The author says:
This series is a bit like The Nevers — in fact, a lot. (Which I still haven’t seen but I’ve heard it is.)
…These are typical Regency/Victorians in a way with the paranormal spin. (And they’re steamy.)
P.S. Here’s the entire series on Amazon & each one CAN be read as a standalone, book #3 is free right now and book #4 is super-bargain priced. The new release is wide — the others KU.
About book #4:
#4 in this UNIQUE historical romance series! THE NEVERS + BRIDGERTON mashup!
Time-traveling lovers navigate the sinister streets of London—while denying their enchantment and desire.
Rescued from the slums and molded into a gentleman, Simon Alexander lost the love of his life to a mystical world he’s always spurned. Still searching for the time traveler who stole his heart, he’ll stop at nothing to find her. When he does, he finds he can’t trust her—or his desire. Will he be able to tame his fear, and his hellion, once and for all?
She’s a time-traveling socialite…
Transforming Emma Breslin from a poverty-stricken termagant into an aristocrat is easier than anyone imagined. Nearly overnight, she delights society as a trendsetting sensation. Torn between her obsession with the man who’s never forgiven her for leaving and her fight to safeguard the magical gem she stole from him, Emma battles to survive without the man she loves. But when her life is threatened, Simon Alexander is the only person in any time she can trust.
Come along for a passionate story where passion defies time and love conquers betrayal.
And here’s the book trailer!! 😀
SERIES READING ORDER:
- The Lady is Trouble (League of Lords Book 1) <— reluctant viscount and the psychic!
- The Rake is Taken (League of Lords Book 2) <— they both have a gift…
- The Duke is Wicked (League of Lords Book 3) <— forbidden love!
- The Hellion is Tamed (League of Lords Book 4) <— time traveling socialite!
Now for the giveaway!
The author says:
Let’s do a giveaway! How about an Amazon gift card ($10) and signed copy of The Hellion is Tamed + book swag. (I have cover magnet and bookmark.)
How to enter for a chance to win it?
Just leave a comment below (and better yet – tell me your favorite historical romance book or series), and by 10pm EST, Sunday June 27th, 2021, I will randomly select one lucky commenter as the winner.
The winner will be contacted and will have 48hrs to respond confirming their mailing address, so if you are picked, do not delay or you will lose your chance. The signed book will be sent to the winner by the author.
OPEN TO US only however everyone is welcome to comment. 🙂
Ready for a couple of excerpts from The Hellion is Tamed (League of Lords Book 4)?
Simon slouched against the doorjamb, crossed his legs at the ankle and took her in, this positively foreign, absolutely fascinating creature who’d beguiled her way into his life.
A woman who’d haunted him more than any ghost in existence.
She was nothing like the society chits who offered themselves to him on a daily basis. Their attraction answerable to his ownership of the Blue Moon and the skills a viscount’s byblow possessed that a high-born man likely wouldn’t. A jaded bunch, the lot of them, himself included, seeking entertainment and deliverance.
Glancing about the room, he came across a tidy pile stacked by the hearth. A pair of silver dancing slippers, a lilac shawl and his gloves. He flexed his fingers and, in a swift move for a man known for them, shoved his clenched fists deep in his trouser pockets. It seemed Emma intended to give the gloves back when he, absurdly, wanted her to keep them.
He took a step into the parlor, aware that a gentleman would have alerted a lady to his presence. But he wasn’t a gentleman, and Emmaline Breslin wasn’t a lady. He shook his head with a soft smile, unsure what to call her. Termagant? Hellion?
She wore another new gown, this one a shade, perhaps two, lighter than her magnificent indigo eyes. Madame Hebert had selected jewel tones that would set her apart in a ballroom, if the vivacity of her personality did not. Simon thought her raw beauty enough to make her shimmer, a diamond amongst dull, grey stone. High cheekbones, a chin that spoke of obstinacy and hasty decisions. A difficult face, sensual and stubborn. One that brought to mind tangled sheets and the pleasurable tremors that ripped through you after coming so hard you almost blacked out.
Any man’s dream aside from the abrasive accent, the rough skin, the disrespectful manner. Things that didn’t matter in the least that mattered mightily to the ton. They’d have to change her, or hide the parts they couldn’t change, before she’d be ready for society introduction.
He knew this because he’d done it himself.
To please him, she needed no alteration. He’d searched for her before he knew. He wondered if she realized that. Or, that’d he given up on her—and now questioned if he should have. Years too late, that decision. He’d lost himself along the way and lost her, too.
With a rousing yawn, Emma pulled Dickens closer and squinted.
Simon held back a chuckle. Why, she needs spectacles. He opened his mouth to tell his hellion that when two small, human projectiles rammed into the back of his legs, forcing him into an awkward stumble into the room.
