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Clothes maketh the heroine
27 Monday Mar 2023
27 Monday Mar 2023
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04 Friday Mar 2022
Posted Author Interviews, blogging, heroes, heroines, Lists of, New book, Romance, Smugglers, Uncategorized
inSHEHANNE–Okay dudes can I get a word in now? It’s taken a while but drumroll and fanfare–a playlist means there will soon be a new book. Book two of Cornish Rogues featuring a hero and heroine, who I think you might get the drift of from some of these song titles. There’s also a couple of classicals thrown in that feature in the book, Bach’s Goldberg Variations
and a Mozart. And the Cyrin version of Where is my Mind? is also something I play. Both leads are certainly looking for their minds. Of course it should have been ‘Where is My Hamster?’ but then ‘Gone I hope,’ might be the reply. To return to Mercury and the Architects, Mercury does indeed sing with the Architects, one of whom is the amazing LYNZI on the list in her own right with Be My Valentine.
18 Saturday Jan 2020
The Historical Cornish Environment—a land of Smugglers and Secrets …
‘A separate people. Throughout the early modern period, many Cornish people continued to regard Cornwall, not as an English county, but as a British country, called Kernow. … ‘
‘Physical isolation provides the key to Cornish history. A rocky peninsula, jutting out some 90 miles into the Atlantic Ocean, Cornwall stands at the extreme south-western corner of the British Isles. Surrounded by waves on all sides but one, it is practically severed from the adjoining lands to the east by the River Tamar, which runs almost from sea to sea. Although mediaeval Cornwall was – technically speaking – an English county just like any other, the culture of the ordinary Cornish people remained entirely different from that of their English neighbours. They still spoke in the Cornish tongue: a language, closely allied with Welsh. They still prided themselves on being descended from British ancestors, rather than Saxon ones. And, as late as the mid-16th century, they still possessed their own styles of dress, their own folklore, their own naming-customs, their own agricultural practices and their own games and pastimes.’
So the past economy of Cornwall might have been based on a range of industries, including metal mining, fishing, china clay production, wool cloth manufacture, quarrying and ship building. Indeed Cornwall’s rich mineral resources may certainly have been exploited on a large scale since medieval times and rows may rage today between surfers, environmentalists and those bent on lifting the tin tailings sitting on the sea bed to be used in gadgets like phones and computers, Cornwall is also known, historically for another ‘industry’. A sort of ‘cottage’ one in that rather a large number of its inhabitants were involved. And one that the landscape and environment lent itself to naturally. Smuggling.
But the location as described above, the fact the people saw themselves as different weren’t the only things to lend themselves to the trade. Parts of the actual coastline were very nicely placed for trips to France and the Scillies. Then there was the nature of the terrain, vast empty beaches, rocky caves, jutting headlands, little better than cart tracks for roads—and, as a quick glance at any map of Cornwall will show, quite a big expanse of moor sitting smack in the middle, while the inhabited bits cluster round the coast. It was nicely private all right.
At its peak, an estimated 500,000 gallons of French brandy per year were smuggled into Cornish coves. Smuggling has many stereotypes and these images often include a small group of men unloading barrels in the night. However, until the early 1800s it was a highly organized, well financed business that was run on very efficient lines.
Of course the reason for all this unhindered smuggling wasn’t just the highly organized locals, it was the weakness of the excisemen, although in their defence, the level of local support, the sheer organizational skills of those involved, which frequently included the clergy, the landowners, in fact, you name it, and the overwhelming numbers of those involved, made it quite impossible, even for the most dedicated exciseman, to police. So a lot went right on under their noses, in broad daylight.
“They were told that if they persisted in trying to make an arrest they would have their brains blown out. As the law now stands, I fear a criminal prosecution would have been useless for the reason, which it shocks me to mention, that a Cornish jury would certainly acquit the smugglers….These, my lord, are the facts.”
Did the tramp, tramp of smugglers’ feet, the alleged digging of tunnels from houses, damage the rock, the wild flowers, the beach grasses, the environment? I have no idea. But, since reading books set there and further along the south coast, I felt the ruggedness, the isolation, the sometimes crumbling decay of their own lives, that drove people into this world, might lend itself to a book someday. And it has. Finally. Set not only in Cornwall but at a point when the government was beginning to fight back and seriously crackdown by every means at their disposal. I hope this book trailer roughly explains it.
13 Friday Sep 2019
Posted Author Interviews, blogging, Book review, book tour, Reviews, Smugglers, writing
inI don’t usually do this.
Only because Jane Hunt can’t get her reviews on Amazon. Thank you. Now do we want the Cleanser here, or not…
And as Destiny, my high functioning depressive heroine says
“Really? And I’m the Man in the Moon. I go out at night and I fly up into the sky in a pair of silver breeches and shine me light on the world.”
Indeed it is Friday the 13th, not the best day in the world to release a new book on BUT then again, it is about a curse. It is also a book about two emotionally bereft people and features a heroine who is what is called a high functioning depressive. She will be along next week to talk more about that.
I made the decision many years ago that I didn’t want to write about people–hamsters either before you interrupt–whose lives were perfect.
Which of us, in reality, has that kind of life? But, as today approached and after the many hair tearing moments I had on this book, especially trying to get in humour that was respectful to an emotional state…well… humour I know my readers expect, let’s just say there were plenty times I thought sometimes the path less chosen is indeed less chosen for a purpose.
That is why it was wonderful this morning to step online to a DM Facebook message from Jane Hunt, an author and reviewer who had an ARC rough copy and who does not shrink from pulling her punches. I want to thank her for that message AND also her review. This is my seventh book and my day, unlike when I released my first two, was to be spent getting on with my present WIP, the household tasks etc. But now I AM going to at least treat myself to a wee pre-Fri evening drink with my Mr. Oh obvi by pre I mean pre Friday nite meal with wine back here. But special days should be celebrated. I think Jane’s review has encouraged me…
…because I felt she got my leads AND after what I said the other week about this being the shortest on secondaries book I have written, she still felt the story was inclusive, the world of the two leads. So yep, I am sharing this review AND the post I wrote for her about the things that inspired Destiny You can look away now if you don’t want to know the score.
‘Cornwall in 1801 rife with smugglers and excise men trying to catch them is the setting for this clever, passionate and witty novel. Destiny Rhodes is cursed, everything she touches turns to dust. All she has left is Doom Bar Hall, her ancestral home, and now even this is in jeopardy.
