Welcome to another First Kiss Friday. My guest today is Alina K. Field who has an expert from The Duke, the Diamond, and the Ghastly Ghoul, her contribution to Moonlight Madness, a Bluestocking Belles Collection. Happy reading, my lovelies, and enjoy!
Excerpt:
A first kiss interrupted by a ghost…
Everett put his weight against the sticky library door. It opened quietly until the final few inches and then squealed in protest, making him wince.
Phillip and Mrs. Bexington were still in the parlor. When he’d seen them through the open door, heads bent cozily over the chessboard they’d settled on, he’d decided to hold this meeting in the library. Outside, the storm had begun to rage, the wind howling and rain pelting the ancient windows. With luck, it would hide the noise of their arrival here.
Chilled air and the smell of camphor greeted him, much more bracingly than on his earlier visit to the library that afternoon. The hand gripping his tightened. Miss Llangrove showed no other signs of nerves.
After she’d emerged from her bedchamber, he’d taken her hand again, and now couldn’t seem to let go. Holding this lady’s ungloved hand in his own bare one was surprisingly stimulating, almost intoxicating.
He shook off the temptation rearing inside him and asked, “Shall I see to a fire?”
“It will take too long,” she said, seating herself.
Her robe hitched up revealing small, well-shaped feet.
His breath caught. They’d look at these books she thought were important and then he’d see about warming her a different way.
“Here they are.” She placed the two volumes on the table. “And phew,” she said, fanning her face, “is your bookroom afflicted with beetles? The odor of camphor is quite strong.”
“Anything is possible.” He reached for one of the books, his shoulder brushing hers. “Though the shelves here are rather empty.”
As he opened the first book, she touched his hand.
Awareness jolted through him. The book. The lady. There was some magic in the air. Or perhaps the combination of lilac and camphor had special stimulating properties.
“Have a care,” she said.
He took a steadying breath and gazed down into startled blue eyes. Her lips parted and her chest—her magnificent chest—rose with a quiet gasp.
Toss the infernal books against the wall. Ravish her, here, in the cold library, from the very top of her head down to her pinkie toes.
She gulped. “I mean, have a care,” she said breathlessly. “It’s…it’s fragile.”
Steadying himself, he blinked.
“The-the book,” she said.
“Yes.” Of course, she meant the book, for he sensed that Miss Llangrove was no fragile miss. That was part of her appeal.
Was she sensible, despite her penchant for ghosts? Who was she really?
“Baron Llangrove,” he speculated. “Or Viscount?”
“Wh-what?”
“Your father. I note that your calling card introduced you as an Honorable. Is your father Lord Llangrove?”
Her gaze narrowed. “My cousin is Baron Llangrove, having recently inherited. You know him—Geoffrey Langer.”
He blinked. The whisp of white that had passed him in the door of his inn room in a froth of lilac scent. The dreams that had started that very night, compelling dreams of a girl whose face he couldn’t quite see.
He was no fantasist. Miss Llangrove had been real then and was real now. He was a man, and Geoffrey was wrong—she was a beautiful woman, not plain at all.
Cracked, Geoffrey had added, but harmless. Perhaps not where a man’s heart was concerned.
He suppressed another surge of lust and turned his attention to the book. “Paper. Not parchment.” The ancient pages showed evidence of much thumbing. “This looks like a handwritten notebook, perhaps copied from a larger herbal.”
“The illustrations of plants are quite beautiful,” Miss Llangrove said, “carefully drawn.”
“I see. These notes in the margins and back are in another hand.” A scrawl really.
“From what I could make out they are receipts and instructions for what must be medicinal treatments.”
The frontispiece designated it as the property of the Wotton Abbey library.
“I suppose the herbal is rightfully your property,” Miss Llangrove said. “But I should very much like to keep the book of sonnets.”
She slid the second volume toward him.
“Astrophel and Stella,” he mused, suppressing a groan. “Love sonnets.”
“By Sir Phillip Sidney, and much read, by all appearances.” She turned to look at him, eagerness shining in her eyes, soft lips parted, candlelight shimmering in a dark curl kissing her cheek.
