Excerpt:

As Chloe and Aunt Daphne reached the arched doors of Lady Mythe's lavender saloon, the noisily babbling music of feminine voices came abruptly to a halt. Every pair of eyes in the room turned on her and widened.

Chloe gulped as she cast about from one face to another. Miss Amy looked silly and closed a little red book in her hands. Lady Laverhorn smiled, but it was the kind of smile that made a person feel she was about to become a crocodile's lunch. Lady Constance and Lady Mythe looked mildly horrified, while Miss Nightengall merely stared with a frown. Whatever the on dit was, Chloe had no trouble discerning it was about her.

"Well?" Miss Amy asked in her girlishly breathless voice, as she hid the little book behind her back.

"Hush. It is none of your concern," said Lady Constance, and she grabbed for the book, but Miss Amy whirled away.

"Well, what?" Chloe returned.

"Well, did he ask?" The carefully constructed yellow ringlets on Miss Amy's head bobbed with her eager nodding.

Chloe hoped that was all this was about. The room was full of the female members of the conspiracy. Even Lady Laverhorn appeared to be one of them, but Chloe didn't quite believe that.

"I do not think I am prepared to discuss it just yet," she replied, trying to smile. How could she tell anyone when she had not puzzled out the answer herself?

"There! You see, I told you he would," Miss Amy gushed. "Are you? Are you going to marry him?"

"Miss Amy, you are above forward," said Lady Constance, her older cousin. "Let us allow Miss Daventry her privacy."

"Oh, do not be so high in the instep, Connie. We are all friends here, are we not? And it is all so very romantical! I wish I had a lover who wrote a book about me!"

An anguished moan hummed through the women.

"Miss Amy, how very shocking," retorted Lady Constance. "You do not have a lover, and neither does Miss Daventry, and you should never intimate so."

"Well, I did not mean precisely a lover. I am sorry, Miss Daventry, I did not mean it quite that way, but it is so romantical."

Chloe felt her heart starting to race. "What is so romantical?" she asked, her voice sounding a bit squeaky.

"The book. Oh, it is so grand." Miss Amy proudly held out the little leather-bound book in her hands, dodging Lady Constance's attempt to grab it away.

"I do not think this is a very good idea, Miss Amy," said Lady Mythe, stepping forward between the two ladies.

"Perhaps we should break it to her more gradually," said Lady Laverhorn.

"Break it to-- Let me see that." Chloe snatched the little book out of Miss Amy's hands just before Lady Mythe could intervene and take the book.

"Oh, no, now you've done it!" said Portia, folding her arms. "Just when everything was going just right."

Chloe walked over to a branch of candles for a little more light. It was just a little book, bound in red leather with gold lettering. Rather new, but it looked like it had been read several times, for the thin paper of the pages was starting to curl at the corners. Two tiny scraps of newsprint marked places.

"The Adventuress," she read. "By Roger Beauchef."

"Ooh, it sounds so romantical the way you say it," said Miss Amy. Her cooing was becoming annoying.

"Oh, do be still, Miss Amy." Lady Mythe moved next to Chloe. "Do take it in the vein it was meant, Miss Daventry. It is really sort of a tribute, you see."

"A tribute? What do you mean?" Chloe opened the pages to a torn paper bookmark in the middle and read silently.

As the fierce wind whipped her sodden golden curls and molded her wet garments against her ambrosially delectable form, Circe shouted...

Circe? Where had she heard that? Hadn't Reggie called her Circe once? His Siren of the Seas?

She flipped back to the cover. Roger Beauchef. Reggie Beauhampton.

Ambrosially delectable form? What was this?

Chloe flipped back the pages and kept reading, with each line seeing herself everywhere, with light green eyes and curls just like her own, described as a hoyden of the worst sort, a flagrant adventuress, blatantly displaying her charms like a light-skirt in Covent Garden!

But if you could, would you not like to have such an adventure? Reggie's words, from their first sailing trip.

He had! He'd written the book about her! Made her a laughingstock before the entire of the beau monde!

She slammed the book shut and whirled around, violent heat flushing her cheeks as she searched for escape.

Lady Mythe touched her shoulder. "Now, my dear, you mustn't take it that way. I am sure he did not mean--"

"Didn't mean? He told me he was writing poetry!"

To buy the EBOOK: Use this shopping cart

To buy the PRINT BOOK:
1> Select and copy 1-58749-465-5
2> Click to go to Amazon.com
3> Paste the number into the Search Field

Author BIO: I remember holding a pencil in my hand at age four and feeling an incredible compulsion to create the magic of words. I knew it could be done. But I couldn't make it happen. At four, I could read, having been taught to read by my older brother, who taught me everything as he learned it, including being left-handed (which may explain why I am both left and right-brained and thoroughly ornery.) At nine, I sat down to a typewriter with a story in mind. But before I had pecked out the first paragraph, my words had already strayed in a different direction. I couldn't give them up, but I couldn't make them fit, and I gave up in confusion. Eventually, maturity, experience, and the abandonment of false dignity resolved most of my barriers to writing. Of course, it helped when the kids grew up.

Since I also have an avid interest in history, along with a Bachelor's Degree in Geography and Anthropology, and an enduring love of romance, I particularly enjoy putting timeless human problems into a romantic, historical perspective.

In my other life, I am married to the One True Hero and have a wild and wonderful collection of children, step-children, and grandchildren. I live in Washington State within a day's drive to mountains, ocean, rivers, volcanoes, or deserts, and just about any climate except the Arctic.