. The irony did not escape him that he, who had always avoided Agatha, was the one who knew where to find her.

As the pretty daughter of the lord of the manor, Agatha had looked down on the world from her superior perch. She gravitated toward people sharing her class and attitude. That meant when her family commissioned an American portrait painter who claimed to be the grandson of a French count that fled the Jacobin terror, she was smitten. Charles had met Alain once. Agatha found irresistible the snub-nosed, beady-eyed painter who combined the aristocratic arrogance of the Ancien Régime with an unshakeable belief in his genius. After finishing the painting, in which all the family members wore the same mournful expression, Alain left for Paris to petition authorities to regain possession of his grandfather’s ten thousand hectares, or at least to receive compensation for the loss. Around this time, Charles heard rumors that a certain baron’s daughter could be seduced merely by inventing an aristocratic ancestor and a good story to go along with it.

Charles traveled to Paris to search for Alain. The expatriate artist refused to face him, even going so far as to exit the back doors as Charles entered the front. He continued to annoy the artist community until one gave him an address of “la pauvre femme que tu cherches—the poor woman you are looking for.”

Agatha suddenly emerged from the apartment building, dragging a small child. She was too busy yelling at the little boy, who, running to keep up, had slipped in the mud, to recognize Charles. When the little boy fell again, she started to drag him. Time had not been kind to Agatha. The lopping gait of a disproportionate figure had replaced her fluid, floating grace. Her long face, conventionally straight nose, and large eyes had been attractive. The face was now longer, the nose reddened, and the eyes nested in purple circles.

Agatha despised Charles for various reasons, calling him, among other things, “Second-rate Cousin” because of his propensity to never quite be the best. Even when he was clearly second-best, he was, to her, mediocrity personified. Agatha reserved her special disdain for Charles's father. Mathew Evers returned from India to recuperate from a nearly fatal illness. He unaccountably sold his commission and started working as a solicitor. With his formidable memory and sharp intellect, Mathew Evers succeeded in this profession and soon became valued and well-paid for his services. In Agatha’s eyes and in the eyes of many of those who mattered in society, Mathew betrayed his class by becoming a “tradesman.” Not only that, in his lawyering, he seemed to purposely irritate powerful men in the society of those who mattered. They made him a social pariah, “cutting him,” as it was put. Mathew didn’t care.

As a solicitor, Mathew advised his father on matters concerning the family finances. The other brothers and sisters were furious at being prevented from fashionably overspending by their tradesman sibling, whom, truth be told, they had never liked. They might have eventually accepted Mathew’s descent from gentleman into the solicitor’s trade—being related to him was like having the school bully on your side—but what they could not abide was his marriage. The young misanthrope returned from a business trip to Bath, married to a woman no one had ever heard of before. Not only had Charles’s mother been a maid, but according to rumor, she had been plucked from an orphanage at the age of twelve to enter domestic service, so the only certainty about her parents was that they were not married. It wasn’t even a case of misplaced affection because she didn’t work in her future husband’s household. The whys and hows of their union remained a mystery, even to their children. Although the scandal had staled after two decades, some tongues still wagged. When Agatha didn’t call Charles “Second-rate cousin,” she called him, not bothering to conceal her sneer, “Half-breed,” but more on that later.

As Charles followed Agatha and the struggling boy through the medieval streets, he felt mixed emotions. Agatha perhaps deserved to be taken down a peg, but not crushed. The mother and son crossed the Seine at the sixteenth-century bridge, Pont Neuf, and continued down a wider boulevard to the public gardens—Les Jardins du Luxembourg. Charles maintained his distance. Agatha gave no indication of awareness of his presence. The mother-son pair formed a discordant presence among the people enjoying their leisure on the well-tended lawns, admiring the flowers, and wandering down the tree-lined paths. This was nature welcoming visitors in her most elegant attire, although a cool breeze discouraged those who might picnic or otherwise linger.

