#BookBlast The Maid of Milan by Beverly Eikli @BeverleyOakley

Beverley Eikli is the author of eight historical romances. In 2012 she won UK Women's Fiction publisher Choc-Lit's Search for An Australia Star competition with her suspenseful, Napoleonic espionage Romance The Reluctant Bride, which has just been shortlisted by Australian Romance Readers for Favourite Historical in 2013.

In 2011 she was nominated for an ARRA award for her Regency romance A Little Deception, and in 2012 for her racy Regency Romp, Rake’s Honour, written under her Beverley Oakley pseudonym.

Eikli wrote her first romance when she was seventeen. However, drowning the heroine on the last page 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 job on South Australia's metropolitan daily The Advertiser to manage a luxury safari lodge in the Okavango Delta, in Botswana, she discovered a new world of romance and adventure in a thatched cottage in the middle of a mopane forest with the handsome Norwegian bush pilot she met around a camp fire.

Twenty years later, after exploring the world in the back of Cessna 404s and CASA 212s as an airborne geophysical survey operator during low-level sorties over the French Guyanese jungle and Greenland's ice cap, Eikli is back in Australia teaching in the Department of Professional Writing & Editing at Victoria University, as well as teaching Short Courses for the Centre of Adult Education and Macedon Ranges Further Education.

Preorder The Maid of Milan at The Book Depository

Website

Blog 

Twitter

Facebook

Beverly will award a $20 Amazon book voucher and a digital copy of The Reluctant Bride to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour. 

Blurb:

After three years of marriage, Adelaide has fallen in love with the handsome, honourable husband who nurtured her through her darkest hours.

Now Adelaide’s former lover, the passionate poet from whose arms she was torn by her family during their illicit liaison in Milan six years previously has returned, a celebrity due to the success of his book The Maid of Milan.

High society is as desperate to discover the identity of his ‘muse’ as Adelaide is to protect her newfound love and her husband’s political career.

 

Excerpt:

The following scene takes place when Adelaide has discovered that not only is she in love with the husband she reluctantly consented to wed, but that she wants him to be in no doubt about her desire to take intimacy to a higher level. Adelaide’s mother has perpetuated a lie to hide her daughter’s sinful past, telling Tristan that Adelaide is an invalid who must be kept calm at all costs if she is not to succumb to hysteria.

‘Addy—?’

Tossing aside the bed covers, Adelaide shifted to make room for him, snuggling against his chest when he yielded slightly, nevertheless terrified of his reaction. She was blatantly seducing – no, trying to seduce – her husband for the first time in her life and she had no idea whether he’d be horrified or delighted. She just knew she had to convey to him her receptiveness for taking intimacy to a higher level.

So far so good. He was breathing more rapidly, she noticed, as he carefully removed his boots. She willed him to hurry. She was on fire. She closed her eyes in anticipation, her mind whirling with all the possibilities of what she might say, but the words with which she’d intended to

unburden her heart were lost in the passion of his kiss. Scorching. It shocked her, as did the speed with which he moved now as he caged her body with his, his hands roaming over her as he trailed hot kisses along her jawline, down her neck, across her décolletage. Adelaide arched with impatience, resisting the urge to be the one to unbutton his trousers.

‘God, Addy, I love you,’ he muttered as he gripped the hem of her shift to raise it, nuzzling her neck. ‘I’ve never loved any woman as I love you. Are you sure you want—?’

Her reassurance that she’d never wanted anything so much was truncated by a sharp rap on the door and her mother’s nasal whine on the other side.

 ‘Addy? I’ve brought you something to help you sleep. Can I come in?’

Horrified, she and Tristan bolted upright as the door knob turned.

‘Wait, mother!’ Addy pulled the covers up to her chin as Tristan leapt to the floor, straightening his cravat and pulling on his boots with lightning speed.

‘Why, Tristan …?’ Mrs Henley’s cloying smile didn’t fool Adelaide. ‘I didn’t know you were here. I’m so sorry to interrupt.’

Adelaide felt like seizing the mug her mother carried with such false solicitude and hurling it at the wall. Instead, she hurled herself back down onto her bed with a sob as her husband bowed before leaving the room.

Where to Buy: Amazon

Book Depository

@MaggiAndersen and her new release The Spies of Mayfair Book

Maggi Andersen fell in love with the Georgian and Regency worlds after reading the books of Georgette Heyer. Victoria Holt's Gothic Victorian novels were also great favorites.

She has raised three children and gained a BA and an MA in Creative Writing. After husband David retired from the law, they moved to the beautiful Southern Highlands of Australia.

