A Father’s Worry

Point of view is a critical tool for a fiction writer. Generally in romance the point of view is one of the two primary protagonists–the hero or the heroine. I reached a point in The Value of Pity when the hero is badly injured and beyond dialog and the heroine, well, she is communication impaired. How do you feel when an author slips into the POV of a secondary character? Here’s an example for Work in Process Wednesday:

The Mallets’ physician and friend, Edwin Peabody, arrived  before the Earl of Chadbourn. Andrew Mallet counted that a blessing. He needed the assessment of a man he trusted and time to prepare. It would fall to Andrew to tell Chadbourn, his oldest friend, that the love of his life had perished and that his son and heir was in mortal danger and unlikely to walk again even if he survived. The more information he had, the better.

Making it worse, Emma had confided to Georgiana in a torrent of tears that she was evading her mother and attempting to run off with the Earl of Chalfont when the accident occurred. The girl feared she might be to blame; Mallet had no doubt. Emma caused the accident. He feared Chadbourn’s reaction. Even the mildest of men would succumb to rage in that situation.

Concern for his own daughter didn’t help. Athena had driven her mother to the brink for two days in her frantic attempts to insert herself into Arthur’s care. Where others saw her as cold and indifferent, Andrew understood her demands for facts and persistence in seeing Arthur to be as much a sign of the depth of her distress as Emma’s incessant weeping. Between them, he and John Parker had kept her from the sick room, but Andrew had begun to think it might be better to allow her access.

Note: excerpts from works in progress may have not yet been edited, will likely undergo change, and may not even make it into the final work!