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She'd been a fool to accept his proposal!
Accompanying Diego Montfalco and his young daughter to his village-restoration project in Spain was a job that appealed to Lucinda Radstone. She'd grown fond of his little girl, and she loved Spain, the country where she'd been raised.
But unfortunately, she'd lost her heart to her aristocratic employer, and she knew she was going to get hurt. He was still in love with his deceased wife, and saw Lucinda only as an amiable and perhaps decorative companion.
Worse, she had a secret that, if he knew it, would cause an impassable, permanent breach....
Accompanying Diego Montfalco and his young daughter to his village-restoration project in Spain was a job that appealed to Lucinda Radstone. She'd grown fond of his little girl, and she loved Spain, the country where she'd been raised.
But unfortunately, she'd lost her heart to her aristocratic employer, and she knew she was going to get hurt. He was still in love with his deceased wife, and saw Lucinda only as an amiable and perhaps decorative companion.
Worse, she had a secret that, if he knew it, would cause an impassable, permanent breach....
159 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1988
1 person is currently reading
19 people want to read
About the author
Anne Weale
227 books49 followersJay Blakeney
aka Anne Weale, Andrea Blake
Jay Blakeney was born on Juny 20, 1929. Her great-grandfather was a well-known writer on moral theology, so perhaps she inherited her writing gene from him. She was "talking stories" to herself long before she could read. When she was still at school, she sold her first short stories to a woman's magazine and she feels she was destined to write. Decided to became a writer, she started writing for newspapers and magazines.
At 21, Jay was a newspaper reporter with a career plan, but the man she was wildly in love with announced that he was off to the other side of the world. He thought they should either marry or say goodbye. She always believed that true love could last a lifetime, and she felt that wonderful men were much harder to find than good jobs, so she put her career on hold. What a wise decision it was! She felt that new young women seem less inclined to risk everything for love than her generation.
Together they traveled the world. If she hadn't spent part of her bridal year living on the edge of a jungle in Malaysia, she might never have become a romance writer. That isolated house, and the perils of the state of emergency that existed in the country at that time, gave her a background and plot ideally suited to a genre she had never read until she came across some romances in the library of a country club they sometimes visited. She can write about love with the even stronger conviction that comes from experience.
When they returned to Europe, Jay resumed her career as a journalist, writing her first romance in her spare time. She sold her first novel as Anne Weale to Mills and Boon in 1955 at the age of 24. At 30, with seven books published, she "retired" to have a baby and become a full-time writer. She raised a delightful son, David, who is as adventurous as his father. Her husband and son have even climbed in the Andes and the Himalayas, giving her lots of ideas for stories. When she retired from reporting, her fiction income -- a combination of amounts earned as a Mills & Boon author and writing for magazines such as Woman's Illustrated, which serialized the work of authors -- exceed 1,000 pounds a year.
She was a founding member of the The Romantic Novelists' Association. In 2002 she published her last novel, in total, she wrote 88 novels. She also wrote under the pseudonym Andrea Blake. She loved setting her novels in exotic parts of the world, but specially in The Caribbean and in her beloved Spain. Since 1989, Jay spent most of the winter months in a very small "pueblo" in the backwoods of Spain. During years, she visited some villages, and from each she have borrowed some feature - a fountain, a street, a plaza, a picturesque old house - to create some places like Valdecarrasca, that is wholly imaginary and yet typical of the part of rural Spain she knew best. She loved walking, reading, sketching, sewing (curtains and slipcovers) and doing needlepoint, gardening, entertaining friends, visiting art galleries and museums, writing letters, surfing the Net, traveling in search of exciting locations for future books, eating delicious food and drinking good wine, cataloguing her books.
She wrote a regular website review column for The Bookseller from 1998 to 2004, before starting her own blog Bookworm on the Net. At the time of her death, on October 24, 2007, she was working on her autobiography "88 Heroes... 1 Mr. Right".
aka Anne Weale, Andrea Blake
Jay Blakeney was born on Juny 20, 1929. Her great-grandfather was a well-known writer on moral theology, so perhaps she inherited her writing gene from him. She was "talking stories" to herself long before she could read. When she was still at school, she sold her first short stories to a woman's magazine and she feels she was destined to write. Decided to became a writer, she started writing for newspapers and magazines.
At 21, Jay was a newspaper reporter with a career plan, but the man she was wildly in love with announced that he was off to the other side of the world. He thought they should either marry or say goodbye. She always believed that true love could last a lifetime, and she felt that wonderful men were much harder to find than good jobs, so she put her career on hold. What a wise decision it was! She felt that new young women seem less inclined to risk everything for love than her generation.
