Hello and welcome to “At First Sight Saturday.” Today’s guest is author Caroline Warfield, who gives us a ‘first sight’ scene from her novella, The Tender Flood, one of the stories in Storm & Shelter A Bluestocking Belles with Friends Collection, available now for 99 cent pre-order. The Tender Flold, introduces us to hero, Zach Newell, and heroine, Patience Abney. Be sure to leave a comment to let Carolineknow what you think of her excerpt and characters.
Excerpt: A wagon careened into the relative shelter of the stableyard with rather more speed than was wise, two boys in the box. The driver, a sodden hat pulled down over his eyes, appeared young and inexperienced.
Zach hurried from the stall as swiftly as he was able, limping on his crutch and waving them into the carriage house and out of the rain. Two things struck him as the wagon lurched to a halt in the shelter of the barn. The wagon’s cargo stirred and shifted under an old patchwork quilt, and the driver, who scrambled down and swept off the ugly hat, was no boy. No lad had eyes so warm and brown, lashes so long, or so glorious a fall of hair; she held him transfixed.
“I need to talk to Mr. Brewster!” The tiny bit of a woman cast wide, frightened eyes up at him as if he could produce the innkeeper. “The road collapsed above town; it gave way and slid down just as we passed.”
“If we were two minutes later, we’d’ve all been tossed into the sea!” The boy who sat with her jumped down beside her. This one, definitely a lad, looked to be fourteen or so.
Mallet set a hand on Zach’s shoulder. “I’ll alert the innkeeper while Jamie tries to wake a groom. You do what you can for the lady and her, er, cargo.”
Zach nodded without looking at his departing passengers, his attention still transfixed on the woman: rum, exhaustion, and a pair of deep brown eyes making it hard to think. One word finally wormed its way into his consciousness. “All?”
He followed her gaze to where the boy pulled back the wet blanket over the bed of the wagon. Five pairs of eyes stared back at Zach, five boys soaked to the skin, and shaken with terror.
“Are we safe now, Miss Patience?” one asked, his voice quivering.
“We are indeed safe, Walter, as I promised we would be,” the woman said with confidence. Only Zach heard her add “Thank God,” under her breath.
About The Tender Flood: Neither battle nor loss of his leg destroyed Zachery Newell. Working as a coachman, he tries to build a life in spite of his injuries while he plans for the sort of life he knew in childhood, happy and content above his father’s print shop. However, when a woman races out of the storm and into the stable yard of The Queen’s Barque with a wagon full of small boys, puppies, and a bag of books, he is enchanted.
Dismissed by a charity school, Patience Abney struggles to create a school that gives every boy a happy and productive life on her own. Now the roof has caved in. Though she managed to get her boys to the safety of an inn, she has no idea how she will rebuild.
Zach knows Patience, the granddaughter of an earl, is far above the touch of shopkeeper’s son. He tries to keep his distance, but when the two of them make their way across the flooded marsh to her damaged school, in search of a missing boy, attraction grows toward passion, complicating everything.
About Storm & Shelter: When a storm blows off the North Sea and slams into the village of Fenwick on Sea, the villagers prepare for the inevitable: shipwreck, flood, land slips, and stranded travelers. The Queen’s Barque Inn quickly fills with the injured, the devious, and the lonely—lords, ladies, and simple folk; spies, pirates, and smugglers all trapped together. Intrigue crackles through the village, and passion lights up the hotel. One storm, eight authors, eight heartwarming novellas.
Storm & Shelter is available for pre-order now at a reduced price. The collection will be released at its normal price on April 13, 2021.
About Caroline: Award winning author of family centered romance set in the Regency and Victorian eras, Caroline Warfield has been many things: traveler, librarian, poet, raiser of children, bird watcher, Internet and Web services manager, conference speaker, indexer, tech writer, genealogist—even a nun. She reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows where she lets her characters lead her to adventures in England and the far-flung corners of the British Empire. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart.
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