Pretty Poison
by Lynne
Barron
What’s
an American heiress to do when a pair of britches, a plunge into a pond in the
dead of winter and a broken betrothal force her to set sail across the ocean to
an arranged marriage with a fortune hunting Englishman?
With
her hopes and dreams sinking to the bottom of the sea like so much lost
treasure, Emily Calvert falls into the pretty poison she finds in a little blue
bottle.
Can
Nicholas Avery, a charming aristocrat with a faulty memory for names and a
family in dire need of financial salvation, convince the wounded lady that the
blessed oblivion she finds in his arms is sweeter than opium?
Excerpt One:
Without a word Emily pushed open the carriage door and
jumped to the ground, her boots sinking into the muck of the stable yard, her
hem trailing along behind her as she turned and marched off toward the small
village.
“Miss Emily!” Tilly struggled to catch up to her mistress,
her little hands clenched in her skirts to hold them above the mud. “Lord
above, what’s come over you, hollering at your father that way?”
“Do not start in on me, Tilly,” Emily warned with a glare
over her shoulder. “You’d do well to remember your place.”
“My place?” the girl repeated as she caught up and fell into
step beside Emily.
“You are my servant,” Emily answered even as she cringed at
the malice dripping from her voice, swirling in her head. She felt mean, mean
and nasty and cruel. “We’re in England now, Matilda Calvert. I’m to be a lady
now and you had best learn to curb your tongue and behave as a lady’s maid
ought to.”
“Why’s everyone staring at us?” Tilly asked, ignoring
Emily’s words entirely.
“They’ve likely never seen a dark-skinned girl like you
before,” Emily replied. “Drop your skirts, Tilly, you’re showing off your
ankles.”
Tilly dutifully complied, her wide eyes taking in the
village and the people who’d stopped to stare at them as they passed. “I think
it’s you they’re eyeballing.”
“Why on earth would
they be looking at me?” Emily demanded.
“I don’t think they’ve ever seen a lady marching down the
street with her hair falling from her pins and fire shooting from her eyes,”
Tilly answered with a grin.
“Well, let them look,” Emily muttered as she reached up to
tuck a wayward curl back into place.
“Where are we going?”
In answer Emily stopped before a little shop wedged between
a milliner and a curio shop. The door was painted a bright green and flanked by
two large multi-paned windows through which she could see row upon row of
bottles stacked on shelves from floor to ceiling. Above the door hung a
weathered sign carved with a mortar and pestle.
The proprietor, a stoop-shouldered man with a shiny bald
head and trim beard greeted them, his welcoming words tinged with a faint
Prussian accent.
Wasting little time on pleasantries, Emily ordered a bottle
of the apothecary’s own special recipe of laudanum, one he’d only whipped up
that morning.
As she waited, she looked about the long, narrow shop,
entranced by the odd assortment of goods stored on the shelves and on tall
rotating display cases. The air was redolent with myriad scents, from lavender
to ginger, frankincense to eucalyptus, all combining into an exotic, spicy aroma
that somehow soothed her frayed nerves, calmed the rapid beat of her heart.
“Oh look at all the pretty little bottles!” Tilly cried from
across the room.
Emily joined her before one of the windows where the girl
had discovered a display of colored glass bottles of all shapes and sizes. A
bright blue bottle with a round base and a long, elegant neck sat on the edge
of the shelf. Emily tilted her head to study the bottle that was as pretty and
dainty as any porcelain statue that had ever graced her mother’s front parlor.
It was shaped almost like a woman, the base the bell of her shirts, the handle
a long elegant arm cocked out with hand resting along a trim waist. Deep within
the fluted neck sat a stopper decorated with pretty blue, red, and green gems.
“My wife says the ladies prefer their tonics in pretty
bottles,” the apothecary said as he joined them. “She thinks it make the taking
of them less onerous.”
“I’ll take this one.” Emily lifted the dainty blue bottle,
surprised by its near weightlessness. The bottle was only slightly larger than
her hand and even lovelier up close. She held it up to the sunlight, amazed by
the way it glowed, by the blue beam that shot through the glass to dance along
the warped wood floor, as if the little bottle had captured the sunlight and
turned it into a moonbeam.
“Shall I fill it for you?” he asked with a nod.
“Thank you,” Emily replied with a trembling smile, her eyes
fixed on the package he held out to her in exchange for the blue bottle. The
paper-wrapped parcel was heavy enough that Emily suspected the contents would
last her to London, would see her cocooned in oblivion through her first
meeting with her aunt, through her father’s departure to join up with a group
of train-mad gentlemen to tour the country’s fledgling railways, perhaps even
through her first introduction to her future husband.
If she was very lucky she might even manage to make it
through her first London Season in quiet contentment, might avoid thinking of
her future, a future that held no resemblance whatsoever to the one she’d
imagined for herself.
“Now mind me, young miss,” the apothecary cautioned as he
handed the second, smaller wrapped parcel into her hands. “Every apothecary
brews his own variety of laudanum. This here that I’ve given you might be a bit
more potent than what you’re familiar with. You be sure to take care with how
much you take until you’ve accustomed yourself to it.”
Emily nodded, barely hearing his words as anticipation
shivered up her spine, finding a nest at the nape of her neck where it settled
like a faint beat, a warm, whispering tingle.
It was an odd sensation, anticipation coupled with a sort of
jittery restlessness, and one she would come to both welcome and dread in the
months that followed.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Write About
What You Know.
She knew she
enjoyed the guilty pleasure of reading romance novels whenever she could find
time between studying, working and raising her son as a single mother.
She knew
quite a bit about women's lives in the Regency and Victorian era from years
spent bouncing back and forth between European History and English Literature
as a major in college.
She knew
precious little about romance except to know that it was more than the cliché
card and a dozen red roses on Valentine's Day.
And she began
to write.
If you would
like to learn more about Lynne Barron and the Idyllwild Series, please visit
her website at LynneBarron.com or follow her at
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/lynnebarron06
Lynne will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour, and a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn host.
Thanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteThank you for featuring Pretty Poison today!
ReplyDeleteLynne Barron
Thank you so much for stopping by! This sounds great and I love your cover on it! :)
DeleteLove the excerpt and the cover!
ReplyDeleteThanks Gabrielle. I hope you read and love the book, too.
ReplyDeleteGreat excerpt, thank you.
ReplyDeleteThank you. Glad you enjoyed it!
DeleteLynne
Great excerpt and cover!! Thanks for the giveaway. :)
ReplyDeleteThank you...good luck with the giveaway!
ReplyDeleteLynne
I have enjoyed learning about the book. Thanks for sharing it.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed the excerpt.
ReplyDeleteI love the excerpt. Sounds like a great book
ReplyDeleteI loved the excerpt!
ReplyDelete