Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for THE VISCOUNT WHOVEXED ME (A Royal Match Book #3) by Julia London.
Below you will find a book description, my book review, an excerpt from the book, an about the author section and the author’s social media links. Enjoy!
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Book Description
Daring. Darling. Determined.
Next to the Season’s newest diamond, Harriet (Hattie) Woodchurch feels like a plain Jane. But that’s of no consequence, since Hattie’s plan for her future is to earn enough to live far, far away from her embarrassing family.
That is until Mateo Vincente, Duke of Santiava and newly minted Viscount Abbott, arrives in London. While the shy European’s spoken English is impeccable, his writing is less fluent. The ton is eager to meet the handsome bachelor, and so many invitations flood in that Mateo needs a correspondence secretary.
With her perfect penmanship and way with words, Hattie is recommended, and the two bond over books and the ton’s eligible ladies. But when Hattie’s friend Flora becomes smitten with the viscount, things get complicated. Flora is tongue-tied in his presence. To help, Hattie feeds her information about Mateo’s interests. Soon things turn around and Flora appears on track to become his duchess. Yet for Mateo, something’s not quite right. Conversation with Flora isn’t as scintillating as it is with Hattie…
Book 1: Last Duke Standing Book 2: The Duke Not Taken Book 3: The Viscount Who Vexed Me
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My Book Review
RATING: 5 out of 5 Stars
THE VISCOUNT WHO VEXED ME (A Royal Match Book #3) by Julia London is another charming and witty addition to this historical romance series. Each book in the series has a royal who needs to find a mate and hopefully a love match with the help of a determined matchmaker and recurring characters working to assist. Each book can easily be read as a standalone with a complete HEA in each with the recurring characters introduced in each book of the series.
Harriet “Hattie” Woodchurch is determined to earn her own living and move very far away from her embarrassing family. While she has friends in society from her time in school, her father is a rich penny-pinching merchant and not a member of polite society and she realizes her life and circumstances will not be like her friends.
Mateo “Teo” Vincente, Duke of Santiava and now also the Viscount Abbott after the death of his mother’s father arrives in London to set his new inheritance in order. Society is excited about his visit and the knowledge that he seeks a wife, but he is not comfortable with the attention. When he needs assistance with his English correspondence, Hattie is recommended for the position. Teo soon finds he and his entire household are enchanted with his scribe.
As Mateo meets all the eligible debutantes, he finds that he is only truly himself with Hattie and Hattie is finding herself increasingly infatuated with the Viscount. The matchmaker still has a few things up her sleeve to assist this pair, if the Viscount is willing to find his voice and stand up for what he wants.
I adore this series not only because of the well written characters and situations that I never know how Ms. London will resolve them into a HEA, but also because the dialogue is always so witty and fun. Hattie is a determined young woman willing to work for everything she wants and yet she is also friendly and warm despite her difficult family, and it broke my heart every time her supposed friends hurt her. Mateo is complicated and a product of his father’s constant verbal abuse, but that makes it even more wonderful when he finally finds his own voice and power. I loved that his hobby and passion is baking. This book has no explicit sex scenes, but a steadily growing romance from the discovering of friendship to love.
I recommend this enjoyable historical romance and the entire Royal Match series.
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Excerpt
Suddenly, a woman entered the shop in such a hurry that she set all the bells above the door clanging. “Mrs. Perkins!”
Mrs. Perkins, the shopkeeper, burst forth from the curtains covering the entrance to a back room like she thought the shop might be on fire. “What is it? What’s happened?”
The woman rushed to the front window where Flora and Queenie were, forcing them aside. “What in heaven!” Queenie cried.
“He’s there!”
“Who’s there?” Queenie demanded—she’d never been shy about seeking answers.
“Here?” Mrs. Perkins gasped and sprang to the window like a gazelle. “Where?”
The woman pointed across the street, and Queenie grabbed Flora’s arm. “Look!”
“You’re hurting me,” Flora said.
“For once, will you do as I ask?” Queenie demanded. “Look!”
Hattie watched the four ladies in the shop window, leaning forward and peering out over the glove displays, confused about what was happening. “Oh my. Oh my,” Flora said, then gestured wildly for Hattie. “Come here, come here, you have to see!”
There was not enough room for the five of them, and Hattie had to stand on her tiptoes to see over Flora’s shoulder. “I can’t really see,” Hattie said.
The rest of them ignored her. “Where?” Mrs. Perkins demanded, sounding panicked.
Mrs. Perkins’s friend pointed.
Hattie tried to make herself taller. The only thing she could see was a haberdashery across the street. Three gentlemen stood before it, chatting. “Is that it?” Hattie asked and sank down onto her feet again.
“Not them,” the woman said. “The viscount.”
There had to be at least a dozen viscounts on Regent Street on any given day. “Which one?”
“Which one?” Flora repeated, and shot a disapproving look over her shoulder at Hattie. “Viscount Abbott, of course.”
“Of course,” Hattie muttered. She didn’t know of any Viscount Abbott. Or why any of these women were interested in him.
“Who is also the Duke of Santiava,” Queenie said. Hattie blinked. Queenie rolled her eyes. “Why do you never know these things, Hattie? It’s as if you live in a cave.”
She never knew these things because she didn’t know anything. How could she? She didn’t exactly exist in the same social circles as Flora and Queenie. She knew what they told her, and they had not told her about this viscount.
Just then, Flora grabbed Hattie’s hand and gripped it so tightly that Hattie winced. Queenie pushed a display of gloves out of the way, and the four women surged forward, Flora dragging Hattie with her.
A man emerged from the shop, holding his hat in his hand. He was tall, with sun-drenched skin. His clothing fit him snugly, and it was apparent that he was trim with an athletic build. His dark hair brushed his collar, and when he looked up at something one of the other gentlemen said, he smiled. Only a little, but it was a smile that sparked through Hattie. That gentleman was quite possibly the most beautiful man she’d ever seen in her life—elegant, strong, and astonishingly agreeable in looks.
No one spoke for a moment.
A carriage rolled in between the shops and stopped, blocking their view of the haberdashery. When it rolled away, the gentlemen were gone.
The ladies settled back. Queenie sighed and stepped away from the window, leaving the display of gloves knocked onto its side. The woman who had rushed in to announce the viscount sighting retreated to the back room with Mrs. Perkins. Hattie picked up the display and righted it in the window.
“You will be at the top of that list, Flora,” Queenie said with certainty.
Queenie was short and round, with soft gold curls that fell around her shoulders. She carried herself like a queen and acted like one on occasion, too. Flora was tall and lithe, her hair auburn. She was pretty by any standard. When Hattie was with the two of them, she often felt like the plain cousin come to town from the village. Her hair was a dull brown, her figure unremarkable.
Flora gave Queenie’s remark a high-pitched, breathy laugh that Hattie had never heard her make. “Don’t be silly!”
“Don’t be coy,” Queenie said. “You know that you will.”
“The list is quite long, I’m certain. What about Hattie? She might be at the top.”
“The top of what?” Hattie asked.
“Really, Hattie!” Queenie said, sounding annoyed. “How can you be so ignorant of all the news around town? The list of potential brides for the viscount, obviously.”
Hattie laughed. Loudly.
“I agree, it’s hardly a possibility,” Queenie said. “I don’t mean to offend, but he is the Duke of Santiava, and now he’s Viscount Abbott, as he is his English grandfather’s only living male heir. He’ll marry someone with a large dowry and from a titled family. Someone with proper connections.”
Santiava? Hattie vaguely recalled something about it. A duchy, she believed, on the Mediterranean Sea. Once a colony of Wesloria if memory served.
“He’s the sovereign duke, and quite rich,” Queenie continued. “But they say he’s a recluse. One must always be wary of the recluse.”
One must? Hattie hadn’t heard that rule.
“And unmarried, obviously,” Flora added as the three of them departed the shop.
“Won’t he choose a wife from Santiava?” Hattie asked as they walked toward Hyde Park.
“No!” Queenie scoffed, and Hattie was once again left wondering how her education could be so lacking. “He’s come here to claim his title and his fortune and, as everyone knows, be fitted with an English wife. It serves a small duchy to have an English or Weslorian duchess, you know, if they were ever to need the backing of a larger country in times of war or economic hardship. This would practically guarantee it.”
