Julia Justiss | IN THE BEGINNING…

Where does an author come up with her stories? Sometimes from watching a movie or reading a book or news article that piques her interest and gets her thinking “What if this happened next… And sometimes, when a secondary character sticks in her head and refuses to be dislodged until she agrees to tell his story. Such was the impetus for my new Hadley’s Hellions series, which begins this month with FORBIDDEN NIGHTS WITH THE VISCOUNT. The character in question was a key player in rescuing the heroine in FROM WAIF TO GENTLEMAN’S WIFE, a story set more than ten years earlier, when farmer’s orphan David Tanner Smith was still a boy. But a sharp, intelligent, resourceful boy who so impresses hero Sir Edward Greaves that he decides to sponsor the lad at Oxford.

Davie has great ideas and a dream of reforming England so that commoners like
himself have a voice in government. But power is wielded by those of birth and
wealth, so I knew to implement those plans, Davie would need to link up with men
of like ideas and better connections. Men who had compelling reasons to be
estranged from others of their birth and class. One of them would become the
leader of the reform group, and before I told Davie’s story, I would need to
tell his.

But unlike the character Davie, I knew nothing at all about this leader. Who
would he be, where would he come from, why would he be an angry young man
determined to change the world—and wrest power from the tight grip of the
aristocracy from which he’d sprung?

Enter Giles Hadley. Estranged son of an earl whose father divorced and disgraced
his mother when Giles was a small child, Giles grew up initially not knowing who
his father was or that his ultimate destiny was to become Earl of Telbridge.
Appalled when he is dragged from the cottage he shares with his mother and sent
off to school for an education that will equip him to handle his eventual
responsibilities, Giles never loses his anger over his father’s treatment of his
mother, or his desire to limit the power such a man wields over his family and
the farmers and tenants who depend upon him.

What sort of woman could intrigue a man who grew up with such a bitter view of
wedlock, he cannot imagine ever marrying? Maybe a heart-sore lady like widowed
Lady Margaret Roberts, who herself has no desire to risk loving again. A strong,
confident lady who may not gamble her heart, but is quite prepared to indulge
her desires in a secret, illicit liaison with an irresistibly attractive
gentleman, her goal a mutual giving and receiving of pleasure, no strings attached.

But passion brings intimacy, and when danger threatens, these two cautious
lovers discover that love doesn’t respect the limits they try to place on their
emotions…

I hope you’ll enjoy Giles and Maggie’s story.

(BTW, Davie’s story, STOLEN ENCOUNTERS WITH THE DUCHESS, will be out in September 2016.)