‘If we are not enemies, but we are not on the same side, then where on earth are we?’
‘I'll tell you where we are, we're in no-man's-land.’
‘No-man's-land,’ Flora repeated. ‘Our own private land.’
‘For the time being.’
No-man's-land. A place where only one man existed, she thought. A man whose eyes glittered darkly down at her, mesmerising beneath the thick curtain of his lashes. A man who, by his own admission, confided in no one, yet had confided in her. A dangerous man. A lonely man. A challenging man. And a very enticing one. ‘I think I like noman's-land,’ Flora said.
‘So do I,’ Geraint said softly, closing the space between them. He slid his arm around her waist. His fingers were delicate on her jaw, her cheek, making her catch her breath in anticipation, making her tremble, scattering her inhibitions to the four winds.
Her body was pliant, melding itself to his hardness as she reached up to put her arms around his neck. As his lips touched hers, her eyelids closed. His tongue ran along the soft skin on the inside of her lower lip, and she shivered at the shocking intimacy of it. It was like the first sip of a fine French cognac. Warmth flooded her.
Born and educated in Scotland, MARGUERITE KAYE originally qualified as a lawyer but chose not to practise. Instead, she carved out a career in IT and studied history part-time, gaining a first-class honours and a master's degree. A few decades after winning a children's national poetry competition, she decided to pursue her lifelong ambition to write and submitted her first historical romance to Mills & Boon. They accepted it and she's been writing ever since.
You can contact Marguerite through her website, www.margueritekaye.com.
Never Forget Me
A Kiss Goodbye
Dearest Sylvie
Forever With Me
Marguerite Kaye
MILLS & BOON
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Also available from MARGUERITE KAYE
Strangers at the Altar
Desert Prince, Bartered Bride
The Wicked Lord Rasenby
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The Highlander's Return
Innocent in the Sheikh's Harem
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Bound to the Wolf Prince
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An Invitation to Pleasure
Spellbound & Seduced
Lost in Pleasure
How to Seduce a Sheikh
The Undoing of Daisy Edwards
The Awakening of Poppy Edwards
The Lady Who Broke the Rules
War, conflict and the impact it has not just on those who fought, but on those left behind, have been recurrent themes in my books. While the First World War has long been a subject which I found compelling, I've always shied away from it as the backdrop to romance. The sheer scale of the suffering, death and destruction seemed prohibitive and the war itself is still very much present in the memories of the families of those who fought in it.
With the centenary of the start of the ‘war to end all wars’ coming around though, I began to seriously rethink my stance. Between 1914 and 1918, the world, or at least the world of those countries involved in the conflict, really did change utterly and it wasn't all negative. Out of such suffering, those who fought and those who lost loved ones were determined some good must come—not just the long-term peace that the League of Nations was established to protect, but ‘good’ for the individual. And it did. Of course, there were other influences and dynamics of change that were in train before the war, but no one can deny (though no doubt someone will now!) that the war gave women's liberation a kick start, not only in enfranchising them, but in getting them out of the home and into the workplace and in Britain making a start on eliminating sexual discrimination by allowing them into the legal profession and the higher echelons of the civil service. A maximum working day (and week) and a stronger trade union movement were just some of the measures that protected workers.
I could go on, but this isn't a history lesson. What I'm trying to say is, the idea of somehow showing the impact of these huge changes on my characters really appealed to me. But how to do this and at the same time capture the essence of the war? I decided that rather than pick one key moment in the conflict, I would write three different stories set at the beginning, the middle and the end. Building on my experience from working on the Castonbury Park series, I'd have some continuity characters who would act as landmarks for the changes and so I came up with the idea of having a house and a family central to all three stories, who would then represent the shift from the old world to the new.
All very well, but finding a way of setting not one but three romances against a backdrop of war without shying away from the reality was a tough one. What I hope runs through all the stories is the triumph of the human spirit and the power of love.
My own spirit, I must admit, was at times crushed by this book. Thanks once again to my Facebook and Twitter friends for all their help and encouragement. You kept me going and you fed me ideas—having letters form a key part of my second story is just one of them. Many thanks to Alice, who shared the amazing story of her grandfather's war