Divers O’Roarke is a man with an agenda and so many secrets. He left Cornwall in the wake of tragedy, but not before he’d cursed the young woman he thought responsible. Now he’s back, the victor, but what he finds is not what he expected. What he feels is not what he thought, but he has a mission, and being turned to ashes by a cursed woman is not part of it.
The setting for this story is atmospheric and authentic. The subtle use of historical detail, lets you visualise nineteenth-century Cornwall. The sinister smugglers, the close-knit community, the rugged beauty of the coast, and the ethos of danger and suspicion, Amidst the roaring sea and windswept coastline, the story of two people, both emotionally bereft, and driven unfolds.
The dialogue is sharp and amusing, and the internal musings even more so. You spend a lot of time in Destiny and O’Roake’s minds, and they are both full of confusion and conniving.
The plot is pacy and twisty. Just trying to work out who O’Roarke is, keeps you guessing. Then there’s the exciseman Lyon, who becomes increasingly sinister. This story is inclusive, you feel part of the deadly game Destiny and Divers are playing, experience their anger, bewilderment, fear, and the passion they cannot hide. The intriguing plot comes to an intense conclusion, revealing who Destiny and Divers O’Roake are in more ways than you can imagine.
O’Roarke’s Destiny’, is historical romance for the twenty-first century. Complex mind games, passionate, sensual romance, and a fast-paced riveting plot that rides the waves of time. I’m looking forward to meeting the next ‘Cornish Rogue.’
Guest Post – Shehanne Moore – Inspiring Destiny
Firstly Jane, thank you so much for inviting me here today to your wonderful book review blog, which is such a help to authors and for your continued support. Always appreciated.
I actually got the idea for O’Roarke’s Destiny the night we sold our house back in 2014. Yep, a while ago and I actually started it when I finished the Viking and The Courtesan in 2015 and put it aside because other scheduled books got in the way. I’d lived in this particular house for almost 30 years and it was a hard house to leave for many reasons, nor was this necessarily a chosen thing. Although looking back now I don’t know what I was worrying about. Anyway, the first night the house was on sale, the second viewer arrived—the dad of one of my pupils who lived along the road. I thought they’d come about something to do with the lessons. Anyway, he soon dashed that hope when he said, ‘I will make you a good offer tomorrow morning first thing. I have already put my house on sale in the hope and prayer of this one. But I know this must be upsetting for you, so don’t show me round, I was burned on the house sale three doors along a few months ago, so you don’t have to.’ And he was as good as every word. Well, as I joked to a friend a few days later, I should have said, ‘And I come with this house. I just need a room.’ Then I thought … bingo, idea for a book there.
Ideas, mind you, are nothing like what ends up on paper. This book started as a frothy battle over a house that only starts a few years later when the hero brings home another woman, a fiancée and the heroine housekeeper doesn’t like this and she discovers her own feelings for the hero. While this had its merits, another idea—a stronger one–formed, that was to start the book at the point where the house has been lost in a card game to a man where there’s past history. But, this seemed a little contrived, given this man has been sort of lost to the world for years. What was he even doing back in the neighbourhood? So I suppose my next piece of inspiration was in the books of Daphne DuMaurier, the smuggling, piratey books I’ve long loved. Having tackled, pirates, Highlanders, Vikings, I’d wanted to do a book about smugglers. Where better to do that than in Cornwall? Why not make that world the backdrop to the story.
Books aren’t just nothing like the idea that you start with—well mine never are, alas–they are about keeping the story going. There’s only so many times two people can argue about the choice of dining room wallpaper for example or the fact that that’s the best antique dishes sitting out at the bin, so while this starts out as a battle over a house, that is only a first layer, with lids to be lifted on a couple who are slogging it out over so much more within themselves and where they are in their lives when the story opens. And that’s not actually the house at all.
02 Monday Sep 2019
Tags
Black Wolf Books, Cornwall, Historical romance, Newbook, O'Roarke's Destiny, Romance, Shehanne Moore, Smugglers, Wreckers
SHEY : Dearest Silv, may I say how very kind of you it is to ask me here today to my blog. I just can’t get over it. The great honour it is. To answer your question about Lizzie I wrote her out because she had no further use …
SHEY. Yes, Lizzie-alas–was adding nothing to the plot.
Nor did I need her after chapter one for the main reason I use a secondary character, that is to hold a mirror to a lead in some way, their personality, their actions, perhaps show them as I did with Dainty and Mitchell Killgower in The Writer and The Rake, in a better light and also I suppose not to make the whole thing too claustrophobic –as I also partly used Susan for in The Unraveling of Lady Fury, and give Fury a sort of confidant. Lizzie was not going to fulfil any of these things and letting her stay was going to change how I saw this book. So why have her? There’s also a one scene appearance by a few children, but while they are contributing to the story there, they’re what you might term decorative extras. Spear-carriers in theatrical terms.
Overall I don’t work with a huge cast of speaking characters but I do generally work with more throughout.
Shey. Indeed I think we got that. The world of Doom Bar Hall itself, despite being smack bang in smuggling and wrecking country, is a tight world. Destiny is a loner, probably a high functioning depressive who bashes through her daily routine and set of tasks with tunnel vision. She’s not one for friends—she’d never been what you might call popular, except with the men she drove to distraction years previously–and she confides in nobody, the family were larger than life that way locally. She’s a product of that family. So to have put in a single scene where she does would have been wrong for her as a character and unbalanced the book. Divers may swagger into that world full of confidence and control, underneath he’s a man on the edge, holding it together and no more. I won’t give away too much of the plot by saying why he’s at this stage when the book opens. He has a sidekick, Gil, to show there’s another side to him and to mirror some of this ‘disintegration’ but that’s it re Gil being there.
And because he could be trusted. A hard thing to come by, not just in this world but the world he inhabited. That dancing, dark and shady place of gnarled shadows and twisted paths, haunted by the need to keep one step ahead where nothing could ever be as it seemed. Not even himself.”
There’s reasons for Orwell–Destiny’s brother
face as long as a six fiddle cases, and twenty four rainy days,
and as for Lyon?
Shey. He has quite an appetite.
You knew everything but nothing of what he was really thinking. Hand him a farthing out the goodness of your heart and he’d still need to know where both came from. The farthing and the goodness. Probably your heart too.
Shey I think it’ s important when you are creating a world for a book and I try with each book to create a world, to think of the things that help show it. And for me in this book it wasn’t the wider smuggling picture which is actually central to the story, but the putting of this hero and heroine and what unfolds in this world between them, centre stage. I felt that could only happen with a small playing ensemble, so even the servants had to go. I think it’s sometimes something to consider in terms of cementing a setting, depending on what that setting is. This one was not the world of ball gowns and dance cards and it’s not a pretty one of smuggling either. And now before you open the voddie and do the Cossack dance… a book trailer.
