Rainbow Snippets: Shore Leave

For this weekend’s Rainbow Snippets, I’m snipping from Shore Leave. This story is in the One Day Hist Rom Book Blast, with over 100 historical romance stories at 99c for one day only, today Saturday, May 18^th. This fantastic event includes some MM Historical Romance stories.

https://books.bookfunnel.com/historicalromancemay2024/27uvi10boi

Authors who take part in Rainbow Snippets each weekend are encouraged to post six or so lines from one of their stories on their blog and then link back to the group post on Facebook. I always enjoy joining in with Rainbow Snippets, especially to read and comment on everyone else’s choice of snippet.

Shore Leave is set in the spa resort of Georgian Bath in its heyday, where naval lieutenant Jacob grudgingly accompanies his young sister Letty into polite society. He meets society beau Sebastian, far more at ease in Bath’s assembly rooms with his exquisite clothes and manners, and a tentative attraction is acknowledged.

In this snippet from Shore Leave, Jacob and Sebastian are on a horse ride in the surrounding countryside, giving them a chance to know each other away from the social constraints of the spa resort.

~~~

“It’s a fine view from here,” Jacob said, aware he was stating the obvious.

“It is,” Sebastian agreed. “Far better to be up here than down there, to my way of thinking.”

He smiled at Jacob’s obvious surprise. “It’s not that I mind doing my social duty from time to time, but if I couldn’t get out in the country air regularly, I think I’d scream.”

“Really?” Jacob dared to look at Sebastian. “But you seem so natural in polite company, as if you were born to it.”

“Indeed, I was,” Sebastian said dryly. “It’s all a matter of the training of a lifetime, but it doesn’t mean I would prefer to be trapped here permanently. I don’t mind doing the pretty and using the family house here a couple of times a year to keep it worthwhile, but at heart, I’m a country boy.

“Yes,” Jacob said. “I was told that you farm.”

This final word was loaded with such faint disbelief so that Sebastian almost forgot his manners and laughed out loud.