Together they traveled the world. If she hadn't spent part of her bridal year living on the edge of a jungle in Malaysia, she might never have become a romance writer. That isolated house, and the perils of the state of emergency that existed in the country at that time, gave her a background and plot ideally suited to a genre she had never read until she came across some romances in the library of a country club they sometimes visited. She can write about love with the even stronger conviction that comes from experience.
When they returned to Europe, Jay resumed her career as a journalist, writing her first romance in her spare time. She sold her first novel as Anne Weale to Mills and Boon in 1955 at the age of 24. At 30, with seven books published, she "retired" to have a baby and become a full-time writer. She raised a delightful son, David, who is as adventurous as his father. Her husband and son have even climbed in the Andes and the Himalayas, giving her lots of ideas for stories. When she retired from reporting, her fiction income -- a combination of amounts earned as a Mills & Boon author and writing for magazines such as Woman's Illustrated, which serialized the work of authors -- exceed 1,000 pounds a year.
She was a founding member of the The Romantic Novelists' Association. In 2002 she published her last novel, in total, she wrote 88 novels. She also wrote under the pseudonym Andrea Blake. She loved setting her novels in exotic parts of the world, but specially in The Caribbean and in her beloved Spain. Since 1989, Jay spent most of the winter months in a very small "pueblo" in the backwoods of Spain. During years, she visited some villages, and from each she have borrowed some feature - a fountain, a street, a plaza, a picturesque old house - to create some places like Valdecarrasca, that is wholly imaginary and yet typical of the part of rural Spain she knew best. She loved walking, reading, sketching, sewing (curtains and slipcovers) and doing needlepoint, gardening, entertaining friends, visiting art galleries and museums, writing letters, surfing the Net, traveling in search of exciting locations for future books, eating delicious food and drinking good wine, cataloguing her books.
She wrote a regular website review column for The Bookseller from 1998 to 2004, before starting her own blog Bookworm on the Net. At the time of her death, on October 24, 2007, she was working on her autobiography "88 Heroes... 1 Mr. Right".
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 15, 2016
Re Catalan Christmas - AW brings us a part road trip part governess/employer romance with a bit of holiday spirit.
The h is a 22 yr old who has a talent for languages. She speaks Catalan, Spanish and English and has spent the last couple of years with her beloved Grandfather in Spain as his helper while he finished his late life magnum opus about birds in the Catalan. The Grandfather died and the h got his little house, but unfortunately she needs to earn some kind of living and jobs in the area are scarce.
The h is the daughter of a high profile and very attention seeking feminist. She has no clue who her father is and her mother basically had her and then dumped her on her grandparents. The h doesn't really talk about her famous (or infamous) mother, she thinks it leads to the wrong impressions about her. The h has no problem with ladies caring for themselves, but she isn't a militant feminist.
The H shows up in the h's little village one day and is looking for her, she was recommended as an interpreter for the architectural project he will soon be working on and he also needs a companion for his small daughter. After some hemming and hawing and a road trip to get to know each other, the h winds up getting the job about four chapters later.
There is the inevitable attraction and there is the H's family looking at her funny when she shows up in the H's wake. Our H is a widower and his former marriage demise was blamed on his dead wife being a devoted follower of the h's mother and she left her and the H's child with bad caretakers and the little girl was badly burned in bath tub incident. Naturally the h hasn't mentioned her own connection. The h thinks his family is against her because she is English and they want a family friend's daughter for the H, but when the family friend daughter announces her own engagement to the man she loves and it isn't the H, the h realizes she was barking up the wrong tree. The family is really just reserved and wanted to make sure this wasn't an insta lust wreck like the H's first time around. They actually like the h and eventually welcome her into the inner circle.
Then the h sees a man who she thinks is her father while she is at the local wharf. It turns out that it IS her unknown dad, the H arranges for them to meet at a party and the resemblance is immediate. All that is left is for the h's mother to make an appearance, which she promptly does like a rabbit popping out of a hat. The big surprise is that the H doesn't really care who her mum is, the h is obviously not like her and after sneaking a few kisses throughout the book, the H is really to surrender to his feelings and proposes marriage with the h happily agreeing for the HEA.
This one is okay, it is fairly quick once AW gets the backgrounds in place and the HEA is sweet if pretty predictable.
The h is a 22 yr old who has a talent for languages. She speaks Catalan, Spanish and English and has spent the last couple of years with her beloved Grandfather in Spain as his helper while he finished his late life magnum opus about birds in the Catalan. The Grandfather died and the h got his little house, but unfortunately she needs to earn some kind of living and jobs in the area are scarce.
