Skylark (43 page)

The novella and two novels form a trilogy of connected stories about three friends from birth who go to war together at sixteen and return ten years later divided. You may have read one or more of these stories, but I think you’ll want to add this edition to your collection, because in this form the three stories come together to make one long story of wounds healed and friendship restored.

Look for this trade paperback edition (a larger-sized paperback) if only to admire the absolutely stunning cover showing the three soldier heroes.

As a romance writer, I’m always interested in heroes, and by that I mean more than the man who gets the woman. Heroes—and heroines, too, of course—stand tall and fight for something, whether it be liberty, security, honor, or justice.

As you saw,
Skylark
has much to do with the nature of the hero. Stephen wants to be the dashing sort but instead is called to work through the law and politics to try to put the world right. In a way it can be harder to fight the quiet fight rather than the guts and glory one, but outright war always takes its toll, as it did on the men of
Three Heroes
.

This is the direct theme of my story in the SF-romance collection
Irresistible Forces
(NAL, February 2004). The novella is called “The Trouble with Heroes” and the phrase is completed at the end of the story. “The trouble with heroes is that they want to come home. But home is also their just reward.” War changes the warrior, and it is often hard for them to return to and fit in with the home they have struggled to defend. Sometimes, as with Dan in “The Trouble with Heroes,” the skills and qualities they have learned in order to defeat the enemy make them unwelcome back in their community.

I originally wrote that story in 1999, before we all became more immediately aware of the debt we owe to heroes and the price of war. With
Irresistible Forces
arriving now on shelves, I’m hearing from readers moved by the way the story applies to their feelings about our times.

In her review of the collection for
Romantic Times
, Donna Carter said, “The jewel in the crown is Beverley’s ‘The Trouble with Heroes,’ a moving exploration of the consequences of war and power on the those who fight as well as those left behind.”

As for the warriors in
Three Heroes
, George, Lord Vandeimen, has seen too much war and lost too many friends, so when he returns to find his parents and siblings dead and his home falling apart, he has no more will to fight. He decides on suicide, and it takes a beautiful, rich, determined widow to stir the ashes back into flame and give him a reason to live.

George, Lord Amleigh, has been flattened by the war, no longer able to truly enjoy life or live it to the full, but he’s working to put his life together, including plans to marry the very suitable Lady Anne Peckworth. But then he inherits the title and property of the mad Earl of Wyvern and meets again the woman who as a girl had crushed his youthful heart. The meeting, the passion, and the restoration of life and love take place in
The Dragon’s Bride
, set against the exciting backdrop of smuggling in Devon. Yes, the same backdrop as
Skylark
, featuring the same bizarre house, Crag Wyvern, and “Captain Drake,” Susan’s brother.

The third George is Major George Hawkinville, a man of the mind who is like Stephen in many ways, equally uneasy about being left on the fringes of the action, even though he knows that is where he can serve best. Today Stephen would probably still be a reforming politician but I think Hawk would be a computer genius. He has a gift for the organization of information.

He went into the cavalry to fight but he was soon moved into the quartermaster’s division and accepted that he could do more good by moving armies efficiently and arranging for adequate food and supplies to be where they were needed. His work sometimes involved investigating fraud, thievery, and profiteering, so when he returns home to find a swindle affecting his home, he’s the right man for the job.

In
The Devil’s Heiress
, Hawk sets out in cold pursuit of the adventuress who’s stolen his father’s money, but finds the seemingly innocent Clarissa Greystone. His struggles to find the truth and do the right thing embroil him with the other two Georges and with Con’s friends, the Company of Rogues. Soon Clarissa is his heaven and his hell, and everything is complicated by the return of an enemy who will do anything to get that money.

The Devil’s Heiress
in particular grows out of some earlier Rogues books,
An Arranged Marriage
and
An Unwilling Bride
.
An Unwilling Bride
was set around the time of the Battle of Waterloo, which was a glorious victory over Napoleon Bonaparte shadowed by a shocking loss of life—more than ten thousand in one battle. It was after that grim and gruesome victory that the Duke of Wellington, commander in chief of the allied forces, said, “Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.”

In
Skylark
, Stephen quotes from Lord Byron’s verses about that terrible battle, which impressed itself upon its age as 9/11 has impressed itself on our times. In
An Unwilling Bride
, when the first casualty lists arrive in London, showing the loss of one of the Rogues there, Nicholas Delaney proposes a toast:

I was deeply touched when in October 2001 a reader asked permission to include these words on a 9/11 quilt she was making. You can see it online here:
www.geocities.com/spenycjo/goldendoor.html

 

In praise of heroes, who are usually the youngest and best of our times,

 

Jo Beverley