More about the 'Coeur Rouge' series
I wrote these blurbs for the books in the series mainly to practice the writing of pitch paragraphs and queries. I have the content of all six books outlined and a lot of material is already written. However, my characters sometimes have their own ideas about how their story should progress, so things are still likely to change.
A Minor Fall
Lady Amelia only ever dreamed of being Dominic Devereaux’s perfect wife. But at the day of her wedding, her life turns into a nightmare. Five days later, Amy is widowed, destitute, and passenger on a ship bound for a continent where she does not know a soul. In no position to be discriminating, she accepts help and protection from Stephen Andrews, a wealthy tradesman far down the social ladder. The very man whom she blames for her late husband’s financial ruin.
Clinging to her preconceptions and to her waning grief for her husband, Amy fights to keep an emotional distance to her handsome savior. Stephen Andrews, however, is a man not easily ignored. Especially not by a woman who hides her red hair beneath dark dye, and a fierce spirit and sharp intellect behind bland obedience. With appalling stubbornness, and an irritating mixture of charm and cheek, he challenges her view of herself until she begins to suspect that she might not be the woman she always thought she was.
Status: On Submission
A Major Lift
When Robert Blythe, heir to the dukedom of Dunford, comes back to England after ten years spent on the continent, he is determined to be finally the son his late father always wanted. Among other things, this also includes a dynastic marriage to a woman his father had chosen for him a long time ago.
Unfortunately, he meets Elaine Crawford first.
She has been madly in love with Robert ever since she met him more than ten years ago, an occurence Robert doesn't even remember. Due to an unforgivable indescretion, her infatuation had become widely known to every gossip in London, and now society waits with bated breath how Robert will react to learning of his ardent admirer, and how Elaine will deal with watching him courting and marrying another woman.
Melting The Ice
When John and Elisabeth marry, everyone thinks them a dream couple. Everyone, that is, but John.
After a horrendous wedding-night that should have robbed her of all romantic illusions, Elisabeth decides not to give up meekly on the man of her dreams. With all the love she feels for him - and armed with the advice of an old prostitute - Elisabeth sets out to seduce her husband.
When John's icy exteriour slowly melts under the warmth of Elisabeth's passionate love, it reveals a man deeply wounded by a troubled childhood. Poisoned by his father's misogynistic teachings and a family secret too scandalous to reveal, John fights Elisabeth's advances - and his own burgeoning feelings - every step of the way.
Taming the Fire
After a stroke of divine good luck has freed her from a life of a courtesan, Lydia doesn't want anything more to do with men.
If only she would not need one of them to father the child she so desperately wants to bring sunshine into her life.
When she tries to convince her best friend - who is himself not interested in women - to enter into a marriage of convenience with her, he stubbornly insists she should attend at least one social event to look for a suitor whom she might be able to love before he will agree to her plan. She agrees promptly, knowing that such a man simply doesn't exist.
Eric Gerard, Viscount Brandon, believes all women to be immoral whores and treats them accordingly. The invitation to Lord Dunford's party seems as good an opportunity as any to find a willing woman to warm his bed.
Whom he finds, however, is a woman as deeply disappointed in men as he is in women. A woman who occupies all his dreams with her blinding beauty and her eyes full of pain. Lydia, who had not felt desire in her whole life, finds herself equally drawn to the young man with the fiery red hair and the manners of a sulking five-year-old.
Still, a union between them is impossible and they know they have to go their separate ways.
If only they could...
The Heir
This book will tell the story of Charles Wemyss, Elaine's friend from A Major Lift.
The Spare
As the youngest of two twin brothers and gotesquely disfigured by a childhood accident, Julian Fleetwood has resigned himself to spend the rest of his life in unrelieved solitude as his brother's estate manager.
Kathy Woolencroft, a divorced woman with an equally bleak outlook on her future, seeks employment as a housekeeper to the recluse. Having expected to see very little of the shy young man who is her employer, she soon sees much more than she had expected. The man with the face of a monster and the soul of a saint wakes desires in her she had thought long dead.
But it is not only their different social standing that intervenes to keep them apart.