We're so excited! The virtual tour for Undone Shorts (e-book historicals) starts today with our guest blogging appearance at Greyhaus. One lucky visitor will win a coupon to download one of the four November releases. Come check us out! Blogs from Nicola Cornick, Ammanda McCabe, Bronwyn Scott and Michelle Willingham will be appearing throughout the dark. We're discussing tips for writing dark moments and dark heroes along with imparting a tantalizing glimpse into each of our November e-books. Here's the link so you can check us out with ease http://www.greyhausagency.com/
See you there!
Bronwyn Scott
Friday, October 31, 2008
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Virtual tour for undone shorts to start Halloween!
Hi All,
I hope everyone is counting the days until the undone shorts on e-book kick off. All four of us in the November releases will be on virtual tour all month starting Halloween (Oct. 31) at Greyhaus literary agency. www.greyhaus.com. Check us out!
I hope everyone is counting the days until the undone shorts on e-book kick off. All four of us in the November releases will be on virtual tour all month starting Halloween (Oct. 31) at Greyhaus literary agency. www.greyhaus.com. Check us out!
Friday, October 03, 2008
HH October Release: The Magic of Christmas
This year's Harlequin Historical Western Christmas Anthology! Last year's garnered two Rita finalists. And this year, the novellas are just as full of Christmas romance as ever.A Christmas Child by Carolyn Davidson
Marianne Winters has no one in the world but her baby brother and, with Christmas approaching, she needs somewhere warm to stay. Will she find her home, and a loving heart, with the lonely pastor, David McDermott?
The Christmas Dove by Victoria Bylin
Maddie Cutler once snubbed bad boy Dylan McCall, but with nowhere else to turn she has come back to town—with a babe in arms. Dylan is a reformed man, and on seeing Maddie again he longs to heal her hurt—and claim her once and for all!
A Baby Blue Christmas by Cheryl St.John
Turner Price hasn't been the same since he lost his wife and child. But when he finds a young woman and newborn twin babies in his stable, he realizes this may be his second chance to be a loving husband and father, just in time for Christmas!
Read the excerpt
Buy
The Magic of Christmas
HH October Release: Scandalizing the Ton by Diane Gaston
Lady Wexin, once the Ton's foremost beauty, has been abandoned by her family and friends, and creditors hound her. Her husband's scandalous death has left her impoverished, and the gossip-mongering press is whipped into a frenzy of speculation when it becomes clear the widow is with child. Who is the father? Only one man knows: Adrian Pomroy, Viscount Cavanley. He has cultivated the reputation of a rake, but in truth yearns for something useful to do. Delicate beauty Lydia Wexin could pose an intriguing—and stimulating—challenge….
Read the excerpt
HH October Release: Hallowe'en Husbands
Marriage at Morrow Creek by Lisa Plumley
The only thing Rose Tillson ever wanted was a life of travel beneath the Western stars—and to marry secret sweetheart Will Gavigan! All Rose needs is a small dose of Hallowe'en magic to make Will realize she's the girl of his dreams….
Wedding at Warehaven by Denise Lynn
When Brigit of Warehaven casts a simple spell to reveal her true love's identity, she never expects to wed him that same night! But until the mischievous trickeries of All Hallows' Eve are over, Randall FitzHenry cannot truly claim his bride's heart….
Master Master of Penlowen by Christine Merrill
Arabella Scott cannot decide whether she's been saved or abducted when she is rescued from highwaymen by a darkly brooding stranger. In his eerily cold, dilapidated home, she has no choice but to trust her cavalry officer rescuer.
Read the excerpt
HH October Release: The Dark Viscount by Deborah SImmons
Thunder claps, lightning strikes and her imposing new mansion looms high, but Miss Marchant is not one to be afraid. Not willful, beautiful Sydony Marchant. If the house doesn't shock her, the arrival of Viscount Hawthorne does. No longer the boy she once kissed—Bartholomew is a man with a ruthless glint in his eye. He's here to uncover a truth and ruin Sydony. But they are soon entangled in secrets darker than they know. And as the tension crackles between them, the memory of their innocent kiss is no longer enough….
