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The Virtuous Widow
Part of the Mills & Boon 100th Birthday Collection
Ellie Carmichael was an heiress when she married, but her husband drank and gambled away her money. Now he is dead, and all Ellie has is their three-year-old daughter and her reputation. But when a handsome stranger turns up on her door on a perilously cold night, Ellie must put her virtue on the line…
Ellie Carmichael was an heiress when she married, but her husband drank and gambled away her money. Now he is dead, and all Ellie has is their three-year-old daughter and her reputation. But when a handsome stranger turns up on her door on a perilously cold night, Ellie must put her virtue on the line…
89 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 17, 2008
7 people are currently reading
148 people want to read
About the author
Anne Gracie
95 books1,528 followersI've always loved stories. Family legend has it that I used to spend hours playing in the sand pit, with a dog on either side of me and Rocka the horse leaning over me, his head just touching my shoulder, while I told them stories. I have to say, dogs and horses are great audiences, apart from their tendency to drool occasionally. But people are even nicer.
In case you imagine we were a filthy rich horse-owning family, let me assure you we weren't. The horse period was a time when my parents entered a "let's-be-self-sufficient" phase, so we had a horse, but no electricity and all our water came from the rain tank.
As well as the horse and dogs, we had 2 cows (Buttercup and Daisy and one of them always had a calf), a sheep (Woolly,) goats (Billy and Nanny) dozens of ducks, chooks, and a couple of geese, a pet bluetongue lizard and a huge vegie patch. I don't know how my mother managed, really, because both she and Dad taught full time, but she came home and cooked on a wood stove and did all the laundry by hand, boiling the clothes and sheets in a big copper kettle. Somehow, we were always warm, clean, well fed and happy. She's pretty amazing, my mum.
Once I learned to read, I spent my days outside playing with the animals (I include my brother and 2 sisters here) and when inside I read. For most of my childhood we didn't have TV, so books have always been a big part of my life. Luckily our house was always full of them. Travel was also a big part of my childhood. My parents had itchy feet. We spent a lot of time driving from one part of Australia to another, visiting relatives or friends or simply to see what was there. I've lived in Scotland, Malaysia and Greece. We travelled through Europe in a caravan and I'd swum most of the famous rivers in Europe by the time I was eight.
This is me and my classmates in Scotland. I am in the second front row, in the middle, to the right of the girl in the dark tunic.
Sounds like I was raised by gypsies, doesn't it? I was even almost born in a tent --Mum, Dad and 3 children were camping and one day mum left the tent and went to hospital to have me. But in fact we are a family of chalkies (Australian slang for teachers)- and Dad was a school principal during most of my life. And I am an expert in being "the new girl" having been to 6 different schools in 12 years.The last 4 years, however, were in the same high school and I still have my 2 best friends from that time.
No matter where I lived, I read. I devoured whatever I could get my hands on -- old Enid Blyton and Mary Grant Bruce books, old schoolboys annuals. I learned history by reading Rosemary Sutcliffe, Henry Treece and Georgette Heyer. I loved animal books -- Elyne Mitchell's Silver Brumby books and Mary Patchett and Finn the Wolf Hound. And then I read Jane Austen and Dickens and Mary Stewart and Richard Llewellyn and Virginia Woolf and EF Benson and Dick Francis and David Malouf and Patrick White and Doris Lessing and PD James and...the list is never ending.
This is me posing shamelessly on a glacier in New Zealand.
This is me in Greece with my good friend Fay in our village outfits. The film went a funny colour, but you get the idea. I'm the one in the pink apron.
I escaped from my parents, settled down and went to university.To my amazement I became a chalkie myself and found a lot of pleasure in working with teenagers and later, adults. I taught English and worked as a counsellor and helped put on plays and concerts and supervised camps and encouraged other people to write but never did much myself. It took a year of backpacking around the world to find that my early desire to write hadn't left me, it had just got buried under a busy and demanding job.
I wrote my first novel on notebooks bought in Quebec, Spain, Greece and Indonesia. That story never made it out of the notebooks, but I'd been bitten by the writing bug.
My friends and I formed a band called Platform Souls a
In case you imagine we were a filthy rich horse-owning family, let me assure you we weren't. The horse period was a time when my parents entered a "let's-be-self-sufficient" phase, so we had a horse, but no electricity and all our water came from the rain tank.
As well as the horse and dogs, we had 2 cows (Buttercup and Daisy and one of them always had a calf), a sheep (Woolly,) goats (Billy and Nanny) dozens of ducks, chooks, and a couple of geese, a pet bluetongue lizard and a huge vegie patch. I don't know how my mother managed, really, because both she and Dad taught full time, but she came home and cooked on a wood stove and did all the laundry by hand, boiling the clothes and sheets in a big copper kettle. Somehow, we were always warm, clean, well fed and happy. She's pretty amazing, my mum.
