Grace Burrowes is starting a new series, Captive Hearts! And the first book, The Captive, releases tomorrow.
Here’s a look at bit of an exclusive teaser for you.
Enjoy!
Summary:
Christian Severn, Duke of Mercia, is captured out of uniform by the French, and is thus subject to torture. Christian does not break, not once, and is released when Toulouse falls. Back in England, Christian has great difficulty taking up the reins of his life until Gillian, Countess of Windmere, a relation of his late wife, pointedly reminds him that he has a daughter who still needs him very much—a daughter who no longer speaks. Gilly pushes, pulls, and drags Christian back to life, and slowly, she and he admit an attraction to each other.
Christian offers Gilly marriage, but Gilly is a widow, and has fared badly at the hands of her first husband. Gillian will not pledge her heart to a man bent on violence, for Christian cannot give up his determination to extract revenge from his torturer. What will it take for them to give up their stubborn convictions and choose each other over the bonds of the past?
“Why not a hack about the park one day soon?” Mercia asked his daughter. He had the knack of pausing long enough to invite the child to answer, but not so long as to create expectations. Gilly wondered where he’d learned such interrogatory skill, or if he simply had a gift.
“Hearing no objection,” he went on, “I’ll invite the countess to ride with us.”
“I haven’t a proper habit,” Gilly said, “but I will make one up, now that I know the stables are open to guests.”
Something nonplussed then a trifle aggravated flickered in Mercia’s eyes.
“We’ll choose her ladyship a mount, shall we?” He put the question to his daughter and extended a hand to the child. “One must indulge in some anticipatory spoiling if one is to form an alliance with a horse or a member of the opposite sex. You are not to repeat that to your governess, Lucy.”
As if she’d repeat anything to anybody.
Mercia took his daughter from stall to stall, eventually lifting her onto his hip, something the girl was old enough to object to, and wise enough to enjoy. She was content to wander from one velvety equine nose to another, her head resting on her father’s shoulder.
And the picture they made, two blond heads nestled together, the duke occasionally murmuring quietly to his daughter, gave Gilly an odd pang for Helene. This was lost to Helene, this simple outing to the stables with father and daughter, lost forever. Watering the flowers in the library, surreptitiously watching His Grace scratch out letters to his old army connections— many of them still on the Continent—that was lost too.
Peeling his oranges.
Kissing him. Reveling in his sandalwood scent. Feeling his heart beat with the firm, steady rhythm of a trotting horse.