Queenie spoke with such authority about him that Hattie had to wonder if she’d consulted with the man himself. She was dubious that a marriage to Flora could guarantee anything of the sort. But she kept silent.
“Imagine, Hattie,” Flora said, “if you were the link to the might of the Royal Navy should that duchy need it.”
All Hattie could imagine was herself on a leaking, rickety boat. “I won’t be the link to anything, because I’m already engaged.” She smiled.
Flora and Queenie exchanged a look. “You haven’t told her?” Queenie said to Flora.
“Told me what?” Hattie asked, confused.
“Tell her. She can’t walk around without knowing,” Queenie said.
Hattie’s heart dropped. “Knowing what? What are you talking about?”
“Oh, Hattie… Mr. Masterson paid me a call,” Flora blurted. “I was going to tell you. I was waiting for the right time.”
“Well, this is hardly it,” Queenie drawled, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she’d just urged Flora to tell her.
But tell her what, exactly? That Rupert had called on Flora? How odd—they weren’t so well acquainted. “Mr. Rupert Masterson called on you,” Hattie repeated, to make sure they were indeed speaking of her Mr. Masterson, the owner and proprietor of the Masterson Dry Goods and Sundries Shop.
“He…he came to me in confidence.” Flora punctuated that remark with a look of sympathy.
Hattie’s gut began to do a strange bit of swirling. “Why?”
“He said…that he thought it best if you and he…” She paused, as if trying to find the words.
Elope? That was it! What other reason could he have for needing to speak in confidence to Flora? He must have sought her help. “Elope?” she asked at the same moment Flora said, “Should not pursue things further.”
No one said a word for a moment. Even Queenie kept her mouth shut. “What?” Hattie asked and stopped walking. This was stunningly incomprehensible. She pressed a fist to her abdomen to keep down the sudden swell of nausea. “What…what did…he…or you…say?” “Oh, Hattie, dearest.” They’d come to the park’s entrance, and Flora pulled her to a bench and sat her down. She took both of Hattie’s hands in hers. “I’m so very sorry, but there is no other way to say it, is there? He would like you to cry off your engagement. End it, I mean. He has come to the unfortunate conclusion that it must be done. But because he has the utmost consideration for you, he means to protect your reputation by having you write him and end it.”
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About the Author
Julia London is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over fifty novels of historical and contemporary romance. She is the author of the popular Highland Grooms series as well as A Royal Wedding, her most recent series. Julia is the recipient of the RT Bookclub Award for Best Historical Romance and a six-time finalist for the prestigious RITA award for excellence in romantic fiction. She lives in Austin, Texas. Visit her at www.julialondon.com.
I am excited to be sharing my Feature Post and Book Review on this HQN Books blog tour for the first book in a new historical romance series – LAST DUKE STANDING (A Royal Match Book #1) by Julia London.
Below you will find an author Q&A, a book summary, my book review, an excerpt from the book and the author bio and social media links. Enjoy!
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Author Q&A
1. Tell us about your latest book. Who are the main character(s) and what can readers expect when they pick up Last Duke Standing?
Princess Justine Ivanosen is going to be queen of Wesloria sooner than she hoped—her father, the king, is dying from tuberculosis. Because he is declining, a marriage becomes very important. The Prime Minister is dead set against having a young woman ascend the throne without a man to guide her, and her mother is still smarting over Justine’s disastrous affair with a charlatan, the reveal of which has left her without great prospects at home. The Prime Minister convinces the queen that they ought to employ a matchmaker to make quick work of it. They can ship her off to England to apprentice with Queen Victoria, bring some suitors around to court her there instead of here, where all of Wesloria will be watching, and give strict instructions that she is to return with a fiance. The prime minister won’t leave the selection of the lucky fellow to chance, and persuades one of his old cronies to send his handsome son to London to keep an eye on the selection process.
William Douglas, the future Duke of Hamilton, has been flitting around Europe for ages. He’s met the princess before, but she was hardly more than a snippy girl who didn’t like losing parlor games. The last thing he wants to do is babysit that child. But he discovers the girl in his memory is now a very attractive grown woman. She’s still a challenge, however—she likes to be called Your Royal Highness a lot more than he likes saying it, and expressly forbids him from offering his advice. He’s one of those people—if someone says don’t do it, he’s going to do it. And he has some advice about every man that comes to meet her.
Lady Aleksander, the matchmaker, sees that these two might be perfect for each other. The only way to find out is to bring some gentlemen around that she knows will unite Justine and William. But they are too busy pretending they aren’t falling in love to even notice.
2. Who was your favorite character to write in THE LAST DUKE STANDING and why?
I like all the main characters. Justine and William were so meant for each other. Little sister Amelia has some growing up to do. Beckett Hawke and Donovan are back from A Royal Wedding series. But I really enjoyed creating Lady Aleksander, the matchmaker. She is the third point of view in this book, and her observations of what is happening is like the Greek chorus—she can see clearly what the leads can’t see. It liked that she’s in her forties, very much in love with her husband, and she just wants everyone to have what she has. She makes no apologies for who she is or what she does and she has the patience of Job. She also likes to eat. We have that in common.
3. What do you like about writing in the historical subgenre? What are the challenges?
I fell in love with historical fiction when I was a girl. Castles and princesses were a long way from a ranch in West Texas, but I loved the stories of balls and gowns and the idea of a rich gentleman. I was surrounded by farmers and ranch hands, so the idea of a pretty dress and fancy dinner had a fairy-tale appeal. I loved history in school, and I minored in British history. The fairy-tale appeal still persists—through the last election and the pandemic, it was a great relief for me to slip off to another world where people were genteel and the biggest problem they had was the strict rules of etiquette putting a damper on their moves. The challenge of writing historical romance today is to make it interesting for the new generation of readers. There is a lot more competing for their attention than there was for mine at a similar age. But a good love story is a good story, no matter the era.
4. Who are some authors you look to for inspiration?
One of the best romances I ever read was Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman. It is a history of Wales, and of King Llewellyn and his very young wife Joanna. The history is dark and bloody, but they truly loved each other.
I have also found a renewed admiration for Julia Quinn. I can look back at her Bridgerton series now and see how clever she was at giving us a large family with a lot of issues to enjoy for years. She must have taken excellent notes from her own books to keep up with all the twists and turns in that family.
5. What is your writing routine like? Do you have a specific place you write? Time of day?
My routine is to do it every day. I usually do some physical exercise in the morning, but once I’ve done that, and picked up the house, and done my Wordle, I get to work. I write every day. I have an office, but the pandemic has made me sick of it. So I move around the house now. I am done with the day’s work by the time school is out—I used to be able to keep my head in two places (the book and family) but I can’t do that anymore. I don’t know what happened to my ability to multi-task, but it has been obliterated. So I work as much as I can during school hours and then hit the wine fridge like any red-blooded working mom.
6. What’s next for the Royal Match series?
I am just finishing The Duke Not Taken. It’s about Princess Amelia, who is also sent to England under Lady Aleksander’s care to find a husband. Amelia really wants a husband and a family. Her problem, however, is she’s too much of a straightshooter for most people. And she’s not willing to settle. Enter the Duke of Marley, who has to be the only man in one hundred square miles who is not the least interested in a beautiful, rich, young princess. He has his reasons…
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Book Summary
When Crown Princess Justine of Wesloria is sent to England to learn the ropes of royalty, she falls under the tutelage of none other than Queen Victoria herself. She’s also in the market for a proper husband—one fit to marry the future Queen of Wesloria.
Because he knows simply everyone, William, Lord Douglas (the notoriously rakish heir to the Duke of Hamilton seat in Scotland, and decidedly not husband material), is on hand as an escort of sorts. William has been recruited to keep an eye on the royal matchmaker for the Weslorian Prime Minister, tasked to ensure the princess is matched with a man of quality…and one who will be sympathetic to the prime minister’s views. As William and Justine are forced to scrutinize an endless parade of England’s best bachelors, they become friends. But when the crowd of potential grooms is steadily culled, what if William is the last bachelor standing?
LAST DUKE STANDING (A Royal Match Book #1) by Julia London is a charming enemies-to-lovers historical romance story start to a new series. I look forward to historical romances by Julia London for the witty dialogue and endearing characters and this one did not disappoint.
Crown Princess Justine of Wesloria is sent to England with her younger sister to find a suitable husband before her sick father, the king, dies. Justine not only has to put up with a matchmaker, she believes is incompetent, and servants always reporting back to her mother the Queen, but a gentleman from her past she is not happy to see again shows up to be an escort of sorts.
