Emily Larkin's Blog - Posts Tagged "trusting-miss-trentham"

Trusting Miss Trentham comes out next month, and I'd like you to meet the hero and heroine.

Letty is an heiress and she's received scores of proposals, but thanks to her Faerie godmother she can hear lies. As the book opens, she's about to receive yet another offer of marriage...

Letty braced herself for what was to come. For the past two weeks, Laurence Darlington had been doing a good impression of a man falling in love. It was one of the better impressions she’d seen this year, although not as good as Sir Charles Stanton’s. That had been masterful.

Laurence Darlington gazed ardently into her eyes. A very handsome man, Darlington. The most handsome of this year’s crop of fortune hunters. And up to his ears in debt.

“Miss Trentham,” Darlington said, emotion throbbing in his voice. “What I am about to say can surely come as no surprise to you.”

No. No surprise.

Letty heard the proposal with weary resignation. It was a pretty speech. Darlington wasn’t fool enough to call her beautiful; instead, he praised her character and her intelligence. Even so, his words resonated with falsehood. When he finished, he said passionately, “There is no one I would rather marry. No one! You are everything I could ever wish for in a wife.” The first half of that statement rang with a clear, bell-like tone. It was actually the truth. The second half gave a discordant clang in Letty’s ears.

“I lay my heart at your feet.”

Darlington was a good actor. He did almost look like a man who’d laid his heart at his lover’s feet.

Letty sends Darlington packing (of course) and then encounters a stranger.

“Miss Trentham?”

Letty glanced up. A man stood before her. He was tall, taller than Darlington, and broad in the shoulder. He was dressed for dancing in a tailcoat and knee breeches and silk stockings, but despite those clothes he looked as if he had no place at the Hammonds’ ball. No languid tulip of the ton, this man. He was whipcord lean, his skin tanned brown, his expression unsmiling. He looked almost dangerous.

Letty felt a slight flare of nervousness. She looked for the footman. Yes, he still manned the refreshment table.

The stranger is Major Icarus Reid, hero of the book, and he is dangerous. He also has a proposal for Letty ... but it's not marriage.

Happy New Year, everyone! Here's the second blog post introducing the hero and heroine of Trusting Miss Trentham.

As you learned in the previous post, Letitia Trentham is an heiress who has the ability to hear when people lie. Now it's time to learn a little bit about Icarus Reid, the hero...

Mr. Reid gave her a long, frowning stare and then said abruptly, “You have a reputation for being able to distinguish truth from lies.”

Letty tried not to stiffen. “Some people believe I can.” She said it with a smile of amusement, as if she thought it a joke.

Mr. Reid didn’t return the smile. “Can you?”

It wasn’t the first time Letty had been asked this question. She’d learned to turn it aside with a jest, with a lie. But something about Mr. Reid made that impossible. His eyes were intent on her face. They were an extremely pale shade of gray, almost silver. She had an odd sense that his gaze was razor-sharp, penetrating skin and bone. Her awareness of him became even stronger—his tension, his exhaustion. There is something very wrong with this man.

“Sometimes,” Letty said, and heard a clang in her ears at the lie. “Sit down, Mr. Reid. Tell me what it is you wish to know the truth of.”

Reid hesitated, and then pulled one of the gilded chairs out of line and sat at an angle to her. He moved like a soldier—precise, controlled movements with no graceful flourishes.

Once seated, he was silent for several seconds, then spoke tersely: “There are two men here in London—I served with them in Portugal—one of them passed information to the French.”

Letty blinked, hearing the truth in his words.

“I’ve spoken with them, and they both say they didn’t, but someone did, and they were the only ones who knew other than the general and myself. The general didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t tell anyone. One of these two men lied, and I can’t tell which one. Would you be able to?”

Letty released her breath slowly and sat back in her chair. “Perhaps.” Clang. “If one of these men is a traitor, what will you do?”

“I don’t know.”

Clang.

“That, Mr. Reid, is a lie.”

Hope flared in his silver eyes, flared on his gaunt face. He leaned forward. “You can tell.”

“What will you do to him?” Letty repeated.

“Probably kill him.” This time, Reid spoke the truth.

Tiny hairs pricked up on the back of Letty’s neck. She glanced at the footman, stationed at the refreshment table, and back at Reid. Common sense urged her to push to her feet and walk from him as quickly as she could—run, if she had to. This man was dangerous.

So, there you have it, a glimpse of the hero through the heroine's eyes.

Happy New Year everyone!

[Image courtesy of the Rijksmuseum public domain collection.]

Here's the last post in this wee series about the hero and heroine of Trusting Miss Trentham.

Letitia Trentham has the unique ability to hear when people lie--and Icarus Reid knows this. It's why he's sought her out.

But being with someone who can hear every lie is uncomfortable at times--especially when you're trying to hide a secret. And Icarus has a huge secret to hide.

To keep his secret, he develops a strategy when talking to Letty Trentham...



[In this scene, Icarus has just had a colossal nightmare and Letty has gone into his bedchamber to wake him.]

“You’re not all right, are you?”

“It was just a nightmare,” Icarus said, avoiding the question. “Everyone has nightmares.”

“You had one last night, too, didn’t you?”

The shudders were dying to shivering. “You should go,” Icarus said, hauling the bedclothes up around his shoulders. His voice was hoarse. Had he been screaming again? Was that why she was here? “I apologize for waking you.”

“You do that a lot, you know. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.” Miss Trentham sat on the end of his bed.

“What?” Icarus discovered that his face was damp. Tears, or sweat? He wiped his cheeks hastily.

“You don’t answer the question I’ve asked. Is it because you don’t want to tell the truth?”

Yes. “You should go,” Icarus said again. “It’s not proper for you to be in my bedchamber.”

Miss Trentham gave him a look that told him she’d noticed the evasion. “Do you have nightmares often, Mr. Reid?”

Every night. “Everyone has nightmares once in a while. Please go, Miss Trentham. Before someone finds you here.” He couched the request as an order.

As you can see, Icarus's strategy is avoidance and evasion -- but sometimes the things people won't say are just as revealing as what they will say.

[Image courtesy of the Rijksmuseum public domain collection.]

Today the fourth book in the Baleful Godmother series, Trusting Miss Trentham, hits the shelves!

Release day is always as nerve wracking as it is exciting, and today it's a little more nerve wracking than usual because I love this novel so much. Trusting Miss Trentham is very much a book of the heart, and it's also a bit unusual--partly because of the heroine, who is very strong-minded, but mostly because of the hero, who is in a very dark place. I hope readers will love him as much as I do!

Here's the blurb:

She's more than just an heiress . . .

Letitia Trentham is noteworthy for three reasons. One, she’s extremely wealthy. Two, she can distinguish truth from lies. Three, she’s refused every man who’s ever proposed to her.

Until Letty receives a proposal she can’t turn down.

Icarus Reid barely survived the Battle of Vimeiro. He lives for one thing—to find the man who betrayed him to the French. He doesn’t want to marry Miss Trentham; he wants to use her talent for uncovering lies.

Suddenly, Letty finds herself breaking the rules, pretending to be someone she’s not, and doing things a lady would never do. But her hunt for the truth may uncover more than one secret—including the secret that haunts Icarus day and night. The secret he intends to take to his grave…

If you read Trusting Miss Trentham , please tell me what you think. (I mean that!) I'd love to know what readers think of Letty and Icarus and Icarus's dark secret.

Happy New Year -- and happy reading!

Emily