The Guardian

by Barbara Miller

For seven years Miss Amy Conde has run a successful horse breeding enterprise on her country estate, Talltrees. She longs to bring new blood into her line with a younger stallion, but that requires capital -- money her absent guardian is willfully withholding. Until Amy turns twenty-five in three months' time, Mr. Trent Severn controls her fate, and she bitterly resents his interference.

Trent's role in aiding his country's war against Napoleon has consumed the last decade of his life. When he thinks of his ward, he remembers a little girl he met once, at her father's funeral. Then he comes to Talltrees and finds that Amy is now a capable, strong-willed businesswoman -- and a vital, passionate soul who regards him with deep disgust. Stunned beyond measure, he determines to find her a husband who will take her off his hands. But when an eligible suitor does arrive, Trent and Amy discover the heated emotion that sparked between them from the first is rapidly turning to desire.

Genres: Romance

368 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Barbara J. Miller started writing romances because she was running out of reading material and all her copies of her Georgette Heyer novels were becoming dog-eared. By day she works as a business analyst; by night she runs a retirement home for aged horses, dogs and cats. On the week-ends she spends a lot of time in Regency England, creating heroes and heroines to fight the Napoleonic Wars, shock London society, and set the countryside in an uproar. Her accomplice is her computer-expert husband Don, who is one of her biggest fans.

Barb admits to enjoying the research as much as the writing, and has the books to prove it. France used to be in the dining room and England in the living room. Now that she has taken over the upper story of their old farmhouse as an office at least all the books are one floor. This saves a tremendous amount of time when she is trying to confirm an obscure fact in the middle of the night. Under the name Laurel Ames she produced eight Regency-era historicals for Harlequin, one of which was nominated for a Rita in 1994. Now, she writes as Barbara Miller. She is a member of the Western PA Chapter of Romance Writers of America and also edits The Laurel Wreath newsletter for them. You may email her at scribe@cvzoom.net.

Reviews

[CJ Mills · Rating 1 out of 5]

The guardian attended to his ward, looked for a husband for her, then falls for her himself. This is an Emilie Loring plot -- a writer of romantic adventure, with the emphasis on wholesome romance, who wrote from 1914 to the early 1950's -- and Loring did them much better. Admittedly, I read the Loring books when I was in high school, so I might not appreciate them anymore.
I got about 1/4 through and quit.

[Misfit]

Harriet says "so-so", http://www.amazon.com/review/R1IXP23I...