William, Lord Douglas has been recruited to spy on the Crown Princess and her prospects by the Prime Minister of Wesloria to make sure her new Prince Consort will be sympathetic to his views. William met Justine eight years previously, but the Justine he is sent to escort is a woman now and the more he discovers about her, the more intrigued he becomes. As their friendship grows, so do the faults of Justine’s suitors.
When it appears William may be the perfect match and the last bachelor standing, a scandal from his past may ruin any chance for a Happily Ever After match.
This is a fun and entertaining read with delightful banter between William and Justine and an entertaining plot that has a great twist at the end. William is an endearing hero throughout. Justine was a little more difficult to warm up to until you realize how her whole life has been manipulated and one small mistake in judgement as a young girl has led to constant supervision. All the secondary characters were fully fleshed, and I will be looking forward to meeting some in future books in the series.
I enjoyed this historical romance and I will be looking forward to reading more in this new series.
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Excerpt
PROLOGUE
1844
When Justine was fourteen, her father took her to the mountainous north country of Wesloria. He said he was to meet with coal barons because they were restless and in need of appeasing. Why? Justine had wondered.
“Because coal barons are always restless and in need of appeasing, darling,” he’d said, as if everyone knew that.
She’d imagined large, heavily cloaked men, faces covered in soot, pacing their hearths and muttering their grievances. But the coal barons were, in fact, like all well-dressed Weslorian gentlemen with clean faces.
They peered at her with expressions that ranged from disgust to indifference to curiosity.
“Don’t mind them,” her father had said. “They are not modern men.”
Justine and her father were housed at Astasia Castle. It was a fortress that jutted out forebodingly from a rocky outcropping so high on the mountain that the horses labored to pull the royal coach up the steep drive. It was purported to be the best of all the accommodations in the area, afforded to Justine and her father by virtue of the fact Justine’s father was the king of Wesloria, and she was the crown princess, the invested heir to the throne.
Justine said the castle looked scary. Her father explained that castles were built in this manner so that armies and marauders could be seen advancing from miles away, and runaway brides could be seen fleeing for miles.
“Runaway brides?” Justine had been enthralled by the idea of something so romantic gone so horribly awry.
“Petr the Mad watched his bride run away with his best knight, and then watched his men chase them for miles before they got away. He was so angry he burned down half the village.” Her father did not elaborate further, as the gates had opened, and the castellan had come rushing forward, eager to show the king and his heir the old royal castle he proudly kept.
Sir Corin wore a dusty blue waistcoat that hung to his thighs, the last four buttons undone to allow for his paunch. His hair, scraggly and gray, had been pulled into an old-fashioned queue at his nape. He kept a ring of keys attached to his waist that clanked with each step he took.
He was a student of history, he’d said, and could answer any question they might have about Astasia Castle, and proceeded to exhibit his detailed knowledge of the dank, drafty place with narrow halls and low ceilings. A young Russian prince had died in this room. An ancient queen had lost her life giving birth to her tenth child in that room.
Sir Corin showed them to the throne room. “More than one monarch’s held court here.”
Justine was accustomed to the opulence of the palace in Wesloria’s capital of St. Edys. This looked more like a common room of a public house—it was small and dark, the king and queen’s thrones wooden, and the tapestries faded by time and smoke.
Another room, Sir Corin pointed out, was where King Maksim had accepted the surrender of the feudal King Igor, thereby uniting all Weslorians under one rule after generations of strife.
“My namesake,” her father said proudly, forgetting, perhaps, that King Maksim had slaughtered King Igor’s forces to unite them all.
They came upon a small inner courtyard. Stone walls rose up on three sides of it, but the outer wall was a battlement. Sir Corin pointed to a door at one end of the battlement that led into a keep with narrow windows. “We use it for storage now, but they kept the prisoners there in the old days. Worse than any dungeon your young eyes have ever seen, Your Royal Highness.”
Justine had never seen a dungeon.
“Is this not where Lord Rabat was beheaded?” her father asked casually. To Justine, he said, “That would have been your great-great-uncle Rabat.”
“Je, Your Majesty, the block is still here.” Sir Corin pointed to a large wooden block that stood alone, about two feet high and two feet wide. It looked to have been weathered by years of sitting in hard sun and wretched winters.
“Oh, how terrible,” Justine said, crinkling her nose.
“Quite,” her father agreed, and explained, with far too much enthusiasm, how a person was made to kneel before the block and lay their neck upon it. “A good executioner could make clean work of it with a single stroke. Whap, and the head would tumble into a basket.”
“If I may, Your Majesty, a good executioner was hard to come by. More miners in these parts than men good with broadswords. Fact is, it took three strikes of the sword to sever Rabat’s head completely.” Sir Corin felt it necessary to demonstrate the three strikes with his arm.
“Ah…” Justine swallowed down a swell of nausea.
“Three whacks?” her father repeated, rapt. “Couldn’t get it done in one?”
Sir Corin shook his head. “Just goes to prove how important it is to keep the broadsword sharp.”
“And to keep someone close who knows how to wield it,” her father added. The two men laughed roundly.
Justine looked around for someplace to sit so that she could put her head between her legs and gulp some air. Alas, the only place to sit was the block.
“Steady there, my girl. I’ve not told you who ordered the beheading,” her father said.
Sir Corin clasped his hands together in anticipation, clearly trying to contain his glee.
“Your great-great-aunt Queen Elena!”
Queen Elena had beheaded Lord Rabat? “Her husband?”
“Worse. Her brother.”
Justine gasped. “But why?”
“Because Rabat meant to behead her first. Whoever survived the battle here would be crowned the sovereign.”
“Ooh, a bloody battle it was, too,” Sir Corin said eagerly. “Four thousand souls lost, many of them falling right off the battlement.”
Justine backed up a step. A quake was beginning somewhere deep inside her, making her a little short of breath. Her knees felt as if they might buckle, and her skin crawled with anxiety, imagining the loss of so many. “Could she not have banished him?”
“And have him slither back like a snake?” Her father draped his arm around her shoulders before she could back up all the way to St. Edys. “She did the right thing. Why, minutes before, she was on the block herself.”
“Dear God,” Justine whispered.
“But at the last minute the people here saved her,” her father said. “She sentenced her brother to die immediately for his insurrection and stood right where we are now to watch his traitorous head roll.”
“Well,” Sir Corin said. “I wouldn’t say it rolled, precisely.”
The two men laughed again.
“Don’t close your eyes, darling,” her father said, squeezing her into his side. “Look at that block. Elena was only seventeen years old, but she was very clever. She knew what she had to do to hold power and rule the kingdom. And she ruled a very long time.”
“Forty-three years, all told,” Sir Corin said proudly.
“Queen Elena learned what every sovereign must—be decisive and act quickly. Do you understand?”
“I don’t…think so?” Justine was starting to feel a bit like she was spinning.
“You will.” Her father dropped his arm. He wandered over to the block to inspect it. “We almost named you Elena after her. But they called her Elena the Bi—Witch,” he said. “And your mother feared they might call you the same.”
“You said she was a good queen.”
“She was an excellent queen. But sometimes it is difficult to do the things that must be done and keep the admiration of your people at the same time.”
The spinning was getting worse. She gripped her father’s arm. “Why?”
“Because people expect a woman to behave like a woman. But a good queen must sometimes behave more like a king for the good of the kingdom. People don’t care for it.” He shrugged. “No king or queen can make all their subjects happy all the time.” He suddenly smiled. “You look a bit like Queen Elena.”
“The very image,” Sir Corin piped up.
Later that day Justine saw a portrait of Queen Elena. She wasn’t smiling, but she didn’t appear completely unpleasant. She simply looked…determined. And her dress was elegantly pretty, with lots of pearls sewn into it.
Later still, when her father and his men had retired to smoke cigars and talk about coal or some such, Justine returned to the courtyard alone. No one was there, no sentry looking out for marauders or runaway brides. She looked up at the tops of pines bending in a relentless wind, appearing to scrape a dull gray sky. She walked up the steps to the battlement and gazed out over the mountain valley below the castle. She spread her arms wide, closed her eyes and turned her face to the heavens.
