Snowdrift and Other Stories Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Georgette Heyer

  Title Page

  Introduction by Jennifer Kloester

  Snowdrift

  Full Moon

  Pistols for Two

  A Clandestine Affair

  Bath Miss

  Pink Domino

  A Husband for Fanny

  To Have the Honour

  Night at the Inn

  The Duel

  Hazard

  NEW STORIES

  Pursuit

  Runaway Match

  Incident on the Bath Road

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Affairs of honour between bucks and blades, rakes and rascals; affairs of the heart between heirs and orphans, beauties and bachelors; romance, intrigue, escapades and duels at dawn. All the gallantry, villainy and elegance of the age that Georgette Heyer has so triumphantly made her own are exquisitely revived in these wonderfully romantic stories of the Regency period.

  A treat for all fans of Georgette Heyer, and for those who love short stories full of romance and intrigue.

  This collection also includes three stories not seen since 1939, published in book form for the very first time.

  About the Author

  Author of over fifty books, Georgette Heyer is the best-known and best-loved of all historical novelists, who made the Regency period her own. Her first novel, The Black Moth, published in 1921, was written at the age of seventeen to amuse her convalescent brother; her last was My Lord John. Although most famous for her historical novels, she also wrote eleven detective stories. Georgette Heyer died in 1974 at the age of seventy-one.

  Also by Georgette Heyer

  The Black Moth

  Simon the Coldheart

  These Old Shades

  The Masqueraders

  Beauvallet

  Powder and Patch

  The Conqueror

  Devil’s Cub

  The Convenient Marriage

  An Infamous Army

  Regency Buck

  The Talisman Ring

  The Corinthian

  Royal Escape

  The Spanish Bride

  Faro’s Daughter

  Friday’s Child

  The Reluctant Widow

  Arabella

  The Foundling

  The Grand Sophy

  The Quiet Gentleman

  Cotillion

  The Toll-Gate

  Bath Tangle

  Sprig Muslin

  April Lady

  Sylvester

  Venetia

  The Unknown Ajax

  A Civil Contract

  The Nonesuch

  False Colours

  Frederica

  Black Sheep

  Cousin Kate

  Charity Girl

  Lady of Quality

  My Lord John

  Introduction

  During my many years of researching Georgette Heyer’s life, I was privileged to spend several weeks at the British Library trawling through literally thousands of magazines in search of her early short stories. It was an extraordinary experience when, on turning a page or scrolling through a microfilm, her name would suddenly appear beneath the title of a story not published since the 1920s and 30s. So exciting was the thrill of discovery that in those moments, I was tempted to do a happy dance right there in the middle of the library reading room!

  Among the short stories that had not been seen by readers since their first publication more than eighty years ago were a handful of historical tales. Written in the true Heyer style, they each contain intelligent heroes and independent heroines as well as tantalising hints of plots and characters yet to come in the Regency novels that would make Georgette Heyer’s name famous around the world.

  A born storyteller, Heyer delighted in writing sparkling comedies of manners, clever mysteries and incomparable Regency romances. As a child she had often made up stories to amuse her schoolfriends and her two younger brothers. She had her first novel published just after her nineteenth birthday. A prolific writer, she produced a dozen books in her first ten years of writing and almost as many short stories. Her first short (as she called them) appeared in print in 1923, and she continued writing them at intervals throughout her fifty-year career.

  The 1920s and 30s were considered a golden age of magazine publishing and, like many other professional writers of her era, Heyer earned good money for her stories. Her earliest efforts were mostly contemporary tales: light-hearted and romantic with the occasional mystery to tease her readers. In the 1920s she was published in The Red Magazine and The Happy Mag, both of which also featured stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Agatha Christie, Richmal Crompton and Edgar Wallace.

  In 1935 Heyer published her first novel set in the English Regency and was delighted when her agent sold Regency Buck to Woman’s Journal for serialisation. The magazine was one of Britain’s most prestigious and to be published in it was considered a feather in any writer’s cap. Many well-known writers wrote short stories for Woman’s Journal, among them Daphne du Maurier, H.G. Wells, Katherine Mansfield, A.A. Milne, Elizabeth Goudge and Paul Gallico.

  Early in 1936, Woman’s Journal accepted Heyer’s first Regency short story, entitled ‘Runaway Match’. Published in April of that year, it is one of her engaging romantic comedies with an enchanting young heroine who, with her oldest playfellow, embarks on a clandestine elopement with unexpected consequences.

  The following month her second historical story appeared, ‘Incident on the Bath Road’; classic Heyer with all of the wit, romantic comedy and lively characters that her readers had come to expect. She took pleasure in including the kinds of bon mots that were becoming hallmarks of her stories – such as when she describes her hero, Lord Revely, as being ‘always courted, never caught’.

  War began in 1939 and Heyer was one of several ‘distinguished authors’ asked to contribute a story to The Queen’s Book of the Red Cross, an anthology supported by Her Majesty the Queen in aid of the Lord Mayor’s Fund. Heyer’s story was ‘Pursuit’, with a nonpareil for a hero and an unexpectedly independent governess for a heroine; two unlikely companions who must travel together in pursuit of his runaway ward. A well-drawn supporting cast makes this story an especially entertaining read.

  In these three republished short stories, knowing readers will recognise the seeds of some of Heyer’s future books and characters; on more than one occasion she remembered an early short story and deliberately used it as the basis for one of her Regency novels. During her career, Heyer published almost two dozen short stories in various magazines, eleven of which eventually appeared in an anthology entitled Pistols for Two. To mark the addition of ‘Runaway Match’, ‘Incident on the Bath Road’ and ‘Pursuit’ to that original anthology, it has been renamed Snowdrift and Other Stories. It is my hope that the modern reader will find as much pleasure in these early Georgette Heyer historical short stories as I did on first seeing them in their original publications.

  Jennifer Kloester

  June 2016

  Snowdrift

  A THIN COVERING of snow already lay on the ground when the Bath and Bristol Light Post Coach set out from Holborn at two o’clock in the afternoon of a bleak December day. Only two hardy gentlemen ventured to ride on the roof; and the inside passengers consisted only of a pessimistic man in a muffler, a stout lady with several bandboxes, a thickset young man with small eyes, and a jowl, a scarlet-coated young lady and a raw-boned countrywoman, who appeared to be her maid.

  The scarlet-coated lady and the young man sat opposite each other, and occasionally exchanged glances of acute dislike. Upon their