“Regan Walker sweeps you away to a time and place you'll NEVER want to leave!”
~ Danelle Harmon, NY Times Bestselling Author
“I was glued to the pages from the first sentence. Magnificent!! Another masterfully and brilliantly executed story!! Bravo!!”
~ My Reading Addiction Reviews
When Jean Donet first appeared on the deck of his ship, la Reine Noire, in To Tame the Wind, shouting orders to his men as guns blazed all around him, he quite stole my heart. I knew then he had to have his own story. And I knew it would take an unusual woman for Jean Donet to consider loving again. I believe I found her in Lady Joanna West.
It releases on May 23, but you can see the short description and read an excerpt here:
England and France 1784
Cast out by his noble father for marrying the woman he loved, Jean Donet took to the sea, becoming a smuggler, delivering French brandy and tea to the south coast of England. When his young wife died, he nearly lost his sanity. In time, he became a pirate and then a privateer, vowing to never again risk his heart.
As Donet’s wealth grew, so grew his fame as a daring ship’s captain, the terror of the English Channel in the American War. When his father and older brother die in a carriage accident in France, Jean becomes the comte de Saintonge, a title he never wanted.
Lady Joanna West cares little for London Society, which considers her its darling. Marriage in the ton is either dull or disastrous. She wants no part of it. To help the poor in Sussex, she joins in their smuggling. Now she is the master of the beach, risking her reputation and her life. One night off the coast of Bognor, Joanna encounters the menacing captain of a smuggling ship, never realizing he is the mysterious comte de Saintonge.
Can Donet resist the English vixen who entices him as no other woman? Will Lady Joanna risk all for an uncertain chance at love in the arms of the dashing Jean Donet?
The excerpt:
Bognor,
West Sussex, England, April 1784
Except for the small waves
rushing to shore, hissing as they raced over the shingles, Bognor’s coast was
eerily bereft of sound. Lady Joanna West hated the disquiet she always
experienced before a smuggling run. Tonight, the blood throbbed in her veins with the anxious pounding of her
heart, for this time, she would be dealing with a total stranger.
Would he be fair, this new
partner in free trade? Or might he be a feared revenue agent in disguise, ready
to cinch a hangman’s noose around her slender neck?
The answer lay just offshore,
silhouetted against a cobalt blue sky streaked with gold from the setting sun:
a black-sided ship, her sails lifted like a lady gathering up
her skirts, poised to flee, waited
for a signal.
Crouched behind a rock with
her younger brother, Joanna hesitated, studying the ship. Eight gun ports
marched across the side of the brig, making her wonder at the battles the
captain anticipated that he should carry sixteen guns.
She and her men were unarmed.
They would be helpless should he decide to cheat them, his barrels full of
water instead of brandy, his tea no more than dried weeds.
It had been tried before.
“You are certain Zack speaks
for this captain?” she asked Freddie whose dark auburn curls beneath his
slouched hat made his boyish
face appear younger than his seventeen years. But to one who knew him well, the
set of his jaw hinted at the man he would one day become.
“I’ll fetch him,” Freddie
said in a hushed tone, “and you can ask him yourself.” He disappeared into the
shadows where her men waited beneath the trees.
Zack appeared, squatting
beside her, a giant of a man with a scar on the left side of his face from the
war. Like the mastiffs that
guarded the grounds of her family’s estate, he was big
and ugly, fierce with enemies, but gentle with those he was charged to protect.
“Young Frederick here says ye want to know about this ship,
m’lady.” At her nod, Zack gazed toward the brig. “He used to come here regular with nary a con nor a cheat. He’s been
gone awhile now. I heard he might have worked up some other business—royal business.”
He rolled his massive shoulders in a shrug. “In my experience, a tiger don’t
change his stripes. He’s a Frog, aye, but I trust the Frenchie’s one of us, a free
trader still.”
She took in a deep breath of
the salted air blowing onshore and let it out. “Good.” Zack’s assurance had
been some comfort but not enough to end her concerns. What royal business? For
tonight, she need not know. “Give the signal,” she directed her brother, “but I
intend to see for myself if the cargo is what we ordered.”
Without seeking the position,
Joanna had become the smugglers’ master of the beach, responsible for getting
the cargo ashore and away to inland routes and London markets with no revenue
man the wiser. She took seriously her role to assure the villagers got what
they paid for. Their survival depended upon it.
Copyright © 2017 Regan
Walker
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