That was the first time she truly felt it—the pull from somewhere deep, the energy of all the kings and queens who had come before her, rising up to the crown of her head, anchoring her to this earth. She felt the centuries of warfare and struggle, of the people her family had ruled. She felt the enormous responsibilities they’d all carried, the work they’d done to carve a road to the future.
Her father had often said that he could feel the weight of his crown on his shoulders. But Justine felt something entirely different. She didn’t feel as if it was weighing her down, but more like it was lifting her off her feet and holding her here. She didn’t believe this was a conceit on her part, but a tether to her past. She would be a queen. She knew that she would, and standing there, she felt like she should be. She felt born to it.
A gust of wind very nearly sent her flying, so she came down from the battlement. She paused just before the block and tried to imagine herself on her knees, knowing her death was imminent. She imagined how she would look.
She hoped she would appear strong and noble with no hint of her fear of the pain or the unknown.
Being queen was her destiny. She knew it would come.
Julia London is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over fifty novels of historical and contemporary romance. She is the author of the popular Highland Grooms series as well as A Royal Wedding, her most recent series. Julia is the recipient of the RT Bookclub Award for Best Historical Romance and a six-time finalist for the prestigious RITA award for excellence in romantic fiction. She lives in Austin, Texas. Visit her at www.julialondon.com.
As the Nazis march toward Paris in 1940, American ballerina Lucie Girard buys her favorite English-language bookstore to allow the Jewish owners to escape. Lucie struggles to run Green Leaf Books due to oppressive German laws and harsh conditions, but she finds a way to aid the resistance by passing secret messages between the pages of her books.
Widower Paul Aubrey wants nothing more than to return to the States with his little girl, but the US Army convinces him to keep his factory running and obtain military information from his German customers. As the war rages on, Paul offers his own resistance by sabotaging his product and hiding British airmen in his factory. After they meet in the bookstore, Paul and Lucie are drawn to each other, but she rejects him when she discovers he sells to the Germans. And for Paul to win her trust would mean betraying his mission.
Master of WWII-era fiction Sarah Sundin invites you onto the streets of occupied Paris to discover whether love or duty will prevail.
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Elise’s Thoughts
Until Leaves Fall in Paris by Sarah Sundin shows why she is the master of writing World War II fiction. This story is filled with intrigue, danger, and romance when two American expatriates living in Paris navigate the “normal” of German occupation in 1940, while secretly working for the resistance.
Lucie Girard has been living in Paris since she was ten years old. She quits her job as a ballerina for the Paris Opera Ballet School to buy her favorite English language bookstore from her good friends to allow the Jewish owners to have money to escape Nazi controlled France. She decides to use the bookstore to help the resistance by having them hide messages in books she delivers to other resistance members.
Widower Paul Aubrey is being shunned by the Americans living in Paris including Lucie. Even though Lucie is attracted to him she rejects him when she discovers he sells to the Germans. Paul is an engineer and owns an automotive factory in France. He is only cooperating with the Nazis because the American military asked him to be a spy. Paul offers his own resistance by sabotaging his product and hiding British airmen in his factory.
This is an excellent historical novel. Sundin has engaging characters and realistically shows what it would be like for Americans living in Nazi occupied France during the neutrality period of 1940.
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Elise’s Author Interview
Sarah Sundin: There are three books in this series dealing with Nazi Germany. I decided to write a story with Americans who remained in France during the occupation. Through my research I found there were 1000s of Americans who remained in France between the Nazi invasion of 1940 and before December 1941, when America was still neutral. At that time American citizens there were free to come and go. Some stayed because of having their roots in France, others enjoyed the French culture, and businessmen who stayed for making money. I wanted to explore these reasons.
Elise Cooper: Why the ballet?
SS: I did it growing up for ten years. Paris is the home of ballet. The ballet is in the main character’s heart.
EC: How would you describe Lucie?
SS: Her character was inspired by Sylvia Beach, a single woman, who ran the bookstore “Shakespeare and Company.” It was an English language bookstore in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s up until December 1941. Many of the bohemian expatriate’s literary community hung out there including Hemmingway. She also published James Joyce’s Ulysses. I gave Lucy a reason to stay, sacrificing her savings to buy a bookstore from her Jewish friends so they can escape. She is dreamy, artistic, and poetic with her feet on the ground. She can read people. Since she only went through 8th grade, she did not feel smart because of being a daydreamer and not good with numbers.
EC: How would you describe Paul?
SS: He was easy to write because he is very much like my husband and son. Very left-brain with numbers as their friends. Paul is good with people in a managerial way and knows what makes them tick. He has no appreciation for the arts. Typical of people who are like Paul, an engineer. He is also an extrovert, social, and likes to be around people.
EC: What about the relationship between Paul and Lucie?
SS: Her intuition told her one thing, while her eyes and ears told her something else. She cannot make heads or tails about Paul. They do have similar personalities. They are kind, honorable, courageous, and determined. They challenge each other. Both came into the relationship guarded and judgmental.
EC: What role did Josie play?
SS: She is Paul’s four-year-old daughter. She is very creative and spirited. She challenges Paul and grows very fond of Lucie who appreciates her stories. She thinks Lucie is wonderful and is enamored by her. Josie bonds with Lucie. Paul originally tried to stifle her thoughts but comes around to understanding her through Lucie who brought both together.
EC: Treatment by the Nazis?
SS: Early in the war, France was different, than by the end of the war. The Germans wanted to pacify the French, so they delayed being brutal. But everything changed in 1942 where the Nazis took away Jewish businesses. They censored civil liberties. They took over houses. German repression was light early on to make sure there was little resistance. At first, they only did some things like the “Otto Rule,” a ban on books, and burning of books. But by the end of 1941 their horrific behavior spiraled. French police helped with the roundups.
EC: What was the role of the bookstore?
SS: I thought about how the resistance found interesting ways to pass messages. I thought that they could do it through the pages of the books. It was like choreographing the resistance code. Lucie would greet resistance members like any other customer. The store would be a letter box. Books brought in were placed behind the desk. The code question to be asked is, “did you read the author?”
EC: Next book?
SS: No title yet. It is set in Denmark in 1943. The hero is a Nobleman and takes on the persona of a shipyard worker. He meets a nuclear physicist, a brilliant woman. They both work for the resistance and strike up an unlikely friendship. It delves into the rescue of the Danish Jews. Because of the resistance over 7,000 Jews were taken safely to Sweden. The whole Danish population united to save their fellow citizens from the Holocaust. It will be out this time next year.
THANK YOU!!
BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for the new Christmas Historical Romance Anthology – MISTLETOE CHRISTMAS containing novellas from Eloisa James, Christi Caldwell, Jenna MacGregor and Erica Ridley.
Below you will find an overall anthology description, my book reviews and the authors’ bios and social media links. If you love holiday historical romance novellas as much as I do, then this is definitely the book you will want for this holiday season. Enjoy!
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Anthology Description
From four beloved writers—Eloisa James, Christi Caldwell, Janna MacGregor, and Erica Ridley—come four original stories that tell a hilarious tale of a Christmas house party that serves up love and scandal in equal measure!
The Duke of Greystoke’s Christmas Revelry is famous throughout the British Isles for its plays, dancing, magical grotto… not to mention scandals leading to the marriage licenses he hands out like confetti.
But not everyone welcomes a visit from Cupid.
Lady Cressida, the duke’s daughter, is too busy managing the entertainments—and besides, her own father has called her dowdy. Her cousin, Lady Isabelle Wilkshire, is directing Cinderella and has no interest in marriage. Lady Caroline Whitmore is already (unhappily) married; the fact that she and her estranged husband have to pretend to be together just makes her dread the party all the more. But not as much as Miss Louisa Harcourt, whose mother bluntly tells her that this is her last chance to escape the horrors of being an old maid.
A house party so large that mothers lose track of their charges leads to a delightful, seductive quartet of stories that you will savor for the Season!
Publisher : Avon (September 28, 2021)
Publication date : September 28, 2021
Language : English
File size : 3427 KB
Print length : 475 pages
Page numbers source ISBN : 0063139693
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My Book Review
RATING: 5 out of 5 Stars
MISTLETOE CHRISTMAS: An Anthology is a new historical romance anthology with four novellas all taking place at the most anticipated event of the winter season, the Duke of Greystoke’s annual Christmas Revelry. This is an entertaining and romantic anthology from start to finish with novellas from four of my favorite historical romance authors, Eloisa James, Christi Caldwell, Janna MacGregor, and Erica Ridley.