Agatha stopped by a fountain. The boy started to cry, which turned into a whimper when she took hold of his ear. She sat on a stone bench, forcing the boy by the ear to sit with her. Both shivered. A quarter-hour later, a man in a black cloak approached. Charles recognized Alain. He had always suspected Alain was more charlatan than painter, quite eloquent in praising his meager genius. Agatha once spent an annoying afternoon comparing Charles to Alain—the mediocre “not-good-enough” to the truly inspired soul. By then, Charles didn’t care what his first cousin thought. He had long ago stopped trying to impress her. He was relieved when he heard she was traveling. Let the rest of Europe deal with her pretensions.

Agatha and Alain had a brief argument. He dropped a few coins into her hand. She threw the coins back at him. He shrugged his shoulders, patted the boy on the head, and said the words that Charles could hear, “Je suis désolé, petit homme, mais tu ne me ressembles pas du tout—Sorry, little man, but you don’t resemble me at all.” Alain left.

Agatha froze. Even from a distance of a hundred feet, Charles discerned the anger reddening her face. Then she started walking rapidly, dragging her little boy. Charles followed. He hurriedly considered the ways he might help. There was probably enough money in his billfold to feed Agatha and her son for a month. He could even arrange secret monthly payments out of his own allowance, so she wouldn’t have to reveal her shameful predicament to her family. The truth would come out sooner or later, but maybe with time, Agatha could beg forgiveness from her family and be reconciled. The thought Agatha would prefer death to shame occurred to Charles, but he didn’t follow it to its logical conclusion until, in the middle of Pont Neuf, she picked up the struggling boy and held him over the bridge’s parapet.

“Agatha!” Charles shouted, his twisting gut foretelling a dreadful event.

She slowly turned her head, her arms straining as the boy slipped a few inches until her hands clasped him at the level of his armpits.

“Agatha!” He screamed and sprinted toward her.

“You!” She snarled. Charles would never forget the expression on her face—the absolute ugliness of crushed pride.

“J’ai peur, j’ai peur—I am frightened, I am frightened,” the boy whimpered.

“I can help you.”

“You!” She yanked the struggling boy back and, with a horrid laugh, handed him to Charles. “You help?” Agatha laughed hysterically as he grasped the boy. “You help?” She mounted the parapet and jumped. Agatha might have survived if her body hadn’t hit the piling.

.

Chapter 2

London 1850

As she walked in Hyde Park, Priscilla was uncertain about the benefits of accompanying her friend Dahlia to London for the Season. A certain great-aunt was sponsoring Dahlia as a debutante. Her family considered Dahlia’s presentation to Queen Victoria a great coup for their reputation. Dahlia, however, was equally scared to death by both the royal presentation ceremony and the prospect of her first Season. “Please, come with me. I need the moral support, and you’re the only one who can give it,” she begged Priscilla. “I can be what I am and make my silly mistakes with you, whereas everybody else will expect me to be a perfect young lady. I haven’t even gotten my French verbs right. And won’t you enjoy the opera and theatre and endless fetes and parties? And there will be plenty of young men, all of high station. I mean, you want to marry, don’t you? I am certain you will have your pick of the most eligible.” Dahlia tried to figure out how to qualify Priscilla for presentation to the queen, but with an American father and just a thin strain of Highland nobility from her grandfather, she orbited too far from the cream of society to be considered for presentation—even without her dark skin. Priscilla’s father, Nathan, was relieved. He said paying for her dress would bankrupt the estate for decades to come. Even Dahlia’s father grumbled that she had better find a husband because if there were a second Season, she would have to attend it barefoot and in rags.

Despite her reservations, Priscilla gave in because Dahlia was her best friend. Nervous and fussy and at times impossible, Dahlia never held a grudge and did not know how to lord superior airs over others. Her father’s land bordered the Asher estate on three sides. They met as little girls on one of these borders and played imaginary games of being orphaned princesses. Dahlia thought it was wonderful that Priscilla had gypsy blood in her. “How romantic! I often want to run off with a band of gypsies.” They shared dancing masters and French masters and made fun of their governesses. They grew up together, sharing dreams. Priscilla’s great-aunt, Lady Astoria, who could pay in pennies what others purchased in guineas, was able to make three dresses materialize. Half a year’s rent from her estate tenants was dedicated to the expenses of Priscilla’s London Season.

