Authors: Love Is in the Heir
“Well, if Pinkerton cannot mend it, I certainly cannot.” The earl continued nursing his glass of cordial, clearly not taking her meaning.
Garnet finally interceded. “My lord, you have the key to the lock. In your pocket, sir.”
“I do? But I don’t recall putting a key—
oh
!” The earl slammed his cordial to the table and took Lady Devonsfield’s hand. Together, they raced, as best they could given their ages and infirmities, out into the passage, then above stairs for a bit of privacy.
It was an hour later, and the earl and his countess still had not descended from the bedchambers above, when there was a knock at the door.
Mr. Edgar rose from the settee where he sat beside his doting wife and answered the door. This, Hannah surmised, was done strictly out of habit, for a most efficient replacement manservant had just been employed at Number One Royal Crescent.
Everyone in the drawing room looked up as a veritable crowd of visitors entered the room.
Hannah jumped up. “Good heavens! Look, ’tis Meredith and Lord Lansing.” Hannah ran forward and hugged her old friend Meredith.
Lady Viola Edgar rose and started for Meredith when the girl’s sisters, Eliza and Grace, swept into the room, trailed by two toddling children, and their handsome husbands, Magnus MacKinnon and Lord Hawksmoor. The old woman clapped her hands with joy. “All of you here at once. Only one pair missing—”
“No, no.” Mrs. Penny entered from the passageway, leading her daughter Jenny, and Lady Viola Edgar’s grandson Callum, and in his arms, her great-grandson James. “We’ve got them all now, my lady.”
Lady Viola Edgar was so completely overcome that she did not know whether to laugh . . . or cry. And so she did the next best thing. She hurried to the staircase.
“Letitia, come at once, Sister! We have visitors—the whole family is here at once.”
When she reentered the room, Eliza approached her first. “We are all dreadfully sorry we were unable to attend the wedding, for it sounded the event of the Bath season to be sure.”
“Darling, the wedding plans were drawn together so quickly, we didn’t anticipate that you would be able to come. But how lovely that you came now!” She gave her grandniece a tight hug.
There was a sound, not unlike two draft horses taking the stair treads; then, a quite disheveled Lady Devonsfield followed by the earl, entered the drawing room to greet the family and to introduce her new husband.
The ladies’ plans were announced. Both women and their husbands would live together at Hanover Square for six months of the year—during the season obviously. Then, Lady Viola and Edgar would reside at Royal Crescent for the other half of the year, while Lady Devonsfield and the earl lived at Devonsfield. It was the perfect solution, for the sisters, who could not bear to be apart, and for their husbands, who needed a modicum of marital independence.
Mrs. Penny set aside the tray of cordial crystals, for this was a true celebration after all, and brought out the cut-crystal glasses from Ireland and filled them with the Feathertons’ last two bottles of contraband French wine from Champagne.
She circled around the room, passing every adult a glass, then boldly took up the last one herself.
Hannah raised her glass in the air and turned a soft eye to her husband, Griffin. “To everlasting love.”
“Hear, hear! To love!” the party cheered as one.
The elderly sisters joined hands and beamed. Here they stood in the bosom of their family. Their hearts were full, and now their lives were complete, for never before had they felt such love and happiness.
Kennymare Cove, Cornwall
H
annah rubbed her eyes against the morning light streaming in the cottage window and snuggled closer to her sleeping husband. With a pleased sigh, she ran her fingertips lightly over the crisp mat of hair on his bare chest as she nestled closer still to kiss him.
Though they were pronounced husband and wife a full month hence, Griffin had been summoned to Greenwich, as a royal appointee, to present his findings on the discovery of a new comet. Only now had he been able to whisk his bride away from the city for a few days before having to return to Greenwich and to begin his work cataloging nebulae.
Surprisingly enough, they had not been truly alone until last eve.
Hannah’s heart had been so full, she had not believed it was possible to feel such happiness—until last night.
Had Griffin not sworn to the contrary, Hannah would have believed another fireball had passed overhead.
