It's a book blast and the book featured is The Likelihood of Lucy by Jenny Holiday. You'll want to comment. If you do, you're entered to win $25 Amazon gift card. Sounds cool, doesn't it?
THE LIKELIHOOD OF LUCY
by Jenny
Holiday
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Trevor Bailey is on
the cusp of opening the greatest hotel in London. His days as a gutter snipe
are behind him, as he enjoys a life of wealth, society, and clandestine assignments
as a spy in the service of His Majesty. Until one tumultuous night churns up
the past he'd long left behind...
Turned out by her
employer for her radical beliefs, Lucy Greenleaf reaches out to the man who was
once her most beloved friend. She never expected that the once-mischievous
Trevor would be so handsome and gentleman-like and neither can deny the instant
attraction.
But Lucy's reformer
ways pose a threat to the hotel's future and his duties as a spy. Now Trevor
must choose between his new life and the woman he's always loved…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And now an excerpt:
“How do you know if you want to marry someone?” Lucy watched
Catharine’s eyes for signs of shock. Still, better not to be too specific.
“Hypothetically speaking, I mean.”
Catharine tilted her head and examined Lucy quizzically,
making no mention of the abrupt nature of the query—the tea had only just been
poured and the footman had hardly got the door closed behind him before Lucy
unleashed the ambush. “How do you know if you want to marry someone? A good
question. If you have options—and unlike most women, you do—it’s quite easy.”
That’s what she’d been afraid of.
“You should marry someone who makes you feel a very great
deal of discomfort,” Catharine declared. “At least initially.”
Lucy swallowed the very unladylike string of curses
accreting in her throat. “This discomfort you speak of. What does it signify?
It would seem to stand in contradiction to what you said in our earlier
conversations. You said that a woman should look for a man who concerns himself
with his wife’s pleasure. Are not pleasure and discomfort opposing states of
being?”
“No, they are not.” Catharine must have heard Lucy’s silent
plea for an explanation, because she grinned. “I know it may seem that way. But
in my experience, the degree of discomfort—misery, even—a man makes a woman
feel is directly proportional to the amount of pleasure he can bring her.”
“But why must everything be so extreme?” Lucy cried. Then,
embarrassed that her question had very nearly become a wail, she took a deep
breath and tried again. “Is there no place in this world for more moderate
sentiments? Contentment, say? Equanimity and intellectual compatibility? I’m
talking about a feeling of being adequately matched. What is so wrong with
that?”
“Nothing, of course. Many successful, pleasant marriages are
built on just such a foundation. And I would never counsel a woman against
accepting a man who brought those qualities to her life.” Lucy was about to
protest that Catharine contradicted herself, when the older woman let
her teacup fall to its saucer with a clatter and looked
intently at Lucy. “If she had no other options.”
Lucy slumped against the back of the settee, and when, after
a few seconds, she didn’t speak, Catharine moved from her chair to sit beside
her. “And let me make myself perfectly clear. We’ve been talking about
pleasure, and given my reputation—and what you’ve seen of me in our colorful
conversations with Emily—you probably assume that we’re speaking of the sort of
pleasure found in the marital bed.” Lucy started to protest. She’d heard enough
already—her
worst suspicions had been confirmed. But Catharine waved
away her objection. “We are, of course. And heaven knows Emily likes to tease
me about my, ah, fondness for that kind
of pleasure. But that’s not really what I’m talking about.”
“What are you talking about, then?” Lucy whispered, fearing
the pronouncement was about to get worse.
“Love. I’m talking about love. I shy away from the word,
generally.” She shrugged. “I’m like a man that way. But what I’m trying to say
is that if you have any choice in the matter, you should marry someone you’re
in love with.
**
“Stop cleaning,” Trevor said.
Lucy turned. “And a good morning to you, too.” Another
precept she’d always tried to instill in her pupils—a false show of confidence
could sometimes lead to the real thing. Not that she was preaching affectation.
Never that. Mrs. Wollstonecraft—her guiding light in all things—would not
approve.
He did not stop scowling. “You are a guest here. Guests
don’t clean.”
“Well somebody has to. Beds don’t make themselves.”
“Why make them at all?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t make mine. Why bother? You’re just going to get
into it again later.”
She would have laughed, but he seemed perfectly in earnest.
And she had to admit there was some logic to his position. Still, she felt
compelled to defend herself. “A servant worth his or her salt would not be able
to look at an unmade bed and not remedy it. You have no servants at all?”
“I’ll have an army of them when the hotel opens—a hiring spree
is my next major task, in fact, and not one I’m looking forward to. For now, I
have a woman who comes in for half days and cooks. But no one enters my private
apartments. Ever.”
“I did.”
“Yes.” He moved to the bed and threw the counterpane back,
undoing her work. “And you’re not a servant.”
She had to cover her shock at his deliberate mussing of the
bed. “That’s debatable. The fate of the governess is to be forever lodged in
the limbo between the household and its staff. She is not quite a servant, not
quite a member of the family. Mary Wollstonecraft once wrote, ‘A teacher at a
school is only a kind of upper servant, who has more work than the menial ones.
A governess to young ladies is equally disagreeable.’” Clamping her mouth shut,
she checked herself. There
was no need to start up with Mary. That was exactly what had
landed her in this mess to begin with. It’s just that Mary’s words were always
so close to Lucy’s heart. It was difficult to censor herself sometimes. But
that’s exactly what she had to learn to do if she was lucky enough to secure
another position.
“Be that as it may, at the Jade, you are a guest.” He set a
package on the unmade bed. “Put this on, and then we’re going out. I’ll meet
you in the kitchen.”
He was gone before she could answer.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
About the Author:
Jenny Holiday
started writing in fourth grade, when her awesome hippie teacher, between
sessions of Pete Seeger singing and anti-nuclear power plant letter writing,
gave the kids notebooks and told them to write stories. Most of Jenny's
featured poltergeist, alien invasions, or serial killers who managed to murder
everyone except her and her mom. She showed early promise as a romance writer,
though, because nearly every story had a happy ending: fictional Jenny woke up
to find that the story had been a dream, and that her best friend, father, and
sister had not, in fact, been axe-murdered. From then on, she was always
writing, often in her diary, where she liked to decorate her declarations of
existential angst with nail polish teardrops. Eventually she channelled her
penchant for scribbling into a more useful format. After picking up a PhD in
urban geography, she became a professional writer, and has spent many years
promoting research at a major university, which allows her to become an
armchair astronomer/historian/particle physicist, depending on the day.
Eventually, she decided to try her hand again at happy endings--minus the
bloodbaths. You can follow her twitter accounts @jennyholi and @TropeHeroine or
visit her on the web at jennyholiday.com.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennyholidaybooks
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/jennyholiday
Get your copy here:
http://www.amazon.com/Likelihood-Entangled-Historical-Regency-Reformers-ebook/dp/B00WRGWHT2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1431466263&sr=8-1&keywords=the+likelihood+of+lucy
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-likelihood-of-lucy-jenny-holiday/1121815835?ean=9781633752825
4 comments:
Thanks for hosting!
Thanks for having me, Wendi! :)
Gotta love those early women who believed women were equal to men without them, we'd currently listen silently to jokes about women being chained to the stove or bed while wondering if something better existed.
Right on, Morgan!
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