A new BookBub special
Are you in the USA or Canada? My publisher (Berkley/PenguinRandomHouse USA) has arranged a BookBub promotion for my book, THE WINTER BRIDE. It will be priced $1.99 until March 9.
Freddy, the hero, is one of many readers’ all-time favorites. Partly it’s because in the previous book in the series, The Autumn Bride, he was such an unlikely hero, a bit of a rake, with a fear of the kind of women he called “muffins” — respectable, marriage-minded girls. The story starts when Freddy’s best friend, Max, asks a favor.
“I want you to look after Aunt Bea and the girls while Abby and I are on our honeymoon,” Max, Lord Davenham, told his friend, the Honorable Frederick Monkton-Coombes.
Freddy almost choked on his wine. “Me?” he spluttered after the coughing fit had passed. “Why me?”
“You’re my oldest friend.”
Hard to wriggle out of that one, Freddy thought. But damn, it was a hell of a thing to spring on a fellow the night before a wedding. As if being best man weren’t trauma enough. He rose and jabbed at the fire with a poker, sending sparks twirling up the chimney.
The less he had to do with the bride’s sisters the better, as far as he was concerned. Pretty, unmarried, respectable girls were not Freddy’s female of choice. Good girls? No, he much preferred the company of bad girls—the badder the better. Good girls, especially good pretty girls were . . . dangerous. And one Chance sister in particular was, to Freddy’s mind, more dangerous than most. She . . . disturbed him. In ways he preferred not to examine too closely.
And now Max must come up with this. And playing the “oldest friend” card, dammit.
“You mean all of them? All the girls?”
“Yes, of course all of them,” Max said impatiently. “There are only three. They’re not exactly a horde.”
That was a matter of opinion.
. . . snip . . .
Max, misunderstanding his silence, added, “Look, it won’t be hard. Just drop around to Berkeley Square every few days, make sure they’re all right, see to anything if there’s a problem, protect the girls from unwanted attentions, take them for the occasional drive in the park, pop in to their literary society—”
“Not the literary society. The horror stories those girls read are enough to make a fellow’s hair stand on end.”
Max frowned. “Horror stories? They don’t read horror stories, only entertaining tales of the kind ladies seem to enjoy, about girls and gossip and families—”
“Horror stories, every last one of them,” Freddy said firmly. “You asked me to sit in on their literary society last month, when you went up to Manchester, remember? The story they were reading then . . .” He gave an eloquent shudder. “Horror from the very first line: ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’ Must he, indeed? What about the poor fellow’s wants, eh? Do they matter? No. Every female in the blasted story was plotting to hook some man for herself or her daughter or niece. If you don’t call that horror, I don’t know what is!”
Max chuckled.
“You can laugh, bound as you are for parson’s noose in the morning,” Freddy said bitterly, “but every single man in that story ended up married by the end of the book! Every last one.” He numbered them off on his fingers. “The main fellow, his best friend, the parson, even the soldier fellow ended up married to the silly light-skirt sister—not one single man in that story escaped unwed.” He shuddered again. “Enough to give a man nightmares. So no literary society for me, thank you.”