The first story is Mistletoe Kiss from Eloisa James.
Lady Cressida “Cressie” is the Duke of Greystoke’s youngest daughter and has always been too busy managing all the entertainments of the Revelry to enjoy them. This year, the duke is on his deathbed and his nephew Valentine Snowe, Viscount Derham, who will inherit learns he is to continue the tradition of the Revelry for ten years after the duke’s death in exchange for a Scottish estate that was to be Cressie’s dowry. Lord Darcy de Royleston is Val’s best friend and a neighbor of the duke. He does not like Cressie’s situation and as his friend points out her finer points and he gets to know her; Darcy decides he wants Cressie for his wife. But will Cressie agree?
The second story is Wishing Under the Mistletoe by Christi Caldwell.
Lady Cressida’s cousin, Lady Isabelle Wilkshire has led a single life writing plays and is thrilled when she is assigned to direct the Revelry play. What she discovers when she arrives is that Val has paired her with the man, she broke off her betrothal from ten years earlier. Cyrus Hill has gone from the son of the stablemaster at Greystoke to a rich money manager to members of the ton. Numbers have been a cold master since Isabelle broke off their betrothal. Will they be able to work out their past hurts to have a second chance at love?
The third story is Compromise Under the Mistletoe by Janna MacGregor.
Lady Caroline Whitmore left her husband a year ago to live a separate life in London. Now, they must return to Greystoke and pretend to be happily married to have her uncle, the Duke of Greystoke release her trust money early. Lord Stephen Whitmore does not understand where his marriage went wrong. With this trip to the Revelry, he is determined to get his wife back.
The fourth Story is Mischief & Mistletoe by Erica Ridley.
Miss Louisa Harcourt’s mother tells her that this is her chance to find a titled husband before she is off the market. Louisa is a dutiful daughter, but she also wants to write poetry more than husband hunt. She is excited to learn Val’s friend, the poet, Mr. Ewan Reid is in attendance. Louis and Ewan make a deal to spend as much time together as they can during the Revelry, but once it is over, so is their time together. But Ewan is keeping a secret that could ruin their time together even as he plans to ask Louisa for more time than just the Revelry.
This is one of the best Christmas anthologies I have read with every story pulling me in with believable couples and dilemmas. Each author is able to give the reader a hero and heroine that they are cheering on to their HEAs. There are sex scenes in each novella that are explicit, but I never felt they were gratuitous. Even with the shorter length of the stories, the characters are fully fleshed and the romance plots progress at a pace commensurate with the short length of the Revelry.
I highly recommend this Christmas historical romance anthology!
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Author Biographies
Eloisa James, a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, wrote her first novel after graduating from Harvard, but alas, it was rejected by every possible publisher. After she got an MPhil from Oxford, a PhD from Yale, and a job as a Shakespeare professor, she tried again, with much greater success. In 2013 she won a Rita Award for Best Romance Novella. She teaches Shakespeare in the English department at Fordham University in New York. She is the mother of two children and, in a particularly delicious irony for a romance writer, is married to a genuine Italian knight.
Christi Caldwell is the USA Today bestselling author of more than ten series, including Lost Lords of London, Sinful Brides, The Wicked Wallflowers, and Heart of a Duke. She blames novelist Judith McNaught for luring her into the world of historical romance. When Christi was at the University of Connecticut, she began writing her own tales of love–ones where even the most perfect heroes and heroines had imperfections. She learned to enjoy torturing her couples before they earned their well-deserved happily ever after.
Christi lives in Southern Connecticut, where she spends her time writing, chasing after her son, and taking care of her twin princesses-in-training. Fans who want to keep up with the latest news and information can sign up for her newsletter at https://www.ChristiCaldwell.com.
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Janna MacGregor was born and raised in the bootheel of Missouri. She is the author of The Bad Luck Bride. She credits her darling mom for introducing her to the happily-ever-after world of romance novels. Janna writes stories where compelling and powerful heroines meet and fall in love with their equally matched heroes. She is the mother of triplets and lives in Kansas City with her very own dashing rogue, and two smug, but not surprisingly, perfect pugs. She loves to hear from readers.
Erica Ridley is a New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author of witty, feel-good historical romance novels, including the upcoming THE DUKE HEIST, featuring the Wild Wynchesters. Why seduce a duke the normal way, when you can accidentally kidnap one in an elaborately planned heist?
In the 12 Dukes of Christmas series, enjoy witty, heartwarming Regency romps nestled in a picturesque snow-covered village. After all, nothing heats up a winter night quite like finding oneself in the arms of a duke!
Two popular series, the Dukes of War and Rogues to Riches, feature roguish peers and dashing war heroes who find love amongst the splendor and madness of Regency England.
When not reading or writing romances, Erica can be found riding camels in Africa, zip-lining through rainforests in Costa Rica, or getting hopelessly lost in the middle of Budapest.
Beauty and glamour meet deception and revenge in this electrifying novel by New York Times bestselling author Amanda Quick.
Investigative apprentice Lyra Brazier, the newest resident of Burning Cove, is unsettled when her boss suddenly goes on a health retreat at an exclusive spa and disappears without another word. Lyra knows something has happened to Raina Kirk, and she is the only one who can track her down. The health spa is known for its luxurious offerings and prestigious clientele, and the wealthy, socialite background Lyra desperately wanted to leave behind is perfect for this undercover job. The agency brings in a partner and bodyguard for her, but she doesn’t get the suave, pistol-packing private eye she expected.
Simon Cage is a mild-mannered antiquarian book dealer with a quiet, academic air, and Lyra can’t figure out why he was chosen as her partner. But it soon becomes clear when they arrive at the spa and pose as a couple: Simon has a unique gift that allows him to detect secrets, a skill that is crucial in finding Raina.
The unlikely duo falls down a rabbit hole of twisted rumors and missing socialites, discovering that the health spa is a façade for something far darker than they imagined. With a murderer in their midst, Raina isn’t the only one in grave danger—Lyra is next.
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Elise’s Thoughts
The Lady Has A Past by Amanda Quick (the pen name for Jayne Krentz) is another winner. This historical novel explores California in the 1930s with riveting characters and a suspenseful mystery.
The plot has private investigator Raina Kirk disappearing after spending a night with her boyfriend Luther Pell. Her apprentice, Lyra Brazier, Luther, and his private investigator Simon Cage realize that Raina has traveled to the plush spa resort of Labyrinth Springs Hotel. Simon and Lyra team up, posing as a honeymoon couple, and check in to the hotel to try to find Raina. They become suspicious of those working and staying at the hotel, discovering that the health spa is a façade for kidnappings and ransoms. Both must watch each other’s back and race with time to find Raina before it is too late.
Lyra is a great character with an uncanny intuitive nature. She is fearless, smart, and works well under pressure. She realizes that she and Simon make a good team considering he senses emotions from objects. Although he gives off an aura of nerdiness, he is nothing of the kind and is very good at connecting the dots.
Readers will enjoy not one, but two relationships in the book. Raina and Luther’s feelings about each other are explored, while Lyra and Simon realize they care for each other deeply. Besides the double romance people will be treated to a gripping mystery, tidbits of 1930s California, and very captivating characters.
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Elise’s Author Interview
Elise Cooper: Why 1930s?
Amanda Quick: The whole fantasy side of California at that time was sold to the public by the movie studios. I have in my head the quick lines that were in the movies and the brilliantly written plots. I love that fast repertoire and the quick wit. This suits my style because I am a very dialogue driven writer. Everybody has a sense of what the 1930s California setting looks like. They are iconic.
EC: Did you do research?
AQ: I enjoy going through books and newspapers about that time-period, and picking up odds and ends, bits and pieces. I stumbled across what happened in the spas and cosmetic industry that were quite the rage in the 1930s. These made perfect settings for a murder. I got an interesting question in my mind, looked for an answer, and then one thing led to another.
EC: You explore the backstory on Raina?
AQ: A lot of people including myself have been curious about her. I have never explained her background until this book where it becomes an issue. She wants a sense of belonging after being in an abusive marriage. After coming to Burning Cove she wanted to leave the past behind. Raina must resolve her past to be free to really love Luther.
EC: How would you describe Lyra, Raina’s apprentice?
