#rivenhall

[izzythehutt]

The Grand Sophy omg…when Charles holds Sophy’s wrist for a few seconds to convey his thanks…I could just swoon

I don't think people give that book enough credit for being romantic...I like to think this was the moment she realizes she loves him, too.

[sleepyowlwrites]

A Name for the Road | tumblr shorts

I meet him on the road. He's attacking a thorn bush with some vehemence. I suppose, given the twigs and briars stuck to his sleeves, that it had offended him by adhering to its nature. There are errant leaves in his curls, and crushed petals at his feet. When he finally shakes out his coat and turns, he catches sight of me, watching him behave like a child. His mouth turns downward, and now he's pouting like a child, too.

"Are you alright?" I ask pleasantly, stepping off the half-paved affair that has been pretending to be a viable roadway for the past mile.

The man runs a hand through his hair, impatiently batting at the leaves that fall out. "I'm perfectly well."

His voice is colored with the slow vowels of westerners. Now that I'm paying attention to his clothes and not his actions, I notice that he's wearing the typical shirt and sash of those who live past Rivenhall, in the wetlands and beyond. And his boots are blue, which is a sure sign of a warlock. Though he's very young to have any. Perhaps his master had money.

"Have you come through the forest?"

"I caught sight of a bidjie," he admits, his countenance mellowing with the mention. Bidjies are very attractive to warlocks, given how potent their feathers are for spells, so this is a plausible explanation for why he'd been forced to tangle with a bush, though not why he was so angry at it.

I think he's blushing, but his skin is a warm bronze and dusk is approaching, so I can't really tell. "But you couldn't catch it, which is why you were taking out your frustration on that thorn bush?"

He presses his lips together, eyes downcast. "That's not inaccurate."

There's no need to embarrass him further. "Evening is falling around us, but there's a small hamlet where I was intending to make my lodging. Would you like to walk together?"

"That's alright." But then he hesitates, and so I wait for the amendment. "I suppose- if you don't mind?"

"Of course," I answer, stepping backward to the road. "And perhaps you might enlighten me as to where you're headed with nothing but a coat and a coin purse."

"The coat holds plenty," he says before his lips are pressed together again.

I start walking and he falls into step beside him, with at least a couple feet between us. I phrase my next question as a statement. "That's delicate sorcery."

He is blushing now. I can't see it on his cheeks, but on the tips of his ears. Hands grasp the sash over his chest like they're anchoring him. He can't be more than twenty.

"Where are you headed?" I ask when he fails to speak. He's not beholden to answer this either, but he looks the sort to do so if the question is open enough.

"Laath."

"To apply for the academy?" Another hopeful, but perhaps with more reason than I had. I'm unsurprised at his affirmative response.

"Yes."

"You must've been studying under a local warlock to own a coat with a hoard spell on it."

"Is that what it's called?" He doesn't look at me. "I can't read my master's notes, or at least, I don't know what they mean. The, uh, hoarding was a mistake. I meant to cast concealment."

I turn my head and then my body to look at him, stepping forward at a sideways angle. "You can't read warlock runes?"

He shakes his head. It seems as though he's going to explain further but he doesn't. One hand musses up his hair in a nervous manner.

"Your master didn't teach you?"

We walk for several minutes in silence as the man starts and stops at answering. He doesn't owe me any explanations, so I don't push him. As strangers on a foreign road, it's discourteous to insist upon backstories. Even I won't trespass as such traditions. He doesn't have to speak to me at all if he doesn't wish to.

I guess he wishes to.

"I don't have a master. He's dead. I only have his notes. That's why I'm desperate to go to the academy. I'm so confused. Sorcery is easy, but it isn't. I can't ever do what I'm hoping to do. And I've got no mind to do anything more useful, so my father sent me off to be a warlock. With his blessing, mind. He's a good man. He believes in me."

And then he shuts up, hands clutching at his sash again, embarrassed or merely anxious. I consider this information while taking my turn at silence before responding.

"I can teach you the runes."

He swings his head around sharply. "Are you a warlock?"

"Undeclared," I say, because it's the simplest explanation. Warlocks go through a period of indecision after academic study, where they take time to consider whether they're willing to vow their lives to the principles of sorcery. He should know this, at least, and I see him nod his understanding. "Would you like to learn the runes before you apply for the academy?"

"Yes." He says it without hesitation. "Teach me whatever you can."

So trusting. Even without his admission of self-study I might've guessed it. A master warlock would never accept a lesson without asking for credentials or performing a subtle truth gleaning spell. "We'll start tonight, then."

He smiles at me, open and eager. He'll be a fantastic scholar, so ready to learn. The professors will love him. Just the right fit for the academy.

Like I never was.

