Modern readers would give her more slack than her contemporaries. Another source of reader sympathy: "She was defending herself!" But, yes, Tracy would at least need to have a hand on her in a definitively threatening fashion to justify killing him.

Ah, much to think about. Fortunately between rewriting Lucy and actually getting to that point in Anna's story, I've got a few months to make up my mind. t ponders

Um - why have her kill him?

Why not just have her wound him, badly enough to completely fuck up her head? The sort of wound that would effectively end his career, but leave him alive, and just as eager to hush it up as she would be?

Wouldn't leaving him alive make him something of an unresolved issue, a thorn in her side? I'd think it'd add an extra layer of hate to the issues he already has--I'm already planning to give him a run-in or two with Jack, and maybe even a snubbing by Anna, just so he already resents them even before he has something to blackmail them over.

What's wrong with the unresolved issue? It leaves a delicate flavour of possibility of a future book.

It gives him more importance, though, too. Whiny villains don't do well in returns unless they're mad genius whiny villains. Tracy is whiny, didn't you say, Susan?

Well, in the nature of things in romance world, the most Jack and Anna can be is supporting characters in someone else's story, and the only way I can see it happening at all is if I get to write their children's stories someday, a quarter century later on the other side of the Atlantic. Not really seeing a place for Tracy there.

No, if I don't kill him, I feel like there needs to be some kind of resolution--or, at least, that I can't go through with my original plan of just using him as the impetus to get Anna to return to England and then getting him out of the way in an easy, no-consequences manner. Crit partner was right to call me on having created an implausibly stupid blackmailer. If he lives, he has to have some kind of continuing presence in the story.

Tracy is whiny, didn't you say, Susan?

Oh, hella whiny.

Could you make him die of complications from the wound she gives him, later on in the book? I'm all for anything that adds layering to characters, when it's possible to do it without compromising the story.

It's a possibility. Once I'm finished with the Lucy rewrite, I think I'm going to sketch out a rough outline/synopsis just to see how much plot I have, and whether I need to complicate or simplify to have the right balance for the length and feel I'm aiming for.