Chapters (30)
Finally, I could not have written this without my husband, Rob, who was endlessly patient as I was trying to finish the novel while we were moving across-country.
A Note on History and Alternatives
Historians will note that Wellington beat Napoleon a day early in this version of history, at Quatre Bras instead of at Waterloo. I am very much indebted to Nick Foulkes’s wonderful book Dancing into Battle: A Social History of the Battle of Waterloo for an understanding of what life in Brussels and the surrounding area was like during the Hundred Days. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the period. I also employed Edith Saunders’s The Hundred Days: Napoleon’s Final Wager for Victory and Arms and the Woman: The Intimate Journal of an Amorous Baltic Nobleman in the Napoleonic Wars by Boris Uxkull for some details of camp life.
The town of Binché does, indeed, have a Gilles Day parade, but without dragons, alas. The rest of the festival is true to our history. Mostly.
The very astute reader will note that in Shades of Milk and Honey, Vincent’s father was a Count. This was a bizarre error, which I’m still not sure how I managed to commit, since there are no Counts in England, not even in my alternate history. He is an Earl and we will assume that Vincent was so overcome during his interview with Jane that he misspoke. Please do me that favour?
In Glamour in Glass, I tried to be somewhat more exacting. Because I am something of a geek, I wanted to eliminate as much language as possible from the book that would have been an anachronism. To that end, I created a word list from the complete works of Jane Austen and used that as a spellcheck dictionary. It flagged any word that she didn’t use, which allowed me to look it up to see if it existed in 1815 or if the meaning had changed. I then either selected an alternate word, or, in a few cases, opted to keep the word because it was clearer than the other options, and I am writing for a modern audience.
Some of the anachronisms that surprised me were words such as: bandstand, belongings, blink, condone, harrumph, knowledgeable, needlepoint, and utilitarian. If you are interested in reading more about the words that I removed from the novel, visit www.maryrobinettekowal.com/deleted-words
By the way, these words did not exist in the Regency but I decided to keep them anyway: windswept, scissored, and outmass.
There are other anachronisms. There always will be. If you spot one, please let me know by emailing [email protected]. They vex me and I would like to avoid them in future novels.
If you are so inclined, I thought I would mention that I have extras for my readers, including short stories, a game, and behind-the-scene peeks. Simply drop by www.ShadesOfMilkAndHoney.com.
Thank you for reading.