Once he’d have died to possess her, now he just might…
Beautiful, headstrong young widow Destiny Rhodes was every Cornish man’s dream. Until Divers O’Roarke cursed her with ruin and walked out of Cornwall without a backwards glance. Now he’s not only back, he’s just won the only thing that hasn’t fallen down about her head—her ancestral home. The home, pride demands she throw herself in with, safe in the knowledge of one thing. Everything she touches withers to dust.
He’d cursed her with ruin.
Now she’d have him live with the spoils of her misfortune.
Though well versed in his dealings with smugglers and dead men, handsome rogue Divers O’Roarke is far from sure of his standing with Destiny Rhodes. He had no desire to win her, doesn’t want her in his house, but while he’s bent on the future, is there one when a passionate and deadly game of bluff ensues with the woman he once cursed? A game where no-one and nothing are what they seem. Him most of all.
And when everything she touches turns to dust, what will be his fate as passion erupts? Will laying past ghosts come at the highest price of all?
September 13th 2019 Black Wolf Books.
29 Tuesday Jan 2019
Shey – Cos frankly I had to kick your butts into gear.
Shey- it is kind as you’re getting till you get back into line.
‘Had her mind really whispered Lady Margaret this morning? James Flint Blackmoore. Pig. Pig. Complete. Absolute. Pig. Bastard. Now, that’s what she should have thought.’
Her gorge rose even though she had something on him now. A shipload in fact. Rescind the rules? In her dreams. His too. The bastard could take what he got and welcome.
Genoa 1820
Malmesbury would father the heir to the Beaumont dukedom. Count Vellagio wasn’t a contender. What she’d logged in her book about him this afternoon said it would be a huge mistake anyway. The same for the Duke of Southey—young, certainly, but a drunk with quiffed hair and filthy fingernails.
No, Malmesbury was the best. The only. Intelligent without being painful, fashionable yet not a dandy, and retaining enough of his looks at the age of fifty not to be outright repulsive.
Of course, it would have helped if Thomas could have fathered the Beaumont heir himself. But as he lay dead in a box in the cellar, that wasn’t likely.
“Gentlemen, you know as well as I do, this is an unusual evening.” Shivers ran up and down Lady Fury Shelton’s spine as she stood in the center of her darkened antechamber.
With its festooned corners and gold-scrolled furniture, the carmine-walled room was the best place for such an assignation, although the tiled floor and the cool clang of evening bells snaking in through the parted shutters made it chillier than usual. The candlelight glinting on the pale oval of Messalina’s face on the hanging above the bed, too. Earlier, the air had been hotter than a boiled lobster. She’d had to change twice in the space of an hour because she was too.
“Hear, hear.” Southey raised his crystal glass.
Where else, but to his obviously parched lips. A toast to her? Already it was obviously beyond his capability to sit down facing her as the other men were, with their drinks untouched on the tiny tables beside them, the epitome of good manners.
“My interviews are complete. Shortly, I will make my choice. Then, having done so, I will invite the said gentleman to this bedroom, where he will perform his duty as often as necessary.”
“All in one night. I say, that’s a tall order for a man. Isn’t it, chaps?”
For Southey, yes, it would be. Given the state in which he’d arrived at her door this afternoon, and what he’d sunk of her amaretto and limoncello in the meantime, it was a miracle he could still stand there against the marble fireplace. Never mind anything else.
But she wasn’t about to debate the subject. Maybe she was fit to snap the spine of the tooled leather book she was clutching–a pity it wasn’t his throat—the Moon could not look serener.
“I say, Fury, how the blazes are you going to tell right away?” Southey hiccupped. “Don’t them things take weeks and weeks to find out?”
“The one chosen will be here for weeks. Those not chosen,”—him in other words–“will leave within the hour. I think we may be clear that at any time in the future, should any one of you breathe a word to anyone about this, I will find out. I have sufficient information in this book here to ruin each and every one of you. Make no mistake, I will use it.”
“By God, Fury, you don’t need to talk like that about any of us, I’m sure,” Malmesbury, who had so far watched the proceedings with an amused smile, muttered. “You want to get one over on Thomas; I, for one, don’t blame you. We all saw him sneaking about with that Porto Antican tart when you first arrived.”
“Yes.” Who hadn’t?
“And do you think we’re unaware what his illness has done to him? The rages? The drinking? The way he keeps you here like a pet poodle?”
That too. Thomas wasn’t who she was getting one over on, but she couldn’t very well say so here.
She held in her hands every dirty little secret concerning these men. All documented in the yellow, dog-eared pages of her book. The leaves also contained letters, bills, testimonies, transactions. She kept it all beneath lock and key. So they obeyed her.
In fact, she kept dirty secrets on every member of the aristocracy she came into contact with, so she was safe for another hour, another day. She was hardly about to lose that balance of control by admitting this wasn’t about Thomas.
No. She could have paid a Porto Antican organ grinder to father her child and walked away, no questions asked. The one at the end of the harbor was handsome enough. But Lady Margaret would smell an organ grinder’s bastard at a hundred paces. Hadn’t the woman scented Fury?
Malmesbury shifted in his chair. “Where is he, by the way?”
“Who? Thomas? Thomas is visiting his father.”
No lie. Had any of these men facing her in the flickering candlelight known whether Thomas’s father lived or died, she’d never have chosen them.
“Even if he wasn’t, Thomas wants you to know me well. That is why he’s gone.” She hesitated. Thomas would spare her this next lie, although there was more than one grain of truth in it now. “Sadly, it is more than he can do himself these days. Now, I must ask you all to return to your chambers and wait. My mind is almost made up. Susan, here, will call in due course for the chosen one to return. And we’ll begin.”
“Dash it, that’s good to know.” Southey thumped his glass down on the marble mantelpiece.
In addition to his drinking, his casual mistreatment of the Murano goblet, while not worth an entry in her book, made him all the more unsuitable. What careless traits might a child inherit? Besides, his odor as he staggered past her made her stomach heave. It took every ounce of her self-control to remain where she was, inhaling the fragrance of the citrus-scented candle Susan had lit to disperse the gloom.
He paused and turned toward her. “All this cloak and dagger stuff is killing, you know.”
“Yes. Certainly for some.”
“What if you can’t … you know?”
“Oh, I’m sure I can.”