Initially, Priscilla wasn’t immune to the excitement and romance of the London Season. Priscilla thought she’d find vicarious pleasure in mixing with the hundred other fashionable young women, many of whom used the event as a rite of passage from daughter to marketable young female. “We’ll find you a husband, never you fear,” Dahlia promised. Whether Priscilla was marriageable from the point of view of wealthy young gentlemen was a doubtful question. She was certain of her attainments. Her great-aunt, Lady Astoria, ensured that she received the approved education for a young lady, including modern languages, grammar, and manners. She had three flaws: a small dowry, too few illustrious ancestors, and the wrong skin color.

Lady Astoria said that to the unbiased eye, her skin was beautiful, the color of fine cherrywood. Her mother was the legitimate daughter of a Highland baron and a Kalbelia gypsy. Three hundred years before, the first cousin of Marie de Guise, mother of Mary Queen of Scots, had married into the family; therefore, technically, a rivulet of French royalty was added to the current of Highland nobility in her veins. Her father, even though his tenants called him squire and he fitted the role in that his income came from land, was American, which was hardly better than gypsy in many people’s minds. At the first London fete Priscilla attended, a debutante who was also being ignored revealed the cruel truth, “You are beautiful, Miss Asher, you have as fine a face and figure as any of us; however, no English parent will want darkie grandchildren, even less so those of our class.”

As for Dahlia, with her chubby beauty and constant blushing, she turned out to be what fashion dictated as the ideal. She found her suitor at the first ball, much to the joy and relief of her family. Mr. Clyde Talbot was a tall, shaggy young man who reminded Dahlia of her favorite dog, Jason, because of his loyalty, sincerity, and enthusiasm. He was easy to pick out of the crowd because he was half a head taller than those surrounding him. Despite having a Savile Row tailor, his clothes fit him badly. No matter how close his Pall Mall barber shaved him, his chin always had the shadow of stubble. The young Mr. Talbot had no special attainments beyond those that came with his station in life. Passable, not exceptional, hulking rather than graceful; yet his eyes were kind and full of love. Dahlia’s great-aunt and mother constantly squabbled over the pleasure of chaperoning the two lovebirds.

Priscilla turned out to be in the way. She wasn’t included when Dahlia, her mother, and great-aunt made calls. She discerned beneath the great-aunt's and mother’s studied politeness disapproval. She was a bad smell that must be endured. Whenever they could not avoid introducing her, there was always a coolness in their tone, as if they were doing so against their will. More than once, she had to explain defensively to blank expressions that one of her ancestors was a first cousin to Marie de Guise, the mother of Mary, Queen of Scots, and therefore she had a trickle of royal blood. They shook their heads in disbelief but kept their manners. Neither shunned nor welcomed, Priscilla had a lot of time on her hands. Dahlia still made sure that Priscilla attended all the fetes and gatherings that were not too discriminating, and she depended on her friend for her late-night effusions over the wonderfulness of Clyde, even waking Priscilla at two or three in the morning to gush.

Priscilla began to tire of her morning walks in Hyde Park to view the fashionable women driving their phaetons. It did not concern Dahlia’s family that she was an unaccompanied female. They were not about to waste their time finding a companion to chaperone her virtue. Additionally, the opera and theatre turned out to be great disappointments. The buzz of conversation never died down enough to enjoy the performances. These venues were merely excuses to congregate, make eyes, and flirt. As for the Pleasure Gardens, she would prefer never to set foot in them again.

