Book Hooks: If Lady Laura Jamison had inherited her great-grandmother’s ability to portend disaster… #MFRWhooks #HistoricalMystery #VictorianRomance #RomCom #BookHooks
Richard, Earl of Winchester, might not know it yet…but he’s Lady Laura perfect match. The mismatched pair risks their wealth and reputations racing around London’s seedier areas in a desperate attempt to stop a madwoman before she recruits more criminals and rebuilds her illegal share trading syndicate. When they accept each other’s strengths and weakness, will Laura and Richard also discover a passion neither counted on?
St. James Church, Piccadilly, London, 1843
If Lady Laura Jamison had inherited her great-grandmother’s ability to portend disaster, she’d have pleaded a megrim, locked herself in her bedchamber, and avoided this morning’s humiliation and stomach-churning terror.
To her chagrin, her senses only warned her of more immediate danger. So, when a grubby urchin had slipped a piece of crumpled paper into Laura’s gloved hand outside the church, she’d acted on instinct and thrust the note into her pocket. She’d read the message from their informant in private, after her sister’s wedding, when she’d have time to consider which, if any, of her family members should be informed.
If the note contained what she thought—a time and place to meet later today—the man must have uncovered something significant about the enemy they were tracking. And if the newly-weds caught even a hint of what was in the wind, their long-delayed honeymoon would be postponed again. No; far better to inform her other siblings at a later time, or perhaps not tell them at all and attend the rendezvous alone.
A brilliant plan except for one large flaw, or rather, one very masculine brick wall, in the form of the bridegroom’s cousin, Richard St. Martin, Earl of Winchester. Though Winchester knew better, the obstinate man treated her as a simpering miss who should be sent to a fainting couch with a maid waving smelling salts under her nose, rather than an intelligent woman who was perfectly capable of making her own decisions. Winchester, having promised the duke that he’d guard the Jamison women with his life, was determined to assume the position of battle commander.
During the service joining Becca and Sherwyn as husband and wife, Laura had felt a prickle of awareness across the back of her neck and known that someone, most likely the Earl of Winchester, had been staring at her rather than the minister conducting the church service. And the moment Laura had followed the bride and groom outside to the sun-drenched steps, Winchester had magically appeared at her side and taken her arm, firmly looping it around her elbow.
“The moment we’re alone,” he’d said, his tone as quietly confident as his manner, “you shall hand over the note in your pocket. I want to know who sent it, and why.”