Read the excerpt
HH October Release: Tamed by the Barbarian by June Francis
A Stolen Kiss…Cicely Milburn has no intention of marrying anyone, let alone a Scottish barbarian! But when Lord Rory Mackillin rescues her from a treacherous attack she reluctantly accepts his help—even though his kisses trouble her dreams.An Honorable Barbarian…The Border Reiver is determined to guard his charge on their journey through war-torn England. Yet he cannot shield his own heart from Cicely's beauty and bravery—especially when the only honorable way to protect her is to marry her!
Read the excerpt
HH October Release: Lady Gwendolen Investigates by Anne Ashley
Elegant yet feisty, well traveled yet innocent to the world, beautiful yet modest—prying into others' lives isn't for Lady Gwendolen Warrender. Until murder and mayhem come to Marsden Wood!And every good sleuth needs a partner. Who better than dashing master of the manor Jocelyn Northbridge? With his touch of arrogance, intelligent eyes and brooding chivalry, she knows he'll make the perfect accomplice. But soon the renowned bachelor has more than solving murder in mind.It seems Gwendolen may have uncovered her very own marriage proposal!
Read the excerpt
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Harlequin Historical Editorial Podcast
Ever wondered what the HH editors are looking for in a manuscript? What are their favourite storylines? Themes? Which time periods are the most popular? And what about those alpha males?
All is revealled with the Harlequin Historical podcast. The podcast takes about 35 minutes, so you might want to relax with a cup of coffee. A pen and paper might be handy to jot down notes or ideas.
All is revealled with the Harlequin Historical podcast. The podcast takes about 35 minutes, so you might want to relax with a cup of coffee. A pen and paper might be handy to jot down notes or ideas.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
BADLANDS BRIDE by Cheryl St.John
Here's an opportunity to get one of Cheryl St.John's books you may have missed! Harlequin is reissuing a classic: BADLANDS BRIDESPECIAL RELEASES
SEPTEMBER '08
ISBN: 9780373361892 (#34)
Reporter Hallie Wainwright's introduction to the Wild West included traveling with a bevy of mail-order brides and shooting bandits. But it was the intimate "hello" in the arms of Cooper DeWitt that truly sent her heart racing—and made it all the more difficult for her to tell the brawny plainsman the truth….
When she jumped from the stage, shining with true grit and spewing tall tales, Cooper thought he just might have struck gold. Raised with the Sioux, Cooper needed a wife who could brave the frontier and corral his restless heart. The problem was, his would-be bride had no intention of marrying him!
ORDER THIS SPECIAL RELEASE FROM eHARLEQUIN.com
READ AN EXCERPT
CHAPTER ONE
Ignoring the reflection of the businesses across the street behind her and the words The Daily meticulously painted in gold and black lettering on the glass, Hallie Claire Wainwright observed herself in the window of her father's newspaper office. She adjusted the jacket of her carefully chosen two-piece fitted dress and smoothed a hand over her dark hair, fashioned into an uncharacteristically neat bun.
"I think I've earned the responsibility of reporting on the boxing matches," she said to her reflection. The sporting event would make the front page every day for weeks, and Hallie could think of nothing more exciting than seeing her name beneath the headline.
"I'm sure I could get interviews with the participants," she said convincingly. "Perhaps they'll share insights with me they wouldn't give the men." Forest green curtains obscured the interior of the newspaper office, but she didn't need to see in to picture her oldest brother, Turner, setting type and her father in the office beyond.
"I've been doing the menial jobs without complaint. It's time you gave me a chance. I'll do my best." Hallie gave her likeness a last confident nod and opened the door.
The reassuring smells of ink, paper and grease, which she'd grown up with, boosted her confidence. Turner didn't glance up as she strode pass the Franklin press to her father's office. She rapped twice and opened the door.
Samuel Wainwright glanced up and immediately returned his attention to the papers on his desk top.
"Father, I—"
"No."
Her mouth dropped open. "How do you even know what I was going to say?"