Was it time to face the reality that she didn’t belong in London? Dahlia’s great-aunt engaged Priscilla in a morning conversation about how she must really miss her home. Dahlia’s mother spoke to her as if she were slow of understanding, even though Priscilla was more fluent than Dahlia, with all her stops and starts and occasional relapses into the vulgarity “Gosh.” They saw her presence as a threat. They were reaching for the next rung on the social ladder. The Talbots occupied that rung. Priscilla was a weight pulling them down. People overall were polite, though the introductions that allowed one access to the inner circles were absent. There was an occasional grimace trying to find a category for her at the fetes and parties for the striving classes. However, no young gentleman paid attention to her beyond the cliches that followed an introduction. Later in the evening, when the partygoers were more lubricated, male eyes emitting a libidinous gleam might veer in Priscilla’s direction. A lady who had drunk eight glasses of champagne tried to console Priscilla, “If we were competing to become a gentleman’s mistress instead of wife, with your exotic complexion and face from an Arabian Nights’ fable, you’d top us all.”

Priscilla came upon the Serpentine, a lake that divided Hyde Park from Kensington Gardens, where several boys were sailing boats. She spotted a young boy in knee-length shorts and an untucked shirt, standing on the shore, holding a boat with a broken mast, crying. Priscilla passed him, then stopped and turned. Nobody was paying attention to the distraught child, who couldn’t have been more than four or five. After several minutes, Priscilla approached.

“Is your nanny nearby?” she asked.

“She gone.” He had an accent Priscilla couldn’t place at first.

“Gone?” This didn’t make sense.

 He looked confused.

“May I see your boat?” Priscilla had been a tomboy before the governess got hold of her. Although Priscilla had acquired the proper education without too much difficulty, during those first years, in between the times learning to be a lady, she climbed trees, played cricket—even was a gifted bowler with her long arms until the governess absolutely forbade that unladylike diversion—ran races, and took long walks in the forest. She also had experience with toy sailboats. The mast had become displaced. Priscilla cast about for something that could serve as an adhesive. She spotted a gash in the bark of a pine tree where resin had freshly formed. Using a stick, she scraped out a glob and applied it to the broken mast. “I hope this works,” she said to the little boy, who stared wonderingly at this strange lady who knew how to fix broken masts of toy boats.

They returned to the lake and set the vessel in the water. They sailed the toy boat for the next hour and a half with only one intermediary repair. Priscilla hoped the nanny or the mother would come and take responsibility for the child, but no one appeared. When asked about his caretaker, he shrugged his small shoulders. He was as well-dressed as the other boys, so he wasn’t a waif. Because he pronounced his name “Robert” without the “t,” she deduced his accent was French. Robert delighted in her company as Priscilla did in his. For that time, she completely forgot her woes. This little person needed her, and they were having fun together.

Finally, she heard a male voice call out, “Master Robert,” with the “t” pronounced.

“Yes, Mr. Charles,” Robert said brightly and smiled at a gentleman in his mid-twenties with sandy hair and a sandy mustache.

“Where’s Miss Mary?” he asked Priscilla, frowning.

“She gone,” Robert volunteered.

He raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Did Miss Mary engage you to replace her?”

“I am not acquainted with Miss Mary, sir,” Priscilla replied in the same interrogating tone, which she thought he deserved for abandoning the child. “Your little boy was standing by the lake crying because his boat was broken. We repaired the boat. I’ve been with him ever since, waiting for a nanny or his mother or somebody to take responsibility for him.”

Robert clasped Priscilla’s hand with both of his as if claiming ownership of her.

The young man took a moment to digest that information. “I am Mr. Charles Evers, Robert’s guardian, who is that somebody. I did not abandon him. I left him in the care of a friend’s maid. It’s distressing that she disappeared. That was certainly not my intention.”

Priscilla relented. “Well, I’m glad you’ve come. Truly, Master Robert has been no bother at all. I enjoyed our time together.”

“He seems quite taken with you. I have been placing advertisements for a nanny. Even if you don’t speak French, which was one of my prerequisites, would you like the position? I will pay you at the highest rate for that type of service.”

