By Beverley Oakley
By Beverley Oakley
Honour and loyalty are two of my favourite themes and
both feature strongly in my July releases – Lady
Lovett’s Little Dilemma, and my English Civil War erotic romance, The Cavalier.
Both books were released within two weeks of each
other and are ‘second chance at love’ stories – or at least, being given a
second chance in the loving or bedroom department since Lady Lovett’s Little Dilemma features a once-devoted married
couple.
However, it’s The
Cavalier that is most topical in view of a wonderful competition my
publisher Total-E-Bound is hosting to win a Couture Corset (with details to
follow).
In writing The Cavalier I was intrigued by the idea of an
unexpected, tense reunion between two old lovers set against civil conflict
with families and friends fighting on opposing sides.
It is one of four novellas in the Bodices & Boudoirs collection and is a poignant tale of blighted love –
and renewed hope – set during the siege of my heroine’s castle in 1648.
Normally I write Regencies but I couldn't resist the
opportunity to write about a time in history when the conflict was so raw.
Brother could be fighting brother or, in this case, a Puritan woman is faced
with her lost love – who turns out to be second-in-command of the King's Men or Cavaliers currently besieging her castle.
Here's a bit of background...
Though it's been eight years since Lady Elizabeth married
the brutal Puritan, Silas Drummond, against her will she's been a dutiful
and obedient wife.
Then Charles Trethveyan marches into her life offering
her a bargain that will save her hated husband's life.
A bargain she can't resist until she learns it's based
on a lie.
Not knowing that Charles is acting to save her life,
Elizabeth succumbs to her husband's demands that she make the ultimate
sacrifice – for the sake of honour.
Death is imminent unless the truth can be revealed in
time.
So, that's talking around the topic, which I often do, but below is the official...
The Cavalier Blurb
Drummond Castle, home of staunch Puritan Silas
Drummond and his beautiful wife, Elizabeth, has been besieged by Royalist
forces. In a bargain to spare her husband’s life Lady Elizabeth has agreed to
spend the night with the commander of the hated King’s Men.
Second-in-command, Charles Trethveyan, has other
ideas. He’s planned this moment since Elizabeth chose to marry Silas eight
years before.
When Elizabeth discovers that her former Cavalier
lover has taken the place of his superior, she must decide whether Charles is
motivated by love or revenge.
Either way, her response will have devastating
consequences.
And here we have an...
Excerpt from a scene in which the depraved commander Reynolds has his
eye to the keyhole. My heroine, Elizabeth, is in the bedroom with the man who
was once her lover and whom she believes betrayed her, though she still has
feelings for him.
Slowly, Elizabeth nodded once. “This is war,” she
whispered, simply, “and I want to live. I’ll struggle and scream as I would if
it were Reynolds but you have my permission to take me. I’ve dreamed of it.”
She said it so he could be under no illusions as to her feelings and was
gratified by the brief shock that crossed his face.
Immediately she tried to pull out of his arms. “You
betrayed me!” she shrieked. “By God, I rue the day I set eyes on you. You
betrayed me. Don’t touch me!”
The play acting had begun.
Total-E-Bound, is offering 100 pounds (about US$155) towards a Couture Corset
for the competition winner. To be in the draw, just purchase a copy of any of the four novellas – including The
Cavalier – in their Bodices and Boudoirs collection.
So, let's talk about me and my own corset envy.
I’ve
always hankered after a corset, even though I’m a country girl now and rarely venture into the Big Smoke. For weeks, however, I've been eyeing a selection of exquisite, high-quality vintage corsets at What Katie Did, a UK company I
discovered during my online corset-viewing travels.
It just so happened that in testing the link for this blog, I was lucky enough to return a few minutes ago to What Katie Did and was completely side-tracked by the fact they're having a huge sale ...
So ... I've finally have done what I'd promised myself for ages! I've just ordered a black and red velvet, boned Antoinette corset with a balconette bust which will cinch me into a 20" waist. It'll take a couple of weeks to get from the UK to Australia which will make it too late for me to wear it to the gala Romance Writers of Australia conference on the Gold Coast that I'm attending next week.
However, I'll post pictures on my blog in a couple of weeks.
And here's the product description:
SHOWGIRL VELVET ANTOINETTE CORSET
Half price clearance sale - now just £75!
This breathtakingly beautiful steel boned corset could be the piece-de-resistance of our Showgirl collection. Or, the icing on the cake, if you'll pardon the pun!
The base for the design is our Antoinette overbust corset once again, but the resulting creation is anything but standard. The fabric is scarlet satin, overlaid with black floral flocking, which is echoed in the rich black velvet overboning and modesty panel. Opulent, decadent, just like the Dauphine herself, the Velvet Antoinette features a balconette bustline for gently uplifted and firmly supported breasts, and gored hips for a ravishingly wasp-waisted silhouette.
It's suitable for most shapes, and for seasoned and inexperienced corset-wearers alike as it's easy to wear and comfortable despite allowing a greater waist reduction than our non-gored versions. Wear it on a night out and you'll be stopping traffic... wear it on a night in and you might have the same effect on hearts!
I'm hoping I can persuade my accountant it's a tax deduction.
Anyway,
if you love steamy historicals then entering Total-E-Bound's Bodices & Boudoirs competition is easy. Details are
here or simply buy The Cavalier here to to be automatically entered into the draw.
Bio
Beverley Oakley wrote her first romance novel when she was seventeen. However, drowning the heroine on the last page (p550!) was, she discovered, not in the spirit of the genre so her romance-writing career ground to a halt and she became a journalist.
After throwing in her secure job on a metropolitan daily to manage a luxury safari lodge in the Okavango Delta, in Botswana, Beverley discovered a new world of romance and adventure: living in a thatched cottage in the middle of a mopane forest with the handsome bush pilot she met around a camp fire. Seventeen years later, after exploring the world in the back of Cessna 404s and CASA 212s during low-level survey sorties over the French Guyanese jungle and Greenland's ice cap, Beverley is back in Australia living a more conventional life with her husband and two daughters in a pretty country town an hour north of Melbourne
She writes traditional Regency Romance as Beverley Eikli and sensual and erotic historical romance as Beverley Oakley.
Good
luck – and have fun!
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BeverleyOakley
Buy the book here: http://is.gd/czJUn8
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