"You have that stubborn look on your face."
"I want to cover the boxing matches." She placed her fists on her hips. "Evan—" her lip curled around the name of the new apprentice "—gets all the good stories."
Samuel shifted his smoking cigar stub from one side of his mouth to the other and leaned back in his creaky leather chair. "Now, Hallie," he cajoled. "Don't get in a huff. You know it wouldn't be acceptable—or safe—for you to take up with that rowdy crowd in the Piedmont district. Any female in Boston with half a brain in her head wouldn't set foot within a mile of the place."
She rolled her eyes. "That's all the brain you give any woman credit for having."
He harrumphed, then shuffled through a stack of papers, finding one he wanted and ignoring her while he checked the list in his other hand against the sheet.
"Hello, Precious," Turner said, entering.
Hallie winced inwardly.
He'd rolled his white shirtsleeves back, and his dark hair stood up on his head in finger-combed waves. He handled the office work, overseeing the typeset and presses. "I want to check this against your copy," he said to their father.
Samuel extended a paper, and the two men concurred. Used to being ignored, Hallie sat on the corner of the ink-stained oak desk and crossed her arms over her chest, unwilling to acknowledge her father's wisdom in this particular case. So what if he was right for once? Her father and brothers, Charles and Turner, always came up with some inane reason that she couldn't handle a story, and ninety-nine out of a hundred times the real reason—the infuriating reason—was that she was a female.
Turner reached for a strand of Hallie's hair that had fallen loose. "You're a sight."
She batted his hand away.
"What are you pouting about now?"
"I'm not pouting."
He laughed. "You're mad as a March hare. Still in a fix over Evan? He says he can't sleep nights for the ringing in his ears. For the last week at supper, you've managed to discredit everything about the man, including his parentage."
Hallie uncrossed her arms and shot a glance at her father. He wore a smile of bored amusement. "I keep hoping someone around here will notice that he's not any more capable than I am."
"And as we've told you a thousand times," Turner said, raising a superior brow, "Father needed Evan."
She tried her best to swallow her resentment. Her father did need help, and she'd worked so hard to prove herself. Samuel had hired the young man to assist Charles with the reporting, so he could devote himself to the book work and editing. It hurt immeasurably that none of them had considered her for the position. And it frustrated her beyond words that they refused to listen to her reasoning.
It was one thing to constantly defer to her brothers, but now an outsider had displaced her! "Perhaps if I put on a pair of trousers, the lot of you will notice I have a whole brain in this head."
Turner scowled. "If you put on a pair of trousers, the men around here will notice more than that. And I'll have to turn you over my knee and discipline the object of their attention."
Hallie resisted the urge to stick her tongue out. Just because they treated her like a child didn't mean she'd give in and behave like one.
"Did you turn in the piece on the quilting society?" Turner asked.
"Now that was an unequaled challenge," she replied, tracing a worn scar on the desk top with an index finger. "Think it'll make the headlines tomorrow?"
"Look," her father said, interrupting. "Remember those classifieds we ran a while back? Here's more of the same."
Turner bent over the desk and read aloud. "'Bride wanted.' Another one—'Wife wanted to cook, do laundry and care for children."'
"What kind of self-respecting woman would answer an ad like that?" Hallie asked, frowning her distaste.
"A woman who wants a husband," Turner replied, directing a pointed glance at his sister. "Unlike you."
She ignored the familiar taunt. "It's barbaric."
"But newsworthy," her father added. He caught his cigar between two fingers and squinted at her through curls of blue-gray smoke. "Some of the young ladies at Miss Abernathy's Conservatory answered the last ads. Why don't you do a story on them, Hallie?"
"Really?" she asked, jumping up.
"I haven't seen anything in the other papers," he continued. "Maybe, for a change, we can print a story before they get the idea."
The assignment filled Hallie with a new sense of importance. The Daily was always trying to get the jump on the bigger papers, and even though the other newspapers always managed to edge them out, the Wainwrights had increased circulation over the past year. Any newsworthy story that first appeared in The Daily was a feather in their journalistic cap.