AQ: She is the siter of Vivian, the heroine of Close Up. Lyra is optimistic, smart, curious, and genuinely interested in people who respond and speak with her. She is also calm, sophisticated, and intuitive. Although coming from wealth and society she is now looking to be a private investigator. Basically, she is a half full person who is positive with good energy. When needed for the investigation she played a role of being dipsy, shallow, arrogant, and self-centered, but this is not really her.
EC: How would you describe Simon?
AQ: He was raised as an orphan and was shattered by the father figure who raised him. He is lonely, in control, and responsible. Simon has a talent for sensing emotions and finding energy left behind.
EC: How would you describe the relationship?
AQ: Simon considered Lyra unpredictable. They had to learn to trust each other to survive. Because of his past he is afraid to have a close relationship. Lyra is looking for someone who can accept her true personality and not see her as a society girl.
EC: What about the relationship between Luther and Raina?
AQ: They both have secrets they must give up, and then they need to understand how those secrets played into their past life. Physically they are a couple, but emotionally they tip toe around each other. In this story they make a giant step and move forward in their connection.
EC: You delve into the psychic, but it seems very believable?
AQ: There is nothing supernatural about it, but an extension of intuition on Lyra’s part. People who do not like reading about the supernatural are OK with the psychic element in the book. It is just one step beyond having it feel real.
EC: How about the setting?
AQ: It is a fake Palm Springs. In the 1930s, the Hollywood crowd discovered it. It had a resort atmosphere. There were therapeutic springs.
EC: What about your next books?
AQ: Out in November is the totally futuristic book I write as Jayne Castle. It has the Dust Bunnies, pets of the human inhabitants of the planet Harmony. I think they captured the hearts of many fans of this series, and I would not be surprised to see on my tombstone “the creator of the Dust Bunnies.” The book’s title is Vuild Voss.
The Jayne Krentz book is titled Lightning In A Mirror and comes out in January. It is the third book in the “Fog Lake Trilogy.” It is about a mysterious government project involving psychic experiments.
The Amanda Quick book comes out next May. I am working on it now. There will be a new set of characters except for the core characters Raina and Luther. The hero and heroine from previous books could make a cameo appearance but I do not repeat them as characters because their story is settled.
THANK YOU!!
BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
Today I am once again posting on the Harlequin Trade Publishing 2020 Summer Reads Historical Fiction Blog Tour. I am very excited to be sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for THE BLACK SWAN OF PARIS by Karen Robards.
Below you will find a book summary, my book review, an excerpt from the book, an about the author section and the author’s social media links. Enjoy!
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Book Summary
For fans of The Alice Network and The Lost Girls of Paris comes a thrilling standalone by New York Times bestselling author Karen Robards about a celebrated singer in WWII occupied France who joins the Resistance to save her estranged family from being killed in a German prison.
In Occupied France, the Resistance trembles on the brink of destruction. Its operatives, its secrets, its plans, all will be revealed. One of its leaders, wealthy aristocrat Baron Paul de Rocheford, has been killed in a raid and the surviving members of his cell, including his wife the elegant Baronness Lillian de Rocheford, have been arrested and transported to Germany for interrogation and, inevitably, execution.
Captain Max Ryan, British SOE, is given the job of penetrating the impregnable German prison where the Baroness and the remnants of the cell are being held and tortured. If they can’t be rescued he must kill them before they can give up their secrets.
Max is in Paris, currently living under a cover identity as a show business impresario whose star attraction is Genevieve Dumont. Young, beautiful Genevieve is the toast of Europe, an icon of the glittering entertainment world that the Nazis celebrate so that the arts can be seen to be thriving in the occupied territories under their rule.
What no one knows about Genevieve is that she is Lillian and Paul de Rocheford’s younger daughter. Her feelings toward her family are bitter since they were estranged twelve years ago. But when she finds out from Max just what his new assignment entails, old, long-buried feelings are rekindled and she knows that no matter what she can’t allow her mother to be killed, not by the Nazis and not by Max. She secretly establishes contact with those in the Resistance who can help her. Through them she is able to contact her sister Emmy, and the sisters put aside their estrangement to work together to rescue their mother.
It all hinges on a command performance that Genevieve is to give for a Gestapo General in the Bavarian town where her mother and the others are imprisoned. While Genevieve sings and the show goes on, a daring rescue is underway that involves terrible danger, heartbreaking choices, and the realization that some ties, like the love between a mother and her daughters and between sisters, are forever.
THE BLACK SWAN OF PARIS by Karen Robards is this bestselling author’s first historical fiction book and it pulls you in with a story of estranged family dynamics, loyalty, partisans, spies, intrigue and action. It is a story that features a young internationally acclaimed singer and her perilous life during WWII in Nazi occupied Europe.
Genevieve Dumont is a celebrated cabaret star with a voice and beauty that captivates. In 1944 Paris, Nazis, partisans and spies are everywhere as the Germans prepare for the invasion they know is coming. Genevieve has been both a star and a smokescreen for her manager, Max Bonet. She knows and at times resents how she is being used and she wants to know as little as possible about Max’s secret life, until she overhears about the capture and arrest of Lillian, Baroness de Rocheford.
Genevieve has kept secrets from Max, but now she needs his help to save the baroness, who is her mother. Reunited with her sister, who is working with the SOE, a daring plan is set into motion. Will the little group be able to rescue the baroness directly from the home of the sadistic SS General Claus von Wagner?
I loved this story, but it was a little confusing in the very beginning as all the characters are introduced because the connections and histories are reveled throughout the entire book in flashbacks. Once it started to flow, I was transported back to 1944 occupied Paris. The description of the Nazi opulence contrasted with the deprivation of the Parisians, the sparkle of the cabaret, the partisan spy networks helping to prepare for the invasion, the mistrust and secrets all engage the reader and I was completely engrossed. Genevieve’s story was as tragic as it was triumphant and her entire family’s history kept me turning the pages. Ms. Robards has written historical characters that could walk off the page with a plot that builds to an action filled climax.
I highly recommend this dynamic historical fiction book with a touch of romance!
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Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
May 15, 1944
When the worst thing that could ever happen to you had already happened, nothing that came after really mattered. The resultant state of apathy was almost pleasant, as long as she didn’t allow herself to think about it—any of it—too much.
She was Genevieve Dumont, a singer, a star. Her latest sold-out performance at one of Paris’s great theaters had ended in a five-minute standing ovation less than an hour before. She was acclaimed, admired, celebrated wherever she went. The Nazis loved her.
She was not quite twenty-five years old. Beautiful when, like now, she was dolled up in all her after-show finery. Not in want, not unhappy.
In this time of fear and mass starvation, of worldwide deaths on a scale never seen before in the whole course of human history, that made her lucky. She knew it.
Whom she had been before, what had almost destroyed her—that life belonged to someone else. Most of the time, she didn’t even remember it herself.
She refused to remember it.
A siren screamed to life just meters behind the car she was traveling in. Startled, she sat upright in the back seat, heart lurching as she looked around.
Do they know? Are they after us?
A small knot of fans had been waiting outside the stage door as she’d left. One of them had thrust a program at her, requesting an autograph for Francoise. She’d signed—May your heart always sing, Genevieve Dumont—as previously instructed. What it meant she didn’t know. What she did know was that it meant something: it was a prearranged encounter, and the coded message she’d scribbled down was intended for the Resistance.
And now, mere minutes later, here were the Milice, the despised French police who had long since thrown in their lot with the Nazis, on their tail.
Even as icy jets of fear spurted through her, a pair of police cars followed by a military truck flew by. Running without lights, they appeared as no more than hulking black shapes whose passage rattled the big Citroën that up until then had been alone on the road. A split second later, her driver—his name was Otto Cordier; he worked for Max, her manager—slammed on the brakes. The car jerked to a stop.
“Sacre bleu!” Flying forward, she barely stopped herself from smacking into the back of the front seat by throwing her arms out in front of her. “What’s happening?”
“A raid, I think.” Peering out through the windshield, Otto clutched the steering wheel with both hands. He was an old man, short and wiry with white hair. She could read tension in every line of his body. In front of the car, washed by the pale moonlight that painted the scene in ghostly shades of gray, the cavalcade that had passed them was now blocking the road. A screech of brakes and the throwing of a shadow across the nearest building had her casting a quick look over her shoulder. Another military truck shuddered to a halt, filling the road behind them, stopping it up like a cork in a bottle. Men—German soldiers along with officers of the Milice—spilled out of the stopped vehicles. The ones behind swarmed past the Citroën, and all rushed toward what Genevieve tentatively identified as an apartment building. Six stories tall, it squatted, dark and silent, in its own walled garden.