The man speaks up after another few minutes. "I'm Abiro, by the way."

"Kivarin."

Abiro smiles again. "Good fortune on meeting you, warlock Kivarin."

"And likewise you."

He doesn't ask for any more information, and I don't require anything else out of him. His name is enough, after all. And the courtesies of the road still apply. All personal information is to be given up voluntarily.

I don't have to tell him I'm dead.

[caedmonofwhitby]

Most of us were taught that the Angles and Saxons moved as pioneer settlers into an abandoned land, whose previous inhabitants had fled or been slain. Many recent excavations reveal a gradual changeover with little apparent effect on the landscape; some-times, as at Rivenhall (Essex), it is not easy to tell at what point the Romano-Britons turned into Anglo-Saxons. The ecological evidence strongly favours continuity. When the curtain is raised by Anglo-Saxon documents, much of what we now regard as the 'classic' English landscape was already there, had already acquired its regional differences, and as far as we can tell was not new. It increasingly seems likely that, at least since the Iron Age, every inch of the British Isles has either belonged to somebody or has been expressly set aside for communal use. Not just main roads but wide areas of fields and lanes are Roman (or earlier) antiquities, and survived the Dark Ages almost intact.

- The History of the Countryside. The classic history of Britain's landscape, flora and fauna

By OLIVER RACKHAM

Woodbridge, Suffolk, England

[greggs-mistflower]

"Devil!" said Mr Rivenhall, and caught her into so crushing an embrace that she protested ... He took Sophy's throat between his hands, pushing up her chin. "Will you marry me, vile and abominable girl that you are?" "Yes, but, mind, it is only to save my neck from being wrung!", Sophy replied. - from The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer "... What if it should begin to rain again? I shall be drenched!" "Then you will be well-served!" retorted her unchivalrous cousin. "Charles!" uttered Sophy, shocked. "You cannot love me!" Mr Rivenhall pulled the door to behind them, and in a very rough fashion jerked her into his arms, and kissed her. "I don't: I dislike you excessively!" he said savagely. Entranced by these lover-like words, Miss Stanton-Lacy returned his embrace with fervour, and meekly allowed herself to be led off to the stables. [simply to leave, not for roll, roll, roll in ze hay] -- ibid., ending. In context, it's a lot less problematic. The book is pretty farcical, they have been fencing through most of the book, and Sophy just did a massive manipulation to arrange marriages for almost everyone in sight in about one chapter.

[anxovert]

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to "Silks" by Kate Rivenhall

Short and sweet and filthy and oh so wrong, and oh so right!

I loved this short, well-told story of forbidden love between twin siblings.

Teddy and Ophelia are twins, aged 27. Teddy has taken over the operation of their parents' racing stables, while Ophelia has left her family behind, horrified at the inhumane treatment of their livestock.

After Ophelia is arrested for animal rights protest activities, she is offered a reduced sentence in return for information regarding her family's plan to tamper with the forthcoming Kentucky Derby.

Teddy has been obsessed with/infatuated with his twin sister for as long as he can remember. He never acted on these feelings, but now that she is home again, he is determined that she will learn how he feels and that they will never be separated again.

This is a story of a sexual relationship between twin adult siblings. It is fantasy, but if that troubles you - even in fantasy - then this book and this review are probably not for you.

Teddy is an alpha male in almost every sense of the word. Such characters are usually frightfully dull, but Teddy's devotion to his sister is strong enough to redeem him in my eyes.

This book is too much for the 'zon, and you'll need to look for it elsewhere - I got mine from Smashwords. It comes with trigger warnings for

Pussywhipped noncon

Birth control tampering

Somnophilia

Forced breeding

Spanking with a belt

Mistreatment of animals (horses)

Violence/Murder

It's all there, and I ate it up. While inarguably "wrong", the plentiful intimate scenes are a joy to read if you're, like, into this sort of thing. Which I am. 😉

Silks on Goodreads

[peri-hellion]

Now that we're halfway through the 2020s and the copyrights are starting to expire, just saying that if I win the lottery you'll know because I'll retire to just write contemporary adaptation of Georgette Heyer novels but gayer and less antisemitic. Hats off to Cat Sebastian and KJ Charles for doing AMAZING queer Heyer-esque regency romance, but there's also something so fun about translating Heyer's eye for society farce to specific contemporary culture.

For example, Charles Rivenhall is an emotionally repressed lesbian with a staggering case of eldest daughter syndrome who has a slow burn 'oh no she's hot and tall' when Sophy arrives but it's also very important to me that this whole thing takes place in Somerville.