The Honorable Miss Carys Llangrove was casting a spell.
She pulled a face and laughed. “Sentimental twaddle, I know. But…”
“But what lady would not want to have scores of pages written about her beauty.”
She colored and shrugged. She wasn’t quite as cynical as she would have him believe.
Nor, perhaps, was he as cynical as she might believe him to be. The room was heating again, a simmering desire conjured by the attraction rising between them. The lady beside him might lack town polish, but he preferred this rougher-cut diamond to one of the many society misses pursuing him.
She sighed and then laughed again, shaking her head. “Most interesting are the notes written, some, I believe, by your ancestress, others by someone else.” She reached for the book and quickly drew her hand back rather than touch his again.
“A moment.” He opened a page at random and began to read.
“Who hath the eyes which marrie state with pleasure… Who hath the lips where wit with fairenes raigneth… Who hath the brest whose milk doth patience nourish…”
He glanced at her and saw the blush deepening.
Her lips twitched. “Twaddle.”
Those lips—pink and plump, and so appealing.
“I. Think. Not.”
As he leaned closer, she sighed.
***
“What are you doing, Everett?”
Miss Llangrove turned toward the alarmed voice and his would-be kiss landed on her ear. He groaned and looked up.
Anger spiked in him. The same lady who’d appeared earlier in his bedchamber was here.
They both stood to confront the gho—
No. Not a ghost—a woman.
The trembling young lady he’d almost kissed leaned into him, but when she spoke, her voice held a challenging note. “Mary Ethelburga Chardwell,” she said.
“An actress,” Hattingly said. “You see her. I see her. You hear her. No one has ever…”
None of the Dukes of Hattingly had spent more than a night under the roof of Wotton Abbey, and none had seen the ghost… or heard the ghost, or would admit to either. Which meant this had to be a real flesh and blood woman.
Except that my hand slipped right through her arm.
His breath tightened. The actress was advancing on them, studying Miss Llangrove as if she were a new-found species.
“You see me,” she said. “You hear me.”
Was it malevolence in her tone?
“I have your book of sonnets,” Miss Llangrove said.
What nonsense. Or…was Miss Llangrove humoring the apparition?
He might as well play along too. “By Sir Phillip Sidney.”
The lady’s face brightened and she blinked. “Sonnets.” She blinked again. “Oh. Yes!”
She cast a frown his way and glanced back at Miss Llangrove. “Caro? You must be careful of him kissing you. He is an unfaithful cur.”
Miss Llangrove sent him a sheepish look. “His grace was merely moving near to…er…look more closely at the pages. And I am not Caro. I am Carys.”
❧══════════ ❦ ══════════❧
The Duke, the Diamond, and the Ghastly Ghoul, by Alina K. Field In Moonlight Madness, a Bluestocking Belles Collection
A friend’s dare and a family legend draw the Duke of Hattingly to Wotton Abbey for an All Hallows’ Eve gathering. He’s determined to prove there are no ghosts haunting his ancestral home, and that the story of a missing diamond is a hum. But then the uninvited Miss Carys Llangrove appears on his doorstep seeking shelter and awakening spirits who lead the duke and the lady to the most precious treasure of all.
Purchase Link:
https://books2read.com/u/4Dwnjr
About the Author:
USA Today bestselling author Alina K. Field earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English and German literature but prefers the much happier world of romance fiction. Her roots are in the Midwestern U.S., but after six very, very, very cold years in Chicago, she moved to Southern California. Now widowed, and with the kids grown, she recently transplanted from Orange County to a desert community. The nest is empty except for a sweet, feisty chihuahua and grandkids who frequently need looking after.
Social Media Links:
Website: https://alinakfield.com/
Amazon Author Page https://www.amazon.com/Alina-K.-Field/e/B00DZHWOKY
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alinakfield
BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/alina-k-field
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7173518.Alina_K_Field
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/alinakf/
Newsletter signup: https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/z6q6e3