A Season of Invitations Begins Today

Welcome to A Season of Invitations! This long-awaited author collaboration of Christmas historical romance novellas begins today. Every month, new stories will be released in the run up to Christmas. All are available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

This collaboration features some fantastic historical romance authors, including Ella Hazard, Lisabel Chretien, Alexa Santi, Olivia Huxley, Angela Kady and me!

From Regency country estates to Victorian New York, featuring a mix of sweet and steamy love stories, enjoy these historical romance novellas about love found during the revels of the festive season.

Sharon Michalove opens the season today with her release Under the Kissing Bough, and The Christmas Masquerade by Daisy Landish is released on 26th June.

Let the festivities commence with these fabulous excerpts!

A Season of Invitations

In a glittering Season of Invitations, society’s most sought-after house parties open their doors to dukes, debutantes, and dangerous secrets. From elegant estates to intimate country gatherings, each invitation promises scandal, temptation, and unexpected romance, with stories ranging from clean to gently steamy, where whispered wagers, hidden pasts, and carefully arranged matches may lead not to ruin, but to love.

Under the Kissing Bough

A Regency Holiday Romantic Thriller

Sharon Michalove

A Dashing War Hero Falls in Love with a Penniless Orphan

When Colonel Henry Fitzwilliam arrives at Rosings Park and reconnects with his cousin Anne’s lady companion, Ophelia Hampton, he can hardly believe she is the same person as the unprepossessing eight-year-old he teased as a teenager. Now, despite himself, he is enchanted by the accomplished but penniless orphan. To his dismay, Sir Thomas Wainwright, a landholder in the district, has also shown a marked interest in the young woman. During a ball at Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s house in Kent Ophelia disappears, and Fitzwilliam and his cousin Darcy must undertake a desperate race across country and against time through the depths of winter. But will they be able to keep her from being married over the anvil at Gretna Green?

Excerpt

Seven Dials, London, England

December 21, 1791

“Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.”

Rita Mae Brown

Shouts in a mélange of accents and languages split the air of St. Giles and penetrated the broken and boarded-up windows of the Rookery as the news ran through London like wildfire. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was dead. Musicians playing fiddles and hurdy-gurdies appeared like magic.

Having never heard of the great composer or heard music other than the bawdy ballads sung by street musicians or the ditties and lullabies her mother crooned, more important to five-year-old Ophelia Westerbridge was the still, cold body on the rough floorboards, clad only in her chemise. A neighbor, in a greasy apron over a ragged linen dress, who looked older than her forty years, held her hand as she gazed on the motionless body of her mother. Smelling death, human vultures had stripped everything from the room—bedding, clothes, even the few sticks of furniture. Tears dripped down the girl’s eyelashes from her widely spaced gray eyes. 

Ophelia’s own shift—worn, torn, and none too clean—hung from her bony shoulders. All the girl had to remember her mother was a tiny scarlet leather pouch embossed with the initials LMW that Ophelia wore around her neck. Inside was her mother’s wedding ring. She also had a small testament, in which her mother kept a few letters Laurence had written to her. 

Amelia Westerbridge, née Hampton, had resolutely used her married name, Westerbridge, even though her father-in-law had forbidden her to use it. But he lived in the country, and Amelia, never one to bow to the dictates of others, felt free to defy his order. 

“Where will I go now?” she cried.

Her plaintive mew received no reply. Surely, thought the woman whose gnarled fingers held hers, surely someone knew her people. A relative would arrive and sweep her away.

Ophelia stayed with the woman and her disreputable son in the filthy room across the hallway from the flat she and her mother had lived in all the girl’s short life. Days dragged by, and no one came. Rations were scanty, and the girl, who never left the room except to use the outdoor latrine, cried herself to sleep night after night on the palette she shared with her hostess.

Two weeks to the day after her mother’s death, change came knocking. Below, a fine lady’s strident tones competed with the cacophony of Rookery life. Ophelia crept to the cracked window and peered down at the street. The fractured scene framed by dusty plane trees surrounded by yellowed, spindly bindweed and the mugwort cultivated by local women as an herbal medicine, provided a backdrop to two women staring at the warped wooden door. 

Standing on the street was a fine carriage with some design on the door. A man sat on the box and a tiny creature stood on a small bench above the back wheels. Ophelia wondered if it was a monkey, like the ones she saw out the windows when the organ grinder came by.

Behind the women stood a tall young man in livery, the sun glinting off silver buttons. The older woman turned to the uniformed man and told him something. He came forward and flung the door wide so the two women could enter the debris-clogged vestibule. Then he stepped back while the women began to climb.

Ophelia, little fingers curled around the grimy sill, stood on tiptoe, hoping to see the monkey perform. To her disappointment, he jumped down, then climbed up on the box with the burly man in the greatcoat. She rubbed at the yellowed pane with her ragged sleeve, trying for a clearer view. Then she turned away. The monkey was just a small boy.

As wooden square heels pounded against the rickety staircase, Ophelia backed into a corner of the room, trying to make herself invisible. Heavy breathing announced the visitors’ presence at the door, where the number five was scrawled in black paint. A knock sounded against the flimsy wooden entrance.

