Welcome to my First Kiss Friday blog. My guest today is my dear friend Caroline Warfield and fellow Bluestocking Belle who has an excerpt from her novella The Morning Light that will be found in our upcoming release Under the Harvest Moon. Happy reading, my lovelies. Take it away, Caroline!
The Bluestocking Belles have created another wonderful collection of interconnected stories, Under the Harvest Moon. I’m delighted Sherry let me share my story, The Morning Light. In this case, however, my hero and heroine’s first kiss occurred a year before the story begins. They were on the brink of betrothal when Adam was called up to serve as a surgeon at Waterloo. Upon return, bad memories, flashbacks, and even hallucinations manifest PTSD. He has pushed Meg away, keeping her at a distance from his darkness.
Excerpt:
He came to the green and stopped. He found himself caught between the Fife and Fiddle and St. Beonna Church. He’d wasted too much of himself in one, and had turned his back on the other.
He glanced around the green, panic rising. The last time he sat on the bench he’d seen the blood and guts of the battle. Today however, preparation for the Harvest Festival filled it.
Sweet memories filled him for once. Meeting Meg over the pie judging at last year’s Harvest Festival and striking up a conversation over the Morris dancing. Discovering her deep love of history and literature. Laughing and talking all afternoon. Dancing under the harvest moon, until they found a private spot by the bridge for an innocent kiss.
“Oh Dr. Wagner, thank goodness!” A voice cut into his revery. A very young, frantic looking woman stood next to him. “My Geordy is bleeding fierce.”
The physician-surgeon in him drove out grieving. He followed her to where the family had been setting up a table to sell baked goods. A boy of about six clutched a piece of rag to his hand. The cut was neither deep nor wide but the howling of the boy had clearly terrified his mother. He doubted it needed stitching but knew from experience that mothers were rarely satisfied with soothing words.
The woman hugged her son and carried him behind Adam on the way to his surgery. When he crossed the bridge, he kept his eyes firmly to the left toward his house lest he see Meg on the arm of Clark again.
Two stitches and a bandage slightly showier than necessary took him twenty minutes. The woman’s gushing flood of gratitude almost brought him to a blush, but he accepted the pennies she offered rather than insult the woman. “I thank God you’ve returned to us safe, Dr. Wagner. The town missed you.”
He saw her out with a frown. God? Did some almighty being bring me back from hell to Reabridge? If so, he deprived me of every joy. If he exists, why did he allow that horror of Waterloo to begin with?
The urge to drink rose. It doesn’t help, Wagner, remember?
Never fear! Love always finds a way, and so it will for Meg and Adam.
About the Story
A physician, Adam Wagner is meant to save lives, not take them, but war called, and the ones he could not save haunt him. His nightmares after Waterloo won’t stop and have begun to invade the daytime until he wonders if he’s losing his mind. Images of a young girl caught in the crossfire keep him from his daughter. The horror of it keeps him from Meg Barlow. They courted and he was close to proposing before he left. Now he can only protect her by staying away.
Meg lives on the charity of her cousin, Earl Barlow, and serves the community as a midwife. She doesn’t understand how Adam could turn his back on her so thoroughly, but she isn’t about to let him get away with it.
About the Book
As the village of Reabridge in Cheshire prepares for the first Harvest Festival following Waterloo, families are overjoyed to welcome back their loved ones from the war.
But excitement quickly turns to mystery when mere weeks before the festival, an orphaned child turns up in the town—a toddler born near Toulouse to an English mother who left clues that tie her to Reabridge.
With two prominent families feuding for generations and the central event of the Harvest Moon festival looming, tensions rise, and secrets begin to surface.
Nine award winning and bestselling authors have combined their talents to create this engaging and enchanting collection of interrelated tales. Under the Harvest Moon promises an unforgettable read for fans of Regency romance.
Preorder now: https://books2read.com/UnderHarvestMoon
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, because love is worth the risk.
https://www.carolinewarfield.com/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/WarfieldFellowTravelers
https://www.bookbub.com/profile/caroline-warfield