By
Beverley Eikli
Remember your first love? The one you loved with such passion it bordered on insanity?
Today we can give way to our feelings, and - generally - not carry the damage for the rest of our lives.
For a Regency debutante, however, 'letting go' would be a huge error of judgement. In an age where sex outside marriage was taboo, a debutante who'd 'strayed' would never be readmitted into society, should her sins be discovered. She'd be regarded as impure, and a woman with a 'past'.
For Adelaide, my heroine in The Maid of Milan, the only way to escape such a fate was to invent 'a past'. One that would be acceptable to the respectable, honourable MP who courts Adelaide when she's mourning her lost love.
Here's a scene at the end of the first chapter, when Adelaide gets a nasty shock.
The
following scene takes place after Adelaide has decided she cannot be present
for the visit of her former lover and the man who was her husband’s childhood
friend. Here, she is suddenly caught off-guard.
Mrs Henley knocked and they entered as Tristan rose, his
forced smile replaced by one of pleasure when he saw Adelaide. He took a step
forward, extending his hand for hers, the flare in his eyes as intense as the
day she consented to be his wife, and Adelaide felt an unexpected jolt somewhere in the region of her heart, her
determination bolstered to bridge the distance between them, despite the oppressive
presence of her mother, always a footfall away,it seemed.
‘Tristan, I—’
She stopped, pulling back as a warm, fragrant breeze stirred
the papers on his desk. The French doors from the garden had been thrown open,
and the heavy tread of Hessian boots upon the wooden floor pulled their
attention towards the muslin curtains which swirled in eddies, silhouetting the
shape of a man: a slender man of middle height – the only ordinary thing about him – dressed in a black cutaway coat and buff
breeches, who materialised before them like a young demigod, smouldering with
an enthusiasm he did nothing to inhibit, for good manners were always in
abeyance to the passion that ruled James’s life.
‘Tristan!’ Tossing his low-crowned beaver upon the ottoman,
James strode forward, arms outstretched, his voice taut with emotion.
Nearly four years, it had been, and from first
impressions it was as if nothing had changed. Inky curls framed his delicately
boned face and his eyes were like coals burning the fire within. No, nothing
had changed, she could see, for James was still like a coiled spring, eager for
love, eager for life, as ready to give as he was to take …
without discernment.
Adelaide froze with nowhere to go, tense with premonition
while shafts of sensation, painful and familiar, tore through her. Could this
really be happening? Unwillingly, her gaze was fixed upon James’s profile, dusted with dark
stubble, tapering up to angular cheekbones delineated with the slivers of
sideburns sported by the fashionable Corinthians of the day.
In four years he could not be so unchanged whereas she
…
She touched her face, her heart. She was a mere husk
of what she’d once been. Tristan knew nothing of the passions that burned
within her when her heart was engaged – and she didn’t know if he ever would, for suddenly she
felt reduced to nothingness by the force of James’s personality.
She’d been his equal once – a woman of fire and
vitality – and she’d loved him with a savagery that her mother claimed bordered
on insanity. She’d been a child, thrust into adulthood by this charismatic older man. Married older
man. But as she looked between the two men before her it was Tristan who made
her heart beat faster, as much with
longing as with fear of what he would think of her if
he knew the truth.
The Maid of Milan Blurb
After three years
of marriage, Adelaide has fallen in love with the handsome, honourable husband
who nurtured her through her darkest hours.
Now Adelaide’s
former lover, the passionate poet from whose arms she was torn by her
family during their illicit liaison in Milan four years previously has
returned, a celebrity due to the success of his book The Maid of Milan.
High society is
as desperate to discover the identity of his ‘muse’ as Adelaide is to protect
her newfound love and her husband’s political career.
Author Bio
Beverley Eikli is the author of
eight historical romances.
She has worked as a journalist,
magazine editor, a safari lodge manager in the Okavango, and an airborne
geophysical survey operator on contracts around the world.
Beverley wrote her first romance
at seventeen, but drowning her heroine on the last page was symptomatic of the problems she grappled with during her 23-year journey towards
publication. She did however stumble upon lasting romance, herself, when the handsome
Norwegian bush pilot she met around a camp fire in Botswana whisked her off
into a world of adventure, encompassing 12 countries in twenty years. A romantic adventure that’s
lasted to the present day.
Recently Beverley received her third
nomination from Australian Romance Readers for Favourite
Historical Romance with her suspenseful Napoleonic espionage Romance The
Reluctant Bride.
She now teaches in the Department
of Professional Writing & Editing at Victoria University,
Melbourne.
Beverley writes under the name Beverley
Oakley for more sensual stories.