“Oh, no,” she said. Her fear for herself and Otto subsided, but sympathy for the targets of the raid made her chest feel tight. People who were taken away by the Nazis in the middle of the night seldom came back.
The officers banged on the front door. “Open up! Police!”
It was just after 10:00 p.m. Until the siren had ripped it apart, the silence blanketing the city had been close to absolute. Thanks to the strictly enforced blackout, the streets were as dark and mysterious as the nearby Seine. It had rained earlier in the day, and before the siren the big Citroën had been the noisiest thing around, splashing through puddles as they headed back to the Ritz, where she was staying for the duration of her Paris run.
“If they keep arresting people, soon there will be no one left.” Genevieve’s gaze locked on a contingent of soldiers spreading out around the building, apparently looking for another way in—or for exits they could block. One rattled a gate of tall iron spikes that led into the brick-walled garden. It didn’t open, and he moved on, disappearing around the side of the building. She was able to follow the soldiers’ movements by the torches they carried. Fitted with slotted covers intended to direct their light downward so as to make them invisible to the Allied air-raid pilots whose increasingly frequent forays over Paris aroused both joy and dread in the city’s war-weary citizens, the torches’ bobbing looked like the erratic flitting of fireflies in the dark.
“They’re afraid, and that makes them all the more dangerous.” Otto rolled down his window a crack, the better to hear what was happening as they followed the soldiers’ movements. The earthy scent of the rain mixed with the faint smell of cigarette smoke, which, thanks to Max’s never-ending Gauloises, was a permanent feature of the car. The yellow card that was the pass they needed to be on the streets after curfew, prominently displayed on the windshield, blocked her view of the far side of the building, but she thought soldiers were running that way, too. “They know the Allies are coming. The bombings of the Luftwaffe installations right here in France, the Allied victories on the eastern front—they’re being backed into a corner. They’ll do whatever they must to survive.”
“Open the door, or we will break it down!”
The policeman hammered on the door with his nightstick. The staccato beat echoed through the night. Genevieve shivered, imagining the terror of the people inside.
Thin lines of light appeared in the cracks around some of the thick curtains covering the windows up and down the building as, at a guess, tenants dared to peek out. A woman, old and stooped—there was enough light in the hall behind her to allow Genevieve to see that much—opened the front door.
“Out of the way!”
She was shoved roughly back inside the building as the police and the soldiers stormed in. Her frightened cry changed to a shrill scream that was quickly cut off.
Genevieve’s mouth went dry. She clasped her suddenly cold hands in her lap.
There’s nothing to be done. It was the mantra of her life.
“Can we drive on?” She had learned in a hard school that there was no point in agonizing over what couldn’t be cured. To stay and watch what she knew was coming—the arrest of partisans, who would face immediate execution upon arrival at wherever they would be taken, or, perhaps and arguably worse, civilians, in some combination of women, children, old people, clutching what few belongings they’d managed to grab, marched at gunpoint out of the building and loaded into the trucks for deportation—would tear at her heart for days without helping them at all.
“We’re blocked in.” Otto looked around at her. She didn’t know what he saw in her face, but whatever it was made him grimace and reach for the door handle. “I’ll go see if I can get one of them to move.”
When he exited the car, she let her head drop back to rest against the rolled top of the Citroën’s leather seat, stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about what might be happening to the people in the building. Taking deep breaths, she did her best to block out the muffled shouts and thuds that reached her ears and focused on the physical, which, as a performer, she had experience doing. She was so tired she was limp with it. Her temples throbbed. Her legs ached. Her feet hurt. Her throat—that golden throat that had allowed her to survive—felt tight. Deliberately she relaxed her muscles and tugged the scarf tucked into the neckline of her coat higher to warm herself.
A flash of light in the darkness caught her eye. Her head turned as she sought the source. Looking through the iron bars of the garden gate, she discovered a side door in the building that was slowly, stealthily opening.
“Is anyone else in there? Come out or I’ll shoot.” The volume of the soldiers’ shouts increased exponentially with this new gap in the walls. That guttural threat rang out above others less distinct, and she gathered from what she heard that they were searching the building.
The side door opened wider. Light from inside spilled past a figure slipping out: a girl, tall and thin with dark curly hair, wearing what appeared to be an unbuttoned coat thrown on over nightclothes. In her arms she carried a small child with the same dark, curly hair.
The light went out. The door had closed. Genevieve discovered that she was sitting with her nose all but pressed against the window as she tried to find the girl in the darkness. It took her a second, but then she spotted the now shadowy figure as it fled through the garden toward the gate, trying to escape.
They’ll shoot her if they catch her. The child, too.
The Germans had no mercy for those for whom they came.
The girl reached the gate, paused. A pale hand grabbed a bar. From the metallic rattle that reached her ears, Genevieve thought she must be shoving at the gate, shaking it. She assumed it was locked. In any event, it didn’t open. Then that same hand reached through the bars, along with a too-thin arm, stretching and straining.
Toward what? It was too dark to tell.
With the Citroën stopped in the middle of the narrow street and the garden set back only a meter or so from the front facade of the building, the girl was close enough so that Genevieve could read the desperation in her body language, see the way she kept looking back at the now closed door. The child, who appeared to be around ten months old, seemed to be asleep. The small curly head rested trustingly on the girl’s shoulder.
It wasn’t a conscious decision to leave the car. Genevieve just did it, then realized the risk she was taking when her pumps clickety-clacked on the cobblestones. The sound seemed to tear through the night and sent a lightning bolt of panic through her.
Get back in the car. Her sense of self-preservation screamed it at her, but she didn’t. Shivering at the latent menace of the big military trucks looming so close on either side of the Citroën, the police car parked askew in the street, the light spilling from the still open front door and the sounds of the raid going on inside the building, she kept going, taking care to be quiet now as she darted toward the trapped girl.
You’re putting yourself in danger. You’re putting Otto, Max, everyone in danger. The whole network—
Heart thudding, she reached the gate. Even as she and the girl locked eyes through it, the girl jerked her arm back inside and drew herself up.
The sweet scent of flowers from the garden felt obscene in contrast with the fear and despair she sensed in the girl.
“It’s all right. I’m here to help,” Genevieve whispered. She grasped the gate, pulling, pushing as she spoke. The iron bars were solid and cold and slippery with the moisture that still hung in the air. The gate didn’t budge for her, either. The clanking sound it made as she joggled it against its moorings made her break out in a cold sweat. Darkness enfolded her, but it was leavened by moonlight and she didn’t trust it to keep her safe. After all, she’d seen the girl from the car. All it would take was one sharp-eyed soldier, one policeman to come around a corner, or step out of the building and look her way—and she could be seen, too. Caught. Helping a fugitive escape.
The consequences would be dire. Imprisonment, deportation, even death.
Her pulse raced.
She thought of Max, what he would say.
On the other side of the gate, moonlight touched on wide dark eyes set in a face so thin the bones seemed about to push through the skin. The girl appeared to be about her own age, and she thought she must be the child’s mother. The sleeping child—Genevieve couldn’t tell if it was a girl or a boy—was wearing footed pajamas.
Her heart turned over.
“Oh, thank God. Thank you.” Whispering, too, the girl reached through the bars to touch Genevieve’s arm in gratitude. “There’s a key. In the fountainhead. In the mouth. It unlocks the gate.” She cast another of those lightning glances over her shoulder. Shifting from foot to foot, she could hardly stand still in her agitation. Fear rolled off her in waves. “Hurry. Please.”
Genevieve looked in the direction the girl had been reaching, saw the oval stone of the fountainhead set into the brick near the gate, saw the carved lion’s head in its center with its open mouth from which, presumably, water was meant to pour out. Reaching inside, she probed the cavity, ran her fingers over the worn-smooth stone, then did it again.
“There’s no key,” she said. “It’s not here.”
“It has to be. It has to be!” The girl’s voice rose, trembled. The child’s head moved. The girl made a soothing sound, rocked back and forth, patted the small back, and the child settled down again with a sigh. Watching, a pit yawned in Genevieve’s stomach. Glancing hastily down, she crouched to check the ground beneath the fountainhead, in case the key might have fallen out. It was too dark; she couldn’t see. She ran her hand over the cobblestones. Nothing.