With that thought burned into her mind, Hannah ran her hand down over Griffin’s chest and beneath the coverlet.
Griffin grinned before opening his eyes. “Good morning, my love,” he whispered to her.
“Will it be? Do you promise? Will it be as good as your ‘good evening’ was?” Hannah widened her eyes with feigned innocence, as she pressed herself against him and twined her leg around his.
Griffin laughed softly and pulled her atop him.
Hannah braced her feet against his, then pushed up to cup his face between her palms and kiss him deeply. Then she stopped and lifted her mouth from his. She felt something at the end of the bed and wriggled her toes beneath the covers.
There was a sizable bump on his ankle.
“What is that, Griffin?”
“Oh, that.” He sought to distract her with another kiss. “’Tis nothing.”
“Have you been injured?” Hannah stared with all concern into Griffin’s eyes, but he merely arched his eyebrows, in a close approximation of her earlier expression of innocence.
Hannah pushed off Griffin and tore back the coverlet from their naked bodies. She crawled down the mattress and touched a white-mottled raised bit of skin. “Griffin?” She turned her gaze upward at him.
“Yes, darling?”
“Griffin, my love, this looks suspiciously like . . . a birthmark.”
“Does it?”
Hannah pounced atop his body and pinned him. “Do not toy with me, sir. You know what I am speaking of. You do!”
Griffin chuckled at her persistence. “That’s because it is—or rather was. I had it from birth. Faded though, as I grew older. Barely noticeable now.”
Hannah widened her eyes. “So you
were
firstborn!”
“If Mrs. Hopshire is correct in her memory, I would have to say . . . yes.”
“Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t Garnet for that matter?”
“Garnet wanted the earldom badly.” Griffin exhaled slowly. “And, I, well, I had no desire to become an earl, spending my days and evenings in pursuit of amusement. I wanted nothing more than to study the stars . . . and you.” He laid his hands behind her neck and back and rolled her to the mattress and moved over her. He kissed her deeply, and a sigh fell from her lips.
“Now, let me observe that heavenly body of yours.”
Many works of fiction are inspired by true events and characters, and
Love Is in the Heir
is certainly one of them. I’m not referring to the “ripped from the headlines” sort of inspiration. I mean the tidbits of historical fact that start an author thinking,
What if . . . ?
The Comet Encke, the second to have been found to have a periodic orbit, inspired the framework for this novel. The comet was spotted in 1786, 1795, 1805, and 1818, but until twenty-seven-year-old Johann Franz Encke worked out the orbit and correctly predicted the comet’s return in 1822, no one knew that all the recorded sightings were of the same comet. The discovery enthralled England’s society, which led me to wonder what would happen if a renowned astronomer predicted that a comet was to orbit low, directly over Bath? What would Bath society—and the Featherton sisters—do? Why, anticipate . . . and celebrate, of course. And so the Bath Comet was born.
Now, one might think, while reading this story, that frail Miss Caroline Herschel is likely a work of fiction as well. After all, I love quirky characters, and she certainly is one. She stood only four feet three inches tall, was a trained performance soprano, a brilliant mathematician and astronomer, and at seventy-two years of age was still sweeping the heavens with her telescopes. Even more unlikely, Miss Caroline Herschel was one of England’s foremost authorities on comets. She sounds like fiction, but she was very real.
Yes, authors of fiction tread the line between reality and fantasy in the creation of their worlds, their characters, and their stories. But this blend of research and imagination is what makes writing stories like
Love Is in the Heir
, stories that readers tell us they love, so rewarding.
KATHRYN CASKIE
has long been a devotee of history and things of old. So it came as no surprise to her family when she took a career detour off the online superhighway and began writing historical romances full-time.
With a degree in communications and a background in marketing, advertising and journalism, she has written professionally for television, radio, magazines, and newspapers in and around the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.
She lives in Virginia in a two-hundred-year-old Quaker home nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains with her greatest sources of inspiration, her husband and two young daughters.