Maggi's free time is spent enjoying her garden and the local wildlife, reading, movies and the theatre. She keeps fit swimming and visiting the gym.

Maggi is a multi-published author, and writes mysteries and young adult novels as well as her Georgian, Regency and Victorian romances.

Website

Blog

Twitter

Facebook

Maggi will award a $50 Amazon GC plus an e-book copy of A Baron in Her Bed – The Spies of Mayfair, Book #1 to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour.

Blurb:

John Haldane, Earl of Strathairn, is on an urgent mission to find the killer of his fellow spy. After visiting the young widow of one of his agents, Strathairn strengthens his resolve. A spy should never marry, and most certainly not to Lady Sibella Winborne, with her romantic ideas of love and marriage. Unable to give Sibella up entirely, he has kept her close as a friend. Then, weak fool that he is, he kissed her.

Lady Sibella Winborne has refused several offers of marriage since she first set eyes on the handsome Earl of Strathairn. Sibella’s many siblings always rush to her aid to discourage an ardent suitor, but not this time. Her elder brother, Chaloner, Marquess of Brandreth, has approved Lord Coombe’s suit.  Sibella yearns to set up her own household. She is known to be the sensible member of the family, but she doesn’t feel at all sensible about Lord Strathairn. If only she could forget that kiss.

  

Excerpt:

Beneath glistening chandeliers, the dancers spun to the strains of a Handel waltz. Strathairn smiled down at his partner, her slim waist beneath his hand as they danced. Lady Sibella Winborne looked like a delicate flower in a gauzy pale gown covered in amber blossom. White ostrich feather plumes adorned her luxuriant dark locks. He enjoyed looking at her. Her serene oval face lifted and she smiled at him, her mouth wide and full. Too wide for beauty some might say, but made for kissing. She had inherited her mother’s famous eyes, a delectable mix of blue and green, but her nature was quieter, lacking the vivacity of her mother in her youth, who was said to have had men falling at her feet. He admired Sibella’s calm beauty, but she was oh, so much more: practical, poised and intelligent. Yet still unmarried, which surprised him.

           

“You arrived late tonight. I wasn’t sure you’d come,” she said.

           

“I was tied up with business.”

           

“Not parliament?”

           

“No.”

           

She tilted her head. “Your horses, then?”

           

He grinned at her blatant curiosity. “No.”

           

“You won’t tell me.”

           

“No.”

           

Sibella laughed with good humor. “Very well. Might I find you riding in Hyde Park tomorrow?”

           

“I hope to.”

           

Her delicate brows rose. “If business doesn’t keep you.”

           

He laughed. “Precisely.”

           

The music faded away. Strathairn escorted her back to her chair where her mother, the Dowager Marchioness of Brandreth, sat fanning herself among the other dowagers. He bowed, planning to slip into the rooms set aside for gambling. As much as he might wish to dance with Sibella again, it would place them under scrutiny, and faro was an effective release from the tension he always carried with him.

           

“Don’t rush off, Strathairn,” her sharp-eyed mother said. “We have seen little of you of late. You rarely frequent these affairs.” She waved her fan in an arc to encompass the ballroom. “Where have you been hiding?”

           

“Not hiding, my lady, merely visiting my estates.”

Lady Brandreth adjusted the silk shawl over her shoulders. “Did you include that pile of yours in Yorkshire? I enjoyed the hunt ball, but it’s cold as charity in winter up in those parts.”

           

“Not this time, but I miss it. There’s a wild beauty to the dales in winter, quite unlike southern England.”

           

“I daresay.” Her purple turban wobbled as she nodded. “You are a fine figure of a man, Strathairn. What are you now? Six and thirty? You should marry. You should be setting up your nursery.” She gestured toward her daughter sitting beside her. “Sibella will bear you healthy children. The Brandreths come of good stock, and the Wederells even better.”

           

“Mama, please!” He caught Sibella’s apologetic gaze and suppressed a wry smile. Her plea would have little effect; the marchioness was known to be one of the most colorful and outspoken members of the ton.

           

The dowager batted her daughter’s protest away with her fan. “I am merely speaking the truth, Sibella.”

           

“Your daughter is a credit to you, my lady,” he said with a smile. “She has inherited both your beauty and intelligence.”

           

“Now you are toad eating.” A roguish smile lit Lady Brandreth’s face. “You always were a charmer. Sibella is intelligent. Walk with her on the terrace to discover it for yourself.”

           

“I should be delighted.”

  

Where to Buy:

Amazon

Knox Publisher

Barnes &Noble