The reluctant caretaker flung open the door in eager anticipation. She had asked her son to arrange something with the Foundling Hospital. Her  gums were bared in a caricature of a smile, displaying her lack of teeth  A hard-faced female stood as if made of stone. Draped in a royal blue fur-lined cape and matching bonnet over a black silk dress, a reticule clutched in a clenched fist, she sniffed the air, then coughed behind her gloved hand. Behind her was a lady’s maid, also in traveling attire.

The elderly dame peered at her suspiciously. “Youse here from the Foundling Hospital?”

The visitor glared. “I am Lady Catherine de Bourgh,” she announced grandly, as if she were Her Majesty and not the wife of a deceased younger son of a marquess. 

“Oh, a grand lady. Why you knocking on my door? Don’t see no charity basket. Wha’cher want, then?”

The woman in black narrowed her flint-colored eyes and stared at her interlocutor. Her mouth twisted into a moue of distaste as she surveyed the room, with its odor of spoiled food, sparse dilapidated furniture, and the rags masquerading as clothing hanging on the backs of spindly, splintered chairs. The sound of rats scurrying in the wainscoting contrasted with the clatter of carts and the chatter of Italian, French, and who knew which other foreign dialects in the street below.

Lady Catherine said, “I am looking for a little girl, Ophelia Hampton. I was told she might be here.”

With a backward shuffle and a crook of her knobbly finger, the woman invited the unlooked-for guest to cross the threshold. Cowering in the corner was a small child with tangled blond hair and streaks of dirt smeared on her cheeks.

“That’s Ophelia, but her name’s Westerbridge.”

“I am her aunt. By marriage,” she added hastily. “The child will henceforth be Hampton,” the woman said, her voice like chalk on slate. “Come here, girl,” she ordered. 

Ophelia hesitated, then crept forward.

Lady Catherine gingerly put a finger under the girl’s chin and raised her head. “Let me look at you.” She sniffed. The girl was still in the same shift she had been wearing when her mother, Amelia, had died. The smell of an unwashed body made her aunt recoil.

“Her odor is offensive,” Ophelia’s new aunt said. Then she recovered herself. “I am Lady Catherine de Bourgh, your aunt. I am taking you to your grandfather’s estate in Derbyshire.”

“‘Bout time summun came to fetch her. Keepin’ me own body and soul together with my good-for-nuthin’ son, wit’out ‘nother mouth ta feed.”

The Christmas Masquerade

Daisy Landish

She fled one wedding… and crashed another.

Lady Vivienne Ashford leaps from a church window on Christmas Eve to escape a forced marriage to the vile Lord Vexley. Desperate and penniless, she stumbles through a snowstorm to Wintermere Hall, only to be mistaken for Miss Charlotte Linden, the American heiress the Duke of Wintermere is supposed to marry.

One night, she tells herself. Just until the storm passes. Julian Rathbone, Duke of Wintermere, is facing financial ruin. His only hope is marrying the elusive Miss Linden and her fortune. But when a disheveled woman arrives claiming to be his intended bride, something doesn’t add up. She’s too skittish, too knowledgeable about England… and far too captivating for his peace of mind.

As Christmas festivities unfold and the house party whirls toward the Twelfth Night masquerade, Vivienne’s lies grow more tangled, and her feelings for Julian more impossible to ignore. But when her true identity is revealed, she’ll lose everything: her sanctuary, her safety, and the one man who made her believe in love.

Now Julian must choose between duty and desire, between a fortune that will save his estate and a woman who already stole his heart.

Perfect for readers who love sweet Regency romance with mistaken identity, Christmas magic, and second chances at love.

Excerpt

The church smelled of hothouse roses and lies.

Lady Vivienne Redstone stood beside Lord Hadrian Vexley at the altar of St. George’s, Hanover Square, and felt the weight of every eye upon her back. The December cold had seeped through the ancient stones despite the dozen braziers lit for the occasion, but it was not the chill that made her hands tremble. It was the certain knowledge that she was about to make the greatest mistake of her life.

“Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband,” intoned Reverend Ashworth, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling, “to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony?”

Vivienne’s grey-blue eyes fixed on the stained glass window behind the altar, Saint George slaying the dragon, all brilliant reds and golds in the thin winter light. How very apt. Except in this particular tale, the dragon had already won, and the maiden was being handed over like a treaty offering.

A flutter of movement in the back pew caught her attention. A woman sat in the last row, half-hidden in the shadows. She wore a bottle-green pelisse trimmed with fox fur, expensive and fashionable, utterly inappropriate for a wedding. It was not the clothes that made Vivienne’s stomach drop. It was the smirk. The knowing, triumphant curve of red lips as the woman met Vivienne’s stare across the length of the church.

Lord Vexley’s mistress. Here. Now. Watching.

Vexley’s hand tightened on hers, a warning or a threat, she could not tell which. His fingers were cold and damp through her thin gloves, and the ruby ring on his smallest finger pressed against her knuckle like a brand.

She had known, of course. But to bring her here, to Vivienne’s own wedding — was too much.

“I cannot, I must…” The words tumbled out in a breathless rush. “The air. I need air.”

She did not wait for permission. She jumped.

Don’t miss a single invitation this festive season.