Redeeming Lord Ryder

     After two months of treatment at Puddling-on-the-Wold, Mary Nicola Mayfield has shown no improvement, and her condition seems impervious to rehab. But Nicola is not the typical guest of Gloucestershire’s destination village for the wealthy and wayward. The trauma of surviving a horrific train wreck has rendered her mute; her injuries have healed, but try as she might, she cannot utter a sound. With her family and fiancé at their wits’ end, Nicola knows Puddling is the resort—the last resort—that holds any hope for her recovery.
     Lord Jack Ryder—baron, businessman and, some say, mad genius—has gone from the heights of success to hit rock bottom, after a faulty girder from his iron foundry caused a dreadful bridge collapse. Nothing has assuaged his guilt over the passenger train that crashed or the lives that were destroyed. The stringent regimen at Puddling is not doing much for his deep depression—until he meets his mysteriously silent neighbor. Their fiery affair breaks all the rules, but will the unspoken truth be too hot to handle?

Here’s an excerpt from Redeeming Lord Ryder: 

     She’d been awake a good portion of the night thinking about their kiss. It had, to put it plainly, knocked her sideways. She had little to compare it to—Richard had not been a demonstrative fiancé. Why should he be, when their relationship had been practical and more or less businesslike? There had been no stars behind her eyelids, no tremors shooting off like fireworks, no tingling lips, no want.

     Nicola had practiced kissing her bare arm as she lay in the dark, feeling ridiculous but determined. Her skin was a poor substitute for Jack’s mouth. His neatly-trimmed beard and mustache had had been as soft as mink fur, quite unlike Richard’s coppery bristle.     Richard was attractive, but Jack was…um, beautiful. See, she could be inarticulate, too.

     She didn’t feel the cold at all, just a wild sense of anticipation. Jack was very close, his quick breaths visible in the air between them. The last time they’d kissed, it was she who initiated the lip to lip contact. Nicola knew she’d taken him by surprise; now she waited to see what he would do. She imagined he was a man of experience—no one of his looks and charm and age could be expected to be celibate.

     He leaned in, cupping her cheek with a gloved hand. “You don’t regret your offer?”

     She shook her head. If she’d had access to the notebook, she would have written get on with it.

     “I’ve never kissed a woman in a churchyard before with, uh, graves about. Are we risking thunderbolts?” His eyes danced with merriment.

     What a way to go, she thought. They weren’t being disrespectful—babies began with kisses, and death eventually, inevitably followed. It was all very circle-of-life, wasn’t it?

     His mouth loomed, and she closed her eyes. He exerted the barest contact, just a whisper of a kiss. She held herself still, letting him set the pace.

     But soon she was squirming a little, swept away by Jack’s skillful tongue. Nicola had the strongest urge to lie down on the bench, which would indeed risk thunderbolts, and frostbite to boot. If her parents divined what was happening to her here, they would remove her post haste.

To purchase Redeeming Lord Ryder, go to:

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A bit about our focus author: 

     Maggie Robinson is a former teacher, library clerk and mother of four who woke up in the middle of the night, absolutely compelled to create the perfect man and use as many adjectives and adverbs as possible doing so. 

     A transplanted New Yorker, she lives with her not-quite perfect husband in Maine, where the cold winters are ideal for staying inside and writing hot historical romances. A two-time Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice nominee, her books have been translated into French, German, Portuguese, Turkish, Russian, Japanese, Thai, Dutch and Italian.

To learn more about Maggie Robinson and the stories she creates, go to: http://www.maggierobinson.net/media/