News for July, 2015

So, I’ve had a month since I got back from the US, and I’m not caught up yet! I’m thrilled with the success of the Waterloo books, too. “The Incomparables” went top 5 on Amazon Regency!

Basically this month I’ve been sitting at my desk, writing, writing, writing, trying to catch up. I now have two books on the way, and ready for their final run-through. I’ve written Julius’s story for the “Emperors of London” series, and another instalment in the Even Gods Fall In Love series.

I’ve done my first Facebook parties, too. One for “The Incomparables” and another to help my friend Monica Burns launch “Mirage,” and so I can launch “Danger Wears White.”

It’s hot here. Really hot, like in the mid 30’s. at Wimbledon yesterday, the thermometer topped 40, so we’re talking hotter than Hades. But we have fresh strawberries to cool us! I finally got to see the new Mad Max movie, which I enjoyed. Tightly constructed, nice pacing.

And I’m still writing, writing, writing!

This month Kensington is releasing “Danger Wears White,” which has an absolutely beautiful cover, IMO. It features one of my favourite places, although I’ve retitled it and resituated it a few miles north. But basically, Imogen lives in Little Moreton Hall in Cheshire. It’s an amazing place, built in the 16^th century with additions put on later. It’s a timber-framed building, with spectacular patterns.

The Hall was built with “green” timber, so it warped and bent under stress, but it held. Now there’s hardly a straight line in the place now. When one of the owners wanted to emulate his neighbours and have a Long Gallery, he built one on top of the existing building, thus blocking off a few rooms, which became “secret” rooms. Not built to be secret, but not much use for anything.

Little Moreton Hall is like something out of a fairy tale, so of course I had to base a book there! Imogen’s family have seen better days, and took the wrong side in the struggle with the Jacobites, so she’s been working, keeping out of trouble. That ends when she finds a wounded man on her property. She thinks he’s a Jacobite, but she can’t just give him up. He’ll die. So she takes care of him. She hasn’t found a Jacobite, she found an Emperor, Antoninus.

So then Tony has to keep Imogen out of trouble!

Danger Wears White

You can read an excerpt and preorder this book by clicking the following links
Amazon
iTunes
Kensington website
Barnes and Noble
“Full of political intrigue, steamy romance and plenty of twists and turns…a well crafted story that kept me on the edge of my seat until the very last page. If Lynne Connolly isn’t on your auto-buy list, she should be.”~Sharon Cullen, author of Sebastian’s Lady Spy
Hoping to live down her family’s connections to the traitorous Jacobite cause, Imogen wants nothing more than a quiet life in the country. When she stumbles upon a wounded man, the white cockade in his coat tells her he’s a Jacobite, and a danger to the crown. Yet there’s something about him she can’t resist . . .
In search of a document on behalf of his powerful family, Tony is shot and left for dead. Secreted away to a hidden chamber, he finds himself both a guest and prisoner of a beautiful but mysterious woman. What she wants and who she serves, he cannot know. But what he does understand is the desire burning strongly between them. And that neither of them will be spared until their lust is sated.
When the action moves to London, suddenly it’s Tony who has to act to save Imogen. Forced to become a lady in waiting to Princess Amelia, she is in peril from the Jacobites, who are convinced she is their salvation. Only the strength of Tony and Imogen’s love can save them now.

Read an Excerpt!

Imogen turned to Tony, anxious to see how he was.

Only for him to roughly haul her close and kiss her. It was brief, but it spoke of a hunger she found hard to believe but easy to reciprocate. Hooking her arm around his neck, she opened for him, and when his tongue entered her mouth she knew this was right. Once again, the world seeped away. Only this was real.

A slow burn crept through her as he tasted her thoroughly. He explored her, touching the roof of her mouth and sending shivers through her. He caressed her tongue with his, so carefully and tenderly that a lump came to her throat.

She’d nearly missed this. Missed him. He could have died. Losing someone to an infection happened so fast and had devastated not a few families she knew.

He spread his big hands over her back, encompassing her body, and she strained up toward him, pressing her breasts against his chest, loving his body heat. If he surrounded her with that heat and never let go she could stand anything. She just needed to keep it there.

When he finished the kiss and gazed down at her, she whimpered and tried to pull him down for more. With a groan, he obliged, and she lost herself in him. He moved her, swinging her to the side to lie next to him, and then he rolled to lean over her, all the time with their mouths locked together, drinking each other in.

