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Her ‘interview’ at the British Embassy in the Portuguese capital had been, as she had expected a job interview for the Imperial Intelligence Service. In itself, this was a little surreal: she had been working for the IIS all the time she was in Spain! Moving on past that little quirk she had discovered that back home in New England, the CSS – the Colonial Security Service – was to be wholly subsumed into the IIS, thus removing it from either the oversight, or the funding peccadillos of individual New England Crown Colonies. This change had not wholly recommended itself to her; she was at heart a proud daughter of the Crown Colony of Vermont first, and a New Englander second, and in any event, she had not decided if she even wanted to go back home quite yet, anyway.

Thinking about it, it was not until she had left New England that she had recognised that she did not like living in a Commonwealth where individual colonial administrations honestly believed, that they had the right to legislate for its citizen’s sex lives.

She got it that if a woman slept with a man that she was not married to then she was, according to the prevailing sexual mores of the East Coast, de facto, a slut or a tart. That sucked but the notion that if she slept with another woman both parties could, theoretically be put in prison for it, and in practice sometimes dragged through the courts and the gutter press, had got really, really old since she had been in a relationship with Henrietta. Worse, back in New England, if she went anywhere near the woman that she loved she was placing Henrietta, and unthinkably, her family in huge peril of scandal; a thing she wished on nobody.

And then there was Alonso…

Which was where she started asking herself what she even meant by thinking she was ‘in love’ with somebody. It seemed to her that she was ‘addicted’ to Alonso, and ‘responsible’ for Henrietta. And that too, was a very peculiar way to look at things!

That first conversation with Queen Sophie had impossibly muddied… everything. She had thought she knew where she stood, known what she felt, and had understood her own motivations and then realised, she had been wrong all along.

In hindsight she had been hot

about Alonso from the moment they met, and he, she guessed, for her. She had always been going to end up in bed with him and yet, she had had no real inkling that sleeping with him was going to have the effect it had had, if not entirely innocently then carelessly, on her part, on poor Henrietta. Melody had thought it was all about her; a mistake she made a lot but self-knowledge usually dawns far too late to stop one putting one’s foot in it. It had never occurred to her that, in her way – albeit in a much less carnal and rather beautiful, in a girlish, naïve sort of way – Henrietta was as stupid about Alonso as she had, obviously, become since she arrived in Spain.

And… now she was hearing her mother’s voice in her head reminding her what a selfish girl she was!

Things had never been this complicated when she was living a life as carnally blameless as any cloistered nun. She had loved being a detective, right up to the moment she had acknowledged that she was burying herself in her work to stop herself worrying about how she had screwed up the rest of her life.

No, that might just be her mother’s voice again.

Anyway, the Imperial Intelligence Service wanted her to come on board ‘for real’, this time. That meant spending a while in England which probably was not going to work for Henrietta. Her mother was ill, of course, and although there was no family obligation or expectation for her to return to Philadelphia she wanted, needed to go back some time soon.

Yes, things were… messy.

And that was before she even tried to figure out how to cope with the Pedro situation…

The boy had come running down the first floor landing laughing and calling ‘Mama Melody’ to welcome her back, and clung to her like she was the edge of a cliff. And, well, she had loved it. She had known the boy less than a month – some of which she had been away being a complete slut with Alonso – and he had missed her.

‘He asked where you were all the time,’ Henrietta had confessed.

Hen was devoted to the little rascal who seemed to get more confident, more precocious with every passing day.

Melody had been happy just to be back with Henrietta and last night had been gently, marvellously blissful; and with the women waking up this morning to discover that Pedro had inserted himself between them had been… perfect.

None of which made Melody feel any more settled that morning.

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George Washington's Ghost
George Washington's Ghost

Conventional wisdom is that if the Crown Colonies of the Commonwealth of New England ever unite in common purpose; then the Empire might fall. That this might happen at the very moment that century-old post-war settlement of the Treaty of Paris is threatening to fall apart, had been the unimaginable nightmare of generations of European monarchs, politicians, diplomats and generals.The unthinkable is happening. Mexican troops are advancing through the South Western borderlands of New England; nothing can stop them. At sea, the supposedly invincible Royal Navy has been driven from the Caribbean and the Gulf of Spain. The handful of survivors of HMS Achilles are trapped in enemy territory. The three brothers unwittingly caught up in the events of Empire Day, 1976, are swept along by the tide of events, while news of Melody Danson and Henrietta De L'Isle's adventures in Spain momentarily distract a bewildered and increasingly uneasy, public in the old and the new worlds.In apparent disarray in the Americas, at home in England, the Government is attempting to navigate the fallout from the death of the Kaiser, distracted from the problems across the Atlantic. And then secrets more explosive than any of the weapons deployed in the war threatening to change the map of New England, burst in the midst of the crisis. In a world threatening to dissolve into chaos; who can step from the shadows to save the day?James Philip was born in London. He and his wife live in Hampshire in the heart of the south of England. Having despaired of ever getting his fiction published by main stream publishers he has embraced the e-publishing revolution with something akin to glee. Surprised by the positive reception to the e-publication of Until the Night and several of his other books, he has now become a full time writer for the first time in his life and is currently working on a large number of new projects including additional instalments to existing series.

James Philip

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