Bound To Please by Hope Tarr is the first historical published by Harlequin Blaze. Read Wendy the Super Librarian’s review, then click on the cut for an excerpt.

He’s not going to take this treatment lying down. At least, not for long…

Fifteenth-century Scotland is a tough place to be a woman in charge. Brianna MacLeod, new laird of her clan, needs a child to establish her position. And the best way to do that is to demand the sexual services of her sworn—and very sexy—enemy!

Ewan Fraser never foresaw being kidnapped, tied up and expected to perform stud service. Yet being bound for the delicious Brianna’s pleasure isn’t all bad. In fact, the more time he spends in her bed, the more he’s determined she’ll be the one who ends up enslaved….

**Excerpt**
1460 ~ St. Andrews, County Fife, Scotland
“Because of your brother my husband and babe both lay in the kirk yard. Your brother, Callum owes me a life, Ewan Fraser, two lives to be exact, and I mean to collect payment on the debt through you.”

“My brother had no hand in your lord’s death. I swear it upon mine honor.”

In the midst of vouchsafing Callum’s innocence, the significance of her statement struck him like yet another fist to the gut. God’s blood, she meant to murder him! Until now he’d assumed she would hold him prisoner and then ransom him back to his brother but not so it seemed. Panic slammed into him, the force exceeding any physical blow he’d so far received.

Scenes from his past twenty-two years skittered through his thoughts. He found himself regretting no deed in particular but rather the many deeds he’d now never have the chance to do. Travel to Edinburgh. Teach his future son to fish. Give Brianna MacLeod a proper kiss. After the clumsy embrace they’d shared as children, he’d spent years hoping for the opportunity to do better by her. Who knew how long he had before she sent him off to meet his Maker, but for certain traveling and procreating would never happen for him now. Looking up into her cool gaze and composed face, it occurred to him that one final wish might yet be fulfilled.

“Your honor, indeed,” she scoffed. “Fraser honor holds no worth in this hall, sir.”

“In that case, lady, I commit myself to your tender mercy. I only ask that you grant me a warrior’s death and have the big one over there—” he gestured to the graybeard towering behind her “—strike my head from my shoulders with a claymore or a sword as befits my station.” After all he’d suffered, subjecting him to disemboweling or burning at the stake hardly seemed sporting.

“Strike off your head!” Her green eyes popped and the luscious lips he contemplated kissing fell open as though making way for his tongue.

Ignoring the hammering inside his skull—he’d be past all fleshly feeling soon enough—he nodded. “Aye, but before you see the deed done, I crave a boon. One kiss from milady’s honeyed lips and then I’ll greet St. Peter with a hearty hey ho.”

The corners of her full mouth twitched, the closest she’d so far come to a smile. “You’re a knave, Ewan Fraser, and like as not you deserve to be drawn and quartered in payment for all the maidenly hearts you’ve broken.”

Drawn and quartered, dear God what a bloodthirsty wench she was. He’d best make the kiss a good one, lingering and deep, whilst he still had the full complement of his manly parts. “First let us have that kiss, milady.”

He started up from his knees to claim it. Head swimming, he struggled to find his footing on the stone flagging. Before he could, the chamber dipped and swayed, the floor falling in beneath him. Stars poked through the encroaching blackness, performing a dizzy dance before his burning eyes.

Watching her prisoner fall over onto his side, Brianna could scarcely credit the proof of her eyes. Ewan Fraser, bold warrior and tanist to his clan, had fainted. Dark hair plastered his damp forehead and his handsome face looked flushed whether from fever or temper or both she couldn’t say. One powerful arm locked about his torso. The protective posture stretched the soiled saffron shirt across his broad shoulders and back, revealing the whip marks bleeding through the torn cloth. Whip marks!

Fury lanced through her. She swung about to Duncan, who’d followed her to the edge of the steps.

Aware of the petitioners watching goggle-eyed from the benches as though a passion play was in progress, she dropped her voice and hissed, “I told you he was not to be harmed.”

She might have had him abducted to serve a greater good, but she was no torturer. Once her end was achieved, she meant to return him to his kinsman hale and whole. Hurting him had never been a part of her plan. Still, badly beaten though he was, at least they wouldn’t have to call in the bonesetter. Bruises and scrapes and torn flesh would heal with time but more often than not a broken bone meant lifelong laming.

Duncan bowed his grizzled head. “I have failed you, milady, and yet I canna say how I could have brought him to you any other way. Fraser or not, a bolder, braver warrior I have never before faced.”

She swiveled to Duncan’s son, Hugh. The young warrior had been charged with guarding Ewan and keeping him out of sight until the court was dismissed. Bruises rimmed his one eye and his stance was markedly hunched.

Voice still lowered, she said, “And you were to have kept him away from the court.”

“And so I would have, milady, only he…”

The smooth-shaven face flushed, and Brianna prompted, “He what?”

“He kneed me in the uh…ballocks.” Darting a look in Duncan’s direction, he added, “My father speaks true, milady. The Fraser’s own stubbornness causes him to come to you thus. He fought like Satan’s own. Earlier today it took the three of us to subdue him and even then he wouldn’t leave off his fashing.”

Three warriors had been charged with abducting him, and Ewan had come close to besting them all. Brianna felt her chest tightening with ill-placed pride and some other emotion she had yet to name. Face flushing, she returned her gaze to the fallen man. It was too late to undo the clumsy capture, but from there on she meant to see Ewan made as comfortable and treated as civilly as circumstances would allow even if it meant tending him with her own hands. The latter thought sent a starburst like thrill shooting through her.

As if sensing her nearness, his closed eyelids fluttered. He blinked, and then opened. His right eye was swollen shut but his left appeared unharmed. The moonstone pale orb pierced hers, stealing her breath and muddling her thoughts.

“Sweet Brie, whatever befell the braw, bonny lassie who was to have been my bride?” His voice trailed off, his eyes rolling back in his head and his body slackening.

So he remembered their betrothal pact. An invisible knot cinched Brianna’s throat. Tender emotions she thought to have locked away with his flute flooded her. Their fair day meeting must have meant something to him, too.

She started toward him, but Duncan’s hand found her elbow. “He speaks in riddles, milady. With your permission, I will see him removed to the dungeon until he is well enough to be brought to you.”

Brianna shrugged free of his hold. “You will do no such thing. Lord Ewan is not a common criminal but a noble hostage. He doesna belong in a dungeon cell but in a chamber befitting his rank and station. Have him carried to the laird’s chamber, my chamber, and mind this time your men do my bidding with a gentle hand.

***

An hour later, Brianna strode down the rush lit corridor to the laird’s chamber, a chalice in one hand and a taper in the other. Looped over her wrist was the basket filled with Milread’s special salve. After dismissing the court, she’d sent her old nursemaid to minister to Ewan’s needs, including bathing. Mention of willow twigs, rose petals, or true love was strictly forbidden.

Her steps slowed as she approached the bedchamber. For the past ten years she’d carried about the memory of Ewan Fraser as a lanky boy with crystal clear eyes and a good-natured grin. The eyes hadn’t changed a whit but everything else about him had altered mightily. The Ewan Fraser waiting for her within was very much a man and a braw beautiful man at that. A braw beautiful man she would bed assuming the thrashing they’d dealt him hadn’t rendered him incapable.

A guard stood outside her door. She recognized him as Seamus, the “broken man.” The young warrior was without kith or kin though Duncan swore he was one of his most trustworthy guards and able fighters. Still, his long pointed chin, narrow darting gaze, and scar puckered cheek reminded her of a rat.

Seamus bowed. “Good eve, milady. Lord Duncan bade me stand watch over the prisoner and…you.”

Ewan’s barging into her great hall while her court was in session had wrought havoc with her intention to keep him quietly confined until her plan bore…fruit. By now the whole castle must know that he’d been brought to her private rooms.

Glad of the early evening shadows to mask the heat that must be branding her cheeks, she nodded. “So I see.”

“Sleep well, milady.” He held the door for her, his gaze brushed over her, his mouth twisted into a smirk.

Telling herself guilt must be making her imagine things, she stepped inside and drew the door closed behind her. Shadows engulfed her, relieved only by the flickering of the fire set in the grate and a brace of candles mounted in wall brackets. Her gaze swung to the bed—and the dark form lying chained in the center. Ah, Ewan…

Iron manacles banded his wrists, his powerful arms drawn high over his head, the carved bolsters serving as anchors for the heavy chains. Seeing him thus, her heart lurched, her regret as piercing as any physical pain. If only they’d been free to fulfill their fair day covenant, they might have come together as man and wife with open arms and free wills and joyous hearts instead of this travesty of a union forged of regret and revenge.

She walked up to the chest at the foot of the bed and paused. Shadowed though it was, she fancied she felt Ewan tracking her movements with his eyes. She’d ordered him stripped and bathed for the practical purpose of needing to care for his wounds. Until now she hadn’t given much thought to how she would feel about putting her own less than perfect body on display. Tall, full-breasted and full-hipped, she wasn’t the plump, pretty child who once had fit so neatly against Ewan’s lean, boyish form.

But they weren’t children anymore or lovers or even friends. A wave of sadness struck her. Steeling herself to ignore it, she set the candle down atop the desk along with the basket and chalice. Reaching up, she removed her veiled headdress. Beneath it, her hair was gathered into a single long braid. She had the fleeting thought she ought to comb her fingers through the waves and leave it loose as she had on her wedding night, but decided against doing so. Drawing any parallel to that ill-fated night would seem like a portent of doom.

Instead she unpinned her plaid. She unwound the length of wool and laid it aside along with the broach that bore her clan crest, a bull’s horns and the motto “Hold Fast” in Latin. She cast another glance upwards to the bed. He hadn’t stirred. Mayhap he truly was asleep. Fingers clumsy, she unfastened her sleeves and then unlaced the front of her gown; the latter she pulled over her head. Modesty had her stopping at her shift. The fine linen whispered just above her ankles. She took off the chain with the seal ring, too, and put it in the drawer. Making a mental note to remember to put it back on later, she folded her clothes and set them in a neat stack on the chair seat. By the time she finished, her hands were clammy cold and shaking.

She retrieved the chalice and basket and rounded to the side of the bed. Leaning over, she whispered, “Ewan, do you sleep?”

His eyes were closed. Long lashes shadowed his high cheekbones. Either the brutal handling had worn him out or he was pretending, for he didn’t as much as blink. Skin heating, she skimmed her gaze over his body, naked except for a swathe of linen thrown over his thighs. Even blanketed by cuts and bruises and angry red welts, he was impossibly beautiful. Broad of shoulder and lean of waist and hip, pale skin stretched taut over sinewy muscle and long bones, he brought to mind a statue carved in marble or alabaster, only Ewan was no cold tomb statue but a living breathing man.

She drew back, a foreign throbbing settling between her thighs. At least one order of hers had been obeyed. He was clean. His damp skin smelled of Milread’s rosemary mint soap as well as some other scent that was his alone; the latter had her thinking of the smell of air just after a cleansing springtime shower. The old woman had washed his hair as well. The pillow beneath his head was damp and the dark tresses shone like polished ebony. One damp lock fell over his forehead and over his swollen shut eye. Overcome by a sudden tenderness, Brianna reached down to brush it back.