Emma shoved to an inelegant sit, tugging her skirt over her ankles, color sweeping enticingly down her neck and bleeding into the rounded collar of her gown. Her gaze snapped to the slippers stacked hopelessly by the hearth as she gave her stockinged toes a frantic wiggle. She’d obviously lost herself in—Simon tilted his head to read the title of the book she’d placed by her feet—David Copperfield.
The duke’s youngest children, twins Worth and Winnie, danced in a wild circle around Simon, chanting a charming ditty he didn’t know, their grubby hands tugging on his trousers and leaving what looked like specks of jam behind. He laughed and tried to brush them off. “I know you’re looking for butterscotch. I didn’t bring any today.”
“Bother,” Winnie said, flashing a gap-toothed grin, her amber eyes exact replicas of her father’s. But her face, oh, her lovely face was all Delaney’s. “You never forget sweets. You’re the bestest for sweet giving.”
Worth plopped himself on the sofa and folded his hands in his lap, a flawless embodiment of etiquette. “I shall behave like a gentleman whilst I beg for my treat.”
Winnie giggled and jammed her bottom right next to her brother’s. “Me, too. A perfect lady.” Then she ruined the statement by licking a spot of jam from her thumb.
Simon had to work to contain his amusement at the apprehensive look on Emma’s face. She obviously hadn’t been around children often. “What say you, Miss Breslin?”
Emma popped her head over the back of the sofa and blinked owlishly. “About?” She wobbled precariously, struggling to put on her slippers without anyone noticing they’d been taken off.
Worth tilted his head. “Oh, hello, Miss Emmaline. You need to tell Uncle Si to give us the candies he always carries. He’ll flip them around like a magician, if you ask him nice. Part of his gift. That and the dead ghosties. My gift is that I will someday make fire fly from my fingertips, like my father, the duke. I dream about doing it, so it must be so.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “A secret, but it means we both have gifts. It means we all have gifts.”
Emma’s gaze shot to Simon’s. Fire, she mouthed?
Later, he said with nothing more than a shake of his head.
The League had worried that the next generation would inherit supernatural abilities and, unfortunately, it appeared to be happening. Julian’s son, Lucien, touched objects and saw the past, as his father did. One of Finn’s daughters seemed to be a blocker, like her mother. And Worth…Worth dreamed of fires. News that had nearly destroyed the Duke of Ashcroft when he’d first realized it. Thrown him into a depression Simon had dreaded he wouldn’t recover from. The League had feared he would return to the opium dens, a place he’d frequented before his marriage, but he had not. His wife, Delaney, would never let that happen.
Consequently, Simon had decided not to have children. He’d been very careful in his relationships, most of those extremely short in nature, to ensure pregnancy did not result.
To parent a beloved child who conversed with the deceased seemed a greater nightmare than conversing with them yourself.
Seemed like a dreadful wager from the start.
Anyway, he’d never feel that blind obsession, reckless need. Overpowering yearning.
Julian and Finn had stressed the imperative often enough. Without love, a successful union was untenable. He supposed it made him a romantic, but he’d seen his brother’s marriages flourish, so he believed love was necessary. Furthermore, he had no title to offer. Nothing to offer except a dubious upbringing, a fictional history, an uncertain future. He was educated, thanks to Julian, and wealthy, thanks to Finn, who’d gifted him half the Blue Moon upon his majority.
His reputation, however, was in tatters. And his soul, in part, broken.
and…
The Duke of Ashcroft played better than her granny ever had, Emma decided as she half-listened to the duchess’s dance instructions and the duke’s meandering tune. Violin tucked against his collarbone, chin resting on the glossy wooden lip, he looked a prime piece standing there, body swaying as he moved through the song. One of those men who was big and broad but still somehow managed to look elegant.
A neat trick, that.
Rather like Simon and his flash of elegance.
To a degree that made her mouth water.
Simon was leaner than the duke but retained a muscular frame his fine clothing couldn’t hide. Lanky, even, a new word in her vocabulary, thanks to Dickens. Restless, his hands in constant motion. Reserved, his emotions sealed. However, she wasn’t fooled. He was passionate beneath that exterior he worked hard to polish smooth as glass. He’d shown his true self to her a few times. While jamming Jonesy’s face into the dirt and for a flaring, hot second when she’d spontaneously spoken to his ghost. Something about that gesture had struck him deeply.
In a place she didn’t think too many people had reached.
Emma peeked from the corner of her eye as the duchess gave her directions she didn’t for a moment hear.
Not when she could watch him.
