Paperback(Reprint)
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
When a powerful, decisive aristocrat undertakes a mission to protect an absent‑minded young inventress from England’s enemies, he finds his orderly world turned into chaos. Merlin Lambourne’s stubborn dream of flight puts her at risk—and is driving Ransom crazy. In spite of himself, he is oddly enchanted by this muddled miss and her eccentric ways . . . but can he overcome his own fears and realize her invention may be the answer to saving both of their lives? A whimsical Regency‑era tale of flying machines, fancy, and love among the hedgehogs.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781497642102 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Integrated Media, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 07/15/2014 |
| Series: | Regency Tales , #1 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 392 |
| Sales rank: | 385,859 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Laura Kinsale is the award‑winning and New York Times –bestselling author of The Shadow and the Star , Seize the Fire , The Prince of Midnight , Flowers From the Storm , For My Lady’s Heart , and The Dream Hunter . She and her husband divide their time between Santa Fe and Dallas. Shadowheart won the Romance Writers of America Rita Award for best long historical romance of 2004. Kinsale also won best romance novel of 1990 for Prince of Midnight . Kinsale was 1987–1988 Career Achievement Award Winner from Romantic Times Magazine . She was also Regency Historical Romance 2004 Career Achievement Award Winner from Romantic Times Magazine and the Innovative Historical Romance 1994 RRA Awards Nominee for Best Historical Romance Author.
Read an Excerpt
For the fourth time, His Grace the Duke of Damerell lifted the knocker with his free hand and brought the tarnished brass crashing down on its mottled-green base. For the fourth time, the sound echoed on the other side of the oaken door, unanswered. Ransom Falconer's mouth drew back in the faintest hint of a grimace.
He and his horse appeared to be the only civilized creatures within five square miles. Had he thought otherwise, he would never have allowed himself such a show of emotion. The overgrown Tudor walls rose above him, gray stone and neglect, an affront to the values of ten generations of Falconers. Admittedly, from where he stood on the threshold Ransom could see the romantic possibilities of the place: shaped gables and tall oriel windows and dark spreading trees, but at the very thought of such sentimentality those Falconer ghosts seemed to stare in haughty disapproval at his back. Without conscious intention, his own aristocratic features hardened into that hereditary expression of disdain.
Princes had been known to quail before such a look. There had been a few kings, too, and innumerable queens and duchesses and courtly ladies, all struck dumb and uneasy beneath the Falconer stare. Four centuries of power and politics had evolved and improved the expression, until by Ransom's time it was a weapon of chilling efficiency. He himself had learned it early-at his grandfather's elegant knee. As it was, when at last the rusty lock creaked and crashed and the door opened on a complaining groan, the figure peering out from the gloom received the full force of His Grace's pitiless mien. The young maid would have been forgiven by a host of knowledgeable Whigs if she'd turned tail and run in the instant before Ransom recalled himself and softened his expression. But she did not. She merely wiped her hands on a grimy white apron and lifted a pair of vaguely frowning gray eyes. "Yes?" she asked, in a voice which might have been testy had it not been so preoccupied. "What is it?" Ransom held out his card in one immaculately gloved hand. She took the card. Without even glancing at it, she stuck the engraved identification into one bulging pocket of her apron.
Ransom watched his calling card disappear, shocked to the core of his pedigreed soul at such poorly trained service. "Mr. Lambourne is at home?" he prompted, keeping his voice quietly modulated. She might be a country mouse of a maid, a shade too softly rounded to be in vogue, but she was a pretty chit with those misty-gray eyes and elegant cheekbones, made more striking by the stark simplicity of her coiled chestnut hair. Not that His Grace the Duke of Damerell was in the habit of dallying with housemaids-she was not at all in his usual style in any case-but he found no advantage in needlessly frightening her. Ransom even allowed himself a moment's human pleasure, his glance resting briefly on her full lower lip before he looked up and lifted one eyebrow in expectant question.
She blinked at him. He found himself experiencing a peculiar sensation. Her eyes held his, but it was as if she did not even see him standing there, but looked past him at some distant horizon. Her mouth puckered. She lifted her hand, resting one delicate forefinger on that sweetly shaped lower lip. "Square the coefficient of the diameter of the number three strut," she murmured.
"I beg your pardon?"
She blinked again and dropped her hand. Her eyes came into soft focus. "Can you remember that?"
"I'm afraid I don't..."
His voice trailed off as she rummaged in her huge pocket and drew out his calling card. After another moment's search, she located a pencil lead and scribbled something on the back of his card. "There," she said, with husky satisfaction. She dropped the card into her pocket and looked up at him with an absent smile. "Who are you?"
His earlier affront at her excruciatingly bad training returned, cooling his momentary startlement back to full reason. "I believe I delivered my card," he said pointedly. "Oh." A becoming blush spread up from her modest collar, but he forced himself to ignore it. Well, not to concentrate on it, at any event. She had skin like an August peach, soft and golden and touched with pink.
She was rummaging again in her apron. The Pocket, as he termed it to himself, seemed to be burgeoning with peculiar paraphernalia. A jay's feather, a tiny telescope, a tangled length of wire, and a flat-toothed metal disk with a hole in the center-all appeared from the depths into which his card had vanished. She looked down, poking out the tip of her tongue in a child's gesture of concentration.
It was not The Pocket so much as the sleepy hedgehog she produced that left him nonplussed. She held the creature out to him, still fussing in her pocket with the other hand. He accepted the animal in dumbfounded silence. She located the card at last and glanced at the engraving, frowning. Then she flipped the creamy rectangle over.
"Oh, yes." She heaved a sigh of relief. "Square the coefficient of the diameter of the-what does that say? Three? Yes, the number three strut." She looked up at him with a small, accusing frown. "I thought you were to remember that."
"Forgive me," he said icily, "but I wish to see Mr. Lambourne, if it won't tax you too much to announce me." She looked completely blank. He was beginning to think that she was unbalanced in her mind when she repeated, "Who did you say you were?"
What People are Saying About This
No one -- repeat, no one -- writes historical romance better.
One of the most powerful and unique voices in romance today...Laura Kinsale writes the kind of books that live in your heart.