Ewan snapped open his good eye and glared up at her. “Come to gloat, milady?”

She jumped back, dripping tallow onto the bedcovers. “You startled me.”

“Really?” The black brow framing his good eye arched upward. “You’ll pardon me if I find that a wee bit difficult to fathom.”

In the thrall of his moonstone gaze, Brianna felt the breath lock inside her lungs. Even masked in bruises, his lean face was a masterpiece of male beauty. She ran her gaze over his high bow, molded aquiline nose, and firm, full mouth—the very same mouth that had gifted her with her first real kiss all those many years ago—and felt a spurt of sticky warmth trickle down her leg.

Embarrassed by her body’s response, she set the basket down and held out the cup. “I’ve brought you something.” She hesitated and then settled next to him, her hip brushing his side.

He pressed his lips together and cut a wary glance to the cup. “What is it?”

“Caudle.” Reading the question in his eyes, she elaborated, “Mulled wine with bits of brown bread, sugar, eggs and spices to render it flavorful. It is an English recipe. My old nurse taught me to make it. It will ease and nourish you.”

“Poison me, more like.” He clamped together his swollen lips, beautiful all the same, and shook his dark head. “I’ll no drink so much as one drop. If you mean to murder me, then do the deed out in the open as a laird would. Poison is the weapon of cowards—and women.” His disdainful expression conveyed he considered the two to be cut from the same cloth.

Leaning over him, Brianna found herself fighting the urge to laugh. She slid her arm beneath his neck and shoulders to raise him and pressed the rim of the cup to his swollen lips. “If I wanted you dead, Ewan Fraser, you’d be dead ere now, so drink.”

In the end hunger and thirst took precedence over pride. He drank, gingerly at first but then with great greedy gulps. Brianna felt a stab of guilt but tamped it down by reminding herself that fair day memories aside, Ewan Fraser was still her enemy. His brother’s crime made him so and they not shared the same blood but as twins had bided together in their mother’s womb. Beyond the necessities of shelter and sustenance, he didn’t deserve her consideration.

She eased his head down on the pillow, and then set the empty cup aside and reached for the basket. Though his upper body was immobile, his gaze followed her every move. She brought out the jar of Milread’s special salve.

Twisting off the top, she warned, “This might sting a wee bit but mostly it should soothe.”

“What is it?”

“It’s no poison if that’s what you’re worried for.” She dipped two fingers inside and then held up cream-coated fingers to show him. “There’s yarrow, red clover, and yellow wood sorrel and other ingredients that aid in flesh mending.”

He sniffed, one dark brow lifting again. “Don’t tell me you’re a healer, too?”

She shook her head. Keeping her touch light, she started on his shoulders. “What little I know of herbs and such my old nurse taught me. Her remedies include everything from amulets to remove evil eye curses to love potions…for silly young maids,” she added, not wanting him to think she’d ever sought out such nonsense.

“Love potions, aye?” He eyed the basket with open skepticism. “Are there any in that wee basket?”

Heat hit Brianna’s cheeks. She shook her head. “Nay, I wouldna wish the curse of being in love on my worst enemy.”

He shrugged and then winced as though the movement caused him pain. “What would you wish on me then?” Not giving her opportunity to answer, he added, “If its ransom that you seek, you should know my brother would just as soon see my head on a pike as part with his coin.”

Gathering her thoughts, she capped the jar, dropped it back inside the basket, and set the latter aside. Lifting her gaze, she said, “It’s not ransom I seek but peace—and a baby. A child with both our bloods will heal the hatred between our clans more so than any treaty. That, Ewan Fraser, is why I’ve brought you here.”

BOUND TO PLEASE BY HOPE TARR

Wendy the Super Librarian‘s review of Bound to Please by Hope Tarr
Historical romance released by Harlequin Blaze (#407) 01 July 2008

I’ll admit when I first heard that Harlequin was interested in publishing some historicals under the Blaze line I didn’t get it. I mean, why? We already have the Harlequin Historical line. Why not just sex some of those up a bit? But after reading Bound to Please, the first ever Blaze historical, I think I now “get it.” Since the line launched in 2001, Blaze has become synonymous with sassy, sexy reads – which is exactly what Bound to Please is, albeit set in the Scottish Highlands and not a hip, contemporary world.

When Brianna MacLeod and Ewan Fraser met as children it was puppy love at first sight. Both children of clan lairds, they vowed to marry each other when they were grown. Instead, as the years pass, Brianna finds herself marrying the man her father chose for her. With her father now dead, and her husband murdered by Ewan’s twin brother, Brianna has sworn revenge. While she didn’t love her husband, the shock of his murder caused her to miscarry their baby. Eager to stop the brewing feud between their clans, Brianna decides the best way to do that is to have Ewan’s baby. So she dispatches her men to kidnap him, chain him to her bed, and there he will stay until the deed is done.

Ewan has carried a torch for Brianna since the day they met as children. So much so, that even at 22, he still hasn’t married (some kind of record for 15th century Scotland). The fact that she didn’t honor their oath to wed still stings, as does the fact that she never answered his letters, and that she’s had him kidnapped for the sole purpose of playing stallion to her brood mare. However, as much as he tries to resist, he cannot. He’s always loved Brianna, and this is his opportunity to prove to her they are meant to be together.

It should be noted that when it comes to historicals, I’m not the sort of reader who analyzes every detail for accuracy. Also, what I know about 15th century Scotland could fill a leaky thimble. That being said, I suspect there will be some readers who will take issue with Brianna being her clan’s laird. Could it have happened? Did it ever happen? That will be up to others to ponder. Me? Not so much. I fell into the story and just rolled with it.

I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump, and this book was just what the doctor ordered. It was fun, sexy and spicy enough to keep the pages turning. Brianna is a woman bound by duty, so much so that she’s not quite sure how to be “just a woman.” Ewan is my favorite type of hero, the man who has carried a torch for the heroine for years and is now realizing that the fantasy doesn’t hold a candle to the real thing. When these two get together it’s enough to peel paint off the walls.

Readers looking for a rich, meaty, historical doorstop of a read won’t find it here. Tarr doesn’t have the time given the short, snappiness of the Blaze line. But she does craft a quick, sexy read, ideal for lounging on the beach or taking an afternoon break while the kids are napping. Hopefully this won’t be a one book experiment and readers will have more historical Blazes to look forward to in the future.

Grade: B-

Summary:

Fifteenth-century Scotland is a tough place to be a woman in charge. Brianna MacLeod, new laird of her clan, needs a child to establish her position. And the best way to do that is to demand the sexual services of her sworn—and very sexy—enemy!

Ewan Fraser never foresaw being kidnapped, tied up and expected to perform stud service. Yet being bound for the delicious Brianna’s pleasure isn’t all bad. In fact, the more time he spends in her bed, the more he’s determined she’ll be the one who ends up enslaved…

Read an excerpt.

by Michelle Styles

July is a time for summer beach reads or just taking advantage of the hot summer sun and reading. Or at least I am hoping that July will see lots of sun. Last year was a washout in the UK, and this year is not much better. I have taken to counting the number of leaks in the summer room as I bury my head in a book and escape elsewhere. But whatever the weather, July is a great time to escape into reading.

July marks the start of the Reader’s Choice 12 book continuity series, Thoroughbred Legacy. If you want to get a flavour of the series, Joanne Rock has written an exciting prequel, Winner Takes All, available now free on eHarlequin as an online read. Chapters will be posted every Tues. & Thursday in June and July.

Joanne explained why the series is close to her heart:

I first came in contact with the glittering world of Thoroughbred racing while working summers at the Saratoga Racetrack in upstate New York. The whole town of Saratoga changes during racing season as exotic cars line up at the rail with Kentucky and Tenessee plates and this historic, charming community becomes the site of glamorous parties and world-renowned racing figures. I couldn’t wait to explore more of that world in Thoroughbred Legacy and I hope readers will follow me to Woodford County, Kentucky.

Joanne also wrote Book #4, Something to Talk About, a July release along with the first three books in the series. The next four are published in September and final four in December.

And I know this has been highlighted before, but it is very exciting news. July sees the launch of the first Blaze historical. Bound to Please has been burning up the ebook chart at eharlequin and is now finally in the shops. Hope Tarr said:

I’m absolutely over the moon to have been asked to help launch Harlequin Blaze historicals with Bound to Please. A Blaze historical offers readers all the opulence and magic, that fairytale “get-away” experience, of a single-title length historical along with the strong heroines, super-sexy heroes, and sensual plotlines for which the line is known.

For those of you who love Regency, Louise Allen has a major new mini series starting in July. Louise is an auto buy for me. I love her slightly different take and settings.

I loved writing Those Scandalous Ravenhursts because I was finding out so much about the characters as the series progressed – they kept surprising me, which kept me on my toes, and they still are as I’m working on number 6, the Piratical Miss Ravenhurst. And it was such fun having the chance to revisit characters I’d loved when I was writing ‘their’ story. I hope readers will enjoy following the Ravenhursts through their adventures – they turned out to be a much more adventurous group than I had first expected – and will have fun travelling with them too, from the mythical Grand Duchy of Maubourg to the West Indies via Burgundy, fashionable London and chilly South Coast beaches.

Louise Allen said, explaining about how the Ravenhursts have taken over her life. And if you read her blog post in June about her Ravenhurst heroes, you will be able to see why I am so excited about this series.

2009 sees the 60^th anniversary of Harlequin’s founding and as with things in publishing, preparations are well in hand. According to Julie Miller, Harlequin Intrigue is celebrating with an eight-month long continuity called The Kenner County Crime Unit. Set in the Four Corners region of the Southwest U.S., you’ll meet FBI agents, CSI investigators, a Native American tracker (Julie’s hero), profilers, wealthy inventors and more–all trying to solve the murder of an FBI agent, which leads to uncovering the theft of millions of dollars, which leads to a crime family, which leads to… Twisty mystery. Droolworthy heroes. Strong heroines. Danger and action. 2009 will also see the 25^th anniversary of Harlequin Intrigue.

The end of July will be the annual RWA National conference which is being held in San Francisco. There is sure to be lots of news from the conference, not the least of which will be the winners of this year’s Rita awards.

Until next time, happy reading and may your summer be wonderfully lazy.

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There is going to be a new ‘ebook exclusive’ line with Harlequin Historical…. and it is gonna be spicy. There are no guidelines yet but what I do know:

• It is tentatively scheduled for November ’08
• They will be short, sexy historical romances
• The working name is Harlequin Historical Undone

These steamy reads will explore passion through the ages and YES there will be westerns. Just in case you missed it or have forgotten in your excitement – there are no writing guidelines available at this point. But Harlequin Historical Undone will be hot, the characters compelling and the time periods will cover everything from Medieval to Regency to Western!

