Sometimes
Love Doesn’t Have to be Put into Words…
Sign
language…
Most
people are aware of it today…the graceful twirling of fingers and hands
representing words and phrases so those unable to hear or speak may
communicate. How many have seen an interpreter signing as someone makes a
speech or a pastor gives a sermon?
Modern
science has enabled many deaf persons to hear again and also to speak, but
signing is a boon to those who can’t be helped.
Think of being in a room full of people, all speaking at once, yet none
making a sound.
This
wasn’t always the case. Once having a deaf child, and subsequently one who was
also mute because he couldn’t hear, was considered retribution from God for
some transgression.
Though
sign language had been known in Great Britain as early as 1570, there were no
set methods for teaching those who couldn’t hear, Parents communicated with a
few gestures which the stricken one came to learn meant specific actions.
Occasionally the child would grunt an acknowledgement, not real words, but
something showing it understood.
That
changed in 1760 when Thomas Braidwood, a teacher from Edinburgh, founded
Braidwoods’ Academy for the Deaf and Dumb. This was considered a
highly-startling endeavor since it was the first school for the deaf in the
kingdom. In fact, some people thought it a scandal since a good many families
believed to try and change the deafness of a child was an affront to the Diety.
Braidwood
managed to change that opinion by teaching the children of some very influential
people. Soon the Academy was thriving and giving hope to many youngsters and an
occasional adult. Several of the people coming to be taught stayed to be
trained as teachers and later went back to their homes to open their own
schools.
One of
the men trained by Braidwood was Joseph Watson who became the headmaster of the
first public school for the deaf.
That’s
the theme of Love is Silent…
…and here the story of Anna Leighton, teacher of the deaf,
and David, Baron Mayfield, begins.
In my novel, Watson trains the fictitious Rupert McAdam who
returns to London to open the McAdam Academy. The school uses the method called
sign-supported speech, which
incorporated both speaking words aloud while simultaneously signing them.
When Dr. McAdam receives a letter from the Right Honourable
Eleanor Wood, asking for a tutor for her younger brother who has been deaf
since the age of five, following a carriage accident in which his nanny and
parents were killed, the doctor suggests his best teacher of young children. Anna Leighton came to his school to learn
signing so she could teacher her younger sister who lost her hearing after a
bout of red measles. She’s such a good teacher, he hires her to help other
youngsters.
Anna will be the best person for the young baron, he
decides.
What he doesn’t know is that the baron is no child. He’s a
young man approaching his majority, and his lands and title are threatened by a
cousin wishing to have him declared incompetent so he can inherit. David Woods’ entire future depends on what
Anna can teach him, and she has only a few months to do so.
Because he lost his hearing at age five, David can still
speak a few words and has rudimentary reading skills as well as the remnants of
near-forgotten manners. He has a habit of asking embarrassing question in
public places, however, and, from his association with young men in a nearby
village, a most crass sense of humor. His only friend is his horse and the two are
nearly inseparable. In fact, David spends most of his day out riding
who-knows-where.
Nevertheless, Anna senses an inquiring intelligence behind
his undisciplined exterior. David reveals he’s eager to learn…unfortunately the
things he wishes most to know can’t be found in any book, and they involve Anna
in a very intimate way.
More unfortunately, Anna finds herself responding to his
earnest but often crude overtures…
Love is
Silent
is a romance set in a period of manners and artifice, when young men were
well-mannered, well-spoken, and expected to have survived a series of affairs
before settling into marriage. David has
experienced none of that, though with Anna’s help, he’s quite willing to do the
latter.
The only question is…will Anna survive the scandal if it’s
discovered what she and her pupil have done?
Love is
Silent
is available from Class Act Books in both electronic and paperback forms.
BUY LINK:
Publisher's website: http://www.classactbooks.com/index.php/component/virtuemart/romance/love-is-silent-detail?Itemid=0
Find out more about Toni V. Sweeney and her pseudonym Icy
Snow Blackstone at:
Twitter: @ToniVSweeney
