A New Contract

I’m dancing around on tippy toes after receiving the news my historical novella Claiming Lady Marianne has been accepted by Ellora’s Cave. Sorry, no shifters in this story, but I’m hoping you’ll like it ever still.

Carelessly tossed from her cruel husband into the care of her perverted grandfather, Lady Marianne thinks her life can’t get any worse; until it does.

After Marianne is caught en compromise with another woman, Viscount Cobham is fed up. He remands Marianne to the care of her beastly grandfather with orders that she take a lover- a male lover. She is to get herself with child by the time he returns from his travels in six months. He will have his heir, one way or another. Marianne’s grandfather charges his stable master with the task, and Marianne is bound to her bed every third night to await the burly man.

Michael Ainsworth is no stud horse himself, and Baron Thurlow’s task is too ghastly to consider. But Michael longs for a glimpse of the pretty girl who used to cling to the paddock fence to watch the horses, and when he finds her terrified and unwilling, his honor demands he protect her. While he knows the viscountess can never love a lowly servant, every day his feelings grow stronger.

With their brief six months together quickly disappearing, can Michael endure the day he must step aside and let the woman he loves return to the cruel viscount?

This story brings me back to my historical roots. When Lady Marianne’s character called to me, she was too desperate to ignore. I needed to give her a humble hero with a heart of gold, and Michael fits the bill to a T. And of course it doesn’t hurt that he’s well hung! : )