Malmesbury got to his feet. “I shall wait then, Fury.”
There was no doubt his palms itched to touch her, but she shrank from letting him. It didn’t bode well for later, but at least he didn’t smell. There wasn’t a single crease in his immaculate silver frock coat. And his shoe buckles not only shone, they sparkled. His valet must be remarkable, whoever he was.
Count Vellagio was silent as the crypt. Speaking limited English—and not much more Italian—he always was, unless it was absolutely necessary.
It was one mercy at least.
***
“Oh, I will fetch the chosen one, will I?” Susan folded her arms across her ample bosom, the instant the door closed.
Fury managed two steps and sank down at her dressing table. “Just cover the bruises, will you? I can’t have them on show. It might affect the conception-–or at least it might affect their ability to perform. They see that and God knows what they’ll think. I know I would.” She tossed the book into the open drawer. “So?”
“Madam—”
“If I have to take a stick to your back, I will.”
“A stick? That’s fine talk, when I think of all I’ve done for you.”
“I know you mean well,” Fury wheedled, dabbing a little perfume on her wrists. “But I believe it’s important for a woman to look her best, regardless of the situation. So don’t argue. I honestly can’t take arguing tonight. I don’t know if I can take anything more.”
“Look your best? For a bunch of drunken old faggots. Sadistic old faggots. Do you know what I heard about Vellagio today?”
Fury picked up her powder puff. When it came to looking her best, she might as well make a start, if Susan wasn’t going to help. “Whatever it was, you shouldn’t have been listening.”
“It was at the market. How could I help it?”
“By covering your ears. Anyway, I thought you didn’t speak Italian?”
“He uses boys. Young boys. Whether they want to or not. He whips them too.”
For a moment Fury stared at the marbled surface of the table. If she could draw strength from its veins to hers, that would be nice. If she could draw strength from anything, in fact. But she was past that now. All she could do was choose one of these old faggots.
“Really? Well, I heard it was young girls. But whichever it is, while I know you mean well, you’re not in my situation. In fact, it’s hard to think of anyone who is. But if anyone was, I’m sure they’d do what I’m doing.”
“You think.”
“We both know it’s this or nothing. I can’t … I won’t be cast off without a penny. Not again. It was bad enough the first time. And anyway, it’s no more than Lady Margaret deserves.” Wincing, she swept the dark fall of hair back from her neck. “Now, please, a little powder—”
“A little powder?” Susan folder her arms tighter. “It will take more than a little powder to cover that mess this time.”
“Just think like Lady Macbeth, will you? And stop arguing. You’ve done it before.” Fury raised her head as a gust of wind blew in through the open shutters. “Anyway, the men aren’t all old. Or faggots.”
“Fine. Have it your own way.” Fury almost ceased breathing as Susan secured the shutters, then bustled across the floor. “You know you always do. Though I’m not thinking of Lady Margaret. Or of what she deserves, either. I’m thinking of you.”
“Then don’t. You know I don’t require it.”
“I’m thinking you should just tell that old toad where to stuff her money. You could find a protector here in Genoa. A woman like you.”
“A woman like me?” Fury met her green-eyed reflection in the not-yet-paid-for glass. “And what would that be, exactly?” Long ago she’d stopped wondering, buffeted by fortune’s changing winds. Forced to snatch what she could to survive. Always knowing one false foot-fall would bring her down. “Anyway, why would I want a protector? Thomas was that, at the start. Now look at me, without a penny to my name again. No. I’ve had my fill of protectors. I want to guarantee my future. The future of … Well …” Her eyes dulled in the glass. “You know as well as I do the things that are dear.”
“But madam, if you didn’t have the money to pay certain bills, my sister wouldn’t—”
“That’s what you say, when we all know money is the most important thing on the planet.” She dabbed a little rouge on her cheeks. “You know the dire nature of my predicament, what I must guarantee and why. That damned old bag hated me from the first. Don’t tell me she doesn’t lie awake at nights just thinking of new ways to torture and humiliate me. But poisoning Thomas’s father against me? Cajoling him on his death bed into insisting Thomas must provide an heir before succeeding to the dukedom? What kind of new low was that? One I would never stoop to. In fact, now I think about it, I don’t know anyone else who would. Well, it’s one blessing at least that Lady Margaret lives in England and I’m here. Even if, in other ways, that’s a torture to me.”
Susan sprinkled a dusting of powder onto the dressing table as if she were measuring the ingredients for a cake, and then wiped her hands down her apron. “Indeed I do, madam, I just think, in fact I know—”
Despite herself, Fury touched what glittered around her neck. The single midnight-blue pendant Thomas had given her two Christmases ago. The copy of it, rather. Because that, like this, was also burning necessity. Her Hatton Garden jewel-maker had served her well, though. Thomas had never once suspected a thing of her need for that kind of money, and how it ran to far more than blackmail.
“Before you say another word on the subject, Susan–-as I know you’re going to and you should know I don’t want to hear–-even this jewel here wouldn’t pay for what I need to guarantee for Storm. It’s like me. Fake.”
“Undervalued is what I’d say. What about blackmail, then? That book—”
“Blackmail is messy, which is why I’m locking the book away again.”
“It’s not my business, but when I think of all the years you’ve bribed dressmakers and housemaids and coachmen to get what’s in it …”
“Out of necessity only. Knowing that at any time, this could all tumble down. No. This is the best way. Besides, think how good it will feel, finally outfoxing Lady Margaret. She insists on an heir. She gets one. Do you really think I’m going to care if the old bat coos over some child that’s not Thomas’s? When that’s going to be the very best feeling in the world? Well?”
“You might not say that in nine months time.”
“I can’t think of a reason why not.”
“So, who are you considering, madam? Southey? He’s certainly the youngest.”
“Well, now I can’t possibly lower myself to having Vellagio, I’m thinking Malmesbury, actually.”
“Malmesbury?” Susan’s fingers didn’t falter, but Fury sensed her start of surprise. Not in admiration of her sense of judgment either.
“Oh, I do admit that Southey would probably be less trouble and far more malleable. But Malmesbury’s hardly one-legged and toothless. I’m sure he knows how to treat a woman properly. Besides, so long as he’s—not like Thomas—what does it matter?”
Truth to tell, if anyone could understand her predicament, Thomas would have. For her sake, he’d tried ensuring an heir. But these last six months, as what pressed on his brain swelled, well … she certainly didn’t want any man treating her like Thomas had.
“That would be hard, madam, given the things His Grace did to you.”
