I matched one of my 'why not try this' fandoms this year in Yuletide and had a lovely request for Heyer's Cotillion. I've never written Heyer fic, or any Regency romance fic unless you count the more Heyeresque parts of Bujold, but she's a longstanding favourite author and I wanted to have a go, and Cotillion is such a fun book, one of my absolute favourites of hers. And Lord Legerwood is one of Heyer's many delightfully sardonic older men and so writing his POV was tremendous fun - I had a couple of false starts trying to write something for this request, but once I started writing Lord Legerwood it all came together very smoothly. And a comedy of misunderstandings seemed very appropriate for Heyer.

By Special Licence (Heyer - Cotillion, canon pairings, epilogue, 2000 words)

To get into the spirit of the thing, as well as reading Cotillion a couple of times through I have been slowly reading through all the Heyers, partly to get the voice and also because it's always like this when I pick up one Heyer: I have to read all the other ones immediately afterwards. I haven't reread any of the Georgian ones yet because I wanted to keep my head in the Regency voice, but now that my fic is all done I will be getting to them because what can beat These Old Shades - the first Heyer I ever read, not necessarily the best place to start except of course it is the best place to start. Anyway, I have been reading through the Regencies more or less in favourite order, so I've now reached Arabella - which has many things I do love but the 'told a silly lie and now have to stick to it' trope isn't one of them. (Top ten Heyer Regencies, not in order: Frederica, Venetia, A Civil Contract, Cotillion, Friday's Child, The Nonesuch, The Foundling, The Unknown Ajax, The Reluctant Widow, Black Sheep.) But even my least favourite Heyers are still fun to reread.

And as well as what I wrote, the authors of my gifts are revealed:
morvidra wrote Happiness In Time Of Joy (Wimsey missing scenes from Busman's Honeymoon)
longwhitecoats wrote Double Exposure (long Wimsey casefic with Harriet/Peter/Bunter)
fullborn wrote Wandrers Nachtlied ('The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp' Theo/Clive fic).

Thank you all very much!