Of course as soon as I know more I will let you know *g*. Don’t know about you but I am sooooooo looking forward to November.

Starting a little bit of a roll here, I suppose. That and Sybil has cracked the whip and demanded these contest winners get posted by the end of the day. Which is good news for the winners, but to be honest I would rather be reading. What? Don’t judge me, I’m being a good duckie and doing what I’ve been told. Instead of reading.

But more contest winners! Woot!

The winners of a signed copy of Vanquished are:

Darla

Mary M.

Andrea

Congratulations to the three winners and be sure to email your physical address to Sybil at redwyne @ gmail .com so that she can send you your prize.  Be sure to put “VANQUISH ME SYBIL” in the subject line of your email!

We will close the contest Wednesday May 21, 2008 @ noon. You can comment here or on the review and answer:

CONTEST! Comment here by noon CST [central standard time] according to the blog timestamp with what you like more: Hope Tarr’s historicals or her Harlequin Blaze’s. The prize is one of three copies of Vanquished, all SIGNED by Hope Tarr!

You can find all the recent reviews, excerpts and news about Hope Tarr here. She has been busy, check it out .

This just in…

Hope Tarr is scheduled to make some history in more than ways than one with Harlequin Blaze books

~ Hope’s story, Bound to Please, is the very first Blaze Historical

~ Scheduled release date is July 1, 2008, and can be ordered at eHarlequin

~ Set in medieval Scotland, Bound to Please twists the tried-and-always-fun bride abduction storyline

~ Only in this case, it’s the prospective groom, Ewan Fraser, who finds himself “swept” off his feet and literally shackled by lovely laird, Brianna McLeod

~ Just a taste:
“If my giving you a bairn is the price of my freedom, then at least arrange matters so that we both might enjoy the act. Unchain me, Brie, and give me leave to show you the pleasure freed hands may bring.”

For a sneak peak go here

~ Enter Hope’s contest once you read the sneak peak!

from Hope’s site:
Set in medieval Scotland, Bound to Please offers a twist (so to speak) on the tried-and-true bride abduction storyline—only in this case, it’s the prospective “groom,” Ewan Fraser, who finds himself swept off his feet and um…”leg-shackled” by lovely laird, Brianna McLeod.

Consider yourself flashed.

Lawson’s review of Untamed by Hope Tarr
Historical romance released by Medallion Press 1 Feb 2008

This is the third in the series about three orphans who have come into their own. The first book followed Hadrian St. Claire, the second Gavin Carmichael, and now Patrick O’Rourke has his turn. Rourke has appeared in the first two books in the series, offering advice when his two friends have hit a rough patch with their respective loves. The question is to see if he can follow his own advice when things hit the rocks with his own new bride.

There’s some time backtracking in this story. The first few chapters revisit a few scenes from the first two books, instead from Rourke and his intended bride, Lady Katherine Lindsey’s point of view. One scene at a ball, an unfortunate wager and the fallout from that, and then the eventual wedding, which happens about the same time Enslaved ends.

Though Shakespeare has a small part in Enslaved, with Daisy’s part in As You Like It, the bard has a larger influence in the fact that as a joke, a copy of The Taming of the Shrew is given to Gavin. Lady Katherine has an unfortunate reputation as a shrew due to her sharp tongue and snobbish demeanor. It’s a front though, since her father is a wastrel and she has a pampered and spoiled younger sister. She’s trying to keep up appearances since her father looses money far too easily.

Kate is then has no choice to marry Rourke under some blackmail, but he doesn’t really know how to treat his new wife. When The Taming of the Shrew finds its way to his hands, he decides to follow the route of Petrucio. Which is probably where the mistakes start. For one thing, Petrucio is the one Shakespearian main character who doesn’t grow and change in a play. He’s always who he is and it’s Katarina that changes and becomes a different person.

Neither Rourke nor Kate, though, really seem to give anything. When they finally seem to be getting along and things are going well, a wrench is thrown in the works and the bond that had been built dissolves like sugar in the rain. Yes, there’s a HEA, but not without some meddling of Daisy and Callie and makes the whole thing rather hollow in the end. Much like the love at the end of Shrew. Though Katarina comes when her husband calls, it’s more for outward appearances rather than because she is there to obey what her husband.

The best way to sum things up actually kind of goes along with the cover. The model is walking with head up high, but her pose is awkward at best, painful at worst and just looks like it’s trying to be something it’s not. How disappointing that the first two books in this series were rather wonderful, and this one didn’t measure up.

Grade: C-

Summary:

“The Men of Roxbury House” wraps with Patrick O’Rourke–Rourke–and Kate’s rocky road to romance, due out February 2008. A marriage based on blackmail takes a surprising turn in this refreshing retelling of Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew.”

Former Roxbury House orphan, Patrick O’Rourke is a rough and ready Scotsman as well as a successful self-made businessman. Lady Katherine Lindsey–Kate–is a beautiful English spinster, a gentlewoman. When she finds herself blackmailed into accepting a marriage of convenience with the handsome Scot, she lets Rourke see another side of her. Following a hasty wedding, Rourke sweeps a seething Kate from the elegant and refined drawing rooms of west London to his crumbling castle in the Scottish Highlands. The only guide he has to wooing and bedding the stubborn spitfire he’s taken to wife is a copy of Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew.” But as passion sparks between them, Rourke finds he may well be in danger of being tamed.

Click on the “Untamed” tag for an excerpt on this site.

Ok, this should have gone up before the excerpt from Untamed, but uh. . .I don’t want to point fingers or blame anyone, so it’s just going up now! It really is a good book.

SNEAK Peek from Chapter 3

Ever felt like you were leading a double life? Sparks fly and passions flare when former Roxbury House orphans, oh-so-proper barrister, Gavin Carmichael and music hall chanteuse Daisy Lake AKA Delilah du Lac meet fifteen years later in a smoky London supper club. Can this on the surface mismatched couple really have a shot at a sexy second chance at love?

E-X-C-E-R-P-T

“The boy I love is up in the gallery,

The boy I love is looking down at me,

There he is, can’t you see, waving with his handkerchief,

As merry as a robin that sings in a tree.”

—The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery, Music hall song made famous by Marie Lloyd

The song spiraled to a close, and Daisy parked herself by the piano to catch her breath. Draping an arm about the pianist, she called out, “Maestro, for my final number give us a cross between spicy and sweet, if you please.”

Each night, her act concluded with her selecting one man from the audience to bring up onstage for her most seductive number. This night’s selection would be “A Little of What You Fancy,” made popular by music hall legend, Marie Lloyd. Like any song, it was the delivery more so than the lyrics that set the tone of the piece. A suggestive smile, a shimmy of shoulders or hips, a subtle inflection of voice could transform the most demure of drawing room melodies into the bawdiest of ballads. It was all in good fun, and the audience ate it up as evidenced by the hefty tips that came her way afterward.

The handsome dark-haired man sitting at one of the front row tables with his friends had caught her eye from the very first. A real gentleman, she’d thought, but beyond that he had the look of someone she’d once cherished and lost, Gavin Carmichael, the orphan boy she’d idolized as a child. For a split second, she’d actually thought he was Gavin before dismissing the notion as fancy fed by wishful thinking and a more than passing resemblance. Taking in his confident carriage, the apparent ease with which he chatted with his tablemates, and the habit he had of looking everyone, including her, squarely in the eye, she told herself he couldn’t possibly be the sweet, stammering, slope-shouldered boy of her memory.

Like Gavin, this solemn-eyed man struck her as the serious sort, not one to appreciate being singled-out and subjected to a feather boa looped lasso-like about his immaculate shirt collar—which made the prospect of tweaking that aristocratic nose and coaxing a flush into those high-boned cheeks all the more irresistible.

From the orchestra pit, a drum roll sounded, her cue to sashay down the stage stairs and choose her night’s “victim.” Summoning her most sultry smile, she announced, “I’ll need a volunteer from the audience. Whichever of you fine, strapping gents shall it be, hm?”

Predictably, hands shot up to the sky along with calls of “Over ‘ere, sweet’eart,” and “Pick me. Me!”

Playing to the crowd, she pursed her painted lips into the pout she knew from experience would turn every man within eyeshot into a randy, raving lunatic. “Oh, my so many gallants to choose from, my poor head is spinning.”

Tapping a finger to the beauty patch beside her mouth, she made a show of scanning the audience, pausing every now and again to hesitate over a pair of pleading eyes or to smile into a flushed face, all the while knowing exactly who she would pick—the dark-haired archangel with the sad, solemn eyes and the beautiful lips. For the span of a single song, she simply had to have him.

“I think it will be…you!” She stabbed her finger at him and then crooked it, beckoning him onstage.

Looking like a startled stag confronted with a hunter’s rifle, for a handful of seconds he stared at her unmoving. One of his grinning friends jabbed him in the side. Coming to, he looked back over his shoulder as if the object of her pointing must be sitting at a table behind him. Daisy hid a smile and silently counted off to five. By “four” he’d turned back to her, expression horrified. Staying in his seat, he jerked his head back-and-forth and mouthed “no.”

He’s shy, she thought, followed by how delicious. After two solid weeks of being ogled by brutes and occasionally pawed by the bolder ones, the prospect of having to coax a man onstage with her was strangely titillating. Watching the mortified flush spread over his high-boned cheeks, she felt a jet of warmth shoot between her thighs and was startled by it. Though her act was overtly sexual, when performing she was very much detached from her body. More often than not, she felt as though she’d left her physical self entirely, as though she were the puppet master pulling the strings behind the scene of a Punch and Judy show only instead of Punch, the puppet she manipulated was called Delilah. The byplay and banter she kept up with the males in the audience was entirely for show. The allure of her act rested on her ability to convince every man in the room she must be mad for him, but the truth was she’d never once felt the slightest sexual stirring while onstage—until now.

Heart drumming and palms perspiring, Gavin watched Daisy sashay down the steps, the spotlight following her as she headed straight for him. As much as he’d wanted to see her, becoming part of her act hadn’t been any part of his plan.

She drew up at their table. “Bonsoir, gents. Do any of you lads know French? It’s the language of love after all.” Even though she addressed the trio as a group, Gavin didn’t miss how her eyes never left his face. God, Daisy.

Rourke volunteered Gavin to speak any language she fancied and gamely suggested they commence with Latin. Faces wreathed in grins, he and Hadrian shifted to the side to make room.

Daisy flung her slender arms out to the side and announced to the audience, “I think our handsome friend must be shy. Are you shy, sweetheart?” Gaze locked on Gavin’s, she leaned over the table, sending cleavage spilling out the top of her gown, and ran her tongue along the seam of her lips, a slow, deliberate slide that had the heat pooling in his groin. Straightening, she called out to the other tables, “Come on fellows, this fine young gentleman wants for encouragement. Let’s give it to him, shall we?”

A wave of boos and hisses rolled over the room. From the back, someone called out “Pisser” and another more benign voice added, “Lucky bloke,” but for the most part Gavin was too caught up in his beautiful tormentor to pay them much heed.

Wrenching his gaze away from her, he pleaded with his friends. “You go, Patrick. You fancy being front and center more than I.”

“Not a chance.” Rourke reached across and slapped him on the back. “It’s your night. It won’t kill you to have a bit of fun for once.”

Mortified, Gavin swung around to Hadrian. “Harry?”

Hadrian shook his head and then gave him a thumbs-up. “Can’t, mate. Callie would have my cock on a platter if she ever found out and even if she didn’t, I’ve had more than my share of show girls in my bachelor days. Pretend you’re in court before the judge and jury if that helps you. Whatever it takes, go to!”

Gavin started to answer he didn’t care to “go to,” but instead found himself swallowing a mouthful of feathers. Standing behind his chair, Delilah ran practiced palms over his shoulders and down his shirtfront, stopping barely above the waistband of his trousers. Fingers pointed downward, she brought her mouth over his ear. “Either be a sport and come on stage with me or have me finish out my act here. What’s it to be, chéri?”

The threat levered Gavin to his feet. Face burning, he submitted to her winding the boa about his neck and then using its tail as a leash to lead him onstage. He mounted the platform amidst raucous applause just as two burly stagehands set down a gilded chair sideways in the spotlight.

“Take a load off, love,” she said, shoving both hands against his chest. Falling back into the seat he caught a whiff of the cool, clean scent of peppermint on her breath, her favorite sweet from all those years ago.

Like Delilah seducing Samson or Salome dancing for Herod, she circled him, her swaying movements matching the tempo of the music, her every teasing gesture designed to arouse. Standing in front of him, she slowly peeled off her elbow high opera gloves finger-by-finger; the left hand with her teeth, a slow, seductive striptease. Gavin sucked in his breath, hoping his erection wasn’t visible to the audience as it must be to her.

She bent over him, grabbing the back of his chair with both hands. Her breasts were a hairsbreadth from his mouth, her green foxfire gaze a burn he felt like a brand on his flesh. In the subdued lighting, her skin, very white and slightly damp, glowed like pearls.

Turning her face to the side, she called out, “I think he likes it, gents. What about you?”

The crowd roared its approval and Gavin more than suspected his wasn’t the only hard-on in the room. Coins fell upon the stage floor like hail, one striking Gavin in the outer thigh. Delilah smoothed her hand over the smarting spot and cooed, “Poor baby,” loud enough for the audience to hear. The next thing he knew she was in his lap, or rather straddling it, a leg on either side of his chair. Hands braced atop his shoulders, she wiggled her bottom, her sultry smile telling him she was feeling every brick hard inch of him.

All at once, her eyes flashed open and her jaw dropped, taking her smile with it. “Gavin?”

He nodded. His mouth felt too dry for speaking but he managed to mouth the words, “Yes. Yes, it’s me.”

In that moment, he forgot he was on stage, forgot he was a respected barrister in a compromising, some might say humiliating position, a collar of feathers about his neck and a boner tenting his trousers. Feeling as though his blood had turned to molten lava, he threw back his head and fitted his hands to her hips and let her dance in his lap in time to the music.

She pulled back, and he fancied the sudden hitch to her breathing and the trembling of her thighs wasn’t part of the act. That now that she saw him for who he was, she was feeling it too, something so bold and powerful and altogether erotic that surely simple lust must pale in comparison.

The music built to crescendo. Her eyes found his. Looking apologetic if not precisely shame-faced, she whispered, “It’s the finale. I’m…I’m sorry.”

Before he could ask what she was sorry for, she arched back, and he found himself on eye-level with her splayed thighs, a sliver of moist pink flesh peeking out of her the slit in her silky black drawers. Suddenly she flipped over, somehow managing to execute the somersault without kicking him in the face. Bounding to her feet, she turned to the audience. In one smooth motion, she reached down and pulled the drawstring of her bloomers. The garment felt away in two halves, revealing the scanty black lace thong beneath.

To a man, the crowd surged to its feet. More money fell upon the stage, crumbled pound notes this time amidst catcalls and wolf whistles and thunderous applause. Playing to the applause, she strutted up and down the stage, stopping periodically to bend over and pick up the money, a devise to show off her exquisitely tight milk white bottom.

Hands full, she pranced back to the piano and dropped the heap of collected coins atop. “Our volunteer has been a proper sport. He deserves something sweet, doesn’t he, Ralphie?”

The pianist obliged with a violent nod. “Aye, Miss Du Lac, seems he ought to get somethin’ for ‘is trouble.”

Daisy winked, a broad gesture meant to be seen all the way to the back of the room and strolled back over to Gavin, still seated in the chair. She settled a hand atop each of his shoulders and looked long and deep into his eyes. “Fancy a sweet, love?”

Gav, have you brought me your sweets again this time?

Gavin opened his mouth to answer that no reward was required but before he could, she grabbed him by the shirt collar and crushed her mouth to his. Drowning in a sea of peppermint and applause, Gavin shot up from the chair, wrapped his arms about her slender waist, and lifted her off the ground.

Off into the distance, a male voice yelled out, “That’s the way, mate. Give her a good rogering.”

The crude remark returned Gavin to reality. He wrenched his mouth away from Daisy’s and looked over her slender past her to a sea of salivating faces. All at once he remembered where he was and, more importantly, who he was.

“Enough!” He stripped off his evening jacket and threw it about Daisy’s shoulders. Staring into her startled eyes, he said, “This is for your own good,” and swung her up into his arms.

“Runaway Bride” meets Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” in Hope Tarr‘s UNTAMED.

Book #3 of Hope’s “Men of Roxbury House” Trilogy

Chapter Two

“And I have thrust myself into this maze,

Happily to wive and thrive as best I may.”

—William Shakespeare, Petruchio, The Taming of the Shrew

Covent Garden Opera House

February 1890

Rourke squinted out into the ballroom where guests were penned in like so many Shetland sheep. “You swore she’d be here.”

Stepping back amongst his friends, Harry and Gavin, he yanked at his collar, the starched points of which had been stabbing into either side of his jaw for the past hour. If seen, the gesture would betray his commonness, but it couldn’t be helped. It was hot. Hot as hell, or best make that hot as Hades as his newly fashionable former Roxbury House friends, Gavin and Harry, had schooled him to say. The enormous crystal chandelier suspended overhead wasn’t solely to blame. Heat from incandescent burners spilled out from the tiered opera boxes, wilting the elaborate floral arrangements and glittering guests, thickening the air with the rank sweetness of dying flowers and ripening flesh, the stench calling to mind the undertaker’s front parlor where once he’d worked as a mourning “mute.”

Since leaving the Roxbury House orphanage at sixteen, he’d worked any number of menial jobs—ditch digger, chimney sweep, and lastly railway navvie. The hard labor had broadened his shoulders and strengthened his back, as well as his will to make something of himself. When he’d entered the pub’s prize fight on a lark and stepped over the ropes to duke it out with the reigning contender, no one, including himself, had expected him to hold out for the requisite three minutes. He’d not only held. He’d won.

What irony that his present abject misery owed to how very far he’d risen in life. And yet at times such as this, when he found himself rubbing elbows with jewel-festooned females and their mustached husbands and beaux, the latter sporting shiny gold watch fobs and fat money clips, he felt the telltale tingling creeping into his palms and the fingers of his right hand, his working hand, starting up with the old familiar flexing jig.

Forcing his fingers still, he reminded himself he didn’t need to be that person anymore. He wasn’t that person. And if the prospect of a pearl-studded brooch or gold tie clasp still had the power to make his hands prickle, the delectable yet-to-be-met “she” brought another very particular part of him to life with the beginnings of a long-unsatisfied ache.

“She” was Lady Katherine Lindsey, daughter to the Earl of Romney and one of London’s preeminent Professional Beauties, young ladies of rank who condescended to allow their pocket-sized photographic portraits, or cartes postales, to be displayed for sale in shops such as his photographer friend, Harry’s. She was also the woman whom the day before Rourke had announced to his two friends he meant to marry.

Harry Stone, known to the public as Hadrian St. Claire, sidestepped the protruding plumes of the grand dame in front of him and directed his gaze out onto the milling crowd. “And so she shall. She may have arrived already.”

Standing on Rourke’s opposite side, his barrister friend, Gavin Carmichael, added his calming voice to the fray. “Mind how long it took us to get through that receiving line. Guests are still arriving. Have patience, Rourke. If she’s here, we’ll find her.”

If Rourke lacked patience, and admittedly he did, it was with good cause. After years in Scotland, he’d come back to London with one purpose: to find a blue-blooded Englishwoman for his wife. He wasn’t looking to make a love match. That would take longer than the fortnight he had left to woo and win. From what he could tell, like Happily Ever After endings, love was the stuff of fairy tales. Once he found a woman of proper pedigree, pleasing looks, and breeding age, he would consider his search ended and his posterity well served. A highborn mother meant that his future children would never be on the receiving end of “the cut direct,” that canny knack aristocrats had for looking through you as though you were made of glass, dirty glass, and then flaring their nostrils and curling their lips as horses did when they smelled something rank.

In the social whirlwind of the past two weeks, he’d so far encountered prim debutantes, brash American heiresses, and randy widows; the latter promising to provide any number of carnal delights. None of them had moved him to give more than a glance or smile in passing, certainly not a proposal of marriage. Determined though he was not to go home empty-handed, he couldn’t stretch out his stay indefinitely. He’d neglected his railway company in Edinburgh far too long. The railway business was as cutthroat as any street scam, the threat from rival companies calling for constant vigilance, the opportunities for swallowing up the smaller fish boundlessly lucrative.

Discouraged, the other day he’d set out for a wee stroll, his meandering footsteps leading him to bustling Parliament Square. That was where he encountered “her,” or rather her likeness in the form of a pocket-sized hand-tinted photograph resting atop the velvet-covered shelving inside Harry’s shop window. The photograph was shot in profile, the woman’s slender hands resting demurely in her lap, her wavy, honey-colored hair drawn up to display the sweet contour of high-boned cheek, lush mouth, and softly rounded chin. Unfortunately the shop was shut up, the shades drawn, the sign turned to closed. Rourke had stood still as a statue in the bracing cold, his face pressed up to the glass, his good eye employed in memorizing every detail of that lovely fine-boned face.

Once he got back to Gavin’s flat, he hadn’t lost any time in asking after her.

“There’s a photograph of a young woman in Harry’s shop window. Dark eyes, light brown hair, hands folded in her lap. Do you know her?”

Gavin had looked up from his open copy of the London Times. “That would be Katherine Lindsey. She’s one of Harry’s PBs, Professional Beauties, and by far his best seller. They’ve worked out an arrangement where she sits for him exclusively. Don’t scowl so. It’s all done in the best of taste, and for the most part, the husbands don’t mind.”

“She’s married, then?” On the walk back to Gavin’s, he’d tried tempering his enthusiasm. For all he knew, his mystery lady might very well be married, engaged, or otherwise beyond his touch. Still, hearing the confirmation sent his hopes sinking like a body weighted with stones tossed into the Thames.

Gavin shook his head. “If you bothered to read anything beyond financial reports, you’d know the lady has made something of a reputation for herself. She’s been engaged three times, and each time she has cried off before the banns were read.”

Intrigued as much by her story as her face, he’d found himself making excuses to stop by Harry’s shop for a second, third, and even a fourth look. Finally he’d swallowed his pride, plunked down his guinea, and purchased a copy of the portrait. It sat propped upon his bedside table, hers the last face he looked upon before sleeping and the first upon rising.

But there was no substitute for the genuine article. The opportunity to encounter Lady Katherine in the flesh had brought him here tonight. Apparently she had some affiliation as a volunteer for the Tremayne Dairy Farm Academy, the charitable recipient organization of that night’s ball. Reckoning that the dance card of a beauty, and a “professional” one at that, would be among the first to be filled, he’d taken up strategic position on the periphery of the dance floor.

“That’s her over there.” Harry’s voice brought him back to the present. “Standing amidst the half-dozen penguins in Lord Dutton’s set. You can’t miss her.”

Excitement gripped Rourke. He felt like a child on the eve of all those bountiful Christmases he’d heard of but never once known. Craning his neck, he scanned the ballroom, the muzzy figures melding into one glittering mass of jewels, plump bare shoulders, and swirling satins and silks. But the trouble with rich people was they tended to speak, move, and dress so very much alike.

Exasperated, he turned back to his two friends. “Point her out to me.”

Gavin spoke up, “It’s a society ball, Patrick, not Billingsgate Market. Pointing is not quite the thing.”

Harry let out a huff. “Hang your pride and put your glasses on, man.”

That was an easy enough recommendation for Harry to make. Handsome Harry, they’d called him back in their Roxbury House days, and with good reason. Blessed with height, blond good looks, and two working eyes, Harry had been coaxing girls out of their knickers before he was old enough to shave. Likewise, tall, dark, aristocratic Gavin had drawn his fair share of female admiration since they’d entered the ballroom. Barrel-chested, blunt-featured, and with a shock of auburn hair that no amount of Makassar oil could seem to tame, Rourke’s rough-hewn looks were less likely to recommend him to a delicate London lassie like Lady Katherine. Having a dodgy eye to boot hardly seemed fair, but certainly he wasn’t the only man in the room wearing glasses. He slid a gloved hand inside his tailcoat’s inner breast pocket and pulled out the detested spectacles. Shoving them on his crooked bridge of a broken nose, he leaned forward.

Like an oyster opening to reveal the pearl sheltered within, the clutch of evening-attired “penguins” parted, bringing their prize into view. Lady Katherine Lindsey peered out from her sanctum and smothered a yawn behind her slender gloved hand.

The first thing that struck him was how very tiny she was. Barely reaching the shoulders of the men ranged about her, she was also slight as a fairy. Following on that thought was that she was far prettier than her picture. Harry might be one of the best photographic portraitists in London, but the photograph he’d taken didn’t begin to do her justice. But then, how could an image imprinted on paper and tinted by hand begin to capture the creaminess of that pale oval face; the wicked, willful flash of those dark eyes; and the wonderful mobility of her lush mouth, berry ripe and fashioned for kissing? The only conceivable flaw he could find was her nose. Seen full face, it was thin about the bridge and slightly longish. An aristocrat’s nose, no doubt it tended to point north, and yet the delicate pinkish tip begged to be tweaked—and kissed.

She must have sensed him staring. Shifting to the side, she cast her gaze over one gentleman’s shoulder and their eyes met. The jolt of sexual awareness struck like a thunderbolt splitting a placid springtime sky, the tingling heat sliding down his spine and settling in his cock. Suddenly glad of the concealing crush, he lifted his champagne flute in silent salute and then knocked back a sip. Warm as piss, just as he’d known it would be, and flat, too. Holding her eye, he choked down the froth and then made a deliberately droll face.

The corners of her mouth lifted ever so slightly upwards, affording him a flash of straight white teeth and two devilish dimples bracketing her bottom lip. As if remembering herself, she feigned a yawn and covered her hand over her mouth once more, only this time Rourke knew it wasn’t boredom she sought to smother. It was a chuckle.

“I think she fancies you, mate.” Harry nudged him in the ribs, but Rourke ignored him, refusing to be distracted.

Emboldened, he sent his gaze on a lazy downward glide, the shadowed hollow of her slender throat inviting mouths and tongues to linger. Her cream-colored gown was of obvious quality though simple in style, the décolletage low but not indecently so, just low enough to allow a teasing glimpse of cleavage. Elbow-high white satin opera gloves sheathed arms that were both slender and shapely.

Imagining those lovely arms wrapping about his neck as he peeled away her gown, he asked, “What’s she like?”

He sensed Harry shrug. “She has a reputation as a shrew, and honestly earned from what I hear, though she’s civil enough to me. Always keeps her pose without any fuss or fidgeting, though she’s not much of a talker. Brings her younger sister along to our sittings, no doubt to keep things on the up and up, not that she need bother.”

Irrational jealousy caused Rourke to look away at last. He stole a sideways glance at the handsome photographer, but his friend’s attention was fixed not on Lady Katherine, but instead on a tall, curvy brunette sipping champagne and chatting to several goggle-eyed gentlemen on the far side of the room. Rourke recalled Harry earlier introducing her as Caledonia Rivers, not a PB, but one of his commissioned portraiture subjects, as well as a leader in the women’s suffrage movement.

Harry scraped a gloved hand through his silver-blond hair and scowled. “She’s off-limits, Rourke.”

Ordinarily Rourke’s tastes ran to buxom women with big breasts and long legs. His former mistress, Felicity, was as tall as he, as well as a proper armful. Striking though Miss Rivers was, his thoughts kept turning back to the pocket-sized Venus on the other side of the room.

Happy to have his handsome friend’s interest elsewhere engaged, he clapped Harry on the shoulder. “Dinna fash, man. Bonny as your Miss Rivers is, I’ve set my cap elsewhere.”

Setting his cap for Lady Katherine was but the first step in winning her. In his hard-scrabble experience, winning anything meant fighting for it. Whether he found himself in a London opera house, a pugilist’s ring, or a railway laborer’s hut sleeping three to a bed, jungle law prevailed.

He divided his gaze between his two friends. “If you’ll excuse me, there’s a lady who’s promised me the next dance. . .only she doesna know it yet.”

Gavin and Harry exchanged amused looks. Gavin’s dark brows rose. “Pardon me for asking, but since when do you dance?”

It was a reasonable question. What little grace he possessed was centered in his nimble-fingered hands; otherwise, he’d been born with two left feet.

Rourke grinned and handed Harry his champagne flute.

“Since now.”

Lawson’s review of Enslaved by Hope Tarr
Historical romance released by Medallion Press 1 Oct 07

This is the second in Tarr’s series following three orphans in late Victorian London. The first story follows Harry Stone, now Hadrian St. Claire. This story follows Gavin Carmichael, now a successful barrister working for his grandfather. Gavin has always wondered about Daisy Lake, a fellow orphan who he had to leave when his grandfather came to take him from the orphanage. Gavin is surprised when he finds Daisy performing in a not so wonderful location as Delilah du Lac, lately of Paris music halls.

Daisy is in London because she eventually wants to persue a career as a serious actress. When Gavin sees her on stage he is in shock, but then at the end of her act he steals her off the stage and offers her something she can’t refuse. He promises to help her get a part in a new production of As You Like It if she will live with him for a month. Daisy assumes the offer is to become his mistress, but Gavin wants more than just some nights of pleasure, and he does all he can to keep Daisy around, even when she continues to lie to him.

Gavin is very likeable. Though he was an orphan for a while, before he was 14 he lived with a caring, if poor, family. His mother fell in love with a poor Irishman and ran away from home. After living for a year in the orphanage, Gavin’s grandfather finds him and gives him everything money can buy, but not the loving home he had before he was orphaned. Leaving the orphanage he left Daisy, but he searched for her when he became an adult.

Daisy has always felt abandoned, by her birth parents who left her as an infant, then by Gavin when he was taken away by his grandfather. She was adopted by a very nice theatrical couple who took her to France where she learned to sing and dance and act a little. Because of all these circumstances, plus the attention from some Frenchmen, Daisy doesn’t really trust Gavin, or men in general, and so she sets out to say things to shock him as well as hide herself but not her body.

Daisy was hard to like at first, with her blunt speech, her constant offering of herself, but not her heart and how she kept Gavin at a distance from truly knowing her. It’s understandable though given her feelings of abandonment as well as thinking Gavin had ignored her for so long. She had written him many letters he never returned. What secrets she hides, there are some big ones, and her reasons make her eventually really grow on a person. It takes the whole book to do it, and it’s frustrating why she doesn’t just trust Gavin, but I did like her in the end.

There’s not any sort of dastardly villain in the story, only the things that people need to overcome to really give themselves to another person and let go of the past. One of the things that was a nice surprise was Daisy’s attitude toward sex. She was very open, maybe too blunt about it, but she was open about her wants, needs and desires and wanted to share them with Gavin. Like Callie from Vanquished, she’s not a virgin and not ashamed of that. Which makes for some great and steamy scenes between Daisy and Gavin.

There’s a greater amount of steamy passion than in Vanquished and I liked the path that Daisy and Gavin when on together and how Daisy went from being he daring woman of the world to a well rounded woman who is comfortable as herself and completely with her man.

Grade: B+

     Blurb:

     “Through thick and thin, forever and ever, come what may, we’ll stay together…”

     So goes the solemn pact between orphans Gavin Carmichael and Daisy Lake. The next day will see them separated for more than a decade.

     Years later, Gavin is a successful London barrister haunted by his past – and the memory of Daisy. To distract him from his obsession, his friends coax him out to an East End supper club where the headlining act is the infamous nightingale of the Montmartre music halls, Delilah du Lac.

     Only when Delilah strolls out onstage, Gavin takes one look at her slanted green eyes, sensuous mouth, and long, slender legs and feels recognition flood him. Delilah and Daisy are one and the same woman – a woman he resolves to save from herself at all costs. He storms the stage and carries her off.

     When Daisy confides her dream to act on a proper London stage, Gavin seizes the opportunity to bind her to him. He will see she gets a part in the upcoming run of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” – provided she agrees to live with him for one month.

     Daisy agrees. Gavin’s offer is too tempting to pass on, and the lanky boy of her memory has matured into an exceedingly handsome man. Sharing his bed for the month will be no hardship. Only as their sensual games increase in intensity, Gavin is the one in danger of being enslaved.

     Read an excerpt.

This was posted forever ago, in fact still is. Instead of moving the one that is already up I am reposting it (I can do that   ) cuz I have excerpts for the next two books to go up today.

retro post all from April 13, 2008

Excerpt of Vanquished by Hope Tarr (Medallion, 1 Jul 06) – pretty covers, but some of the model’s poses make me go “ouch!” Have you seen her recent Blaze cover?

CHAPTER ONE

“Your denial of my citizen’s right to vote, is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one of the taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers as an offender against the law; therefore the denial of my sacred right to life, liberty, property…”

~ Susan B. Anthony
United States of America v. Susan B. Anthony, 1873

Westminster, London
February 1890

“Votes for Women now. Votes for women NOW!”

The protestors’ voices pitched higher still, shriller still, or so it seemed to Hadrian as he hurried across Westminster Bridge, the wind tearing at his greatcoat and scarf and threatening to rip the bowler from his head. Stepping out onto the crowded street, he tightened his grip on his camera, a German-made Anschütz with a shutter mechanism capable of arresting motion to one-thousandth of a second. He’d put the equipment to good test that afternoon at St. Thomas Hospital photographing a newly discovered medical anomaly. The poor bastard had been born with an enormous scrotum, tumor-mottled skin, and a chronic palsy that would have rendered traditional photographs little better than a blur. Even so, using his talent to turn a fellow human being into little better than a circus freak hadn’t set well with Hadrian, and the subject’s sad-eyed patience in holding any number of humiliating poses had made him feel like the lowest of beasts. Now frozen, footsore and famished, he couldn’t reach his studio soon enough.

But to do so he first had to run the gauntlet of suffragists who’d overtaken Parliament Square. They’d camped out for coming on two days now, creating a bloody nuisance for pedestrians and conveyances alike. Dressed in somber grays and serious blacks, the fifty-odd females picketing beneath the gray wash of winter sky might just as easily pass for a funeral procession as a political rally were it not for the placards the women held aloft and the noise they emitted — especially the noise.

“Miss Caledonia Rivers to speak on the subject of female emancipation… Hallman’s Assembly Rooms… tomorrow evening… seven o’ clock.”

Dodging traffic to cross to the sidewalk, Hadrian could only shake his head. That any woman fortunate enough to possess a roof and four walls would march about in the bitter air struck him as a sort of perverse self-indulgence, a foolishness on par with going slumming in the stews or touring prison yards to observe the convicts picking oakum. He had no patience for it, none at all and when one bug-eyed female had the audacity to try and stuff a pamphlet in his already full hands, he swallowed an oath worthy of his Covent Garden days and darted inside the park’s gated entrance.

He realized his mistake at once. Apparently not content with clogging the sidewalks, the damnable females had made camp within the park proper. A platform had been erected in the center of the green and several more dark-clad women busied themselves lighting the torches set about its perimeter. Giving them broad berth, he kept his head down and his sights trained on the opposite end of the wrought-iron gate.

The blare of a bobbie’s whistle from outside the park walls instinctively sent him swinging around — and barreling into a female’s soft body. “Ouf!”

Hadrian stared down in horror. The woman he’d knocked off her feet now sprawled at his, feathered hat askew and skirts bunched. On the frost-parched-grass beside her, a leather briefcase crammed with papers stretched wide open.

He went down on his knees beside her. “Madam, are you all right?” Unleashing his grip on the camera, he slid an arm beneath her shoulders.

She jerked at his touch. Behind the netting of veiled hat, her green eyes flashed fire. “It’s miss, actually.” She elbowed her way upright and yanked down her skirts — but not before Hadrian caught sight of a pair of appealingly trim ankles. “And I would be in fine fettle indeed had you but seen fit to mind where you were going.” Broken peacock feather dangling over her one eye, she got to her knees and began collecting her papers.

Courtesy toward women was deeply ingrained, one of the few values Hadrian possessed, and the only claim he could make to being a gentleman by deed if not by birth. And so rather than point out that she had bumped into him as well, he held out his hand to help her up. “Allow me.”

Beneath the weight of that atrocious hat, her head snapped up. “I believe I have had quite enough of your help for one day.”

As if bent on proving her wrong, the demon wind kicked up, scattering vellum sheets to the four winds.

She leapt to her feet. “My papers!” Hiking up her skirts, she gave chase across the park. Over her shoulder, she shouted, “Well, don’t just stand there. Do something!”

Bloody hell. With a muttered prayer that his camera would still be there on his return, Hadrian abandoned it to run after her. Hell bent on cheating the wrangling wind, he plucked one sheet from its skewer of wrought-iron fencepost and another from the foot of the statue of the late Benjamin Disraeli. At the lady’s insistence, he retrieved two more from the upper branches of one very tall, very scratchy oak tree. Breathless, bruised, and sporting a tear in his coat, he shoved the last of the papers in his pocket and climbed down. Dropping to the hard-packed ground, he scanned the square for signs of his erstwhile victim, but she appeared to have vanished.

He was on the verge of giving up and going on his way when he spotted her, down on all fours and buried shoulder-deep in the boxwood hedge. Coming up behind her, he tapped her smartly on the back. “What the devil do you think you’re about?”

From beneath the branches, her muffled voice answered, “Collecting my papers naturally.” She crawled out, feathers hanging at half-mast and a clutch of vellum in one grubby glove.

This time she accepted his hand up without argument. Standing face-to-face, he saw she was tall, nearly a match for his six feet. The novelty of looking a woman directly in the eye had him peering beyond the blur of veil for a closer study. No great beauty, he decided, nor was she any green girl. If he had to make a stab at guessing, he’d peg her at thirty-odd, perhaps a year or two older than himself, and a spinster judging by the “miss” as well as the dreary clothing. And yet the sage-colored eyes beneath the slash of dark brows were both expressive and arresting, and the full mouth and softly squared jaw completed a pleasing enough picture.

Caught up, it took her discreet cough to remind him of the papers bulging from his pocket. Handing them over, he said, “I think this is the lot.”

“Thank you.” She took them from him, her gloved fingertips brushing his, and improbably he felt the warm tingle of her touch shoot straight to his groin. Stuffing the papers inside her case, she spotted the mud and dried leaves festooning the front of her coat. “Oh dear, I’m a mess” she said, swiping at the muck with her soiled glove. “I never can seem to manage the trick of remembering a handkerchief.”

He fumbled in his pocket. “Here, have mine.” He pressed the square into her palm, again experiencing that peculiar surge of heat.

She accepted with a grateful smile and bent to brush away the dirt. “Thank you — again.” Straightening to her full, glorious height, she handed back his handkerchief.

Feeling in better spirits, he shook his head. “Keep it. Really, it’s the least I can do after mowing you down like so much lawn grass.”

She laughed then, a soft airy tinkling that made him think of the wind chimes his landlady insisted on hanging by his backdoor. “All right then… if you’re sure.” She stuffed the wadded ball of linen into her coat pocket and turned to go. Stopping in her tracks, she looked back. “Mind you don’t lose your papers.”

“My papers? Oh… quite.” Good God, he’d left his best camera out in the open and, worse yet, had been on the verge of forgetting it entirely. What the devil was the matter with him? Jogging over to retrieve it, he thought of his flat, empty save for his cat, and realized he was no longer so very eager to reach it — at least not alone. “I’m not always such an oaf, you know,” he called back, wracking his brain for something else to say, some pretense to hold her.

From a few feet away, she cupped a hand to her ear. “Sorry?”

“I said I’m not always such an oaf.”

“Oh.” She paused in mid-step, appearing to consider that. “Well, I’m not usually such a harridan, either except when I’m nervous — or in this case, late.”

“I don’t think you’re a harridan.” Camera in hand, he closed the space separating them in three ridiculously long strides. “It’s these protestors, taking up the whole bloody square as if they own every brick and statue, spewing their rubbish at all hours that have everyone on edge. I only came through the park to avoid them.”

Mouth lifting into a pretty smile of full pink lips and straight white teeth, she nodded to the park beyond them. “It would seem you’ve rather failed in that regard.”

“Yes, I suppose I have.” Looking back over his shoulder, he saw they were the object of a good many whispers and gawking stares. Their mad dash must have made an amusing spectacle indeed. Ordinarily that realization would have set him fuming but rather than care, he found himself saying, “There’s a tea shop just around the corner. Allow me to make amends by buying you a cup?”

She shook her head, looking adorably shy and far younger than she had at first when she’d still been tight-lipped and cross. “That isn’t necessary. And I’ve an… engagement to keep.”

Ah yes, presumably the engagement for which he had made her late already. A decent fellow would accept defeat and send her on her way. And yet the mental image of how splendid she would look freed from all those ghastly clothes and wearing only his bed sheets prompted him to press, “As you’re late already, why not postpone it altogether, at least until you’ve thawed?

She shook her head, causing the broken hat feathers to careen like a torn sail. “I can’t. I really must be going.” The tightening of her mouth told him he’d been too forward, that this time she really did mean to go.

“Ah well, perhaps we’ll bump into one another again sometime.” He fished inside his coat pocket for one of his business cards as a pretense to asking her name.

“Yes, perhaps we shall,” she allowed but there was no hope of it in her eyes. She turned to go and Hadrian knew this time there would be no more keeping her.

Before she could take a step, a squat woman with salt-and-pepper hair and a man’s plaid muffler wrapped about her short neck rushed up to intercept her. “Good Lord, Callie, are you all right? I was outside the gate and only just heard what happened.”

Beneath her veil, the woman — Callie — flushed bright crimson. “Calm yourself, Harriet. I am perfectly fine. I took a bit of a tumble, and my briefcase spilled.” Her shy-eyed gaze shifted to Hadrian. “This gentleman was kind enough to help me.”

From behind horn-rimmed spectacles, Harriet’s beady-eyed gaze dropped to the camera case in Hadrian’s hand. “I don’t know what rag of a newspaper you’re with, sir, but if your scheme is to scare up scandal and rubbish by waylaying Miss Rivers and photographing her in disarray, then you’d best think again.”

Taken off guard, Hadrian started to demur when from the vicinity of the stage, someone with a bullhorn belted out, “Miss Caledonia Rivers to make her address. Five minutes, ladies. Five minutes…”

Callie Rivers. Caledonia Rivers. It was then that the fog inside Hadrian’s head lifted. His mystery woman was one of them, a suffragette! And not just any suffragette but their leader! Seeing her through new eyes, he took in the spinsterish coat, the awful hat, and the leather case containing the oh-so important papers, and asked himself how a piquant smile and a pair of pretty ankles had turned him into such an absolute idiot.

He stared at her, feeling like a biblical figure from whose eyes the scales had just fallen. “Your pressing engagement, I take it?”

She answered with a brusque nod, at once prim and proper and utterly businesslike. “Quite.”

Now that his initial shock was fading, he could at least appreciate the irony of the situation. The first woman to pique his interest in years was the celebrated champion of a cause he’d come to loathe.

“Lest we part as strangers, my name is St. Claire. Hadrian St. Claire.” By this time, he had the sought-after business card in hand and his shock firmly in check. Handing her the card, he said, “I’m not a reporter. I’m a photographer. I have a studio a few blocks from here on Great George. Portraiture is my specialty.”

She tucked his card into her pocket with nary a glance. “I’m afraid I’m not terribly fond of having my photograph taken.”

