The Making of Matthew Wolfe

By Blair Bancroft

Author's Note. Welcome to a Regency series with a twist! Although the Matthew Wolfe books feature the adventures of a supposed nobody off the mean streets of London, they are designed for Covid relief—light, warm-hearted, even whimsical. Hopefully, by the time Matthew has his Happily Ever After, our World will have righted itself and we will be well on our way back to normal. Meanwhile, here is the first in a series of novellas told as an old-fashioned "serial," each book with a cliff-hanger ending.

Matthew Wolfe, born and raised in the squalor of London's inner city, should be a nobody, forever destined to obscurity, or the hangman. But wait . . . he can read and write, is a whiz at math, can speak like a gentleman, even knows more than a bit of French. And when the boy from London ends up on a hops farm in Kent, surrounded by remnants of the Royal 10th Hussars and a passel of children, what will this fish out of water do? Retired military and their ladies, children, dogs, a regal cat, neighbors in need, and a determined twelve-year-old—all assist Matthew on his journey toward the person he is meant to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blair Bancroft
• Release date: Nov 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9780999851999

Blair Bancroft

Blair Bancroft recalls receiving odd looks from adults as she walked home from school at age seven, her lips moving as she told herself stories. And there was never a night she didn't entertain herself with her own bedtime stories. But it was only after a variety of other careers that she turned to serious writing. Blair has been a music teacher, professional singer, non-fiction editor, costume designer, and real estate agent. She has traveled from Bratsk, Siberia, to Machu Picchu, Peru, and made numerous visits to Europe, Britain, and Ireland. She is now attempting to incorporate all these varied experiences into her writing. Blair's first book, TARLETON'S WIFE, won RWA's Golden Heart and the Best Romance award from the Florida Writers' Association. Her romantic suspense novel, SHADOWED PARADISE, and her Young Adult Medieval, ROSES IN THE MIST, were finalists for an EPPIE, the "Oscar" of the e-book industry. Blair's Regency, THE INDIFFERENT EARL, was chosen as Best Regency by Romantic Times magazine and was a finalist for RWA's RITA award. Blair believes variety is the spice of life. Her recent books include Historical Romance, Romantic Suspense, Mystery, Thrillers, and Steampunk, all available at Smashwords. A long-time resident of Florida, Blair fondly recalls growing up in Connecticut, which still has a piece of her heart.

Book preview

The Making of Matthew Wolfe

by Blair Bancroft

Published by Kone Enterprises

at Smashwords

Copyright 2020 by Grace Ann Kone

For other books by Blair Bancroft

Please see https://www.blairbancroft.com

1

Thanks for venturing into the Matthew Wolfe series. These novellas, told in classic serial style, touch on the basics of the human condition, yet are light, humorous, even whimsical—a deliberate attempt to entertain and distract during the dark days of Covid-19.

Warning 1: Devotees of Regency-era novels will find these stories a bit different, as the series is basically one long book, each ending in cliff hanger mode.

Warning 2: Matthew uses a number of Regency expletives, as might be expected of a young man brought up in London’s back alleys.

For those who have not read The Abominable Major, here is the story behind a born-and-bred Londoner’s residence on a hops farm in Kent:

When the Countess Alexandrova, an old acquaintance of the officers of the Royal 10th Hussars, is stalked by a Russian prince, Major Courtland Randolph hires a sixteen-year-old street urchin called Nick Nameless as a watcher. When the prince attempts to break into the countess’s townhouse, Nick, who takes his new position very seriously, ends up flattening him. An act that plunges him into prison, where he is beaten and starved until he is rescued by the major, provided with a new identity—Matthew Wolfe—and brought to the hops farm the former hussars have established as a refuge in Kent. (If hops is an unfamiliar word, they are a vital ingredient in making beer and ale.)

I hope you have as much fun reading this tale as I had writing it.

Blair Bancroft, November 2020

Chapter 1

It was a sunny Sunday in July and a good day to be seventeen. Matthew Wolfe sat on the grassy bank of a stream, his makeshift fishing pole dangling a bit of string into a still, black pool seemingly undisturbed by the gurgling water rushing by just beyond. His kaleidoscope of memories, however, was more in tune with the dark depths of the pool than the brightness of the day.

Fishing, he’d been told, was a good way to get away from it all. It didn’t seem to be working.

Ungrateful whelp!