“Well, we must remember, he wasn’t always like that. No. I think I’ve decided, Malmesbury, and I … Well, I think I should just go along there and get it over with. The sooner the better, don’t you think?” She smoothed a smoky curl into place on her forehead. “Besides, my reckoning is, he positively expects it.”
“What? Malmesbury? That old–”
“Oh, yes.” She reached toward the open trinket chest. “Now, what do you think? Sapphire earrings or plain gold?”
“I don’t see either matters, since they’re not going to be on very long.”
“Just the same.” She fastened on the sapphire drops. “You obviously didn’t see the way he stared there just now. I very much doubt he can contain himself.”
“The old goat.”
“Well. Who knows? If he’s a randy one, it might even be rather fun.” She marveled at herself for laughing when shadows ringed her eyes. But there, so long as she got through this, what did it matter?
Susan’s hand rested on her shoulder. “Then I’ll get him for you, madam, if this is truly your choice.”
“No.” Fun or not—and she thought not—the notion of admitting him here, to the bed she’d shared with Thomas, didn’t seem quite right somehow, even if she did manage to conceive the Beaumont heir. “I—I’ll do it. I need to calm my nerves. What bedroom is he in again? I confess I’ve forgotten.”
“The Blue Chamber.”
“Well then, think of England, as they say. Wish me luck. And remember to lock the drawer. However I choose to use it, that book is still the world to me. We must see it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.”
She rose, smoothed her dress—indigo silk, a perfect match for her hair and eyes– and took the candlestick.
If she did this, she forfeited forever her claim to be a respectable woman. Who was going to know though? Apart from herself, Susan and Malmesbury. That old coot would marry her in a second, if she gave the word. It was all the more reason to choose him. So why worry when the only thing that could possibly stand in her way was herself?
If she didn’t execute this task, then she faced being in the same position as she had been in seven years ago. It was fine at eighteen. But now, she needed to secure some things. Once she had, think of how free she’d be of men and all their machinations. For the first time ever. Women, too.
The Blue Chamber stood at the far end of the landing near the stairs, and she padded there noiselessly in the arc of the flickering candle, past the disapproving busts of the villa-owner Signor Santa-Rosa’s ancestors and the draped apertures, which she sometimes imagined hid more secrets than she did.
Malmesbury would be surprised to see her. Irresistibly dressed, jeweled, perfumed in a floating cloud of jasmine, and, hopefully, willing—as much as she could make herself, anyway. Who would know that beneath the rustling indigo silk, the heady, intoxicating jasmine she had bathed in earlier, she was like a skittish colt, ready to bolt? Was this how Marie Antoinette felt going to her execution? The queen’s deeds were certainly questionable. But her courage now? That was to be admired.
Besides, surprise could sometimes be the best method of attack. A man was, after all, a man. And, as she’d said to Susan, it might even be rather fun. If it wasn’t, well, in addition to swiftly retiring to her own bedroom, bolting the door and lying with cool lavender scented cloths on her forehead, there was her book, wasn’t there?
If he put a hand on her that was less than seemly, what she’d say to him on the subject of his murkier dealings would certainly ensure it would be fun the next time, if not before. Oh, this was going to be just fine.
Drawing a breath to quell her hammering heart, she raised her hand to tap on the door.
“Hello, sweetheart.” A low, American Southern voice drawled. Not from the other side of the door where she expected to hear something, but almost in her ear.
“Imagine seeing you here.”
Genoa 1820
Rule One: There will be no kissing. Rule two: You will be fully clothed at all times…
Widowed Lady Fury Shelton hasn’t lost everything—yet. As long as she produces the heir to the Beaumont dukedom, she just might be able to keep her position. And her secrets. But when the callously irresistible Captain James “Flint” Blackmoore sails back into her life, Lady Fury panics. She must find a way to protect herself—and her future—from the man she’d rather see rotting in hell than sleeping in her bed. If she must bed him to keep her secrets, so be it. But she doesn’t have to like it. A set of firm rules for the bedroom will ensure that nothing goes awry. Because above all else, she must stop herself from wanting the one thing that Flint can never give her. His heart.
Ex-privateer Flint Blackmoore has never been good at following the rules. Now, once again embroiled in a situation with the aptly named Lady Fury, he has no idea why he doesn’t simply do the wise thing and walk away. He knows he’s playing with fire, and that getting involved with her again is more dangerous than anything on the high seas. But he can’t understand why she’s so determined to hate him. He isn’t sure if the secret she keeps will make things harder—or easier—for him, but as the battle in the bedroom heats up, he knows at least one thing. Those silly rules of hers will have to go…
24 Saturday Nov 2018
CHAPTER ONE
Scotland, long ago and far away
Never look at the moon as you reach for the stars…
Displaying herself half naked had never been part of the plan. Especially not in a see-through scarlet dress, in the middle of a raging snowstorm. But Lord Ewen McDunnagh was handsome so a plan could change.
It was unfortunate it should change so soon when he was also a drunk with a reputation for hiking the skirts of all women between the ages of fifteen and fifty and she’d still to gain entry to Lochalpin, but then again a knife jabbed her throat–his. So why not?
Show herself fully naked either? Well? Wasn’t she meant to be alluring, despite the fact it killed her to the fossilized back ends of her chattering teeth?
“Lady McGurkie.”
Behind her, Kendrick—who else?—sounded as if he was hunched in abject despair over his palfrey.
When it later came to him describing her behavior, slut and she has learned nothing weren’t words her bastarding, old father would exactly want to hear. But the stars could only be reached in Lochalpin. That place no stranger had set foot in in five years. Alive anyway. Here she was on the doorstep.
So the first thing wasn’t to ignore the way the snowflakes glistening in Lord Ewen’s umber colored hair, had just caused her jaw to drop when he first rode through the curtain of snow, the fact he was hard strength in worn leather and his voice when he’d told her to stop in his name, was richer than winter blackberries, too. The first thing was to get over it at all costs. The doorstep that was. That she’d been told to expect a troll and this wasn’t a troll wasn’t even secondary.
What exactly was Lord Ewen going to do if she didn’t shut her cloak which, actually, it had killed her to open? Send her back down the pass with her father’s men? Hardly. If it was his brother, the terror of her glen, perhaps. But it had been agreed he wouldn’t be here today.
Fisting the reins to control her nickering mount, she raised her chin.
“Thank you, Kendrick but I do think I’m capable of handling this. Lord Ewen, sir. I’m your bride, here at last after an arduous journey through the storm. So … so if you would just be so kind, so good …” Good was not something he looked like he was much accustomed to being. Except perhaps in bed? So maybe being good was something she should skip over, “as to remove … “
“My bride?”