Readers may contact Kathryn at her Web site:
www.kathryncaskie.com.
Where authors give you the inside scoop!
What could an author of historical romances and an author of contemporary vampire fiction possibly have in common? We find out when authors Kathryn Caskie and Robin T. Popp chat online about their books.
Robin T. Popp:
Do you know that the hero of
Seduced by the Night,
Dirk Adams, was never intended to be a long-term character and end up with his own story? When I first created him in
Out of the Night,
he was supposed to be like one of the extras on
Star Trek
—killed off in the first fifteen minutes of the show.
Kathryn Caskie:
You mean the guy in the red shirt with the landing party, right?Don’t tell anyone, but I grew up watching
Star Trek
.
Robin T. Popp:
Me, too. I loved that show. So, what about in
Love is in the Heir
(on sale now)? Any “red shirts” turned heroes?
Kathryn Caskie:
No red shirts, but over the course of the book my hero did split into two characters. You see, my heroes are usually bad boys, but Griffin, the hero of
Love is in the Heir,
couldn’t be. Problem was, no matter how hard I tried to keep him in line, his wicked side kept showing up, making my heroine hate him. Then my heroine thought, it was almost like he was two different men. And that is exactly what he became: two separate people. The good twin, Griffin, and the rakish twin, Garnet, who are both pretending to be the same man.
Robin T. Popp:
I foresee many interesting situations.
Kathryn Caskie:
It’s especially bad when Griffin tells her he loves her and wants to marry her, and they make love. Then the next day, she runs into the rakish twin who acts like it never happened. She thinks she’s fallen for the oldest trick in a rake’s book.
Robin T. Popp:
Why are Griffin and Garnet pretending to be the same man?
Kathryn Caskie:
There is this law called primogeniture. The eldest inherits everything—titles, houses, money—but if no one knows which twin was born first, meaning no clear heir, the Crown can reclaim it all. The ailing earl in my story doesn’t want that to happen when he dies so he makes a deal with the twins. The twin to marry a woman of quality first will be named “firstborn.” This is all pretty illegal, so the bride hunt has to remain a secret.
Robin T. Popp:
Ah, secrets, lies, and deceptions. In
Seduced by the Night,
I have a similar situation when Beth (the heroine) believes Dirk is something he isn’t. She’s a biochemist and vampires are trying to kidnap her because they want her to duplicate the chupacabra venom that turns humans into vampires—they plan to sell “immortality” on the black market. So Dirk, as her bodyguard, is trying to protect her without her knowing that he, himself, is a changeling—half-human and half-vampire.
Kathryn Caskie:
Griffin’s dilemma is that he wants to tell the heroine everything, but he can’t because he doesn’t want to betray his brother’s trust. It’s a case of honor and integrity versus love.
Robin T. Popp:
Dirk faces a similar choice. If Beth discovered the truth, she’d be terrified of him. This is further complicated because Beth is engaged to another man and while honor dictates that Dirk keep his emotional distance from her, his heart demands otherwise.
Kathryn Caskie:
I wouldn’t have thought our stories could be so different and yet share so much common ground—two books about deception and dual identities.
Robin T. Popp:
Tough issues to overcome, especially in a romance story.
Kathryn Caskie:
But as you say, our books are romances, so our characters will live happily ever after.
Want more Regency-set romance? You’ll LOVE these titles!!!
Julie Anne Long
“A born storyteller.”
—Romantic Times BOOKClub Magazine
BEAUTY AND THE SPY
0-446-61686-9
TO LOVE A THIEF
0-446-61426-2
THE RUNAWAY DUKE
0-446-61425-4
Kathryn Caskie
“Her writing sparkles.”
—
CATHY MAXWELL
,
New York Times
bestselling author
A LADY’S GUIDE TO RAKES
0-446-61609-5
LADY IN WAITING
0-446-61424-6
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
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Pamela Britton
“The kind of historical romance that readers
dream of discovering.”