The h is the daughter of a high profile and very attention seeking feminist. She has no clue who her father is and her mother basically had her and then dumped her on her grandparents. The h doesn't really talk about her famous (or infamous) mother, she thinks it leads to the wrong impressions about her. The h has no problem with ladies caring for themselves, but she isn't a militant feminist.
The H shows up in the h's little village one day and is looking for her, she was recommended as an interpreter for the architectural project he will soon be working on and he also needs a companion for his small daughter. After some hemming and hawing and a road trip to get to know each other, the h winds up getting the job about four chapters later.
There is the inevitable attraction and there is the H's family looking at her funny when she shows up in the H's wake. Our H is a widower and his former marriage demise was blamed on his dead wife being a devoted follower of the h's mother and she left her and the H's child with bad caretakers and the little girl was badly burned in bath tub incident. Naturally the h hasn't mentioned her own connection. The h thinks his family is against her because she is English and they want a family friend's daughter for the H, but when the family friend daughter announces her own engagement to the man she loves and it isn't the H, the h realizes she was barking up the wrong tree. The family is really just reserved and wanted to make sure this wasn't an insta lust wreck like the H's first time around. They actually like the h and eventually welcome her into the inner circle.
Then the h sees a man who she thinks is her father while she is at the local wharf. It turns out that it IS her unknown dad, the H arranges for them to meet at a party and the resemblance is immediate. All that is left is for the h's mother to make an appearance, which she promptly does like a rabbit popping out of a hat. The big surprise is that the H doesn't really care who her mum is, the h is obviously not like her and after sneaking a few kisses throughout the book, the H is really to surrender to his feelings and proposes marriage with the h happily agreeing for the HEA.
This one is okay, it is fairly quick once AW gets the backgrounds in place and the HEA is sweet if pretty predictable.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 10, 2018
Book proposal submitted by Anne Weale to Harlequin Presents Editor:
1) Feminism bad.
2) Traditional women good.
3) I like Lady Diana Spencer.
Reply of Harlequin Presents Editor:
Sounds good!
1) Feminism bad.
2) Traditional women good.
3) I like Lady Diana Spencer.
Reply of Harlequin Presents Editor:
Sounds good!
January 28, 2022
Started out ok but slow and the pace dragged. I skipped to last 50 pages and still slow but with a contrived ending that tied all the loose ends.
June 22, 2015
from back cover ..
She'd been a fool to accept his proposal! Accompanying Diego Montfalco and his young daughter to his village-restoration project in Spain was a job that appealed to Lucinda Radstone. She'd grown fond of his little girl, and she loved Spain, the country where she'd been raised. But unfortunately, she'd lost her heart to her aristocratic employer, and she knew she was going to get hurt. He was still in love with his deceased wife, and saw Lucinda only as an amiable and perhaps decorative companion. Worse, she had a secret that, if he knew it, would cause an impassable, permanent breach.....
She'd been a fool to accept his proposal! Accompanying Diego Montfalco and his young daughter to his village-restoration project in Spain was a job that appealed to Lucinda Radstone. She'd grown fond of his little girl, and she loved Spain, the country where she'd been raised. But unfortunately, she'd lost her heart to her aristocratic employer, and she knew she was going to get hurt. He was still in love with his deceased wife, and saw Lucinda only as an amiable and perhaps decorative companion. Worse, she had a secret that, if he knew it, would cause an impassable, permanent breach.....
December 26, 2023
Ce nu face omul pentru un bonus? Citește o carte din seria romance, din 1900 toamna, de la Alcris. Da,da, chiar așa!
Hai să povestesc cum am ajuns să îmi sacrific ziua cu o asemenea lectură!
Inițial, mărturisesc că am intrat în poveste ca în apă rece.
Nu-s genul meu de cărți, dar, hei, cine știe ce descoperiri fascinante mă așteptau printre paginile acestei opere literare atemporale?
Povestea se-nvârte în jurul lui Lucinda, o tânără ce rămâne fără sprijin financiar după ce bunicul său primește o viza către veșnicie.
Îmi venea să întreb dacă bunicul nu putea să lase și un pic de cash în urma lui, dar evident, nu s-a gândit decât să lase un manuscris ornitologic ce trebuia publicat.
Mama Lucindei, o activistă feroce a drepturilor femeilor, deși ar avea un cont bancar mai plin decât lista de prieteni de pe Facebook, o neglijează total. Îmi imaginez că activiștii din trecut nu prea țineau la capitolul "mame și fiice".
Apoi apare pe scenă Diego, un văduv chipeș și cu buzunarele pline de dolari, care caută o doamnă educată să-i hrănească copilul și să-l învețe engleza și spaniola, dar și dialectele uzuale catalane.