“Yes. To be, that is, sir. Because of course, we are not wed … yet.”
“Hmm …”
His sea-green glare said yet would be a long time coming–if at all–that he found her left nostril more appealing. Thankfully him wanting her was optional. In fact, if five years in her father’s dungeon had destroyed her allegedly famous allure, think of the hassle it saved her if he didn’t when she’d been expecting a troll and this wasn’t a troll.
There were shores she’d once danced on. This wasn’t one.
“Lady Kara—” Kendrick muttered again.
“Yes. Lady Kara McGurkie, my lord. Will you please stop interrupting me Kendrick, thank you? Chief … Chief Ian Dhub’s oldest daughter, in case you’ve somehow forgotten.”
Lord Ewen lowered his gaze, edged his lip with his tongue. The faintly rueful smile was the first, tiniest crack in his veneer.
Good. It would be a disaster if every piece of tittle-tattle ever to slip past his brother, Callm the Black Wolf, was just that and he’d changed his mind about this wedding.
Or he thought there was something untoward about her, sitting here dressed like this. But she could relax. Finally the glen beckoned.
“The tinker chief bastard’s daughter, my bride?” He thrust the dagger back in his belt, displaying an inch of hardened stomach muscle. “Don’t you just love learning something new in life every day, Princess?”
Yes, she did. Particularly that she was not going to have to fight him off until that ring sat on her finger. Obviously his brother wasn’t the only one who didn’t like strangers in his precious glen. It made her even more generously disposed towards him.
“Already my lord likes his little joke, I see.”
“Damn right I do.”
“Then I shall be sure to see—“
He leaned closer. It was only the brush of breath against her cheek. Yet the shock of the contact travelled the length of her body, the one she’d been dead inside of for five years. “Because where you’re concerned, you can count on it splitting my sides.” Before she could open her mouth he turned to the mob surrounding him, on foot and horseback. “Well, can’t she, lads?”
Lads? Do pardon her for thinking she’d seen better-looking corpses. But to a man they whistled, catcalled and stuck out their tongues, so obviously they were as alive as her, for the time being anyway.
This wasn’t going quite as well as she’d like and if Kendrick complained again it might go even less. What exactly was Lord Ewen going to do if she didn’t shut her cloak? Send her back—remember? At least she hoped she did. Because that would not be a good choice for her.
“Oh, I think you’ll find when we’re wed, sir, I shall count on anything.”
“My lips are wet already.” He curved them in a deep grin. “With what you’re showing me here.”
“Good.”
Because frankly—damn him–the time had come to stop sitting here showing him it in the perishing cold, the snow piling up in her hood and do what she’d come to do. She removed her gloved hand from the reins. “Because you agreed to put an end to the war between our clans by wedding Chief Ian Dhub’s daughter, Lady Kara McGurkie, did you not? And I am Lady Kara McGurkie. Yes. My credentials are right here should you wish to see them.”
An armory clinked. Claymores, dirks, and axes. All glinting in the snow-lit dusk. All leveled at her. His men were good all right. Far better than her father’s stretched on horseback along the narrow pass behind her. Imagine the wedding night if they did that around the bed.
“Jesus.” The sloping, three-legged, shaggy beast at his side—what it was she’d no idea, except that it had fangs and it yowled, as his boot hit its backside. “Hell, Dug. Shut up, will you?”
Dug? She swallowed. He called the dog, Dug? How basic. What would he call his children when he had them? Child? Bairn? You? Son …
Her ribs tightened.
God, her mind whispered, don’t waylay me on the road to perdition. You can’t win. But there it was in that same moment. A vision, a boy, sitting right there on Lord Ewen’s shoulder, pale as the snowflakes dusting it, ethereal as the roiling mist. The eyes blue as the sky on a sunny day. The same soft hair. Her boy, her son, Arland.
Children’s names?
Wedding nights?
Was she completely, ragingly insane?
There weren’t going to be any children. And there wasn’t going to be any wedding night.
Because, after the wedding feast, there wasn’t going to be any groom.
Desiring her could be murder.
To love, honor, and betray…
To get back her son, she will stop at nothing…
Dire circumstances have forced Kara McGurkie to forget she’s a woman. Dire circumstances force her to swear to love and honor, to help destroy a clan, in order to get back her son. But when dire circumstances force her to seduce her fiancé’s brother on the eve of the wedding, will the dark secrets she holds and her greatest desire be enough to save her from his powerful allure?
To save his people, neither will he…
Since his wife’s murder, Callm McDunnagh, the Black Wolf of Lochalpin, ruthlessly guards heart and glen from dangerous intruders. But from the moment he first sees Kara he knows he must possess her, even though surrendering to his passion may prove the most dangerous risk of all.
She has nothing left to fear except love itself…
Now only Kara can decide what passion can save or destroy, and who will finally learn the truth of the words… Till death do us part.Releasing December 7th. Now available on pre-order for (99 p?!1.29 cents..limited time, pre-order only. Also coming on print. Just need to sort that with the er.. dudes….
29 Monday Jan 2018
Shehanne. Well….
Shehanne.. Oh, you mean that one? ‘Why I needed a playlist for this book and it is so ceaselessly whining too?
Shehanne – Well, first of all it’s not the only whining things round here.
Shehanne – You know? I couldn’t agree more. I guess you just can’t help whining anyway even though there’s a few upbeat ones there. I mean obviously I chose Shut Up and Dance because the heroine is called Destiny. Oh and did i say, it is something I wish you’d do? You can get your little hamster rocks and socks off to that one. Then there’s some specially chosen, wonderfully atmospheric classical, largely because they are ones I play–Lachrymosa the Thalberg version–and I am certain it would be nothing for you to learn those.
By next week.
Look, this book was originally called The Lady Of Lavistock and it was a nice little rainbows and unicorns effort. She’s in the house. He wins the house. She comes with it in a rainbows and unicorns kind of way.
It’s all fine till the day he announces he’s getting married to someone else. The problems were there even then, because to open the story at the point of change, would have meant starting with his announcement, not with her losing the house. But the real problems started, seeing as you are so kindly asking,
when the hero threw the book at the end of the first section in chapter two, as my heroes often do.
he said. It was the first I knew. But hey do I ever argue?
I mean it’s not like I plot, or I might plot to get rid of you lot.
