BLURB:
Winner of the Choc-Lit
Australian Star competition!Emily Micklen is proud, passionate – and left with no option after the death of her loving fiancĂ©, Jack, but to marry the scarred, taciturn, soldier who needs to secure a well-connected wife.
Major Angus McCartney hopes that marriage to the unobtainable beauty whose confident gaze about the ballroom once failed to register his presence will offer both of them a chance to put the past to rest.
Emily’s determination to be faithful to Jack’s memory is matched only by Angus’s desire to win her with honour and action. Sent to France on a mission of national security, Angus discovers how deeply Emily has been duped, but the secrets he uncovers lead them both into danger. Can Angus and Emily unmask the real conspirators before they lose everything?
Excerpt
Major Angus McCartney was out of his depth.
He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. Only five minutes in this
gloomy, oppressive parlour after the women
had arrived and he was questioning his ability to complete his mission,
a feeling he’d not experienced before Corunna
four years before.
He’d been unprepared for the assault on his senses unleashed by the
beautiful Miss Micklen. He shifted position once more, fingering the letters
that belonged to her. For two years he’d carried the memory of the young woman
before him as a confident, radiant creature in a white muslin ball gown with a
powder-blue sash. Now her tragic, disbelieving gaze unleashed a flood of
memory, for in her distress she bore no resemblance to the paragon of beauty at
the Regimental Ball, a bright memory in an otherwise tormented year after he’d
been invalided out of Spain. Clearly Miss Micklen did not remember him.
She’d remember him forever now: as the harbinger of doom, for as surely
as if he’d pulled the trigger he’d just consigned her hopes and dreams to
cinders.
She turned suddenly, catching him by surprise, and the painful, searing
memory of the last time he’d confronted such grief tore through him.
Corunna again. As if presented on a platter, the image of the soldier’s
woman he’d assisted flashed before his eyes, forcing him to draw a sustaining
breath as he battled with the familiar self-reproach which threatened to unman
him.
He reminded himself he was here to do good.
‘A skirmish near the barracks?’ the young woman whispered, resting her
hands upon her crippled mother’s shoulders. ‘Last Wednesday?’
‘That is correct, ma’am.’
Mrs Micklen muttered some incoherent words, presumably of sympathy.
Angus pitied them both: Miss Micklen digesting her sudden bereavement, and the
mother for her affliction. The older woman sat hunched in her chair by the
fire, unable to turn her head, her claw-like hands trembling in her lap.
He cleared his throat, wishing he’d taken more account of his
acknowledged clumsiness with the fairer sex. He was not up to the task. He’d
dismissed the cautions of his fellow officers, arrogantly thinking he’d be
shirking his duty were he not the one to deliver the news. It was condolences
he should be offering, and he had not the first idea how to appeal to a frail
feminine heart.
Nor was he accustomed to the lies tripping off his tongue as he added,
‘A tragic mishap, ma’am, but Captain Noble acquitted himself with honour to the
end.’
Miss Micklen’s gaze lanced him with its intensity. Tears glistened, held
in check by her dark lashes. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she whispered, moving to
draw aside the heavy green velvet curtain and stare at the dipping sun. ‘Jack
told me he was on the Continent.’
Choosing not to refute Jack’s lie, he said carefully, ‘An altercation
occurred between a group of infantry in which I was unwittingly involved. When Captain
Noble came to my assistance he was struck a mortal blow to the head. I’m sorry,
Miss Micklen.’
He wished he knew how to offer comfort. The beautiful Miss Micklen of
the Christmas Regimental Ball had seemed all-powerful in her cocoon of happy
confidence. Unobtainable as the stars in heaven, he’d thought as he’d watched
her skirt the dance floor in the arms of the unworthy Jack Noble. For so long
he’d carried Miss Micklen’s image close to his heart and this was the first
time he’d been reminded of Jessamine.
Sue Perkins review of
The Reluctant Bride by Beverley Eikli
A lovely historical romance set in England in Napoleonic
times. The main characters are caught in a web of intrigue and Emily, the
heroine, finds the stability of her life is rocked when her fiancé is killed
and everything disintegrates around her.
Angus, the hero, is strong and considerate with a consuming
passion for Emily. They struggle through their first months together, with
Angus going on business for weeks at a time, leaving Emily alone with her
thoughts which turn from sorrow to disbelief with many other confusing moods
along the way.
I truly enjoyed this book, a wonderful story and I loved the
way the author made me aware of the historical times, without throwing
historical facts at me. I just hate it when the story is swamped by history,
but this is not the case in The Reluctant Bride. I would imagine in this era
there were several women like Emily who found themselves in a difficult
situation, but had no savior to turn to.
A lovely book with well drawn characters and emotions which
were very real to life. If I were rating this I'd give a five out of five.
AUTHOR Bio and
Links:
Beverley
Eikli is the author of eight historical romances published by Pan Macmillan
Momentum, Robert Hale, Ellora's Cave and Total-e-Bound. Recently she won UK
Women's Fiction publisher Choc-Lit's Search for an Australian Star
competition with her suspenseful, spy-based Regency Romance The Reluctant
Bride.
She's been
shortlisted twice for a Romance Readers of Australia Award in the Favourite
Historical category — in 2011 for A Little Deception, and in 2012
for her racy Regency Romp, Rake's Honour, written under her Beverley
Oakley pseudonym.
Beverley
wrote her first romance when she was seventeen. However, drowning the heroine
on the last page was, she discovered, not in the spirit of the genre so her
romance-writing career ground to a halt and she became a journalist.
After
throwing in her job on South Australia's metropolitan daily The Advertiser
to manage a luxury safari lodge in the Okavango Delta, in Botswana, Beverley
discovered a new world of romance and adventure in a thatched cottage in the
middle of a mopane forest with the handsome Norwegian bush pilot she met around
a camp fire.
Eighteen
years later, after exploring the world in the back of Cessna 404s and CASA 212s
as an airborne geophysical survey operator during low-level sorties over the
French Guyanese jungle and Greenland's ice cap, Beverley is back in Australia
teaching in the Department of Professional Writing & Editing at
Victoria University, as well as teaching Short Courses for the Centre of
Adult Education and Macedon Ranges Further Education.
She writes Regency Historical Intrigue as Beverley Eikli
and erotic historicals as Beverley Oakley.
Beverley won the Choc Lit
Search for an Australian Star competition with The Reluctant Bride.
Shortlisted for the 2012
Australian Romance Readers Award for her novel Rake's Honour
Finalist in the 2011 Australian Romance Readers Awards for her novel A
Little Deception.
Links:
9 comments:
Thank you for hosting
Thanks so much for hosting me, Sue, and for your absolutely wonderful 5 Star review. It was a real thrill to know you liked The Reluctant Bride :)
Nice excerpt. Thanks for sharing The Reluctant Bride and the giveaway. This book sounds interesting!
Great review, thank you. I can't wait to read it.
Very nice review
bn100candg at hotmail dot com
Thanks for visiting Beverley. Sorry I didn't get here sooner but my time difference makes it difficult.
Really loved the book, just the type I enjoy reading.
Thanks Sue. I understand that time difference. I live in Australia have one Australian publisher, one US one (Ellora's Cave) and three UK ones, so communicating with them and waiting for answers requires patience:)
Thanks Eva, bn, Melissa and Rita. I'm glad you enjoyed the excerpt:)
Love this kind of book. Congrats on the prizes too.
The Reluctant Bride sounds interesting. Sounds like you've had an interesting life yourself, Beverly. Congrats on your book.
Tina
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