Introducing Lady Claire

Thanks to those who commented and shared a rule of courtship. As you’ll see below, our interviewee today could use any tips you’d care to pass along! According to the random number generator, the winner of today’s signed copy of The Captain’s Courtship is Regencyresearcher. I have a hunch I know who that is, but please drop me a note at reginascott@owt.com with your physical address, and I’ll send it right out.

Today we have with us Lady Claire. She grew up in privilege as the daughter of the Earl of Falbrooke and made an excellent match her first season a decade ago to Viscount Winthrop. Her husband died in his prime a year ago, leaving her a widow. I’ve heard rumors she intended to relocate to Bath or the warmer climes of Italy, but something is keeping her in London this Season. Perhaps we can convince her to share her secrets.

Nineteenteen: Welcome, Lady Claire. Are you looking forward to this Season?

Lady Claire: I am indeed. I love London, museums, the theater, the art and science exhibitions. And this year will be special, as I’m sponsoring a young lady, Samantha, Lady Everard.

19Teen, tapping chin with finger: Lady Everard, you say? Isn’t there a connection between you and the Everard family?

Lady Claire, with a charming smile: There certainly is. I’ve been a friend of the family for years.

19Teen: That’s not exactly the way we remember it. Weren’t you at one time engaged to the second son of the family, former privateer Captain Richard Everard of the Siren’s Gold?

Lady Claire, with an airy wave: La, that was years ago. You cannot expect a lady to remember every suitor who comes calling.

19Teen: But he wasn’t just a suitor. You promised to marry him.

Lady Claire: And he promised to write and return soon. Two years with no word is not soon. Besides, my father was very pleased with the match I made.

19Teen: Your father was pleased, eh? What about you?

Lady Claire, hitching her shawl closer: I’m sure any lady would be pleased to be a viscountess. But I believe you wanted to know more about my Season this year. It will be beyond marvelous. Lady Everard is such a dear—so vivacious, so energetic. I know you will be charmed. We’ve already planned her coming out ball, and I intend to have her presented to the Queen at the earliest opportunity.

19Teen: And how do you feel about Captain Everard taking part in these activities? Won’t you have to spend a great deal of time in his company, first traveling to Cumberland to meet his cousin Lady Everard, and then here in London when she starts her Season?

Lady Claire: Very likely. I’m sure he’ll make a fine escort.

19Teen: That’s it? No trepidation about meeting your old swain again, especially now that you’re about to put off your widow’s weeds? You never thought about him once over all these years?

Lady Claire, lowering her voice: I’ve thought about him far too often, and you know it. How many times I’ve wished I could undo the past. But I can’t. He’ll never forgive me for betraying him. If he knew any other woman eligible to introduce his cousin to the Queen, he would never have showed up at my door.

19Teen: And now that he has?

Lady Claire: Now that he has, I find myself afraid to dream again.

19Teen: Never fear, Lady Claire. We think you will find that the captain’s courtship may have an entirely different ending this time around.

To learn more about Lady Claire and Captain Richard Everard, look for The Captain’s Courtship online or in a store near you. If you’d like another chance to win an autographed copy, simply leave a comment on this post before midnight your time on Thursday, July 19. I’ll draw a name and announce the winner next Friday, June 20.

Launching the Captain: Rules of Courtship

While Marissa and I and millions of others were off celebrating the birth of our nation, another birth took place. My twenty-second work of romantic fiction made its debut (yes, I know, not quite the convention-shattering birth of the USA!). The Captain’s Courtship is the second book in my Everard Legacy miniseries from Love Inspired Historical. Today and Friday, I’m giving away an autographed copy. Read on to learn how you can win.

The Everard legacy miniseries focuses on three handsome cousins who set out to claim their inheritances and learn that love is their greatest reward. In the first book, Jerome, Richard, and Vaughn Everard discovered that their late uncle had kept a daughter secret, a daughter who has inherited not only his title but their vast empire of shares in sailing ships, money in the Exchange, and lands in six counties.

