1–What is the title of your latest release? KISS ME, MY DUKE 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? My latest release is called “Kiss Me, My Duke” and is about a young housekeeper with a mysterious past who decidedly has no plans to kiss her arrogant employer-duke, but somehow winds up traveling with said handsome duke to London to search for a missing family member…and eventually doing a little kissing. Or, if that doesn’t grab you, here’s the tagline: Before she was his servant, she had another name…and all of London swooning at her feet.   3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? I write Regency historical romances and most of the books in that genre are set in London–often during the Season, like in Bridgerton. Because I am willful and stubborn, I try to avoid London and have only set a couple of books there. But this book demanded a London setting, so my hero and heroine travel from a country townhouse straight to the Big City and visit some delightfully dangerous locales as part of their adventures. (They may even face down a lioness, but I’m not telling.)   4–Would you…

Chapter 1   1827, London   Fleur Warburton had only recently arrived in London…and now here she was, leaving a trail of blood in her wake. She was trembling—yes, like a leaf, though she detested the expression. She was no shrinking violet, no weak little mouse. The more horrors she went through, the more determined she was to be strong. And yet a man was dead. There, in the alleyway behind her. His body lay in a pool of his own blood, the life utterly gone from him. She would not have left him there otherwise, no matter how commandingly he had told her to run. She had waited. And they had shot him. And then she had run. She was still running. Jasper was going to kill her, she thought, deliriously. If she made it back to him at all. She turned a corner and suddenly was swept up into a sea of people. A busy marketplace. Assorted stalls lined the sides of a wide square. Wagons were weaving their way amongst the crowd, seeking somewhere to unload their goods—sweet-smelling produce fresh from a farm, jars of canned goods, homespun clothes neatly folded, tied, and packaged. Fleur looked about…