"I'll work on it right away." She kissed her father on the cheek and smugly tilted her chin on her way past Turner.
Samuel and Turner exchanged conspiratory grins. "How long do you think that will keep her out of our hair?" Turner asked.
Samuel ran a hand over his balding pate. "Let's hope until Evan has a foot in the door. It's hard enough being a cub, without having to deal with Hallie when she's got her hackles up."
"Well, then, we'll just have to keep her busy."
"Isn't it just the most romantic thing you've ever heard?" The young woman with golden hair and ivory skin ignored the cake and tea on the tiny table and stared vacantly across the front of the lace-decorated establishment where the ladies of Boston came to socialize over afternoon tea.
Hallie thought traveling to God-only-knew-where to marry a man she'd never laid eyes on was the most asinine thing she'd ever heard, but she politely refrained from saying so.
"Where are the northern Dakotas, anyway?" Tess Cor-dell asked, coming out of her dreamy-eyed trance. "One of the girls said up by the North Pole."
"I don't think it's quite that far." Hallie tried to recall her geography lessons. "It's far to the west and up north. Quite remote, I'm sure."
Tess took an envelope from her reticule and carefully removed and unfolded a letter. "His name is Cooper DeWitt. He has a stage line and a freight company, so he must be very wealthy." Her pale blue eyes took on that dreamy quality again. "The only thing he requested in a wife was that she be able to read and write. I think that's good, don't you? He doesn't sound like a demanding sort of fellow."
"Or discriminating," Hallie added.
"Right," Tess agreed, the comment apparently sailing over her head. "He's not superficial like most young men who care only that a woman be from a good family."
Hallie heard the resentment in her voice. Obviously Tess was not from a well-to-do family, or she wouldn't have responded to an ad from a desperate frontier man. "Does he say how old he is?"
Tess frowned at the paper momentarily. "No." Her expression brightened. "But he does mention that he's never had a wife, so he must be young."
Or uglier than a buck-toothed mule, Hallie thought more realistically. What was this poor girl getting herself into? She almost wanted to offer her assistance if the girl needed someone to provide for her so badly she was willing to do this. But she held her tongue. Her family had told her often enough that her thinking was not that of a typical twenty-year-old woman. Tess was obviously delighted with her plan. "What else does he say?"
"Only that the country is beautiful and that I would have everything that I need."
"How romantic." Hallie made a few notes on her tablet. "Are you worried about being so far from anyone you know?"
"Well..." Tess chewed her lower lip. "I don't have family, but a couple of the other girls have accepted positions in the same community, so we'll be traveling together. I'm sure Mr. DeWitt will see that I can visit from time to time."
Hallie noted the term accepted positions for later reference. "Are the other girls as excited as you?"
"Oh, yes!" Her pale eyes sparkled. "This is an adventure of a lifetime!"
"I want to speak with the others, too. Can you give me their names?" Hallie scribbled a list and thanked Tess for the interview.
Hallie met the other young women, then hurried home to write her article. The enormous, masculinely furnished house was quiet, as usual. She slipped into her father's study and seated herself in his oversize chair, arranging paper, pen and ink on the desk top. She loved the room, did her best thinking among the familiar heavy pieces with the Seth Thomas mantel clock chiming on the half hour.
Nearly three hours passed before Hallie noticed the time. Double-checking the information, wording and neat printing, she blotted the pages. Her father would undoubtedly cut it in half, but, pleased with her work, she delivered it to his office.
He read the pages while she waited. "This is just what we wanted, Precious," he commended her.
Gladdened at the acknowledgment, she ignored the patronizing nickname.
"Keep on this," he said.
"You mean...?"
"I mean follow up. Go with them when they shop for the trip, watch them pack, all that. We'll run a series on the brides, right up until you wave them off at the stage station."
Surprised and more than a little pleased, Hallie nodded. "All right." She patted the edge of the desk in satisfaction. "All right."