A jerk disturbed her, a tiny wince, but that served to bring her back down to earth. About to grip his biceps in an unthinking action she stopped. Shame swept through her and she pulled away. “I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” His voice was rough. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I didn’t mean to pounce on you like that. I don’t know what came over me.”

“I do.” With an instinct as old as time she cupped his cheek, melting when he turned his head and pressed a kiss into her palm.

“I’m sorry about the whiskers. There’s little I can do about that at present.”

When she rubbed her palm against his jaw, the bristles set up an abrasion that half-tickled, half aroused. These new sensations gave her new responses, but something deep inside her stirred and awoke. She could even put a name to it. Desire.

Imogen wanted this man with a desperation she couldn’t have imagined before she met him. If she didn’t have him, she’d regret it forever. She knew it. It was worth any price. Five minutes, ten, half an hour—she didn’t care.

Spinsterhood stretched ahead like an empty wasteland. But she could have this, once, this one time. Nobody would know. Unless the unthinkable happened, but she could even cope with that.

“I like it.” She smiled, letting her need show in her face, daring to open to him. He could reject her. She wouldn’t blame him if he did. Or—her cheeks heated. She was forgetting far too much here, taking too much for granted. “Are you too tired to stay awake? Too weak?”

When he moved, something brushed her hip. His erection, hard and needy. Heat flooded her groin, and she shifted to ameliorate the desire to be touched.

“Does that feel weak? But you’re my savior. I’d be a poor man if I thanked you in this way. I can’t take advantage of you like that.”

She took umbrage at that remark. As if she had no choice in the matter. “Take advantage? I should strike you for that. But you’ve suffered too much hurt already. I can’t. How are you feeling?”

He tried to move away but she refused to release him. She pulled him back. His smile was rueful. “Sweetheart, if I don’t let you go now, I don’t think I will be doing it for some time.”

“I don’t want you to.” She bit her lip. “But you should rest.”

“I am resting. Here, with you. Don’t tempt me, please.”

The plea pushed her the rest of the way. She had to persuade him somehow or spend the rest of her life regretting it. “I want you.”

This close she saw the way his pupils widened. “I want you too. Never doubt that. But I cannot. How can I despoil what isn’t my right to take?”

“It’s your right if I give it to you.” She needed to tell him the truth. Well, not all of it. “I’m not married, nor am I likely to. I’m a maid, but I want you to take it as a gift. My virginity.”

His shock was evident in the way he froze, every part of his body stilling. “You can’t do that.”

“It’s mine. If I want to give it away, I will.”

He swallowed. “Are you sure?”

“Are you up to the task?”

Her inadvertent double entendre gave him a smile, and his body relaxed against her when he laughed. All but one part. “Yes, I’d say so. I’ve suffered much worse in my time, and seen worse, too. Your prompt action saved me from harm, and Young George worked like a Trojan to reinforce what you started.”

“What did he do?”

“Washed out the wound every hour. Every trace of infection is gone. He fetched some brandy last night that you’re not supposed to know about, so don’t go telling him that I told you.”

Now he made her laugh, and on the heels of her laughter, he kissed her.

Mirth stopped, and passion took its place. At his taste, every part of her body strained up to him. Her yearning became undeniable.

Especially when he spread one hand over her waist and slid it up her body to touch that part of her breast that swelled above her stays. It felt so good, his warmth and the way he was stroking her, that she wanted more. She unfastened the first hook. He groaned. She kept going.

After brushing her hand away, he took over, rapidly unhooking her stays, and then broke their kiss at last. When he opened his eyes, the pupil was nearly all black. “Why don’t all women have their stays made that way?”

“They do.” He couldn’t have seen many women in their everyday wear. For some reason that made her happy. With a wicked smile, she wriggled, and the stays fell away.

He touched her as if she were sacred, feathering his fingers down her breast to the edge of her shift. When he pulled the bow undone, nothing stopped him pushing it out of the way. He made careful work of it, his fingers shaking against her flesh.

Anticipation made her center dampen. She bit her lip, trying to push some control back into her wayward body, but he smiled and dropped a kiss on her mouth.

“Take off your shirt,” she said.

“It’s all I have on.”