Once I learned to read, I spent my days outside playing with the animals (I include my brother and 2 sisters here) and when inside I read. For most of my childhood we didn't have TV, so books have always been a big part of my life. Luckily our house was always full of them. Travel was also a big part of my childhood. My parents had itchy feet. We spent a lot of time driving from one part of Australia to another, visiting relatives or friends or simply to see what was there. I've lived in Scotland, Malaysia and Greece. We travelled through Europe in a caravan and I'd swum most of the famous rivers in Europe by the time I was eight.
This is me and my classmates in Scotland. I am in the second front row, in the middle, to the right of the girl in the dark tunic.
Sounds like I was raised by gypsies, doesn't it? I was even almost born in a tent --Mum, Dad and 3 children were camping and one day mum left the tent and went to hospital to have me. But in fact we are a family of chalkies (Australian slang for teachers)- and Dad was a school principal during most of my life. And I am an expert in being "the new girl" having been to 6 different schools in 12 years.The last 4 years, however, were in the same high school and I still have my 2 best friends from that time.
No matter where I lived, I read. I devoured whatever I could get my hands on -- old Enid Blyton and Mary Grant Bruce books, old schoolboys annuals. I learned history by reading Rosemary Sutcliffe, Henry Treece and Georgette Heyer. I loved animal books -- Elyne Mitchell's Silver Brumby books and Mary Patchett and Finn the Wolf Hound. And then I read Jane Austen and Dickens and Mary Stewart and Richard Llewellyn and Virginia Woolf and EF Benson and Dick Francis and David Malouf and Patrick White and Doris Lessing and PD James and...the list is never ending.
This is me posing shamelessly on a glacier in New Zealand.
This is me in Greece with my good friend Fay in our village outfits. The film went a funny colour, but you get the idea. I'm the one in the pink apron.
I escaped from my parents, settled down and went to university.To my amazement I became a chalkie myself and found a lot of pleasure in working with teenagers and later, adults. I taught English and worked as a counsellor and helped put on plays and concerts and supervised camps and encouraged other people to write but never did much myself. It took a year of backpacking around the world to find that my early desire to write hadn't left me, it had just got buried under a busy and demanding job.
I wrote my first novel on notebooks bought in Quebec, Spain, Greece and Indonesia. That story never made it out of the notebooks, but I'd been bitten by the writing bug.
My friends and I formed a band called Platform Souls a
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
January 25, 2021
A cute-ish Christmas novella.
A down on her luck and genteel-poor widow, fighting eviction and more from her landlord.
A sweet, angelic plot moppet.
An amnesiac and injured stranger who stumbles upon their cottage one cold December night.
Some patching, some resisting and some insta-love later - a mild hiccup occurs before the fairy tale ending.
A down on her luck and genteel-poor widow, fighting eviction and more from her landlord.
A sweet, angelic plot moppet.
An amnesiac and injured stranger who stumbles upon their cottage one cold December night.
Some patching, some resisting and some insta-love later - a mild hiccup occurs before the fairy tale ending.
August 24, 2015
Too rushed. I don't mind the predictable storyline, but it felt like the story was just there to fill the gap for the romance. So, even though this is just a quick read, it became even quicker with all the pages that I just skipped through.
December 19, 2022
[augmented version of my french December 8th review]
If I discovered « The Virtuous Widow » in french, as part of an anthology, the first story of the said anthology didn't made me want to keep it. Instead, I grabbed the second story, this one, in its standalone original english version, to re-read it later.
Anne Gracie uses here the classic amnesia trope. A poor and innocent widow (as her first husband didn't love her and abandoned her to gambling as soon as their daughter was born) rescues a handsome amnesic stranger on her doormat. Literally.
The historical setting doesn't changes much the recipe, though Ellie can indeed, be badly judged by her neighbors (imagine, a woman, alone in her house with a man !), especially her despicable landlord who'd put her in his bed. Nothing new under the sun (or better the winter cold) in this plot, but the lack of surprises doesn't makes it less good to read. The little Amy gives a cute touch to it, and the start of the « family » life is even more interesting than the romance, which begins by long and dull misunderstandings from both sides. But after those goofy debuts, it never stops to grow better, and even gets a nice Christmas tale atmopshere at the end.
A sweet seasonal historical romance.
If I discovered « The Virtuous Widow » in french, as part of an anthology, the first story of the said anthology didn't made me want to keep it. Instead, I grabbed the second story, this one, in its standalone original english version, to re-read it later.
Anne Gracie uses here the classic amnesia trope. A poor and innocent widow (as her first husband didn't love her and abandoned her to gambling as soon as their daughter was born) rescues a handsome amnesic stranger on her doormat. Literally.
