The Characters of Wedding Matilda by Heather Hiestand

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By the time a writer has reached book six in a series, she has a basic idea about what readers are enjoying. Although the Redcakes series is centered around a teashop owned by a family with three daughters (and one living son) the heroes and supporting men quickly became the highlight of the series. The Redcakes daughters were trouble-makers, and the men around them were swoon worthy. Having said that, I couldn’t start bringing the series to a conclusion without finding happy endings for the daughters, even the most troublesome of them all, Matilda Redcake, who had a misguided liaison in Marquess of Cake (Redcakes book 1) and went on to have an illegitimate child, and a relationship with the child’s father that created sparks at times as the series progressed.

Matilda Redcake, though, is a modern girl. It may be the 1890s in my series now, but I think today’s readers can relate to her sometimes misguided but family-centered ways. Still though, she’s problematic. What is a nouveau riche, social-climbing family to do with its female black sheep? You can’t marry off a daughter with an illegitimate child. Or that is, you can try to marry her to the father of her child. That didn’t work out so well. So instead of hiding her away, the Redcakes decide to attempt to educate her in something useful rather than merely decorative. As my story begins, she’s running the family factories in Bristol, living a life very different from the one she expected to live back when the series began in 1886 when she was just twenty-one and ready to take fashionable society by storm.

When searching for a hero for Matilda, I went back and looked at supporting characters inhabiting the tea shop arena to see who might suit her. I found Ewan Hales, the Redcakes’ secretary. Seemingly an ordinary guy, but is he? Of course not! As this novel begins, we discover that our long-time, ambitious but loyal supporting character has just discovered he is the heir to a scandalous noble house. All of a sudden his world is turned on its ear. Not only that, he might finally be worthy of a fashionable bride in the eyes of society. How troublesome to fall for a woman who has been both above him, and now beneath him, and decidedly not who a future earl should wed.

How do you feel about single mother romances? Do you enjoy having kids in romance stories? Should they be seen or heard? What are some of the things that make it harder for single moms to find love?

Wedding Matilda

Sugared violets, buttercream…but he craves her kiss most of all…
 
Orphaned as a boy, Ewan Hales is proud to make his living as secretary to the manager at Redcake’s Tea Shop. But the startling news that he’s heir to the Earl of Fitzwalter changes everything. While tendering his resignation to lovely Matilda Redcake, however, Ewan is struck by her spirit, the luscious bow of her lips—and a realization. Matilda might not marry a working man—but will she wed a future nobleman?
 
Ewan’s unruly hair and roguish kisses are tempting, but Matilda has far too many problems to consider romance. With sabotage at a cake factory threatening the family empire, she must focus her considerable willpower on keeping Redcake’s from ruin—until she learns that her young son has been kidnapped. Together, she and Ewan must uncover the truth before they can savor the sweet freedom of love…

EXCERPT

Matilda knew Mr. Hales was the spider at the center of a web of information about Redcake’s.

The man himself had his back to her, one finger on a row of figures in an open ledger and the other on a typewriter key. She had no idea how to operate such a machine, but it did make reports easier to read, so she had insisted that her own secretary, her cousin Greggory Redcake, learn to operate one.

“Mr. Hales?” she inquired.

The finger went up in the air in a request for silence. Her eyebrows lifted. When had the man become so imperious? He probably thought she was a cakie, the Redcake’s name for waitresses. Still, she’d have expected him to be more charming. Her sister Alys said he was notorious for relationships among Redcake’s female employees, having worked his way through accounting, the Fancy, and the bakery staff.

His finger moved down the row of neatly printed numbers in the ledger. The keys clicked a few times. A pause. He turned a page in the ledger and repeated the sequence.

“Mr. Hales,” she tried again.

His fingers stopped moving, pinched around the page he was turning. His back stiffened as he slowly resumed his page turn. His other hand left the keys and he swiveled his chair around.

“Yes?”

He remained cold. No little bow, no small obsequious smile, as she had seen from him in the past. His hair had been mussed, she now realized.

Didn’t he recognize her? “I’m Matilda Redcake.”

Her announcement brought no change in his demeanor. “I know who you are, Miss Redcake.”

Heather Hiestand was born in Illinois, but her family migrated west before she started school. Since then she has claimed Washington State as home, except for a few years in California. She wrote her first story at age seven and went on to major in creative writing at the University of Washington. Her first published fiction was a mystery short story, but since then it has been all about the many flavors of romance. Heather’s first published romance short story was set in the Victorian period, and she continues to return, fascinated by the rapid changes of the nineteenth century. The author of many novels, novellas, and short stories, she has achieved best-seller status at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. With her husband and son, she makes her home in a small town and supposedly works out of her tiny office, though she mostly writes in her easy chair in the living room.

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