Avea pretenții așa specifice încât nu știu cum nu a ajuns să angajeze o profesoară de poliglotism pentru copilul lui.
Desigur, destinul o îndreaptă pe Lucinda spre Diego, care nu prea e convins că e potrivită pentru job pentru că e prea tânără.
Și acum ghiciți ce face Lucinda?
Se hotărăște să se întoarcă în Regatul Unit pentru a-și găsi o slujbă decentă. În loc să își pună pe CV experiența unică de educatoare pentru un copil bogat, ea preferă varianta clasică de a căuta de muncă. Un pic cam old-school, dar hei, să ne păstrăm tradițiile!
Și aici începe aventura.
Dieguito doarme la ea o noapte (și nu, nu facem altceva decât nani), iar apoi pornesc împreună spre Regatul Unit. Până la urmă, totul se termină cu un happy end, regăsirea unui tată pierdut și iubirea care nu putea să lipsească din ecuație.
Ah, aceste cărți romantic! Steluțe și recomandare? Eu mă abțin, dar dacă tu citești astfel de cărți este o lectură plăcută!
Hai să povestesc cum am ajuns să îmi sacrific ziua cu o asemenea lectură!
Inițial, mărturisesc că am intrat în poveste ca în apă rece.
Nu-s genul meu de cărți, dar, hei, cine știe ce descoperiri fascinante mă așteptau printre paginile acestei opere literare atemporale?
Povestea se-nvârte în jurul lui Lucinda, o tânără ce rămâne fără sprijin financiar după ce bunicul său primește o viza către veșnicie.
Îmi venea să întreb dacă bunicul nu putea să lase și un pic de cash în urma lui, dar evident, nu s-a gândit decât să lase un manuscris ornitologic ce trebuia publicat.
Mama Lucindei, o activistă feroce a drepturilor femeilor, deși ar avea un cont bancar mai plin decât lista de prieteni de pe Facebook, o neglijează total. Îmi imaginez că activiștii din trecut nu prea țineau la capitolul "mame și fiice".
Apoi apare pe scenă Diego, un văduv chipeș și cu buzunarele pline de dolari, care caută o doamnă educată să-i hrănească copilul și să-l învețe engleza și spaniola, dar și dialectele uzuale catalane.
Avea pretenții așa specifice încât nu știu cum nu a ajuns să angajeze o profesoară de poliglotism pentru copilul lui.
Desigur, destinul o îndreaptă pe Lucinda spre Diego, care nu prea e convins că e potrivită pentru job pentru că e prea tânără.
Și acum ghiciți ce face Lucinda?
Se hotărăște să se întoarcă în Regatul Unit pentru a-și găsi o slujbă decentă. În loc să își pună pe CV experiența unică de educatoare pentru un copil bogat, ea preferă varianta clasică de a căuta de muncă. Un pic cam old-school, dar hei, să ne păstrăm tradițiile!
Și aici începe aventura.
Dieguito doarme la ea o noapte (și nu, nu facem altceva decât nani), iar apoi pornesc împreună spre Regatul Unit. Până la urmă, totul se termină cu un happy end, regăsirea unui tată pierdut și iubirea care nu putea să lipsească din ecuație.
Ah, aceste cărți romantic! Steluțe și recomandare? Eu mă abțin, dar dacă tu citești astfel de cărți este o lectură plăcută!
abrierto-to-read-hr-other
May 10, 2021She'd been a fool to accept his proposal!
Accompanying Diego Montfalco and his young daughter to his village-restoration project in Spain was a job that appealed to Lucinda Radstone. She'd grown fond of his little girl, and she loved Spain, the country where she'd been raised.
But unfortunately, she'd lost her heart to her aristocratic employer, and she knew she was going to get hurt. He was still in love with his deceased wife, and saw Lucinda only as an amiable and perhaps decorative companion.
Worse, she had a secret that, if he knew it, would cause an impassable, permanent breach..
Accompanying Diego Montfalco and his young daughter to his village-restoration project in Spain was a job that appealed to Lucinda Radstone. She'd grown fond of his little girl, and she loved Spain, the country where she'd been raised.
But unfortunately, she'd lost her heart to her aristocratic employer, and she knew she was going to get hurt. He was still in love with his deceased wife, and saw Lucinda only as an amiable and perhaps decorative companion.
Worse, she had a secret that, if he knew it, would cause an impassable, permanent breach..
July 27, 2022
How dreadfully boring.
January 22, 2016
I liked this story despite its being tepid, but it just appealed to me.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews