Avon Books
Click here for The Highland Lords series
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Sold to a Laird
Sold to a Laird is memorable for two reasons. I'm not that in love with the title, and the cover caused me problems.
The cover wouldn't pass the test at the USPS, so I sent out postcards with a paper bag over the top of her décolletage. Click here for the whole story.
Now, for the story. I confess to loving a marriage of convenience plot, and Sold to a Laird is one of those. The hero is a self-made man, and the heroine is the daughter of a duke who agrees to marry to save her mother. Little did she know that her new husband ends up changing her life.
Now, here's a secret that most people don't know. Sold to a Laird is Book 1 in a trilogy of books linked by an object - the Tulloch mirror. All three books are stand alone and can definitely be read separately. The next book is A Highland Duchess, followed by A Borrowed Scot.
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A Scotsman in Love
A Scotsman in Love came together because of several articles I read. One, about the startling number of carriage accidents in the 19th century. Another, featuring Christina Robertson, a Scottish painter beloved in the Imperial Russian court. Add in a scene of Scotland in winter, a picture of a house that fascinated me, and Glengarrow was born, the setting for A Scotsman in Love. Robert was a great foil for Margaret, and she was a tremendous challenge to him.
Robert was a widower, and Margaret was hiding from what had happened to her in Russia. The last thing either wanted was to look for love. Love, however, found them.
This book features a theme which is a constant in my books: love heals all wounds.
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The Devil Wears Tartan
The Devil Wears Tartan came to life because of something I read about Chinese history. The article I was reading led to another link, which led to another, and like magic, the plot was born.
Marshall Ross and Davina McLaren are both flawed characters (love flawed people) who have made mistakes and paid dearly for them. They are forced together by circumstances, but Fate, instead of being capricious in this instance, rewarded each of them with the other. Marshall found in Davina a woman who could believe in him, and Davina found in Marshall a challenge, and someone who deserved both her loyalty and her love.
The Scottish Companion
Grant Roberson, the 10th Earl of Straithern, desperately needed two things: an heir, and an answer to the mystery of who was trying to decimate his entire family. The heir could be obtained by an expedient marriage - a young woman by the name of Arabella Fenton, who proved to be as disinterested in love as he. The mystery might take a little longer, but he was determined to find the person responsible for the deaths of his brothers.
Everything was going according to plan until he saw her - Arabella's surprising companion. Her eyes hinted at sadness, but her comments were designed to keep him in his place.
The story of The Scottish Companion fascinated me from the very first moment I envisioned Gillian - the companion who was trying so very hard to put one foot in front of the other and simply endure her life. Yes, she had been foolish, and yes, she had been unwise in love. But who among us hasn't been, a time or two?
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Autumn in Scotland
George MacKinnon was the penniless and thoroughly dislikable Earl of Marne, and the Laird of Balfurin Castle. Charlotte Haversham was the likely heiress. Nor did she mind being wed to George. After all, a woman had to marry, and he was as acceptable a bridegroom as any. Love would come, her mother said, and if it didn't, then she would simply have to find other diversions. George and Charlotte wed, in a lavish affair that cost her father a fortune.
The marriage of convenience plot is my favorite plot, and poor Charlotte certainly had a difficult marriage ahead of her. Thank heavens George disappeared.
When he shows up again, all those years later, she didn't know what to do. Especially since he wasn't loathsome at all - quite the opposite, in fact.
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An Unlikely Governess
I have always loved Mary Stewart's Nine Coaches Waiting. However, I've often thought that the book plot could work as a historical. So, I took the basic premise and tweaked it a little, changed the villain, added more scenes, and powered up the sensuality.
Beatrice Sinclair has been hired as the new governess for the Duke of Brechin, a precocious nine-year-old boy with underdeveloped manners and an overdeveloped opinion of himself. Although she is certain she can eventually handle the child duke, she is not so sure about his cousin, Devlen Gordon, an independently wealthy industrialist.
When the child's life is threatened, his older cousin takes the two of them to his home in Edinburgh. Despite Beatrice's suspicions that Devlen may have reasons to cause the young duke harm, she finds herself charmed by him. Beatrice only wanted a position, a way to feed herself and survive in an increasingly harsh world. Instead, she found a terrified nine-year-old boy desperate for protection, and an enigmatic man who fascinated her.
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ExcerptTill Next We Meet
I'll be the first to admit that I don't know where some of my ideas come from - they're a result of something I've read, dreamed, heard about, or one idea simply fuses into another.
Such was the case with Till Next We Meet.
I knew I wanted to write a book that featured letters, but then I thought about soldiers at war. Regardless of the time period, men have always gone to war and women have always worried about them. What if a wife falls in love with her husband via his letters, and the moment she realizes that fact, he's killed? Unknown to her, however, the man who writes to her isn't the man she married.
Something odd about the book is the hero's name. Originally, he had a first name, but as a Colonel and then a Duke, he was more often referred to by his surname. Moncrief was so completely himself, and his name so adequately mirrored him that I never once mentioned his first name. I deleted the only mention of his first name in the copy edits. By the way, it's Adam.
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ExcerptClick here for The Highland Lords series
After the Kiss
It all began innocently enough.
Margaret is a proper widow, living penuriously and quietly in the Downs until she is forced to sell one of three scandalous books she discovered. Michael is the Earl of Moncrief, forced by circumstances and a profligate family to marry for money. When the two meet, the attraction is mutual and alarming for both of them.
Add a mystery involving the lurid Journals of Augustin X, a meddling mother, three sisters looking for husbands, a starchy, disapproving butler, and the plot is complete. Except, of course, for the bargain that Michael proposes, After the Kiss.
Available only as an Ebook
Scottish Brides
In 2009, SCOTTISH BRIDES was re-released with a new cover. Everything's the same except for the cover.
In 1998 when I was deep in the throes of writing My Beloved I received word that Avon wanted me to participate in an anthology to be published in 1999. Now, let's be honest here. Most anthologies whizz by you. You think you know some of the authors, but you probably only buy the book for one writer. Rarely more than that. But have you noticed who the authors are on this one? Christina Dodd, Stephanie Laurens, Julia Quinn and little ol' me.
The only teeny, tiny problem was the fact that I was knee deep in My Beloved. And you want the story when????? Okay, I dropped everything (not necessarily metaphorically, either. My desk is a disaster when I'm working on a book. I tend to burrow and ignore.)
I really had fun doing all the research I had to do for this story. It took me into the depths of... whiskey making. Absolutely fascinating stuff. It was also a great experience working with the wonderful authors in this anthology.
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My Beloved
My Beloved is my only medieval. Set in England and France, it’s the story of Juliana and Sebastian of Langlinais and two secrets he must keep. One could change the world as he knows it; the other will prevent him from ever touching his bride.
But above all, it's a love story that transcends boundaries.
Juliana had spent most of her life at the convent of Sisters of Charity waiting to be summoned to her husband's side, only to be offered a strange bargain when she arrived at the castle of Langlinais. What he proposed would allow her to perform the work she loves. But will that freedom be enough to overcome the mystery of her husband? Why does he dress in a monk's robe? Why does he forbid her to ever touch him?
Kindle edition
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Excerpt
My True Love
When I finished My Beloved, I admit that I didn't want to leave Sebastian and Juliana, so My True Love was born.
It's a little different type of sequel since it happens 400 years after My Beloved, but Juliana and Sebastian both feature in the book.
Another point of difference in My True Love is that it happens during the English Civil War, a time not often used in historical fiction.
My True Love is the story of Stephen of Langlinais, Sebastian's descendant, and Anne, a Scottish woman who begins to dream of him as a child.
Upon a Wicked Time
Jered Mandeville is impossibly arrogant. Tessa Astley is innocent and optimistic. Their marriage was a dream come true for Tessa, and matter of convenience for Jered. Fate and Nature, however, conspired to change both their minds.
Jered doesn't want a soulmate, just a proper duchess hidden away on his country estate to beget heirs. He certainly doesn't see a place for his sheltered bride in his decadent life in Regency London.
So Tessa starts a campaign to win his heart by invading his home, his reckless adventures, and his bed. And just perhaps she might be able to convince the cynical duke to feel again.
There were, frankly, times when I had my doubts
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Print re-issue available 2/23/10
Excerpt
My Wicked Fantasy
My Wicked Fantasy is the story of a working girl who married above her station, only to have her solicitor husband die and leave her penniless. As if that were not enough, she begins to hear a ghostly voice, entreating her to protect someone.
Mary Kate begins to believe that the voice belongs to the Earl of Sanderhurst's wife, and that Alice St. John is dead. Archer, however, maintains his wife is alive and well and perfecting this little hoax only to acquire funds with which to support herself and her lover.
I truly didn't know Alice St. John's fate when I began the book. But I knew that Mary Kate Bennet was determined to discover it.
Ebook available now.