BooksChatter: ☀ Wicked Wager

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for Wicked Wager, an Historical Romantic Intrigue by Beverley Eikli (8 October 2015, Escape Publishing - Harlequin Enterprises, Australia Pty Ltd, 174 pages).

PREVIEW: Check out the book's synopsis and our exclusive excerpt below. Read the first chapter with Amazon Look Inside.

Author Beverley Eikli will be awarding a $20 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour. Please do take part: comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other exclusive excerpts (☀), and reviews (✍).

Synopsis | Teaser | About the Author | Giveaway & Tour Stops

Synopsis

A dissolute rake, a virtuous lady, a ruthless society beauty and a missing plantation owner with secrets — just another day in Georgian England…

1780

Wealthy Jamaican plantation owner Harry Carstairs has disappeared — and everyone wants to know where he is…

Celeste Rosington knows her place in society, and while she may not be overjoyed at her upcoming wedding to her detached cousin Raphael, she nonetheless hopes the marriage will be successful. When Raphael asks her for her help to save Harry, she agrees. But her decision costs her more than she knows…

Celeste’s clandestine visit to Harry’s home is witnessed, and her connection to Harry misconstrued. Harry’s secrets put Celeste into more danger than even Raphael understands, and throws her into the path of the ruthless, cunning, beautiful Lady Busselton and the dissolute, dangerous Lord Peregrine.

Raphael is invested in keeping Harry alive. Lady Busselton is invested in keeping him quiet. Lord Peregrine is invested in anything that staves off boredom. And Celeste is becoming increasingly invested in Lord Peregrine.

After all, what resistance does an innocent young woman have against something so deliciously wicked?

Teaser: Exclusive Excerpt

     Lord Cowdril’s family seat dated back to Elizabethan times, with neat gravelled paths and formal gardens providing a charming venue for gentle exercise. Lady Cowdril, who was easily exerted, never went beyond the second tier of rose bushes, she declared, due to her palpitating heart. The opening lines of her sentence, suggesting a return to the house, however, was truncated by clear delight and a volte face.
     ‘Perry will give me his arm,’ she declared in robust tones, and they all turned to observe a figure issue from the front portico and down the steps, advancing towards them.
     Perry? Celeste raised her eyebrows in a silent question regarding the identity of their new visitor, but as he was nearly upon them she followed the cue of the rest of her party: curtseying as she inclined her head in greeting of the arrival whose tall frame was coming into focus. Though to be sure, no one’s heart could be pounding as fiercely as hers, even Lady Cowdril’s in the midst of one of her palpitations.
     She ventured a glance from beneath lowered lashes. He was impressive, even from a distance. Unusually, he wore his dark hair naturally, tied in a queue at the back, with informal country attire: knee breeches and knee boots with a dark wool coat. Yes, even from a distance she saw his eyes were very piercing.
     Swallowing with difficulty, she was alarmed to observe, as he approached, that they were focused on her. Could it be that this gentleman, whose features were gaining greater distinction with every step, did indeed know her for her role in his sister’s distress?
     She frowned as she noticed his full lips were curved in a smile; a smile that seemed only for her; and her heart did a skittering dance at the clear interest of this inimitable Viscount Peregrine as he rounded the rose bushes and finally came to stand in full view before them.
     Dear Lord. Cognisance was like a stone dropping to the pit of her stomach. Those lips had covered hers not two nights before in a secluded arbour at Vauxhall Gardens. Those arms had held her against him in a lust-filled moment of abandonment. Sweet Mercy, but Perry—whoever he really was to Lady Cowdril—was Celeste’s handsome stranger.

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About the Author

Beverley Eikli wrote her first romance when she was seventeen but discovered that killing her heroine on the last page was death to her burgeoning romance writing career.

She became a journalist, occupied for many years with life’s newsworthy - but often, unhappy - events until romance finally trumped after she met a handsome Norwegian bush pilot around a camp fire in Botswana’s beautiful Okavango Delta where she was running a safari lodge for a couple of months.

Unhappily, Beverley was due to return home the following day to marry her Australian boyfriend.

Happily, though, that fell through and after a whirlwind eight-month courtship based on regular 18-page letters between Botswana and South Australia, Beverley returned to live with her handsome Norwegian bush pilot in a thatched cottage in the middle of a mopane forest beside a flood plain of lurking wild animals, marrying her handsome bush pilot in Norway shortly afterwards.

Twenty happy years—and 12 countries later—Beverley is now back in Australia living a more conventional life with her husband, two daughters and a Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy the size of a pony in a pretty country town an hour north of Melbourne.

She writes traditional Regency romance as Beverley Eikli and sensual historical romance as Beverley Oakley.

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