“Pity. You’d make for a most intriguing subject.” And because he had absolutely nothing to lose — now that he knew who and what she was, what possible interest in her could he have — he looked directly into Caledonia Rivers’ beautiful, mortified eyes and added, “I should have recognized you from the newspaper etchings had they but done you justice. You’re far prettier, and far younger, than I would have supposed.”

Beneath the veil, the stain on her cheeks darkened from pale pink to dusky rose but, to her credit, she didn’t look away. “I think you mock me, sir.”

“On the contrary, miss, if either of us is the subject of mockery, I rather think it is me.” He nodded toward a clutch of young women watching them and giggling behind their gloves.

Harriet skewered him with a sharp look before turning back to the Rivers woman. “Callie, dear, we really must be on our way.” She hooked her plump arm through her friend’s and began leading her away.

“Ladies.” He tipped his bowler to them both, but it was Caledonia Rivers whom he followed with his eyes as she hurried toward the platform, creased and muddied skirts trailing the pavement, broken hat feathers caught up in the fingers of the wind.

So that was Caledonia Rivers, the celebrated suffragette spokeswoman making headlines in all the newspapers. What was it the press was calling her these days? Ah yes, The Maid of Mayfair. Unlike so many of her suffragette sisters whose reputations skirted the fringe of respectability, Caledonia Rivers was said to be so very good and virtuous — and yet not too good or too virtuous to indulge in a bit of a flirt in a public park, the little hypocrite.

He’d only paid her the compliment to torture her, and yet in his roundabout way he’d spoken nothing but the truth. The flesh-and-blood woman with whom he’d passed the last delightful few minutes scarcely resembled the stern-faced Amazon the newspapers made her out to be.

As for the “maid” part, he was deucedly sorry he wouldn’t have the opportunity to test that out for himself.

Or would he?

Lawson’s review of Vanquished by Hope Tarr
Historical romance released by Medallion Press 1 Jul 06

If you’re looking for a different sort of story, setting and characters, this book is for you. Set in late Victorian London, the story follows a leader of the suffragist movement, Caledonia Rivers. She’s a spinster whose whole life is the movement for women’s rights in England. She meets Hadrian St. Claire, a photographer, who has been asked to take her picture for a series of photographs to go along with the passage of a woman’s suffrage bill in Parliament. What, oh what, could happen? Probably anything and everything.

Hadrian has been blackmailed to take incriminating pictures of Callie by a high ranking Member of Parliament who wants to see her not only ruined, but vanquished. Hadrian has some gambling debts he needs to repay and has to accept the deal even though he doesn’t know Callie. However, Hadrian’s objectivity toward Callie falters when he sees she’s vulnerable as well as a well spoken leader of the suffragist movement.

Both Hadrian and Callie are very likable characters. Callie is a tall, voluptous woman, who was degraded when she was younger by her fiance. She has given up the rest of her life for the women’s vote because she doesn’t have the idea that she can be worthwhile to a man. Hadrian shows her through his attention and camera lens that she’s a beautiful woman and he also gives her the means to come out of her shell.

Hadrian is a different story. He’s had a harder upbringing, finally when he was 15 making it to an orphanage by the good graces of the prime minister William Gladstone. Before that Hadrian had been Harry Stone, son of a prostitute with a shady past. With Callie Hadrian sees that just surviving isn’t enough, that she is someone worth spending his life with.

Of course the whole sordid story of the payment for the photography comes out in the end, but what Hadrian does for the woman he loves helps to bring the MP to justice in a satisfying ending to the story. The fact that someone would go to such lengths is true, but done in an over the top sort of way. Also, the ties between the pasts of Hadrian and Callie seem sort of a stretch, but again, could have happened. The lives of the characters haven’t been easy and the societal hardships aren’t glossed over, whether Hadrian’s past or the treatment of the poor women of London.

The style and characters are well done as well as the setting, even if some of the plot devices are a little overdone. The next two books in the series follow fellow orphans of Hadrian’s, Gavin and Patrick, who are briefly introduced and help with some of Hadrian’s views that there’s more to life than just survival.

Grade: B

Blurb:

Known as The Maid of Mayfair for her unassailable virtue, unwavering resolve, and quiet dignity, suffragette leader, Caledonia —Callie — Rivers is the perfect counter for detractors’ portrayal of the women as rabble rousers, lunatics, even whores. But a high-ranking enemy within the government will stop at nothing to ensure that the Parliamentary bill to grant the vote to females dies in the Commons — including ruining the reputation of the Movement’s chief spokeswoman.

After a streak of disastrous luck at the gaming tables threatens to land him at the bottom of the Thames, photographer Hadrian St. Claire reluctantly agrees to seduce the beautiful suffragist leader and then use his camera to capture her fall from grace. Posing as the photographer commissioned to make her portrait for the upcoming march on Parliament, Hadrian infiltrates Callie’s inner circle. But lovely, soft-spoken Callie hardly fits his mental image of a dowdy, man-hating spinster. And as the passion between them flares from spark to full-on flame, Hadrian is the one in danger of being vanquished.

Read an excerpt (scroll down).

CONTEST! Comment here by noon CST [central standard time] according to the blog timestamp with what you like more: Hope Tarr’s historicals or her Harlequin Blaze’s. The prize is one of three copies of this book, all SIGNED by Hope Tarr!

Ok I am going to work toward getting all the nifty prizes logged today and we will start giving them out. Some of them will go to random comment in a post with these icons. WHAT icons?

SSE EXCERPT: Dear Santa by Karen Templeton

EXCERPT Part II: Thigh High: Thigh High by Bonnie Edwards

EXCERPT: Give Me a Texan: The Love Letter by Linda Broday

EXCERPT: Give Me a Texan: No Time for Love by Phyliss Miranda

EXCERPT: Give Me a Texan: A Shade of Sunrise by DeWanna Pace

EXCERPT: Give Me a Texan: Amarillo By Morning by Jodi Thomas

EXCERPT Part III: Thigh High: Twinkle Twinkle Little Thong by Bonnie Edwards

Excerpt from Viking Warrior, Unwilling Wife by Michelle Styles
new historical release from Mills & Boone with a UK release in June 2008

Yours, Mine…or Ours is book two in Karen Templeton’s Guys & Daughters series (Dear Santa, Yours, Mine…or Ours? and Baby, I’m Yours)

Excerpt of Taken by the Viking by Michelle Styles, coming 1 May!!
Historical romance released by Harlequin 1 May 2008

Excerpt Unlawful Contact by Pamela Clare aka the one to steam the screen

I am missing some and will add them tomorrow (I see Kresley Cole’s aren’t here). More excerpts to come from Lisa Kleypas, Jill Shalvis, Lynne Connolly, Stephanie Tyler, Caroline Linden, HelenKay Dimon, EC Sheedy, Liz Carlyle, Hope Tarr, Lora Leigh, Sabrina Jeffries, Jenna Petersen, Laura Drewry, Sydney Croft, Roxanne St. Claire, Jennifer Estep, Cheryl St.John and many more….

As well as some nifty prizes from t-shirts and books *g*. Some you will have to answer questions from the excerpts and other will be random drawings from the comments.

first recap can be found here

Excerpt of Vanquished by Hope Tarr (Medallion, 1 Jul 06) – pretty covers, but some of the model’s poses make me go “ouch!” Have you seen her recent Blaze cover?

CHAPTER ONE

“Your denial of my citizen’s right to vote, is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one of the taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers as an offender against the law; therefore the denial of my sacred right to life, liberty, property…”

~ Susan B. Anthony
United States of America v. Susan B. Anthony, 1873

Westminster, London
February 1890

“Votes for Women now. Votes for women NOW!”

The protestors’ voices pitched higher still, shriller still, or so it seemed to Hadrian as he hurried across Westminster Bridge, the wind tearing at his greatcoat and scarf and threatening to rip the bowler from his head. Stepping out onto the crowded street, he tightened his grip on his camera, a German-made Anschütz with a shutter mechanism capable of arresting motion to one-thousandth of a second. He’d put the equipment to good test that afternoon at St. Thomas Hospital photographing a newly discovered medical anomaly. The poor bastard had been born with an enormous scrotum, tumor-mottled skin, and a chronic palsy that would have rendered traditional photographs little better than a blur. Even so, using his talent to turn a fellow human being into little better than a circus freak hadn’t set well with Hadrian, and the subject’s sad-eyed patience in holding any number of humiliating poses had made him feel like the lowest of beasts. Now frozen, footsore and famished, he couldn’t reach his studio soon enough.

But to do so he first had to run the gauntlet of suffragists who’d overtaken Parliament Square. They’d camped out for coming on two days now, creating a bloody nuisance for pedestrians and conveyances alike. Dressed in somber grays and serious blacks, the fifty-odd females picketing beneath the gray wash of winter sky might just as easily pass for a funeral procession as a political rally were it not for the placards the women held aloft and the noise they emitted — especially the noise.

“Miss Caledonia Rivers to speak on the subject of female emancipation… Hallman’s Assembly Rooms… tomorrow evening… seven o’ clock.”

Dodging traffic to cross to the sidewalk, Hadrian could only shake his head. That any woman fortunate enough to possess a roof and four walls would march about in the bitter air struck him as a sort of perverse self-indulgence, a foolishness on par with going slumming in the stews or touring prison yards to observe the convicts picking oakum. He had no patience for it, none at all and when one bug-eyed female had the audacity to try and stuff a pamphlet in his already full hands, he swallowed an oath worthy of his Covent Garden days and darted inside the park’s gated entrance.

He realized his mistake at once. Apparently not content with clogging the sidewalks, the damnable females had made camp within the park proper. A platform had been erected in the center of the green and several more dark-clad women busied themselves lighting the torches set about its perimeter. Giving them broad berth, he kept his head down and his sights trained on the opposite end of the wrought-iron gate.

The blare of a bobbie’s whistle from outside the park walls instinctively sent him swinging around — and barreling into a female’s soft body. “Ouf!”

Hadrian stared down in horror. The woman he’d knocked off her feet now sprawled at his, feathered hat askew and skirts bunched. On the frost-parched-grass beside her, a leather briefcase crammed with papers stretched wide open.

He went down on his knees beside her. “Madam, are you all right?” Unleashing his grip on the camera, he slid an arm beneath her shoulders.

She jerked at his touch. Behind the netting of veiled hat, her green eyes flashed fire. “It’s miss, actually.” She elbowed her way upright and yanked down her skirts — but not before Hadrian caught sight of a pair of appealingly trim ankles. “And I would be in fine fettle indeed had you but seen fit to mind where you were going.” Broken peacock feather dangling over her one eye, she got to her knees and began collecting her papers.

Courtesy toward women was deeply ingrained, one of the few values Hadrian possessed, and the only claim he could make to being a gentleman by deed if not by birth. And so rather than point out that she had bumped into him as well, he held out his hand to help her up. “Allow me.”

Beneath the weight of that atrocious hat, her head snapped up. “I believe I have had quite enough of your help for one day.”

As if bent on proving her wrong, the demon wind kicked up, scattering vellum sheets to the four winds.