But inheriting the Everard legacy isn’t as easy as it may sound. Samantha’s father left a set of stipulations in his will, and unless she fulfills them, she and her cousins will lose everything their family has worked to gain. The first requirement is that Samantha be presented to the queen. And only a lady who has already been presented can sponsor her for the introduction. A shame that every lady the Everards know who might be disposed to do them a favor is decidedly out of the queen’s league.

All but one. Lady Claire Winthrop was once engaged to Captain Richard Everard, throwing him over for a wealthy viscount. Now she’s a widow with more than one secret in her past. Can Richard convince her to sponsor the mercurial Samantha? And if the two are drawn together once more, will the captain’s courtship be successful this time?

As you can tell, courtship plays a big part in this story, whether Richard and Claire’s memories of their first courtship or their attempts to find their way back into courting again. When I was writing my young adult novel, La Petite Four, I developed a character named Lord Snedley, who considered himself an expert in the rules of courting (among other things). Here are some of his rules for courting:

• On her first introduction to a gentleman, a young lady would do well to keep her eyes on his chin, unless of course he should have a pock or wart there. Raising her eyes to his will make her appear forward and staring at his feet will make the fellow uncomfortable. I also advise against staring at birthmarks or protrusions of any sort.
• Gentlemen, when you visit, stay a quarter hour, no more, no less. Unless, of course, you are pressed to stay by a particularly winsome young lady, or you find yourself enamored of the lemonade served that day, drink fourteen glasses, and must needs make use of the retiring facilities.
• Young ladies are indebted to their chaperons, those maternal sorts who hover about at balls, making sure that everything is aboveboard. Do insist that they stay away from card tables, sharp objects, and the occasional cavorting in the servant’s hall.
• Indulging in flirtation is every young lady’s prerogative and quite expected in more fashionable circles. If you feel daunted, I suggest you practice on a door knob, which will not notice if your hair was parted the wrong way nor remark that you have parsley stuck between your front teeth.

Now it’s your turn. Give me a rule of proper courtship, real, from a book you read, or imagined, in a comment to this post, and I will put your name in a drawing to win an autographed copy of The Captain’s Courtship. Comments received before midnight U.S. West Coast time on Thursday, July 12, will be eligible. I’ll announce the winner in my Friday post, where we’ll learn more about Lady Claire Winthrop, and I’ll give you another chance to win.

The Captain's Courship is available at

Harlequin Online

Amazon

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Red-Headed Step-Children of the Cover World

Did you know there are rules to cover art? Sacred dogma passed down through the millennia? These secrets vary from publishing house to publishing house and I suspect editor to editor. Some will tell you that books with blond heroes on the cover sell poorly. So, while an author has full freedom to write about a blond hero, the fellow on her cover will have dark hair. Prussian heroes don’t sell (yet Arnold Schwarzenegger took that all the way to the bank). Older heroines don’t sell. Widows in mourning don’t sell (all those black clothes-br!). Books with clinches (passionate embraces) are passé/don’t sell well/sell like hotcakes.

But two things that many publishing houses seem to agree on is that heroes with reddish hair should not be on covers (so that poor fellow can forget about making a splash as a cover model), and readers find men with beards and mustaches shady (and hence, you know, they should not be on covers). They are, pardon the pun, the red-headed step-children of the cover world.

Given all this, I knew the hero of my July book, The Captain’s Courtship, was doomed to live out his life between the pages and never on a cover, for he has auburn hair, beard, and mustache! I was resigned to seeing a dark-haired, clean-shaven hunk, er gentleman on the cover. Imagine my delight when I received a copy of my cover this week and saw what the artists had done. There is Captain Richard Everard, in all his russet-haired, bearded, mustachioed glory, standing by his favorite place at Dallsten Manor, the pond. There is Dallsten Manor, pretty much the way I pictured it. And goodness but look—Lady Claire is dressed in her black widow’s mourning, and looking rather dashing, I think.

Very likely this means my book is doomed to fail, but I like to hope it will rise against the odds, just like Richard and Claire.

Care to guess who I asked the artists to use as examples for them? Here’s a couple hints. The lady has not only acted in Jane Austen movie adaptations but directed one. When it comes to historical movies, the gentleman is better known for his role in an American miniseries, and the closest he’s gotten to Jane Austen’s period is a Napoleonic war naval uniform on the holodeck.