Happy New Year, my lovelies, and welcome to my First Kiss Friday blog. My first guest author of the year is my dear friend Caroline Warfield. Caroline has an excerpt from her upcoming novel The Forgotten Daughter in her new Ashmead Heirs series. If you haven’t gotten a chance to read them, you’re missing out. We hope you enjoy this first kiss scene. Happy reading!

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When the old Earl of Clarion leaves a will with bequests for all his children, legitimate and not, listing each and their mothers by name, he complicates the lives of many in the village of Ashmead and beyond. Francis Hancock was left out and forgotten completely. She is the third of The Ashmead Heirs.

In The Forgotten Daughter, Fanny comes looking for a hero. She gets a mild-mannered land steward. Eli is good at fixing things, however, and he is determined to solve her problems, even when they take him far from home. Even when he falls in love with her. Even when she falls into the net of a trafficking ring. Even at risk to his own life. Never underestimate a quiet hero. 

In this scene, a band of kidnappers tried to pull her from her carriage.

Excerpt:

“Is this the first time you killed a man, Benson?” the corporal asked.

Eli nodded. He’d had no choice and wouldn’t second guess himself, but the horror of it would haunt him.

“It needed doing,” Goodfellow said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Think on the things you protected.”

When Fanny slid up next to him and put an arm around his waist, he turned her away from the sight of the brigand’s wounds, and pulled her into an embrace. He soaked in the comfort she offered, thanking God she had not been injured. 

Fanny went up on her toes and kissed the side of his chin. “We best get Reilly to a doctor,” she said, her voice thick and wet.

He kissed her fiercely then, pouring all the wanting, all the passion, all his need for comfort into that kiss. When he raised his head, still holding her, Goodfellow studiously saw to the tack on his horse, but Wil stared open mouthed.

Eli almost asked Fanny to trade places with Wil, needing her by his side, but she’d be safer inside the carriage. One thing he knew for certain. Once they got to the inn, he wouldn’t let her out of his sight.

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About the Book

Frances Hancock always knew she was a bastard. She didn’t know her father was an earl until her mother died. The information came just in time. She and her mother’s younger children were about to be homeless. She needs help. Fast. What she wants is a hero.

Eli Benson, the Earl of Clarion’s steward, took great pride in cleaning up the mess left behind by the old earl’s will. When a dainty but ferocious young woman with the earl’s hair and eyes comes demanding help, his heart sinks. She isn’t in the will. She was forgotten entirely. And the estate is just getting its finances back in order. But he knows a moral obligation when he sees one. He may not be her idea of a hero, but people count on him to fix things. He’s good at it. Falling in love with her will only complicate things.

Eli will solve her problems or die trying. It may come to that.

Preorder now for 99 cents. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09PGSYJ3Q/

It reverts to full price after launch on January 27.

About the Author

Award winning author Caroline Warfield has been many things: traveler, librarian, poet, raiser of children, bird watcher, Internet and Web services manager, conference speaker, indexer, tech writer, genealogist—even a nun. She reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows where she lets her characters lead her to adventures in England and the far-flung corners of the British Empire. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart. 

Learn more about Caroline here:

Visit Caroline’s Website and Blog  http://www.carolinewarfield.com/

Meet Caroline on Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/carolinewarfield7

Follow Caroline on Twitter https://twitter.com/CaroWarfield

Email Caroline directly   warfieldcaro@gmail.com

Subscribe to Caroline’s newsletter  http://www.carolinewarfield.com/newsletter/

Amazon Author http://www.amazon.com/Caroline-Warfield/e/B00N9PZZZS/

Good Reads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8523742.Caroline_Warfield

Bookbub https://www.bookbub.com/profile/caroline-warfield

Bookshelf: http://www.carolinewarfield.com/bookshelf