She leapt to her feet. “My papers!” Hiking up her skirts, she gave chase across the park. Over her shoulder, she shouted, “Well, don’t just stand there. Do something!”

Bloody hell. With a muttered prayer that his camera would still be there on his return, Hadrian abandoned it to run after her. Hell bent on cheating the wrangling wind, he plucked one sheet from its skewer of wrought-iron fencepost and another from the foot of the statue of the late Benjamin Disraeli. At the lady’s insistence, he retrieved two more from the upper branches of one very tall, very scratchy oak tree. Breathless, bruised, and sporting a tear in his coat, he shoved the last of the papers in his pocket and climbed down. Dropping to the hard-packed ground, he scanned the square for signs of his erstwhile victim, but she appeared to have vanished.

He was on the verge of giving up and going on his way when he spotted her, down on all fours and buried shoulder-deep in the boxwood hedge. Coming up behind her, he tapped her smartly on the back. “What the devil do you think you’re about?”

From beneath the branches, her muffled voice answered, “Collecting my papers naturally.” She crawled out, feathers hanging at half-mast and a clutch of vellum in one grubby glove.

This time she accepted his hand up without argument. Standing face-to-face, he saw she was tall, nearly a match for his six feet. The novelty of looking a woman directly in the eye had him peering beyond the blur of veil for a closer study. No great beauty, he decided, nor was she any green girl. If he had to make a stab at guessing, he’d peg her at thirty-odd, perhaps a year or two older than himself, and a spinster judging by the “miss” as well as the dreary clothing. And yet the sage-colored eyes beneath the slash of dark brows were both expressive and arresting, and the full mouth and softly squared jaw completed a pleasing enough picture.

Caught up, it took her discreet cough to remind him of the papers bulging from his pocket. Handing them over, he said, “I think this is the lot.”

“Thank you.” She took them from him, her gloved fingertips brushing his, and improbably he felt the warm tingle of her touch shoot straight to his groin. Stuffing the papers inside her case, she spotted the mud and dried leaves festooning the front of her coat. “Oh dear, I’m a mess” she said, swiping at the muck with her soiled glove. “I never can seem to manage the trick of remembering a handkerchief.”

He fumbled in his pocket. “Here, have mine.” He pressed the square into her palm, again experiencing that peculiar surge of heat.

She accepted with a grateful smile and bent to brush away the dirt. “Thank you — again.” Straightening to her full, glorious height, she handed back his handkerchief.

Feeling in better spirits, he shook his head. “Keep it. Really, it’s the least I can do after mowing you down like so much lawn grass.”

She laughed then, a soft airy tinkling that made him think of the wind chimes his landlady insisted on hanging by his backdoor. “All right then… if you’re sure.” She stuffed the wadded ball of linen into her coat pocket and turned to go. Stopping in her tracks, she looked back. “Mind you don’t lose your papers.”

“My papers? Oh… quite.” Good God, he’d left his best camera out in the open and, worse yet, had been on the verge of forgetting it entirely. What the devil was the matter with him? Jogging over to retrieve it, he thought of his flat, empty save for his cat, and realized he was no longer so very eager to reach it — at least not alone. “I’m not always such an oaf, you know,” he called back, wracking his brain for something else to say, some pretense to hold her.

From a few feet away, she cupped a hand to her ear. “Sorry?”

“I said I’m not always such an oaf.”

“Oh.” She paused in mid-step, appearing to consider that. “Well, I’m not usually such a harridan, either except when I’m nervous — or in this case, late.”

“I don’t think you’re a harridan.” Camera in hand, he closed the space separating them in three ridiculously long strides. “It’s these protestors, taking up the whole bloody square as if they own every brick and statue, spewing their rubbish at all hours that have everyone on edge. I only came through the park to avoid them.”

Mouth lifting into a pretty smile of full pink lips and straight white teeth, she nodded to the park beyond them. “It would seem you’ve rather failed in that regard.”

“Yes, I suppose I have.” Looking back over his shoulder, he saw they were the object of a good many whispers and gawking stares. Their mad dash must have made an amusing spectacle indeed. Ordinarily that realization would have set him fuming but rather than care, he found himself saying, “There’s a tea shop just around the corner. Allow me to make amends by buying you a cup?”

She shook her head, looking adorably shy and far younger than she had at first when she’d still been tight-lipped and cross. “That isn’t necessary. And I’ve an… engagement to keep.”

Ah yes, presumably the engagement for which he had made her late already. A decent fellow would accept defeat and send her on her way. And yet the mental image of how splendid she would look freed from all those ghastly clothes and wearing only his bed sheets prompted him to press, “As you’re late already, why not postpone it altogether, at least until you’ve thawed?

She shook her head, causing the broken hat feathers to careen like a torn sail. “I can’t. I really must be going.” The tightening of her mouth told him he’d been too forward, that this time she really did mean to go.

“Ah well, perhaps we’ll bump into one another again sometime.” He fished inside his coat pocket for one of his business cards as a pretense to asking her name.

“Yes, perhaps we shall,” she allowed but there was no hope of it in her eyes. She turned to go and Hadrian knew this time there would be no more keeping her.

Before she could take a step, a squat woman with salt-and-pepper hair and a man’s plaid muffler wrapped about her short neck rushed up to intercept her. “Good Lord, Callie, are you all right? I was outside the gate and only just heard what happened.”

Beneath her veil, the woman — Callie — flushed bright crimson. “Calm yourself, Harriet. I am perfectly fine. I took a bit of a tumble, and my briefcase spilled.” Her shy-eyed gaze shifted to Hadrian. “This gentleman was kind enough to help me.”

From behind horn-rimmed spectacles, Harriet’s beady-eyed gaze dropped to the camera case in Hadrian’s hand. “I don’t know what rag of a newspaper you’re with, sir, but if your scheme is to scare up scandal and rubbish by waylaying Miss Rivers and photographing her in disarray, then you’d best think again.”

Taken off guard, Hadrian started to demur when from the vicinity of the stage, someone with a bullhorn belted out, “Miss Caledonia Rivers to make her address. Five minutes, ladies. Five minutes…”

Callie Rivers. Caledonia Rivers. It was then that the fog inside Hadrian’s head lifted. His mystery woman was one of them, a suffragette! And not just any suffragette but their leader! Seeing her through new eyes, he took in the spinsterish coat, the awful hat, and the leather case containing the oh-so important papers, and asked himself how a piquant smile and a pair of pretty ankles had turned him into such an absolute idiot.

He stared at her, feeling like a biblical figure from whose eyes the scales had just fallen. “Your pressing engagement, I take it?”

She answered with a brusque nod, at once prim and proper and utterly businesslike. “Quite.”

Now that his initial shock was fading, he could at least appreciate the irony of the situation. The first woman to pique his interest in years was the celebrated champion of a cause he’d come to loathe.

“Lest we part as strangers, my name is St. Claire. Hadrian St. Claire.” By this time, he had the sought-after business card in hand and his shock firmly in check. Handing her the card, he said, “I’m not a reporter. I’m a photographer. I have a studio a few blocks from here on Great George. Portraiture is my specialty.”

She tucked his card into her pocket with nary a glance. “I’m afraid I’m not terribly fond of having my photograph taken.”

“Pity. You’d make for a most intriguing subject.” And because he had absolutely nothing to lose — now that he knew who and what she was, what possible interest in her could he have — he looked directly into Caledonia Rivers’ beautiful, mortified eyes and added, “I should have recognized you from the newspaper etchings had they but done you justice. You’re far prettier, and far younger, than I would have supposed.”

Beneath the veil, the stain on her cheeks darkened from pale pink to dusky rose but, to her credit, she didn’t look away. “I think you mock me, sir.”

“On the contrary, miss, if either of us is the subject of mockery, I rather think it is me.” He nodded toward a clutch of young women watching them and giggling behind their gloves.

Harriet skewered him with a sharp look before turning back to the Rivers woman. “Callie, dear, we really must be on our way.” She hooked her plump arm through her friend’s and began leading her away.

“Ladies.” He tipped his bowler to them both, but it was Caledonia Rivers whom he followed with his eyes as she hurried toward the platform, creased and muddied skirts trailing the pavement, broken hat feathers caught up in the fingers of the wind.

So that was Caledonia Rivers, the celebrated suffragette spokeswoman making headlines in all the newspapers. What was it the press was calling her these days? Ah yes, The Maid of Mayfair. Unlike so many of her suffragette sisters whose reputations skirted the fringe of respectability, Caledonia Rivers was said to be so very good and virtuous — and yet not too good or too virtuous to indulge in a bit of a flirt in a public park, the little hypocrite.

He’d only paid her the compliment to torture her, and yet in his roundabout way he’d spoken nothing but the truth. The flesh-and-blood woman with whom he’d passed the last delightful few minutes scarcely resembled the stern-faced Amazon the newspapers made her out to be.

As for the “maid” part, he was deucedly sorry he wouldn’t have the opportunity to test that out for himself.

Or would he?

How Flashdance… LOL 

It’s Raining Excerpts!EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT: Secrets of Surrender by Madeline HunterEXCERPT Part I: Thigh High: Parlor Games by Bonnie Edwards

EXCERPT: Phantom Pleasures by Julie Leto

EXCERPT Part I: Unlawful Contact
EXCERPT Part II: Unlawful Contact
EXCERPT Part III: Unlawful Contact
EXCERPT Part IV: Unlawful Contact

SSE EXCERPT: Dear Santa by Karen Templeton

EXCERPT Part II: Thigh High: Thigh High by Bonnie Edwards

EXCERPT: Give Me a Texan: The Love Letter by Linda Broday

EXCERPT: Give Me a Texan: No Time for Love by Phyliss Miranda

EXCERPT: Give Me a Texan: A Shade of Sunrise by DeWanna Pace

EXCERPT: Give Me a Texan: Amarillo By Morning by Jodi Thomas

EXCERPT Part III: Thigh High: Twinkle Twinkle Little Thong by Bonnie Edwards

Excerpt from Viking Warrior, Unwilling Wife by Michelle Styles
new historical release from Mills & Boone with a UK release in June 2008

Yours, Mine…or Ours is book two in Karen Templeton’s Guys & Daughters series (Dear Santa, Yours, Mine…or Ours? and Baby, I’m Yours)

Excerpt of Taken by the Viking by Michelle Styles, coming 1 May!!
Historical romance released by Harlequin 1 May 2008

Excerpt Unlawful Contact by Pamela Clare aka the one to steam the screen

I am missing some and will add them tomorrow (I see Kresley Cole’s aren’t here). More excerpts to come from Lisa Kleypas, Jill Shalvis, Lynne Connolly, Stephanie Tyler, Caroline Linden, HelenKay Dimon, EC Sheedy, Liz Carlyle, Hope Tarr, Lora Leigh, Sabrina Jeffries, Jenna Petersen, Laura Drewry, Sydney Croft, Roxanne St. Claire, Jennifer Estep, Cheryl St.John and many more….

As well as some nifty prizes from t-shirts and books *g*. Some you will have to answer questions from the excerpts and other will be random drawings from the comments.