“It’s not—” she began, standing up, only to break off with a swiftly indrawn breath as the door through which the girl had exited flew open. This time, in the rectangle of light, a soldier stood.
“My God.” The girl’s whisper as she turned her head to look was scarcely louder than a breath, but it was so loaded with terror that it made the hair stand up on the back of Genevieve’s neck. “What do I do?”
“Who is out there?” the soldier roared. Pistol ready in his hand, he pointed his torch toward the garden. The light played over a tattered cluster of pink peonies, over overgrown green shrubs, over red tulips thrusting their heads through weeds, as it came their way. “Don’t think to hide from me.”
“Take the baby. Please.” Voice hoarse with dread, the girl thrust the child toward her. Genevieve felt a flutter of panic: if this girl only knew, she would be the last person she would ever trust with her child. But there was no one else, and thus no choice to be made. As a little leg and arm came through the gate, Genevieve reached out to help, taking part and then all of the baby’s weight as between them she and the girl maneuvered the little one through the bars. As their hands touched, she could feel the cold clamminess of the girl’s skin, feel her trembling. With the child no longer clutched in her arms, the dark shape of a six-pointed yellow star on her coat became visible. The true horror of what was happening struck Genevieve like a blow.
The girl whispered, “Her name’s Anna. Anna Katz. Leave word of where I’m to come for her in the fountainhead—”
The light flashed toward them.
“You there, by the gate,” the soldier shouted.
With a gasp, the girl whirled away.
“Halt! Stay where you are!”
Heart in her throat, blood turning to ice, Genevieve whirled away, too, in the opposite direction. Cloaked by night, she ran as lightly as she could for the car, careful to keep her heels from striking the cobblestones, holding the child close to her chest, one hand splayed against short, silky curls. The soft baby smell, the feel of the firm little body against her, triggered such an explosion of emotion that she went briefly light-headed. The panicky flutter in her stomach solidified into a knot—and then the child’s wriggling and soft sounds of discontent brought the present sharply back into focus.
If she cried…
Terror tasted sharp and bitter in Genevieve’s mouth.
“Shh. Shh, Anna,” she crooned desperately. “Shh.”
“I said halt!” The soldier’s roar came as Genevieve reached the car, grabbed the door handle, wrenched the door open—
Bang. The bark of a pistol.
A woman’s piercing cry. The girl’s piercing cry.
No. Genevieve screamed it, but only in her mind. The guilt of running away, of leaving the girl behind, crashed into her like a speeding car.
Blowing his whistle furiously, the soldier ran down the steps. More soldiers burst through the door, following the first one down the steps and out of sight.
Had the girl been shot? Was she dead?
My God, my God. Genevieve’s heart slammed in her chest.
She threw herself and the child into the back seat and—softly, carefully—closed the door. Because she didn’t dare do anything else.
Coward.
The baby started to cry.
Staring out the window in petrified expectation of seeing the soldiers come charging after her at any second, she found herself panting with fear even as she did her best to quiet the now wailing child.
Could anyone hear? Did the soldiers know the girl had been carrying a baby?
If she was caught with the child…
What else could I have done?
Max would say she should have stayed out of it, stayed in the car. That the common good was more important than the plight of any single individual.
Even a terrified girl. Even a baby.
“It’s all right, Anna. I’ve got you safe. Shh.” Settling back in the seat to position the child more comfortably in her arms, she murmured and patted and rocked. Instinctive actions, long forgotten, reemerged in this moment of crisis.
Through the gate she could see the soldiers clustering around something on the ground. The girl, she had little doubt, although the darkness and the garden’s riotous blooms blocked her view. With Anna, quiet now, sprawled against her chest, a delayed reaction set in and she started to shake.
Otto got back into the car.
“They’re going to be moving the truck in front as soon as it’s loaded up.” His voice was gritty with emotion. Anger? Bitterness? “Someone tipped them off that Jews were hiding in the building, and they’re arresting everybody. Once they’re—”
Otto broke off as the child made a sound.
“Shh.” Genevieve patted, rocked. “Shh, shh.”
His face a study in incredulity, Otto leaned around in the seat to look. “Holy hell, is that a baby?”
“Her mother was trapped in the garden. She couldn’t get out.”
Otto shot an alarmed look at the building, where soldiers now marched a line of people, young and old, including a couple of small children clutching adults’ hands, out the front door.
“My God,” he said, sounding appalled. “We’ve got to get—”
Appearing out of seemingly nowhere, a soldier rapped on the driver’s window. With his knuckles, hard.
Oh, no. Please no.
Genevieve’s heart pounded. Her stomach dropped like a rock as she stared at the shadowy figure on the other side of the glass.
We’re going to be arrested. Or shot.
Whipping the scarf out of her neckline, she draped the brightly printed square across her shoulder and over the child.
Otto cranked the window down.
“Papers,” the soldier barked.
Fear formed a hard knot under Genevieve’s breastbone. Despite the night’s chilly temperature, she could feel sweat popping out on her forehead and upper lip. On penalty of arrest, everyone in Occupied France, from the oldest to the youngest, was required to have identity documents readily available at all times. Hers were in her handbag, beside her on the seat.
But Anna had none.
Otto passed his cards to the soldier, who turned his torch on them.
As she picked up her handbag, Genevieve felt Anna stir.
Please, God, don’t let her cry.
“Here.” Quickly she thrust her handbag over the top of the seat to Otto. Anna was squirming now. Genevieve had to grab and secure the scarf from underneath to make sure the baby’s movements didn’t knock it askew.
If the soldier saw her…
Anna whimpered. Muffled by the scarf, the sound wasn’t loud, but its effect on Genevieve was electric. She caught her breath as her heart shot into her throat—and reacted instinctively, as, once upon a time, it had been second nature to do.
She slid the tip of her little finger between Anna’s lips.
The baby responded as babies typically did: she latched on and sucked.
Genevieve felt the world start to slide out of focus. The familiarity of it, the bittersweet memories it evoked, made her dizzy. She had to force herself to stay in the present, to concentrate on this child and this moment to the exclusion of all else.
Otto had handed her identity cards over. The soldier examined them with his torch, then bent closer to the window and looked into the back seat.
She almost expired on the spot.
“Mademoiselle Dumont. It is a pleasure. I have enjoyed your singing very much.”
Anna’s hungry little mouth tugged vigorously at her finger.
“Thank you,” Genevieve said, and smiled.
The soldier smiled back. Then he straightened, handed the papers back and, with a thump on the roof, stepped away from the car. Otto cranked the window up.
The tension inside the car was so thick she could almost physically feel the weight of it.
“Let them through,” the soldier called to someone near the first truck. Now loaded with the unfortunate new prisoners, it was just starting to pull out.
With a wave for the soldier, Otto followed, although far too slowly for Genevieve’s peace of mind. As the car crawled after the truck, she cast a last, quick glance at the garden: she could see nothing, not even soldiers.
Was the girl—Anna’s mother—still there on the ground? Or had she already been taken away?
Was she dead?
Genevieve felt sick to her stomach. But once again, there was nothing to be done.
Acutely aware of the truck’s large side and rear mirrors and what might be able to be seen through them, Genevieve managed to stay upright and keep the baby hidden until the Citroën turned a corner and went its own way.
Then, feeling as though her bones had turned to jelly, she slumped against the door.
Anna gave up on the finger and started to cry, shrill, distressed wails that filled the car. With what felt like the last bit of her strength, Genevieve pushed the scarf away and gathered her up and rocked and patted and crooned to her. Just like she had long ago done with—
Do not think about it.
“Shh, Anna. Shh.”
“That was almost a disaster.” Otto’s voice, tight with reaction, was nonetheless soft for fear of disturbing the quieting child. “What do we do now? You can’t take a baby back to the hotel. Think questions won’t be asked? What do you bet that soldier won’t talk about having met Genevieve Dumont? All it takes is one person to make the connection between the raid and you showing up with a baby and it will ruin us all. It will ruin everything.”
“I know.” Genevieve was limp. “Find Max. He’ll know what to do.”
Karen Robards is the New York Times, USA TODAY and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of more than fifty novels and one novella. She is the winner of six Silver Pen awards and numerous other awards.
