New Regency Romance Release – The Wallflower’s Wicked Wager
A Waltz with a Rogue, Book 5
He loved her beyond anything and everything—precisely why he couldn’t ever marry her.
A wounded hero.
Love—sentimental drivel for insipid, weak, feckless fools.
Since an explosion ravaged Captain Morgan Le Draco’s face and cost him his commission in the Royal Dragoons, he’s fortified himself behind an impenetrable rampart of cynicism and distrust. Now destitute and shunned by the very society that once lauded his heroics, he’s put aside all thoughts of marrying and having a family. Until he risks his life to save a drowning woman. At once, Morgan knows Shona’s the balm for his tortured soul, but as a wealthy, titled noblewoman, she’s too far above his humble station and can never be his.
An intrepid wallflower.
Love—a treasured gift reserved for those beautiful of form and face.
Scorned and ridiculed most of her adult life, Shona, Lady Atterberry believes she’s utterly undesirable and is reconciled to spinsterhood. She hides her spirited temperament beneath a veneer of gauche shyness, until a strapping, scarred stranger saves her life, and she can’t deny her immediate, powerful, and sensual attraction to him. Despite how ill-suited they are and innuendos that Captain Le Draco is a fortune-hunter, she cannot escape her growing fascination.
Two damaged souls searching for love.
Others are determined to keep them apart, and Shona is goaded into placing a wicked wager. One that sets her upon a ruinous path and alienates the
only man who might have ever loved her. Is true love enough to put their pasts behind them, to learn to trust, and heal their wounded hearts?
Caution: This book contains one devilish, seemingly irredeemable rogue, an on-the-shelf wallflower who dabbles in wicked wagers, an unexpected and most enticing swim in a lake, a villainess you’ll want to shove into said lake, and a cast of captivating secondary characters with their own tantalizing romantic tales.
For a heartwarming, inspiring story about the power of love, purchase your copy today of THE WALLFLOWER’S WICKED WAGER, the fifth installment in Collette Cameron’s romantic historical Regencies A Waltz with a Rogue Novella series.
Read an Excerpt
“I’m truly sorry for your suffering, Shona.”
Captain Le Draco had used her given name.
Most impudent of him. Quite beyond the pale.
And she didn’t object at all.
“It must’ve been unbearably difficult for you.” Compassion rendered his voice husky and thick, and for an instant, Shona gaped, owl-like in amazement.
Except for the Needhams, Harcourt, and Alexa, no one had ever expressed any sympathy for her situation. She swallowed against the tangled knot constricting her throat, and blinked away tears she hadn’t realized had sprung to her eyes.
She wrapped his coat a bit tighter around her shoulders. “Thank you. It was quite awful at first. But the passage of time has helped. That, and being surrounded by people I know care for me.”
Seemingly of its own accord, her finger touched his marred cheek, the merest feathering over the rigid flesh. Brazen, that. And wholly invasive, and inappropriate, particularly since she’d known him all of twenty or thirty brief minutes.
Why did she feel this compelling need to comfort Captain Le Draco? To touch him? Such a powerful, overwhelming need that she kicked aside her usual shyness and reticence?
“What about you, Captain?” Her confidence hadn’t yet grown enough to address him by his given name too. “I imagine it’s been most difficult for you as well. Does it still hurt?”
She softly pressed her pads against the contorted flesh.
He seized her hand and held it to his ravaged cheek, his eyes closed, eyelashes trembling as if he were in pain or overcome by extreme sentiment.
“Yes.”
