Author Note

Those of you who have read my Wild Warriners series will recognize Seb Leatham from A Warriner to Seduce Her. If ever a side character deserved his own story, it was my tough, selfless and phenomenally brave spy. We saw hints of his character in that first story, and one of them was his crass incompetence around women. I’d never written a shy hero before, so getting inside his head was fascinating. What could I do to take him out of his comfort zone in the shadows?

Well, you’ll have to read this book to learn the answer, as I don’t want to spoil it. Suffice to say that I also brought in another former side character for my heroine. Lady Clarissa Beaumont is the spoiled sister of Bella in A Warriner to Tempt Her. Who better to flummox the socially awkward Seb than a feted society incomparable?

In A Warriner to Tempt Her, Clarissa is not all bad, and we do see glimmers of a better person underneath. Even as I first wrote her, I knew that there was something interesting yet tragic lurking in Clarissa’s past. I’m a rescuer at heart, so I figured she deserved a proper happily-ever-after with a man who understood her.

It turned out that there was so much more to Clarissa than met the eye and that she was capable of so much more than she ever believed. But to show that, I had to turn her safe, cossetted world upside down and plunge her into the dangerous world of smuggling and espionage. Seb’s world...