Hallie read her articles in print each day, delighting in the fact that her father hadn't cut more than a sentence or two. She was so delighted, she didn't allow the fact that her father's new apprentice was covering the boxing championships and making headlines nearly every other day upset her—too much.
The day before her subjects were due to leave, she stepped into the office early. On the other side of the partially open mahogany door her brothers' voices rose.
"I'll take this sentencing piece," Charles said. "I'll be at the courthouse this morning, anyway."
"Right," Samuel said. "Evan?"
"I still have the lawyer to interview and, of course, the matches tonight. I'll try not to take a punch myself this time."
Male laughter echoed.
"That's some shiner!" Charles said.
"Great coverage, son." Samuel added. "You'll do anything to get an unusual angle. That's the stuff good reporters are made of." The aromatic scent of his morning cigar reached Hallie's nostrils, and she paused, a hollow, jealous ache opening in her chest at her father's casual praise of Evan Hunter. "How many more matches?"
"Another week," Evan replied.
Hallie reached for the door.
"What're we gonna do with Hallie?" Turner's voice carried through the gap beside the door. "Her brides leave tomorrow."
Hallie stopped and listened.
"That turned out to be an excellent piece," Charles commented. "We've had good response."
"Plus we got the jump on the Journal," Samuel agreed.
"Who'd have thought that when you came up with something to keep her off Evan's back during the matches, we'd actually get a good piece of journalism?" She recognized Turner's voice.
They laughed again.
A heavy weight pressed upon Hallie's chest. Hurt and self-doubt squeezed a bitter lump of disappointment into her throat. Of all the patronizing, condescending, imperious—
They'd handed her the story like presenting a cookie to a toddler they didn't want underfoot! And now they gloated over their own superiority. Hallie had never felt so wretched...so cheated...so unimportant.
"Do we have any sources in the Dakotas?" Charles asked.
"Why?"
"The real story is on the other end of that stage line."
A moment of silence followed Charles's comment, wherein Hallie imagined them nodding piously at one another.
"Yes, when the men who sent for those gals set eyes on them," Samuel agreed. "No. We don't have anyone that far west."
"Too bad," Turner said.
"Too bad, indeed," Charles said. "We could have had a real follow-up story there."
"Let's just hope the Journal doesn't think of it." Samuel added.
Heartbroken, Hallie gathered her skirts and trod stealthily back out the front door. She walked the brick street without direction. It never entered her mind to go home. Her mother would only tell her as she always did that her father and brothers did such things for her own good. Clarisse Wainwright had been born and bred to be a genteel wife and a mother to Samuel's sons. The fact that Hallie had come along had been an inconvenience to all of them, or so Hallie saw it.
Hallie hadn't been born the proper gender to take a prominent place at the newspaper, as much as she wished to, as much as she knew the same amount of ink flowed through her veins as her brothers'. They'd patted her on the head and sent her on her way since she'd been old enough to toddle after them.
The truth lay on her crushed heart like lead. They would never see her as good enough, as equal, as valuable or necessary.
"I think I've earned the responsibility of reporting on the boxing matches," she said to her reflection. The sporting event would make the front page every day for weeks, and Hallie could think of nothing more exciting than seeing her name beneath the headline.
"I'm sure I could get interviews with the participants," she said convincingly. "Perhaps they'll share insights with me they wouldn't give the men." Forest green curtains obscured the interior of the newspaper office, but she didn't need to see in to picture her oldest brother, Turner, setting type and her father in the office beyond.
"I've been doing the menial jobs without complaint. It's time you gave me a chance. I'll do my best." Hallie gave her likeness a last confident nod and opened the door.
The reassuring smells of ink, paper and grease, which she'd grown up with, boosted her confidence. Turner didn't glance up as she strode pass the Franklin press to her father's office. She rapped twice and opened the door.
Samuel Wainwright glanced up and immediately returned his attention to the papers on his desk top.
"Father, I—"
"No."
Her mouth dropped open. "How do you even know what I was going to say?"
"You have that stubborn look on your face."
"I want to cover the boxing matches." She placed her fists on her hips. "Evan—" her lip curled around the name of the new apprentice "—gets all the good stories."