So? Where were we? Well, he also didn’t want to be called Manning Carver and he was most certainly NOT for being some fancy-ancy rich self-made Regency business-man. ‘With a heroine called Destiny Rhodes, you need to bin the rainbows and unicorns and Lavistock shit and think far bigger and far darker,’ he said. ‘What you have in terms of motivating these characters to do what they do, has more holes than a colander. It’s wishy-washy.’
Every writer works differently but I found a playlist helpful because, with the exception of the house premise, what I am now about to knock into shape, was kind of flown by the proverbial seat of my pants.
is not quite what I sort of originally saw.
Maybe one of these days….
In the meantime I chose the versions I like of these songs. Songs that reflect two people who are more afraid of clinging to the cliff face, than they are to let it go. It’s not failing to survive that scares them.
You know, sometimes that can be a lot scarier than it seems.
30 Sunday Jul 2017
Posted Guest bloggers, Lists of, Romance, writing
inTags
Music, Music to write to, Playlist, Playlist for the Writer and The Rake, Romance, sci-fi, Shehanne Moore, The Writer and the Rake, Time-travel
https://robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com/2017/07/24/carrotranch-writeprompt-pies/
Brittany. Oh God, not you lot again. Darlings, don’t you have a cage or something to be in? Your little balls to play with? Hmm?
Brittany. All the better to amuse yourselves with then darlings. Now then what is it you want to know? So long as it’s not will I ever be a nice Georgian housewife, how to instruct a servant, or can you have one of my fags, or any of my booze, we’re good.
Brittany . But I do, darlings. So? Playlist? Well when she was writing the Viking and the Courtesan which I understand is about my granddaughter Malice…
Shey listened a lot to the first piece on this list, probably because she plays and has taught it several times too. So obviously when writing more of the series it was her starting point, just as Mitchell and I are. I think she found the epic scope of it inspiring, although our story was not nearly as epic as all the things Malice went through, a shipwreck, a convent raid nearly being burned to death in a Valhalla style funeral in Viking times, being kidnapped, locked up and then incarcerated in a lunatic asylum in Regency times, all the time just trying to find her way to where she wanted to be.
The rest though? Well, these were ours, pure and simple. As to why darlings? Well, you’ll just have to listen won’t you? Any lines about smiling like you mean it which I do all the time, sort of anyway, being far apart on this old carousel, and people rather being lonely than being by someone’s side, are of course incidental….
02 Friday Jun 2017
Tags
Caroline Lamb, Christian Cavanagh, Etopia Press, George Sand, Katherine Ferrers, Mary Wollstonecraft, Regency, Romance, Shaakespeare, Splendor, Starkadder Sisterhood, The Wicked Lady, Twelth Night, Women, women in Regency times
It’s A Man’s World – with Shehanne Moore
‘You wait ages for one Shehanne Moore book and then two come along at once! Hot on the heels of her irrepressible timeslip novel The Writer and the Rake, comes her long-awaited Regency – Splendor – sequel to the fabulous Loving Lady Lazuli. Shehanne has the knack of creating unforgettable heroines set against an authentic historical backdrop.
Here she talks about some extraordinary women on the late 18th/early 19th century.’
In terms of being a wife in ruination only which is what he has just asked, you can see my latest hero, Kendall Winterborne, Earl of Stillmore, is following in well-trodden footsteps when it comes to my heroes. As for Splendor the heroine? Well, being up to her neck in it, goes with the turf.
I recently did a guest blog for the lovely poet Christy Birmingham, on the pretty awful lot of Georgian Women. Splendor is set in a slightly later time, Regency more than early Georgian, where the hunt for a husband was a serious business, families spent a fortune on their daughters, ‘coming out’ and unattached ladies had but one goal, NOT to signal what that goal was. But what happened when they achieved that goal?
Mary Wollstonecraft, mother of Mary Shelley—and a woman who defied convention– had published her Rights of Women in 1792.
It highlighted the ‘means and arts by which women had been forcibly subjugated, flattered into imbecility and invariably held in bondage’. So all good for women then? A great time being spent in pursuing frivilous goals? On going to dances with wet skirts as a means of showing off their legs and getting lots of attention from the male sex, of arriving dirt-poor from the country and passing oneself off as an heiress to bag a rich suitor? All things that went on, things that are alluded to in Splendor. So, a jolly good time for women then? Right?
Well, no. Contraception, childbirth etc, had not greatly improved. For women, chastity before marriage, was often as much a matter of necessity.
Also women were still their husband’s property. My hero Stillmore may be divorced, he certainly got all his wife’s money beforehand. In fact marrying her saved the family fortunes after his father ran off with a kitchen maid who bankrupted them.
So, given all this, you can understand Splendor being glad when Stillmore informs her that while this ’thing’ he’s asking her in such polite and patient terms, involves marriage, it will be one in name only, since he utterly despises and actively fears the institution. In fact he regards anyone foolish enough to take that trip down the aisle, as he once did, as an imbecile.
He has his reasons by the way.
You can also see, given the only slightly improved lot of women in the early 19th century, why quite a few of them wanted to be a man. And that is something Splendor is masquerading as at the start of the book. Not because she especially wants to be a man but because the prize money in a certain chess completion is much greater in the men’s part of the tournament, than the ladies. Nine and a half thousand guineas greater to be precise. Money she needs—badly.
In that respect she’s not the first woman to decide that going about this as a man was the way to ensure her future as a woman. Katherine Ferrers—The Wicked Lady anyone—was said to have taken to the highways as a man in her husband’s absence, to sort out the little blip in her finances, get them on a more even keel.
Too bad that she was apparently shot, exhorting a victim to stand and deliver, which they did, killing her in the process. Looking on the bright side, at least her financial worries were at an end. Something Splendor certainly considers when she gets challenged to a duel by Stillmore. Just one of the little drawbacks of entering a man’s world.
Very well, Katherine’s case has never actually been proved but the idea of women dressing as men is not stupid. Shakespeare chooses to make his main character in Twelfth Night, Viola, a cross-dresser. She wasn’t laughed off the stage either. all right she was no doubt being played by a man dressing as a woman, masquerading as a man.
Shakespeare also has each of the three women in the Merchant of Venice, dress as men at certain points of the play, for perfectly valid reasons. Again, the idea wasn’t derided.
Why does Viola cross-dress? Because, ship-wrecked and needing to find her brother, she is also faced with the harsh economic reality of finding work and the only opening? Yep, you guessed it. It’s for a man.
There are several instances of women cross dressing for that reason.
Christian Cavanagh, an Irish-born mother, left her children with her mother and a nurse to pursue her husband who had disappeared, into the army. Christian the subject of a book by Daniel Defoe, fought in several battles before it was discovered it was Mrs. Davies not Mr.
Pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read never masqueraded as men but they certainly lived as them.
Lady Caroline Lamb, as mad, bad and dangerous to know as her lover, the poet Byron, being rich, didn’t need to dress as a man to make her way in that world, unlike her poorer ‘sisters.’ But when she fancied a quickie with Byron, she did find that sneaking into his chambers was a lot easier, if she was dressed as a boy.
Author and mistress of Chopin, George Sand, who I forgot to mention in the original post- (How the hell could I ever miss out George?) never dressed as a man because she wanted to be one, took the name George either. Originally she only wanted to go to the theatre, to the cheap seats where women were forbidden. Why did she want the cheap seats? Because she couldn’t live with her husband any more, divorce was illegal and he cut her monthly allowance. I reckon that women, were doing what resourceful women, have done from time immemorial, and that’s survive. Whatever the era. And freed from having to be a woman certainly seemed to make them quite as dangerous to know in some instances too. Catherine Cavendish, thank you so much, lady and writer extraordinary for asking me to your wonderful blog today.
And now? That duel.
Extract from Splendor: Shehanne Moore
He was an unashamedly driving, look-at-me male. Unless he knew her body was shaped differently? Did it mean he wasn’t going to shoot her? She could stay in the tournament? Win the ten thousand pounds? If he knew she was a woman, he was surely going to say…
“For God’s bloody sake, you’re damn well meant to move,” Stillmore snarled. “Stop bloody arsing, will you?”
In all of her intimate brush with the Starkadder Sisterhood, she had never been told to stop doing such a thing, especially not by a man whose buttocks seemed glued to hers. She felt him turn his head.
“Don’t damn well add miscounting to cheating.”
“Miscounting? Me? When you—”
“Fram, start the count again. As for you, try to do what he says this time if it’s not beyond you.”
Despite the fact the pistol felt like ice in her hand, she gritted her teeth. “Do you somehow think it’s my fault I’m not? Look, Your Grace—”
“One.”
Whether it was her fault or not, the shock she got at hearing the word yet again and the difficulty of forcing her feet to move, meant she took a giant step forward, almost sliding on her said arse on the wet grass. These damned boots of Gabe’s were too large and thin as milk dribble on the soles. But so long as Kendall Winterborne didn’t think this was another trick on her part to delay the action, it would be all right.
“Two.”
Another step. She could barely keep hold of herself as she took it. But, count her blessings, her senses weren’t being accosted by the feel of him. The man…good God…who might kill her.
“Three.”
A drag of air into her tortured lungs. All she had to do was get off one round. How hard was that? Her finger tightened on the trigger. What if she killed the earl? Was he so black-hearted he deserved to die?
And all because he’d undermined her when she’d meant to say, I’m a woman. You can’t shoot me. Or had she undermined herself, precisely because she was a woman?
“Four.”
For God’s sake, was it five paces or six? Seven even? She could not remember for the mist snaking into her nostrils. And she needed to remember. As surely as her name was Dora Malachi whom everyone called Aurora Splendora, she needed to remember. She would be shot in the back otherwise. Then…then she’d be dead.
“Five… Six…”
But there was no sharp retort, no searing agony, no impact of a bullet tearing cloth and flesh, so obviously, obviously, when it came to how many paces, it wasn’t, five, or six. It couldn’t be. It must be…
“Seven.”
The word wasn’t even out when she seized a breath and swung on her heel, managing just to keep her balance in the dew. Her fingers squeezed the trigger. She should have aimed, but it wasn’t as if she could see, so it made no difference. The crack ricocheted through her head, reverberating around every cavity in her eardrums. Crows rose like a screeching blanket from the ground. It was nothing to the noise Kendall Winterborne, the Earl of Stillmore, made as he hopped on one foot.
“Jesus bloody Christ. Jesus suffering bloody Christ.”
Nothing to the way he limped about, blackening the air with curses as she stood trying to look knowledgeable either. The buzz in her ears swelled. Starkadder and his silver watch fob chain she never got to polish, she hadn’t hit him, had she? How on earth she had managed to get that shot off, she had no idea. How it had blasted him in the foot either. But she had blasted him. Oh God, oh God, oh God. She had fired. He hadn’t. It meant one thing.
Even the somewhat large, staggered first pace she’d taken had not substantially increased the distance between them. For that she’d have had to bolt. So now…now he didn’t just stop hopping, he stopped dead center in the space opposite, the space he’d occupied just before she’d shot off her pistol, the smoking pistol that slithered from her palm, making a funny thudding noise as it struck the soft grass.
He raised his arm. Raised one eyebrow too. Her gaze widened in an involuntary spasm, so she saw the drizzle-sprayed mist, and his eyes primed on her like flintlocks above the shining barrel of the gun. The one now leveled at her breast, so carefully aimed, he could not miss.
A shudder shook her as his eyes narrowed, his brow furrowed. His finger fastened slowly on the trigger.
Then he drew it slowly, deliberately toward his chest.
BLURB
The only thing he hates more than losing at chess is marriage…
For Splendor, former servant to the London’s premiere jewel thieves, pretending to be someone else is all in a day’s work. So when she learns of a chess tournament—a men’s chess tournament—with a ten thousand pound prize, pretending to be a man is the obvious move. The money will be enough to set her fiancé up in his own business so they can finally marry, and more importantly, it’ll pay off her bills and keep her out of debtor’s prison. But she doesn’t plan on her opponent, the rakish Kendall Winterborne, Earl Stillmore, being a sore loser—and a drunken one, at that. But before she can collect her prize, she finds herself facing the most merciless man in London across a pair of dueling pistols at dawn. Chess may be Splendor’s game, but she’s never fired a pistol. And dressed as a man with ill-fitting shoes on the slippery grass and borrowed glasses that make it hard to see, she’s certain she’s finally tipped her own king.
Bitter divorcee Kendall Winterborne, Earl Stillmore, is the ton’s most ruthless heartbreaker. And he’s got three pet peeves: kitchen maids, marriage…and losing. So when he realizes the “man” opposite him has entered the chess tournament under false pretenses, he’s in the perfect position to extort the little chit. But that’s before the exasperating woman begins to slip beneath his skin, and soon all he can think about is slipping beneath her skirts. But the confounded woman is engaged to someone else, and worse—she’s nothing but a former kitchen maid, just like the one that lured his father into the marriage that ruined the family name. And his ex-wife taught him more than he cared to know about why marriage was the worst kind of checkmate of all…
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