Osiyo~

I’m turning the Round Pen over to fellow author, Caroline Warfield today!

The Reluctant Wife

Children of Empire, Book 2

Genre: Pre Victorian, Historical Romance  µ Heat rating: R (two brief -mild- sexual encounters)

ISBN: pending  µ Page count: 334 pages

Pub date: April 26, 2017

What drives people apart? What brings them together? These are themes I like to explore in my work. I introduced three mischievous boys as supporting characters in A Dangerous Nativity. To my surprise, they imbedded themselves in my imagination.  

When I began to plan a new series that would move the characters in my Dangerous Series forward a generation, I thought of those boys. What sort of heroes might they be? How did the problems they encountered growing up mold them?  Their interests, ambitions, and responsibilities would take them in different directions. As their stories emerged, however, I realized they had been driven far apart above all by the machinations of a duplicitous woman. (Of course they were! Did you doubt it?) It would take the right women to make them whole again.

Now I have three cousins, driven appar by deception, who must find their way back from the edges of the British Empire.

Their stories, set in the 1830s, began to form in my mind. I knew each one of them would eventually make their way home and find healing in the journey. The first, Rand Wheatly, had become a miserable recluse, living in the Canadian frontier and obsessed with wealth.  I told his story in The Renegade Wife, Book one of The Children of Empire. He and his cousin Charles sorted out some of their misunderstandings in that book, but left other issues unresolved. Charles, the Duke of Murnane, will be drawn into upheaval in Canton China before he can bring closure and final resolution in The Unexpected Wife, scheduled for October 2017.

The Reluctant Wife tells the story of Fred Wheatly who sought a military glory in the Bengal Army. He left England as a young man oblivious to the disasters he left in his wake. lll-suited to the politics and beaurocratic nonsense he encountered there, failure dogs his steps. Does he dare go home and face them?

Has anyting ever driven you away from family or friends? How did you resolve it? Or did you?

Giveaway!!!

I will give a kindle copy to one randomly selected person who leaves a comment. The prequel to this book, A Dangerous Nativity, is always **FREE**. You can get a copy here: http://www.carolinewarfield.com/bookshelf/a-dangerous-nativity-1815/

Blurb

When all else fails, love succeeds…

Captain Fred Wheatly’s comfortable life on the fringes of Bengal comes crashing down around him when his mistress dies, leaving him with two children he never expected to have to raise. When he chooses justice over army regulations, he’s forced to resign his position, leaving him with no way to support his unexpected family. He’s already had enough failures in his life. The last thing he needs is an attractive, interfering woman bedeviling his steps, reminding him of his duties.

All widowed Clare Armbruster needs is her brother’s signature on a legal document to be free of her past. After a failed marriage, and still mourning the loss of a child, she’s had it up to her ears with the assumptions she doesn’t know how to take care of herself, that what she needs is a husband, and with a great lout of a captain who can’t figure out what to do with his daughters. If only the frightened little girls didn’t need her help so badly.

Clare has made mistakes in the past. Can she trust Fred now? Can she trust herself? Captain Wheatly isn’t ashamed of his aristocratic heritage, but he doesn’t need his family and they’ve certainly never needed him. But with no more military career and two half-caste daughters to support, Fred must turn once more—as a failure—to the family he failed so often in the past. Can two hearts rise above past failures to forge a future together?

Find it here: http://www.carolinewarfield.com/bookshelf/reluctant-wife/

About Caroline Warfield

Traveler, poet, librarian, technology manager—award winning author Caroline Warfield has been many things (even a nun), but above all she is a romantic. Having retired to the urban wilds of eastern Pennsylvania, she reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows while she lets her characters lead her to adventures in England and the far-flung corners of the British Empire. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart.

Caroline has an active blog and her newsletter list recently zoomed past 3000.  She is a RONE award winner and has five star reviews from Readers’ Favorite, Night Owl Reviews, and InD’Tale. She is also a member of the writers’ co-operative, the Bluestocking Belles. With partners she manages and regularly writes for both The Teatime Tattler and History Imagined.

Website http://www.carolinewarfield.com/  

Amazon Author http://www.amazon.com/Caroline-Warfield/e/B00N9PZZZS/

Good Reads http://bit.ly/1C5blTm

Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/carolinewarfield7

Twitter @CarolWarfield

Email warfieldcaro@gmail.com

Excerpt

Get control of yourself, Clare, a small part of her brain urged, dimly aware that exhaustion and relief made her foolish. She didn’t care. Just that moment his arms around her back and his shoulder firm beneath her cheek felt solid. Safe. Dependable.

“Easy, easy. It’s only a tent,” he soothed, one hand making gentle circles on her back.

“You thought about us. No one ever—” He had looked after her, she realized, from the moment he found her at the inn in Calcutta comforting his children. No man ever took care for my comfort before.

She took a shuddering breath. Dependable? This is Fred Wheatly holding you, the man who— She didn’t remember what just then. She felt his kiss on her head, then her ear.

She raised her head and his mouth came down on hers. The gentle kiss made no demands, forced no response, and asked only trust. No man had ever kissed her like that. She couldn’t resist him. When he withdrew to look down at her, she closed the distance and kissed him back, tasting sweat, sand, and male.

“Papa? Are we there?”

He broke off the kiss and tipped his forehead to hers, silent laugher rocking him. “We have come to a place. That much is certain,” he responded. Clare didn’t think he referred to the way station.

What a great peek into The Reluctant Wife. And you’re offering up a FREE copy to a commenter! Readers, be sure to leave your email for the drawing.

Thank you, Caroline!

Dodadagohvi~