Samuel shifted his smoking cigar stub from one side of his mouth to the other and leaned back in his creaky leather chair. "Now, Hallie," he cajoled. "Don't get in a huff. You know it wouldn't be acceptable—or safe—for you to take up with that rowdy crowd in the Piedmont district. Any female in Boston with half a brain in her head wouldn't set foot within a mile of the place."
She rolled her eyes. "That's all the brain you give any woman credit for having."
He harrumphed, then shuffled through a stack of papers, finding one he wanted and ignoring her while he checked the list in his other hand against the sheet.
"Hello, Precious," Turner said, entering.
Hallie winced inwardly.
He'd rolled his white shirtsleeves back, and his dark hair stood up on his head in finger-combed waves. He handled the office work, overseeing the typeset and presses. "I want to check this against your copy," he said to their father.
Samuel extended a paper, and the two men concurred. Used to being ignored, Hallie sat on the corner of the ink-stained oak desk and crossed her arms over her chest, unwilling to acknowledge her father's wisdom in this particular case. So what if he was right for once? Her father and brothers, Charles and Turner, always came up with some inane reason that she couldn't handle a story, and ninety-nine out of a hundred times the real reason—the infuriating reason—was that she was a female.
Turner reached for a strand of Hallie's hair that had fallen loose. "You're a sight."
She batted his hand away.
"What are you pouting about now?"
"I'm not pouting."
He laughed. "You're mad as a March hare. Still in a fix over Evan? He says he can't sleep nights for the ringing in his ears. For the last week at supper, you've managed to discredit everything about the man, including his parentage."
Hallie uncrossed her arms and shot a glance at her father. He wore a smile of bored amusement. "I keep hoping someone around here will notice that he's not any more capable than I am."
"And as we've told you a thousand times," Turner said, raising a superior brow, "Father needed Evan."
She tried her best to swallow her resentment. Her father did need help, and she'd worked so hard to prove herself. Samuel had hired the young man to assist Charles with the reporting, so he could devote himself to the book work and editing. It hurt immeasurably that none of them had considered her for the position. And it frustrated her beyond words that they refused to listen to her reasoning.
It was one thing to constantly defer to her brothers, but now an outsider had displaced her! "Perhaps if I put on a pair of trousers, the lot of you will notice I have a whole brain in this head."
Turner scowled. "If you put on a pair of trousers, the men around here will notice more than that. And I'll have to turn you over my knee and discipline the object of their attention."
Hallie resisted the urge to stick her tongue out. Just because they treated her like a child didn't mean she'd give in and behave like one.
"Did you turn in the piece on the quilting society?" Turner asked.
"Now that was an unequaled challenge," she replied, tracing a worn scar on the desk top with an index finger. "Think it'll make the headlines tomorrow?"
"Look," her father said, interrupting. "Remember those classifieds we ran a while back? Here's more of the same."
Turner bent over the desk and read aloud. "'Bride wanted.' Another one—'Wife wanted to cook, do laundry and care for children."'
"What kind of self-respecting woman would answer an ad like that?" Hallie asked, frowning her distaste.
"A woman who wants a husband," Turner replied, directing a pointed glance at his sister. "Unlike you."
She ignored the familiar taunt. "It's barbaric."
"But newsworthy," her father added. He caught his cigar between two fingers and squinted at her through curls of blue-gray smoke. "Some of the young ladies at Miss Abernathy's Conservatory answered the last ads. Why don't you do a story on them, Hallie?"
"Really?" she asked, jumping up.
"I haven't seen anything in the other papers," he continued. "Maybe, for a change, we can print a story before they get the idea."
The assignment filled Hallie with a new sense of importance. The Daily was always trying to get the jump on the bigger papers, and even though the other newspapers always managed to edge them out, the Wainwrights had increased circulation over the past year. Any newsworthy story that first appeared in The Daily was a feather in their journalistic cap.
"I'll work on it right away." She kissed her father on the cheek and smugly tilted her chin on her way past Turner.
