Halloween is fast approaching and to celebrate Haunting Miss Fenwick is on sale!

Thrilled to finally have a permanent home, a Squire’s daughter won’t let a supernatural creature scare her away. While hunting the ghost she doesn’t believe in, she stumbles upon a mysterious flesh and blood man who might be the key to all of her problems.

When the new Squire moves into Fenwick Manor, an ex-army officer secretly searching the sprawling medieval wreck devises a plan. First, the manor’s legendary ghost will chase servants away. Then, he’ll convince the new residents to leave.

But the Squire’s spirited daughter soon has him wondering if he might have found a perfect comrade in arms to help battle old enemies and find the proof that will clear his family name.

Buy your copy today for 99 cents/pence/euros

Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/bzvOa9

What’s coming up?

Courted by the Earl

A member of our reader group asked me why my novel, Bella’s Band vanished from Amazon. The good news is, last month the rights for this book reverted from the publisher. Bella’s Band has a brand new title, Courted by the Earl, and will have a brand new cover soon, plus it will be available on other retailers. Stay tuned!

Fated Hearts, A Love After All Retelling of the Scottish Play

Fated Hearts is my story for the Tragic Characters in Classic Literature Project, wherein with complete artistic license and an abundance of hubris, a group of Regency romance authors are retelling some of the great stories of literature. We’re setting our stories in Georgian England, and giving each of these tragic heroes and heroines a happily-ever-after.

The Tragic Heroes for this project include Heathcliff, the Sheriff of Nottingham, Orpheus and Euridice, Frankenstein, and Colonel FitzWilliam of Pride and Prejudice. My hero, as you’ve probably figured out, is Macbeth.

Release day is set for December 29th! Here’s a taste of it:

A Scottish Baron returning from two decades at war meets the wife he divorced and the daughter he disavowed, only to learn that everything he’d believed was a lie.

What he can’t deny is that she’s the only woman he’s ever loved. They’re not the young lovers they once were, but when passion flares, it burns more hotly than ever it did in their youth.

They soon discover, it wasn’t fate that drove them apart, but a jealous enemy, who played on his youthful arrogance and her vulnerability. Now that old enemy has resurfaced, more dangerous than ever.

Chapter One

London

Friday, 3 March, 1815

A crush, they called these suffocating occasions, and the term was apt.

Major Finnley Macbeth, Scottish baron and late of his majesty’s Highland Brigade, shifted his weight from the leg that still ached like the devil, and scanned the room for his quarry, an undersecretary in the Home Office who he’d met at the army’s winter quarters in Frenada.

From his spot near a damask covered wall, he measured each breath, trying to calm a rising unease. The heavy scent of perfume, mixed with the fine beeswax and hothouse florals, unsettled more than his stomach. The shimmering silks and waving plumes threatened to stir the disquieting visions plaguing him lately.

Fire, explosions, rain, the screams of men and horses.

He squeezed his hands into a fist. These were not the hellish memories of the recent past, dammit, but rattling visions of some battle yet to come.

Or not. Foretelling the future was for Travellers and crones, wasn’t it? Not battle-hardened men like himself.

He inhaled slowly, held the breath for a count, and then eased the air out. Best keep his purpose in mind—he was here to track down Sir Thomas Abernathy, lately arrived in London, and rumored to be attending this rout.

His gaze swept the room, seeking the distinctive bald pate. In spite of his forty-three years, his eyesight was still keen enough to make out a sniper or spot the dust of a fleeing stag. Keen enough as well to relish the deep décolletages and clinging, delicate, almost transparent skirts on display this night, a vision far more cheering than the one the Sight was showing him.

A more modestly clad woman stood alone halfway across the ballroom, her back turned to him, surveying the room as he was doing.

A memory stabbed him, laced with an old shame. He’d once known a lass with hair like this, so abundant, so near to black. The lady tonight had crowned all the loveliness with dark feathers, like a glorious cormorant. His hand itched to pull out those feathers and rake his hands through the tumble of hair, as he’d once done…

He caught a steadying breath. It couldn’t be her. He’d simply been without a woman too long.

And these visions plaguing him of he knew not what? That foolishness grew from naught but fatigue, the wages of war, and the steady company of too much death. The lovely lady with feathers atop her head was only a stranger wondering where her man had got off to.

Yet he couldn’t turn away. As he watched, she pivoted one way, and then the other, allowing a glimpse of dangling earbobs and a firm chin.

Drawn to her, he stepped out on his bad leg just as she turned.

Pain shot through his hip. The room threatened to fall away and he held onto the pain, let it shore him up whilst he swore a silent curse.

Because he was looking at a ghost.

Let me know what you think, have a wonderful week, and don’t forget to pick up your copy of Haunting Miss Fenwick! 

 

Image credits: Wikimedia Commons