The historical setting doesn't changes much the recipe, though Ellie can indeed, be badly judged by her neighbors (imagine, a woman, alone in her house with a man !), especially her despicable landlord who'd put her in his bed. Nothing new under the sun (or better the winter cold) in this plot, but the lack of surprises doesn't makes it less good to read. The little Amy gives a cute touch to it, and the start of the « family » life is even more interesting than the romance, which begins by long and dull misunderstandings from both sides. But after those goofy debuts, it never stops to grow better, and even gets a nice Christmas tale atmopshere at the end.
A sweet seasonal historical romance.
July 19, 2014
This is a short, sweet romance. If you just go with it and let the story carry you along without any cynicism then you will enjoy it. However, if you're looking for harsh reality then you may be disappointed. Ellie and her daughter, Amy, are lovely characters. The stranger who shows up at their doorstep, whom Amy calls Mr Bruin, changes their lives significantly in such a short period of time. Everything works out in the end but it was still enjoyable to go along for the ride. There is a honeymoon scene but it's not too long and doesn't adversely affect the storyline. This is 3-1/2 - 4 stars only because it may be too saccharine sweet for some but I was charmed by it.
December 27, 2022
cw: grief, attempted sexual assault, poverty, amnesia, injury
Loved it! It was very adorable and feel good. This one is about a poverty stricken heroine who has a daughter that wants a father. The heroine is a widow who loves her daughter but is not sure she can give that to her. The heroine ends up taking care of the hero after he is left hurt and robbed of his possessions. He wakes up with amnesia and believes himself to be the heroine’s husband at first, but of course the heroine corrects him. The daughter takes a liking to him and soon enough so does the heroine. This was really cute and perfect for Christmas! I had so much fun reading about the three of them becoming a family and loving each other.
Loved it! It was very adorable and feel good. This one is about a poverty stricken heroine who has a daughter that wants a father. The heroine is a widow who loves her daughter but is not sure she can give that to her. The heroine ends up taking care of the hero after he is left hurt and robbed of his possessions. He wakes up with amnesia and believes himself to be the heroine’s husband at first, but of course the heroine corrects him. The daughter takes a liking to him and soon enough so does the heroine. This was really cute and perfect for Christmas! I had so much fun reading about the three of them becoming a family and loving each other.
February 1, 2021
Similar to accidental wife so I was hoping for something similar but can’t help feeling a bit disappointed.
Insta love. Insta lust.
And too convenient ending aka eye rollers.
2.5 stars for me.
Insta love. Insta lust.
And too convenient ending aka eye rollers.
2.5 stars for me.
historical-romance
December 26, 202139
January 22, 2013
It was very short, and the romance definitely happened too quickly for my liking. And I generally find amnesia plots to be quite unbelievable and not all that interesting.
And the end just seemed kind of stupid.
I did enjoy parts of the book, but in the end I can't say it was all that interesting.
And the end just seemed kind of stupid.
I did enjoy parts of the book, but in the end I can't say it was all that interesting.
August 27, 2014
It was such a short enjoyable read ^^
This time my review would be much simpler and shorter than usual, because all I can say I loved all the characters, events, and specially princess Amy. I was happy for Ellie and Amy especially the whole thing after he and back was simply heartwarming and the grandma oh how Amy loved her.
This time my review would be much simpler and shorter than usual, because all I can say I loved all the characters, events, and specially princess Amy. I was happy for Ellie and Amy especially the whole thing after he and back was simply heartwarming and the grandma oh how Amy loved her.
December 22, 2014
Meski ada sedikit thrill di plot ceritanya, tetapi beberapa scene di buku ini bisa bikin geli dan gemas sendiri sama si tokoh utama prianya. Ngebaca buku ini nggak terasa lumayan cepet kok karena pace-nya yang slow yet steady dan jarang bikin bosen karena kelakuan hero dan heroine-nya :)
January 2, 2013
This deserved a one star, but it had one thing going for it, it was short.
November 25, 2014
a bit too tame for my liking but good enough.
November 6, 2016
3.5 stars
September 27, 2022
3.5 ⭐️
April 16, 2017
Listen, I don't need much. I want a romance where I feel the chemistry between the hero and heroine, anything keeping them apart is reasonable, and the writing is good. Anne Gracie has the last thing covered easily, and while cliched, I enjoyed her plot and characters. Her heroine Ellie has a terrible husband who thankfully died and left behind an adorable daughter who automatically calls the amnesiac hero Papa. When Ellie tells her daughter that he's not her Papa, she renames him Mr. Bruin aka Mr. Bear which is almost as cute! The ending was pretty typical, but overall I enjoyed it.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews