Got your attention, huh?

Actually, this post isn’t what you’re probably thinking it might be about. I haven’t just checked out my reviews on Goodreads or anything even scarier – I am in the middle of doing my research for my Innocent series. The Innocent Auction and The Innocent Betrayal are both English Regency historicals set in 1810 and 1811 respectively.

I love reading romance, any kind, and growing up I would read whatever my mum had lying around, and it was always books filled with dashing heroes, beautiful heroines, balls, duels, and lashings of brandy and cups of tea.

Okay, so my reading tastes might have changed slightly – but my love of this era is still strong.

When I decided to write The Innocent Auction, it was knowing the undeniable fact that homosexuality was a hanging offense, and it still would be until 1861.

Poverty and crime were also rife. The slums of London – called The Rookeries – had no running water or plumbing, just open sewers, crime, suffering, and death.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I wanted a love story – a happy ever after one – but not one that pretended none of these problems existed. I wasn’t just going to wave a magic author wand…or pen.

I have never had to do so much research for a book in all my life. No condoms, no lube – they used rose oil – how my characters ate, how they dressed, and how they spoke to each other.

Which brings me back to the title of this blog post.

I needed a swear word. Bugger and bleedin’ hell worked well – but at that second in my writing my character needed to say fuck. I was stuck – completely convinced that this was so modern there was no way I could use it. So, I hit the research – again.

And what do you know? The word “fuck” used in a sexual connotation dates back to the fifteenth century, and okay the poem was translated from Latin, but that was good enough for me. So – whatever else they did or didn’t say three hundred years later than that poem was written, in 1811 my characters weren’t giving a fuck either.

The Innocent Proposal should be finished next month and out sometime in December. There’s an EXCLUSIVE sneak peak of the first few paragraphs at the end of the post.

Chapter One

“Shite.”

Jack cowered as he heard the guard curse and fling the iron gate open, but he didn’t even spare a glance as the man rushed in. He was concentrating on keeping the meagre contents of his stomach down and trying to distance himself from the smaller, cold body despite them being still shackled together.

Charlie was dead. Pale, still. Eyes closed, thank fuck. Not that Jack wasn’t used to death.

Death happened every day in Seven Dials. It was what happened to the living that still shocked the crap out of him, even though he should be used to nothing else now.

“What the ’ell did you do?” Carter, the guard, snarled and grabbed Jack by the throat.

“Nowt. I aint done nowt,” Jack wheezed around the hand that was choking him. His fingers scrabbling ineffectually against the iron grip.

“Or bleedin ’ell,” another voice cussed. Smith, another guard, ducked under the beam as he entered Jack’s cell — what was supposed to be the washroom. Because of overcrowding, of the hulks — the rotting war ships moored on the Thames used to house prisoners awaiting deportation — were now filled with hammocks slung together to cram in as many as possible.

“It’ll be the jail fever,” Smith peered at the small, pitiful form of Charlie still on the hammock.

Jack was suddenly let go and he sagged against the wall next to the hammock, pulling oxygen down his abused throat.

The washroom was so small they could only put the smallest prisoners down here, shackled together in pairs, and because of that the hammocks, also slung together, were nothing but tattered rags that wouldn’t hold a man’s body. Jack was small for his age but Jack’s own had given way two nights ago and he’d spent last night curled up with Charlie in his.

Trouble was Charlie was too soft, and at fourteen, a good few years younger than he was.

He also hadn’t grown up in a dump like Jack had. He wasn’t used to scrabbling about in human shite on the off chance the shiny thing he’d seen might be some’at he could sell. He wasn’t used to choking down the disgusting moldy biscuits that they called food in this place, and even worse the black stuff that passed for water that likely came straight from the Thames. Jack was. He’d lived in some bad places, except in here he was chained. At least in Neal’s Yard he could escape the bastards that wanted a hole to screw, or at least get some coin for it. In here he had no choice.

He fell asleep because he was too exhausted to stay awake after a ten hour day working on the river and the guards simply locked the decks at night. He’d woken terrified more times than he could count. Once to get beaten when the guy couldn’t hold him still long enough to bugger him and the man had finally lost his temper, and once when another man interfered with the one that wanted to have him. Jack had made an agreement for protection then. Any food he could steal went to Keller and a few times he’d had to suck his filthy cock. He was lucky Keller was more interested in the food.

Then a fortnight ago the guards had moved some of them to temporary hammocks in the washrooms and he’d gotten out of the way on a night. Best thing that had happened to him in the four months he had been stuck down here.

Jack gazed at the slight, still body in despair. As soon as he’d woken up and touched the cold body, he’d known. He’d had a dad once. They all slept in the same bed and he remembered what waking up alongside a stiff and deathly cold body felt like. He’d promised himself it would never happen again…and now look.

“What the hell are we going to do?” Smith whispered as if the warden two decks above could hear him against the oaths and rattling of chains as their prisoners tried to move.

“How the ’ell should I bleedin know?” the other guard hissed. “He’s expecting a boy, and if the carriage is owt to go by, there’ll be some coin in it.”

Smith paled. “Warden’ll kill us.”

The other guard pounced again on Jack. “He’ll do. He wants a boy to shag, we’ll give him one.”

Smith looked aghast. “He wants a young boy. He’ll never pass for fourteen.”

Jack struggled. Nothing he’d heard convinced him what he was wanted for was a good Pain bloomed in his face as Smith punched him. Jack’s head snapped back and his legs folded. “Keep still if yer know what’s good for yer.” The other guard quickly unshackled his irons and Smith simply hoisted Jack over his shoulder. The room spun sharply and the noise faded, drowned by the roaring in his ears. He was barely aware of being carried up the ladders to the deck.

Suddenly, he was dumped unceremoniously onto the floor and he just managed to roll over as he retched. There was nothing in his stomach to heave up, but his body didn’t seem to know that.

“What in heavens happened?” Jack barely heard the cultured words, and tried to open his eyes in confusion.

“Hammock snapped and he fell out,” Smith answered quickly.

“For God’s sake, give him a drink, man,” he heard the voice order.

Jack choked and spluttered as Smith heaved him up and beer was nearly forced down his throat. He gipped again.

“I said give him a drink, not try and drown him,” the man snapped impatiently and confused, Smith let go. Jack’s legs were still not working and he stumbled only to be caught in strong arms.

“M’lord, he’s filthy,” Jack heard someone else protest.

Jack knew he was talking about him but he wasn’t about to protest when he was gently swung up into the same strong arms and held. Jack inhaled a lung full of the man’s smell he didn’t have another word to use to call it except … clean. He hadn’t smelled anything clean in…well, never really.

Maybe it wasn’t just Charlie who had died. He shivered uncontrollably. “The blanket,” he heard the nice voice say and he was wrapped in something warm and soft. Tears pricked Jack’s closed eyes and his throat tightened. Something else that never happened. Crying was a waste of good water his dad had always said. Some days he’d been so thirsty down here he knew his body didn’t even have tears, but he didn’t want to die. Another few weeks in this dump and he may change his mind, but he wasn’t convinced he wouldn’t have found some way to escape. Every day he planned and tried to stay alive long enough to make it happen.

Then he’d woken up chained to Charlie’s dead body and for a few seconds he’d given up.

For a few seconds Charlie had looked so peaceful. He wasn’t shaking or pissing himself in fear like the day before, and Jack had wanted that.

Looked like his wish had been granted. Jack sighed and stopped attempting to open his eyes. At least dying was warm and smelled good. Maybe the heaven stuff was true and his dad would meet him…Jack settled into the warmth and let the blackness that had hovered around his mind swallow him up and carry him away.