Author Note

It’s hard to say goodbye, and last year I bade farewell to my series centered around the Beauchamp family. Regular readers will know I enjoy writing stories set in the same Regency world, where familiar faces pop up in a supporting role, and so when I was thinking about what to write after finishing Alex’s story (Christmas with His Wallflower Wife), I decided to write a complete standalone.

I didn’t anticipate how hard that would be.

I’ve been immersed in the Beauchamps’ world for several years, and as I wrote one, the next would be percolating inside my brain and each book started off on familiar ground. This was different and I felt like a fish out of water at first—much as my hero, Adam, does when he discovers his first thirty-six years have been a lie and he enters the alien world of the haut ton as an earl.

In the end, I couldn’t resist including two tenuous links to “my” Regency world in The Earl with the Secret Past: one name and one (very) secondary character. I wonder if anyone will spot them.

This is a second-chance-at-love story, where Adam meets up again with widow Kitty, the seventeen-year-old he fell in love with fifteen years ago. I adored both Adam and Kitty, whose confidence has been eroded by her past although she is very good at hiding those insecurities. I hope you enjoy it.