Samuel and Turner exchanged conspiratory grins. "How long do you think that will keep her out of our hair?" Turner asked.
Samuel ran a hand over his balding pate. "Let's hope until Evan has a foot in the door. It's hard enough being a cub, without having to deal with Hallie when she's got her hackles up."
"Well, then, we'll just have to keep her busy."
"Isn't it just the most romantic thing you've ever heard?" The young woman with golden hair and ivory skin ignored the cake and tea on the tiny table and stared vacantly across the front of the lace-decorated establishment where the ladies of Boston came to socialize over afternoon tea.
Hallie thought traveling to God-only-knew-where to marry a man she'd never laid eyes on was the most asinine thing she'd ever heard, but she politely refrained from saying so.
"Where are the northern Dakotas, anyway?" Tess Cor-dell asked, coming out of her dreamy-eyed trance. "One of the girls said up by the North Pole."
"I don't think it's quite that far." Hallie tried to recall her geography lessons. "It's far to the west and up north. Quite remote, I'm sure."
Tess took an envelope from her reticule and carefully removed and unfolded a letter. "His name is Cooper DeWitt. He has a stage line and a freight company, so he must be very wealthy." Her pale blue eyes took on that dreamy quality again. "The only thing he requested in a wife was that she be able to read and write. I think that's good, don't you? He doesn't sound like a demanding sort of fellow."
"Or discriminating," Hallie added.
"Right," Tess agreed, the comment apparently sailing over her head. "He's not superficial like most young men who care only that a woman be from a good family."
Hallie heard the resentment in her voice. Obviously Tess was not from a well-to-do family, or she wouldn't have responded to an ad from a desperate frontier man. "Does he say how old he is?"
Tess frowned at the paper momentarily. "No." Her expression brightened. "But he does mention that he's never had a wife, so he must be young."
Or uglier than a buck-toothed mule, Hallie thought more realistically. What was this poor girl getting herself into? She almost wanted to offer her assistance if the girl needed someone to provide for her so badly she was willing to do this. But she held her tongue. Her family had told her often enough that her thinking was not that of a typical twenty-year-old woman. Tess was obviously delighted with her plan. "What else does he say?"
"Only that the country is beautiful and that I would have everything that I need."
"How romantic." Hallie made a few notes on her tablet. "Are you worried about being so far from anyone you know?"
"Well..." Tess chewed her lower lip. "I don't have family, but a couple of the other girls have accepted positions in the same community, so we'll be traveling together. I'm sure Mr. DeWitt will see that I can visit from time to time."
Hallie noted the term accepted positions for later reference. "Are the other girls as excited as you?"
"Oh, yes!" Her pale eyes sparkled. "This is an adventure of a lifetime!"
"I want to speak with the others, too. Can you give me their names?" Hallie scribbled a list and thanked Tess for the interview.
Hallie met the other young women, then hurried home to write her article. The enormous, masculinely furnished house was quiet, as usual. She slipped into her father's study and seated herself in his oversize chair, arranging paper, pen and ink on the desk top. She loved the room, did her best thinking among the familiar heavy pieces with the Seth Thomas mantel clock chiming on the half hour.
Nearly three hours passed before Hallie noticed the time. Double-checking the information, wording and neat printing, she blotted the pages. Her father would undoubtedly cut it in half, but, pleased with her work, she delivered it to his office.
He read the pages while she waited. "This is just what we wanted, Precious," he commended her.
Gladdened at the acknowledgment, she ignored the patronizing nickname.
"Keep on this," he said.
"You mean...?"
"I mean follow up. Go with them when they shop for the trip, watch them pack, all that. We'll run a series on the brides, right up until you wave them off at the stage station."
Surprised and more than a little pleased, Hallie nodded. "All right." She patted the edge of the desk in satisfaction. "All right."
Hallie read her articles in print each day, delighting in the fact that her father hadn't cut more than a sentence or two. She was so delighted, she didn't allow the fact that her father's new apprentice was covering the boxing championships and making headlines nearly every other day upset her—too much.
