Baroness Adele von Mueller learns the sweetest love is forbidden….
Baroness Adele von Mueller
It’s 1903 and free-spirited 18-year-old Baroness Adele von Mueller has just arrived to live with her spinster aunt in New York City. After a previous impropriety tarnishes her reputation with the German nobility, her father sends her overseas to give her one last chance to marry into money and save the family’s name. Instead, Adele finds herself falling for charming and wickedly handsome Nick Mason, the foreman of a paper factory, who is as gorgeous as he is poor. As family secrets are revealed, Adele learns there’s much more riding on her marrying wealthy than just keeping the family’s name…
Nick Mason
Nick Mason has a habit of falling in love with every girl he sees. An orphan, former newspaper seller and now a foreman at a paper mill, he’s nursing a bruised heart after being dumped by a laundry girl. But when he meets Baroness Adele disguised on a night out as a maid in her family’s house, he knows right away there’s something different about her. Once she reveals her true identity, he’s even more intrigued. Nick has fallen for white women before, but never one so wealthy, and never one he knew he couldn’t live without. With most people firmly against their love, he must visit her in secrecy to make their romance blossom.
Nick and Adele must stand up to a society and a family that won’t accept their love for what it is: true and enduring. Can they withstand the storm, or will they be forced apart by a deck that’s stacked against them in this steamy Victorian romance?
This historical interracial romance/Victorian romance novel marks Anya Silverthorne’s debut.
Excerpt
“I don’t mean to pry,” Nick said, looking down at his feet and then lifting his eyes to Adele’s own. His breath caught in his throat for a minute as she looked back at him, her blue eyes reminding him of paintings of the tropics he’d seen. “But how could a woman like you be tarnished? Pardon me, but you look pretty, I don’t know, amazing?”
Adele took a deep breath and rolled a curl through her fingers, as she often did when she was nervous, her face growing hot at the compliment.
“Once upon a time, I met a boy and thought I was in love,” she answered. “And he wasn’t in love with me. I did some stupid things, and now I’m paying for it.”
“Stupid things?”
Adele shook her head, shame washing over her face. Even though Nick wasn’t her societal equal, she still couldn’t bring herself to say it to him. She couldn’t take knowing he thought any less of her. While Adele knew propriety wasn’t the same amongst the lower class, she still knew it was there, upheld where it could be.
“Let’s not talk about that right now,” Adele said. “I don’t want you to think of me in a bad way.”
“I don’t see what you could’ve done that was so bad.” Nick shook his head. “Unless you’re secretly Lizzie Borden or something.”
A smile spread on Adele’s face.
“No, not that. Just the kind of mistakes a young, dumb girl makes when she thinks she’s in love."
Nick put his hand on hers, and Adele turned hers over so that they were palm to palm. Slowly, she threaded her fingers through his, closing her delicate hand on top of his callused one.
He repeated the motion, his hand encapsulating hers. It made her feel safe—wanted.
“I ain’t perfect, so I ain’t gonna judge you like these society people,” he said.
“Thank you,” Adele said.
The pair sat for a moment, getting lost in each other’s eyes. Adele found herself wanting to say something, anything, but it was as though her voice had been pulled from her body by the beauty of his face.
The more she looked at him, the more she couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone as gorgeous.
“Would you want to see me again? I mean with everything, me being who I am, and living where I live and having committed some sin a year ago and—"
Before she could finish her words, he kissed her, straight on the lips. Despite his hands being so rough, his lips were exquisitely soft. At first, the kiss was chaste, but then Nick opened his mouth slightly, letting his tongue slowly move into her mouth.
Adele had only kissed a handful of boys before, but some of them were sloppy, like they were licking something inside of her mouth. But Nick, he was gentle, like he was inviting her to dance.
His hands moved to her waist and hers around his neck as the kiss exploded between the pair, igniting something that they could never take back, as though it were sealing their fate.
After a good five minutes or so, the only sound in the room besides their kisses being the clock in the corner marking the passing of each minute, Nick pulled away. He kept his eyes closed for a moment, savoring the moment.
He then opened his eyes, surveying Adele in front of him. Her face was also in a post-dreamlike state, and she moved her fingers to her lips, as if to keep the moment his lips touched hers replaying in the universe.
“I had to stop myself,” he said. “You’re too beautiful. I could kiss you all day, Miss Adele.”
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