“No. I’m sorry. I am otherwise engaged.” Priscilla was miffed that her skin color made people assume she belonged to the servant class.

Robert was inconveniently hugging her leg. “Please.”

“I’m sorry. I really can’t take on employment.” Priscilla got to her knees to look directly into Robert’s eyes. “If you want, little man, I’ll be here tomorrow at one o’clock, and we can sail your boat or look for newts and frogs or, if your guardian allows and brings one, fly a kite.”

“Promise,” Robert begged.

“He will be here without fail,” Charles affirmed. “We must depart, little man. The pretty lady gets ever so worried when I am five minutes late.”

“Then I also promise I’ll be here,” Priscilla said, thinking, at least I’ve made one conquest this Season.

That evening, Dahlia begged Priscilla to accompany her to the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. Casting an eye on her great-aunt and her mother, who were about to do battle over being the chaperone, Dahlia declared that, tragically, Clyde was occupied that evening, and she was so dreadfully afraid of being bored. There would be no need for a chaperone because Priscilla could accompany her, and the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens was a public place where nothing dangerous ever happened. Priscilla agreed, thinking it would be better than staying with Dahlia’s great-aunt and mother, who had taken to looking through her and talking around her.

Public or not, the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens was not safe for Priscilla. The first time, after crossing the Vauxhall Bridge and paying the two shillings entrance fee with six other young women and two chaperones, Priscilla felt as if she had accidentally happened into a fairytale circus. A Chinese pagoda, a Greek temple, a Moorish tower, and fifteen thousand glass lamps hanging from the trees created a magical ambiance. Faced with a bewildering choice of concerts at every turn, jugglers, fireworks, fire breathers or ‘salamanders as they were called, tightrope walkers, hot air balloon ascents, dancers on stilts, and various other diversions with extravagantly dressed performers, Priscilla could not help laughing for the pure joy of the experience. The enchantment lasted until she strayed too many yards away from the lighted paths and her chaperoned group. A very unpleasant man loomed out of a shadow and propositioned her. She fled, and he pursued, raising the price, finally offering her the outrageous sum of a guinea for an hour of “clicket,” which Priscilla understood by context and the gravelly, suggestive tone. A second young gentleman approached seemingly with the same intention, but then they recognized each other from a fete three nights before.

A third man blocked her passage as she tried to join her group to watch a hot air balloon ascent. He pursued her into the “wilderness,” a maze of dark forest paths purposely designed for romantic assignations. After a terrifying quarter-hour, she lost him and lost herself. She was nearly in a tearful panic when she found her group again, gazing placidly at the slowly rising balloon.

Thinking that she couldn’t possibly be so unfortunate as on her first visit and vowing to stay in public view, Priscilla acceded to her friend’s wishes. The great-aunt and mother agreed to let them visit the gardens with Priscilla as a sufficient chaperone, not realizing that a certain type of individual made assumptions about Dahlia’s dusky friend. Their artificial world blinded them to real evil.

Demonstrating the insouciance of love toward the difficulties of others, Dahlia was immediately greeted by Clyde upon paying the entrance fee and passing over the bridge into the park. “Be so kind, my dearest friend, as to allow Clyde and me a little private time,” 

BRIDES OF THE GAUNTLET

“Riveting and well written”

WHAT THE RIVER OF THE CHEROKEE DID NOT SAY

“a dark and melodic tale of loss and life… truly captivating in a way that only James Short's books can be."

THE SHADOW PATRIOT

“The Shadow Patriot is spun gold wrapped in tragedy, sweet revenge, and in love, and I'd recommend it with all my heart to anyone in this world who has eyes to read!”

THE SULIOTE MAIDEN

“Seeped in rich, vibrant history, this amazing epic tale has a wealth of historical detail.”

FERINGHEE

a story that fully transports the reader to another era of love, loss, determination, and redemption. Highly recommended,"