Standing before the window, hands braced on the ledge, staring out at nothing of interest that she could see. People slinking down a busy London street. Overloaded carts, posh carriages, burdened hackneys. Coachmen in liveried attire. Folks in plain dress, folks in stylish. It wasn’t like it was dark and the lane lit with those incredible streetlamps one could stare at all night. He flipped a farthing between his fingers, defying gravity, not looking down. Muscle memory, the gypsies called it. An effort to calm himself, she’d come to believe. She’d seen hawkers at carnivals who couldn’t do what he could.
It made her wonder, in a mysterious little nook that lit up when she looked at Simon Alexander, what else he could do with those hands.
“He’ll forgive you. If you’re patient…and you play your cards right. As women for centuries have had to. Don’t feel it’s dishonest; it’s simply the mathematics of love.”
Emma flinched and turned to the duchess, her breath catching to realize she’d been caught ogling what accounted, in a distant, supernatural family way, to this woman’s brother. “Play my cards…”
With a groan, Delaney slid gracelessly into the chair her husband had directed a footman retrieve for her. The duke was the height of care and consideration with regard to his duchess, which Emma found a most adorable—and sickening—thing to watch. “He’s the sensitive one in this family. Julian, Finn, Humphrey, Sebastian, none as painstakingly constructed as Simon. As guarded. Still holding on to such a substantial slice of who he was before. So many secrets. Too many secrets. Finn and Julian worry about his struggle, like brothers should. But I”—Delaney took a sip of tea from the cup the duke had snapped his fingers and had superciliously delivered to her—“think he’ll talk to someone, when he finds the right someone. What he’s doing, with these women, I imagine doesn’t require much talking. And is only an effort that brings more loneliness, not takes it away. But men have to figure that out for themselves, now, don’t they? Uncomplicated creatures.”
“Forgive me for what?” Emma asked, the snag in her voice apparent. Anger and…understanding flooding out. Simon was scamp, a rogue, a bounder. And she’d been right in thinking he was upset with her. But she was upset, too. Nevertheless, if he trusted her enough to share his secrets, she’d likely be weak enough to fall right into that trap and share hers back. “What did I do?”
Delaney paused, the teacup halfway to her lips. “You left.”
Emma glanced over her shoulder to confirm the man they were discussing hadn’t moved from his contemplative spot by the window. “I couldn’t come back. My mother was ill, dying. And, then, when I could, after she passed, even with the Soul Catcher, I messed up, over and over. Arrived once before Simon was even born. The other time, in Oxfordshire, but he was a baby in London. Once, I even ended up in Scotland in the dead of winter.Horrible. And then…” Emma glanced at his gloves, still clutched in her hands. She’d lifted them to her nose in the privacy of her bedchamber this morning and breathed his scent into her soul. He hadn’t forgiven her—but he hadn’t waited, either. “I made it back. Five years after I left, maybe six.” She glanced into the duchess’s smoke-gray eyes, the scene coming back to her, a rough pinch to her heart. “There was a woman. Older. A countess or something close to it, I figured. I stepped into a performance I shouldn’t have, then stepped out as quickly as I could. Landed in the wrong year on the way back, which I fixed after a bit of experimentation.”
Stepped back—but not before he’d broken her heart. What she’d always wanted to share with him, those intimate things she’d seen other couples doing in dank alleys and hidden nooks of public houses. Saved herself to share with him. An experience Simon had thrown away on one of a thousand. Just another toff getting his dangly-bits off.
She’d vowed then and there to never come back.
About the author:
Award-winning author Tracy Sumner’s storytelling career began when she picked up a historical romance on a college beach trip, and she fondly blames LaVyrle Spencer for her obsession with the genre. She’s a recipient of the National Reader’s Choice, and her novels have been translated into Dutch, German, Portuguese and Spanish. She lived in New York, Paris and Taipei before finding her way back to the Lowcountry of South Carolina.
When not writing sizzling love stories about feisty heroines and their temperamental-but-entirely-lovable heroes, Tracy enjoys reading, snowboarding, college football (Go Tigers!), yoga, and travel. She loves to hear from romance readers!
- Her website: https://www.tracy-sumner.com/
- Her Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Tracysumnerauthor
- Newsletter (subscribers get the award-winning novella): https://www.tracy-sumner.com/
newsletter/ - Her reader’s group on FB “The Contrary Countesses”: https://www.facebook.com/groups/tracysumner
Thanks for the shout-out, Maryse! This series is a PASSION project for sure!
My favorite series is Angelique by Anne Golon. Historical romance are the best!
I haven’t read a HR yet, maybe this will be my first.
Sounds like a great series!!!! I love historical romance!
This sounds great! I do love a good highlander book, they are probably my favorite historical fiction.
Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase is my favorite historical romance.