[hantologie]

In her interview with John Edes at Lawford Rebecca West had described how she first gave her heart to the devil as a child, some seven years earlier. He had appeared to her and her mother in various shapes, including that of 'a proper young man' who asked Rebecca to turn from God. Subsequently the devil became her deity, providing for her and protecting her; he was, it seemed, an idealized man in a household where men were missed. To Rebecca he was father, master, brother and, in due course, lover. Even as she grew into adolescence she made no distinction between these roles: they added up to love. While she and her mother were living at Rivenhall the patriarchal values of George Francis, one of the chief inhabitants, were such as to cast a long shadow over a disreputable widow and her daughter. But witchcraft reversed the flow of power, as when Francis's only son was cut down - like reaped barley, Anne West had said - leaving the parents to suppose that he had fallen victim to a witch. Rebecca West remembered her mother slyly remarking that if Master Francis thought the boy bewitched, then surely he was right.

Malcom Gaskill, Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy

[nicknumber]

British writer Anna Caroline Steele, née Wood. Some choice excerpts from her biography in The Feminist Companion to Literature in English:

"She [married] Lt-Colonel Charles S. in 1858 but returned almost immediately to Rivenhall, her parents' home in Essex, avoiding men thereafter."

"She wrote at least six novels and several plays, with themes of seduction and betrayal, and some focus on women's position. Her very successful first novel, Gardenhurst, 1867, suffers from an absurd plot, but is interesting for its concluding implication that the bond between sisters outlives romantic love."

"Lesbia, 1896, concerns an uxorious husband and a frivolous wife, and demonstrates the stifling effect of men's idealization of women."

"In London AS had been a figure in the literary world (several of Trollope's letters are to her), but spent her last years in Brighton, a recluse who fed her pet monkey on anchovy-paste sandwiches."

[hopefulbeardcowboy]

Find the best Service For Cabs in Rivenhall by The Taxi Man WITHAM. Visit: https://goo.gl/maps/GpGfaaugy89oSyXd8

[sosrantings]

BAHAHAH GOD, I LOVE SOPHY!

[semioticapocalypse]

John Downing. Margaret Thatcher waist-deep in blackcurrant bushes during a visit to Appleford Farm, Rivenhall, Essex, during a General Election campaign photocall, 29 May 1987

[trinovantetrading]

In the name of love...or the law?! ❤️ A few new-old bits will be on our ebay account later-find link on trinovante.co.uk alternatively find Mark at @sunburyantiques next week or call him on 0790 306 1027 to arrange a visit! #antiques #vintage #vintagedecor #oldsign #decorativeitems #interiordesign #homesandgardens #eventstyling #interiorstyling #trinovantetrading #chelmsford #colchester #braintree #rivenhall #silverend #essex #suffolk #cambridge #cambridgeshire #hertfordshire #london #kent #sussex #surrey #sunburyantiques #sunbury #kemptonpark #uk (at Trinovante Trading) https://www.instagram.com/p/BxuD-HcHQRE/?igshid=jhy7tzjsxale

[izzythehutt]

Listening to Heyer Today, which I recommend to anyone who is a fan of Georgette Heyer’s work and/or interested in writing period fiction, and am surprised and alarmed to discover that a lot of people apparently don’t like Charles Rivenhall...?  Like in the world of Heyer fandom there’s a swath of people who think he is a drag?

My two favorite Heyer heroes are Dominic Alastair, Lord Vidal and Charles Rivenhall (lol dichotomy of man) and I can understand the former being uh....“controversial”....but Charles?? Yeah, he can be a bit of a pill, but he’s trying to keep his family together! His profligate gambler father almost bankrupted them! He’s got a passel of younger siblings he’s thinking of! You know Charles is a good dude because Tina the greyhound and Jacko the Monkey like him!

[lackadaisycal-art]

I spent all of yesterday binge-reading The Grand Sophy (a day AWESOMELY spent) and ended up drawing this very late at night! It's sketchy and messy but I think I actually quite like the style of it - the anatomy needs a bit of work

[historyboy78]

Abandoned Places UK | Polish Displaced Persons Camp | Ghost Caught On Camera

Abandoned Places UK | Polish Displaced Persons Camp | Ghost Caught On Camera

Exploring an abandoned Polish Displacement Camp where my grandfather was placed after ww2 Most of this site was abandoned and left derelict since 1975, 47 years ago, although some areas were still in use up until 2005 at which point it was completely abandoned, it’s now crumbling and falling apart and before long nature will reclaim it completely. Unless of cause the bulldozers come in and…

[clarkesyd]

‘charles!’ uttered sophy, shocked. ‘you cannot love me!’

mr rivenhall pulled the door to behind them, and in a very rough fashion jerked her into his arms, and kissed her. ‘i don’t: i dislike you excessively!’ he said savagely.

the grand sophy by georgette heyer