Matthew scrunched up his face in disgust. Trust his common sense to deliver a swift kick in the ass when it was most needed. For, no doubt about it, an ungrateful whelp he surely was. He was whole and healthy and should be on his knees thanking God for his new life at Kirkwood Farm. For the colonel and his lady who insisted on treating him like a gentleman, when, in truth, he was a nameless bastard from Seven Dials, with nothing more to show for his seventeen years than an agile mind, a strong back, an even stronger will to survive, and a remarkable ability to adapt to his surroundings. Including his startling transition from the rookeries of London to a hops farm in Kent.

But if that were true, what the bloody hell was he doing out here all alone when he didn’t know a bloody demmed thing about catching a bloody demmed fish?

The newly minted Matthew Wolfe glared at the dark pool where the fish continued to ignore his bait. And why would any fish in a fine country stream want to be caught by the likes of him?

Your mother raised you right.

He couldn’t argue with that. And if he ignored the years right after her passing, he’d been managing quite well for himself that day he’d met the major . . . the day Nick Nameless of Seven Dials, London, started down the road to becoming Matthew Wolfe of Kirkwood Farm, Kent.

You’re doing it wrong.

Matthew, his reaction time honed by years in London’s back alleys, did not tumble off the bank, joining his fishing line in the pool of water below, but he came close to it. If he’d let someone sneak up on him like that in the city, he’d likely be dead. Gritting his teeth, he slowly turned to look at the speaker.

His jaw dropped.

A child. A girl child was telling him he didn’t know how to fish. And what do you know about it? he grumbled.

You are sitting there, staring into space, paying no attention to your pole, the annoying little miss declared. "You are supposed to wiggle the bait through the water, entice the fish. Actually, she added, her blue-green eyes skewering him with disdain, while you’ve been sitting there like a lump, they have likely eaten every drop of your bait."

Never in a thousand years was he going to admit that he’d never fished before in his life. After all, anyone who ate a fish out of the sewage flow known as the Thames had to be mad, right?

Well, go on, look, she taunted. I wager you have lost all your bait.

Chagrined, Matthew stared at his line, almost certain the little monster was right but unwilling to prove it.

Hands on her hips, she glared at him.

Grimly, he lifted his line, keeping his face a careful blank as he swung the sodden piece of meat onto the bank between them. Ha! The chit was wrong. The fish hadn’t eaten his bait. They were just feeding somewhere else today.

"What is that?" his nemesis demanded.

A bit of meat I saved from last night’s dinner.

Her rather pretty face twisted into a moue of disgust. Trout don’t eat meat! she declared. You have to have worms, big fat earthworms. You thread them on the hook—oh for goodness sake, how can you have grown as big as you are and know nothing about fishing?

Thoroughly humbled, Matthew muttered, I grew up in London.

Oh.

For the first time he took a good look at her, and instantly realized she was more than an annoying fishing critique. Here was trouble. Too well spoken and well dressed to be a stray girl from the village, there was no way she should be out on her own, talking to strange men on the bank of a stream. How old are you? he demanded.

Twelve and a half.

And what are you doing on land belonging to Kirkwood Farm?

And suddenly, a mere twelve or not, there before him was a privileged young lady who wandered where she pleased because her father was a somebody. Chin high, all arrogance from the top of her warm brown hair to the tips of her shiny half-boots, she stretched out her hand, pointing to the far side of the stream. "That is my father’s land. Sir Jasper Ainsley. I am Jocelyn. There are stepping stones at a shallow place in the copse, making it easy to walk this side of the stream as well as my own. Colonel Trevor does not mind."

Of course he didn’t. I beg your pardon, my lady.

I am a ‘miss’, not a ‘my lady’.

Again, I beg your pardon, Matthew declared, recovering what the major had taught him to call his sangfroid, a French term for rock solid steadiness in times of crisis. But you shouldn’t be talking to strange men, no matter where you find them. Devil take it, he was applying London rules to a country girl who had never had occasion to fear anything. And yet she was on the verge of blossoming into a woman. It was high time—

But I know who you are, the girl protested. I have seen you in church. You sit with the colonel and his wife, with his officers.

Which in her eyes, as dubious as the appellation was, made him a gentleman. And eligible to speak with Jocelyn, daughter of Sir Jasper Ainsley. The oddities of Fate . . .

I must get back before Miss Preston begins to worry, she announced. But next time it rains, I will gather some worms for you. And with that, she turned toward the line of trees in the distance.

Gather worms? How is it you know so much about fishing? Matthew called after her.