The day before her subjects were due to leave, she stepped into the office early. On the other side of the partially open mahogany door her brothers' voices rose.
"I'll take this sentencing piece," Charles said. "I'll be at the courthouse this morning, anyway."
"Right," Samuel said. "Evan?"
"I still have the lawyer to interview and, of course, the matches tonight. I'll try not to take a punch myself this time."
Male laughter echoed.
"That's some shiner!" Charles said.
"Great coverage, son." Samuel added. "You'll do anything to get an unusual angle. That's the stuff good reporters are made of." The aromatic scent of his morning cigar reached Hallie's nostrils, and she paused, a hollow, jealous ache opening in her chest at her father's casual praise of Evan Hunter. "How many more matches?"
"Another week," Evan replied.
Hallie reached for the door.
"What're we gonna do with Hallie?" Turner's voice carried through the gap beside the door. "Her brides leave tomorrow."
Hallie stopped and listened.
"That turned out to be an excellent piece," Charles commented. "We've had good response."
"Plus we got the jump on the Journal," Samuel agreed.
"Who'd have thought that when you came up with something to keep her off Evan's back during the matches, we'd actually get a good piece of journalism?" She recognized Turner's voice.
They laughed again.
A heavy weight pressed upon Hallie's chest. Hurt and self-doubt squeezed a bitter lump of disappointment into her throat. Of all the patronizing, condescending, imperious—
They'd handed her the story like presenting a cookie to a toddler they didn't want underfoot! And now they gloated over their own superiority. Hallie had never felt so wretched...so cheated...so unimportant.
"Do we have any sources in the Dakotas?" Charles asked.
"Why?"
"The real story is on the other end of that stage line."
A moment of silence followed Charles's comment, wherein Hallie imagined them nodding piously at one another.
"Yes, when the men who sent for those gals set eyes on them," Samuel agreed. "No. We don't have anyone that far west."
"Too bad," Turner said.
"Too bad, indeed," Charles said. "We could have had a real follow-up story there."
"Let's just hope the Journal doesn't think of it." Samuel added.
Heartbroken, Hallie gathered her skirts and trod stealthily back out the front door. She walked the brick street without direction. It never entered her mind to go home. Her mother would only tell her as she always did that her father and brothers did such things for her own good. Clarisse Wainwright had been born and bred to be a genteel wife and a mother to Samuel's sons. The fact that Hallie had come along had been an inconvenience to all of them, or so Hallie saw it.
Hallie hadn't been born the proper gender to take a prominent place at the newspaper, as much as she wished to, as much as she knew the same amount of ink flowed through her veins as her brothers'. They'd patted her on the head and sent her on her way since she'd been old enough to toddle after them.
The truth lay on her crushed heart like lead. They would never see her as good enough, as equal, as valuable or necessary.
Monday, September 01, 2008
HH September Release: The Shocking Lord Standon by Louise Allen
Rumors fly that Gareth Morant, Earl of Standon, is to be wed. He cannot honorably deny them, but he won't be forced into marriage.Encountering a respectable governess in scandalizing circumstances, Gareth demands her help—to make him entirely ineligible.He educates the buttoned-up Miss Jessica Gifford in the courtesan's arts. But Gareth hasn't bargained on such an ardent, clever pupil—or on his passionate response to her! He wanted to cause a stir—it seems they are about to brew a scandal!Read the excerpt
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The Shocking Lord Standon
Part of the Sexy Historical Promotion
Also out this month as a Mills and Boon Historical
HH September Release: Unlacing Liliy by Gail Ranstrom
The bastard son of a duke, Devlin Farrell is about to exact revenge for his mother's murder. He will even go as far as kidnapping his enemy's bride from the altar!Lilly O'Rourke is merely an innocent pawn in Devlin's plan. Other than ruining her reputation, he means her no harm—though it's hard to play the perfect gentleman when he's struggling to resist her tempting beauty.But Devlin has lived so long for revenge, can he now forfeit this desire—and in rescuing Lilly, save himself?Read the excerpt
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Unlacing Lilly
Part of the Sexy Historical promotion.
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