I have brothers, she returned, the words cast over her shoulder.

Matthew stood, dumbfounded, watching the little chit’s every step until she disappeared into the woods. It was wrong, wrong, wrong—him meeting a nob’s daughter on the bank of a stream . . .

And suddenly he was sitting on the bank of a murky river a hundred times wider than this clear and bubbling stream, his head filled with memories—warm memories, harsh memories. A few glorious bits infused with hope.

And then he’d met the major, and his life turned upside down.

For the better, yes. But it was all so demmed strange.

Matthew gazed into the taunting pool of water, willing it to reveal what the future held for him. But of all the gifts God had given him, divination was not among them. He picked up his pole, glared at it, stared at the trees that had swallowed his odd little visitor.

He shouldn’t, but he would. After the next rain, he’d be back.

Chapter 2

In June 1815 the fiercely fought Battle of Waterloo put an end to Napoleon Bonaparte’s years of conquest. In the aftermath, a group of war-weary veterans from the Prince’s own Royal 10th Hussars turned their backs on their former lives, choosing to retire to the peace and serenity of the hops fields in Kent. A move that did not quite work out as planned, when Colonel Marcus Trevor and his men found themselves once again at war, this time with neighbors who were convinced soldiers turned farmers could be up to no good.

The result: another win for the men of the 10th Hussars, but in the mêlée the sprawling house at the heart of Kirkwood Farm burned to the ground. A disaster somewhat assuaged by the colonel having had the good sense to marry the daughter of a duke, a lady with both money and good taste. Although the money came only after the Duke of Wentworth, shocked by open warfare in the hops fields, released his hold on his daughter’s dowry and the Trust Fund he had withheld when Lady Amelie married a hops farmer, no matter how distinguished Colonel Trevor’s lineage. (Cynics suggested that the duke was also anxious to rid himself of all the unexpected guests intruding on his newly wedded bliss, though the refugees from Kirkwood Farm took up barely a quarter of the space Wentworth Priory had to offer.)

Whatever the reason for the duke’s change of heart, a new Kirkwood Farm soon rose on the foundations of the old. But there the resemblance ended, for Lady Amelie promptly acquired a tasteful collection of comfortable furnishings, suitable for the home of a landed gentleman (if a far cry from the ostentatious elegance of the state rooms at the home of her childhood, Wentworth Priory). And as the refugees from Kirkwood Farm moved back into rooms the same shape and size as the old, but now sparkling with fresh paint and new furniture from London’s best warehouses, the men had sense enough to give thanks where thanks was due. Both officers and troopers already adored their colonel’s wife. They now worshipped the ground she walked on.

Matthew Wolfe, the newcomer brought to the farm by the colonel’s long-time friend and partner, Major Courtland Randolph, had never seen the old farmhouse and nor met Lady Amelie until she was heavily pregnant, but he promptly joined her long list of admirers. She was an angel, Kirkwood Farm a home beyond his wildest dreams. Matthew Wolfe had given up on God some time ago, but how . . . Well, he was willing to give God another chance.

Not all was perfection at the resurrected Kirkwood Farm, however. Lady Amelie’s efforts to encourage the gentlemen to shorten their after-dinner forays into the port had not been as successful as her furnishings. Although she liked to think the men now spent less time consuming port and brandy while reminiscing about their days on the Peninsula and dissecting current politics, she was well aware it was possible she was deluding herself. With Dariya, Countess Alexandrova, gone to London (followed by the colonel’s partner, Major Courtland Randolph, now raised to Marquess of Ashbourne), there were only two females left to commiserate with each other while the gentlemen enjoyed the conviviality of after-dinner port and banter: Lady Amelie and Mrs. Emma Lassiter, governess to the farm’s motley collection of children.

On this particular evening in July, the ladies were exceedingly comfortable as they waited for the gentlemen—if, that is, any woman heavy with child could ever be termed comfortable. The parlor, rather than crying, Here I am, admire me, was designed for comfort, a welcome to all who crossed the threshold. Nicely done up in blending shades of burgundy, soft brown, and gold, it seemed to glow in the last glimmer of lingering twilight. Warm, inviting, the epitome of the place of refuge Kirkwood Farm was meant to be.

Matthew Wolfe, last of the men returning to the parlor, paused in the doorway, scanning the room. He breathed in the soft evening breeze filtering through the open windows, a wonder of nature in such sharp contrast to the