Meet Lady Anne Addison!

Hi, all. First, let me introduce myself: I am a new author to Sourcebooks. My name is Donna Lea Simpson (aka Donna Simpson in my previous life as a Regency author with Zebra), and I write (mostly) historical romance. Lady Anne and the Howl in the Dark, set in the Georgian era in England, will be released April First, no fooling!

I thought for my first blog entry with the Casa Babes I would introduce the two main characters of the Lady Anne series, Lady Anne Addison and Lord Anthony Darkefell.

A few weeks ago I was looking for something on Amazon.com… a review clip from one of my Regencies, maybe? And I came across a newer reader review of one of my older novelettes in an anthology called ‘Untameable’, one of the Zebra Regency themed anthologies. My story was entitled ‘A Rogue’s Rescue’. The heroine was Miss Ariadne Lambert, a spinster of humble appearance, but determination and grit. Jaimey Grant, the Amazon reviewer, said she gave my story five out of five for the heroine, and when I thought back, I realized something.

Lady Anne Addison, the heroine of the Lady Anne stories, had her origins in Ariadne, a lady I have never forgotten, really, because I, like Jaimey, just love the heroine who is smart, not a pushover, gutsy, determined and who possesses all the attributes of a woman you would want to be friends with; she’s loyal, caring and relentlessly honest. Even though she’s plain, she knows she is a woman of worth and sterling quality.

There are lots of differences, of course. Anne is titled and wealthy, while Ariadne was in possession of a modest fortune inherited from an employer. But both, importantly, value themselves too much, despite a complete awareness of their plainness, to ever settle for a marriage of convenience.

Lady Anne Addison is the only daughter of the Earl and Countess of Harecross, Kent. She was engaged once when she was young and has never forgotten her narrow escape from a marriage that would have been a disaster for her. She’s a little gun shy for that very reason, knowing that as that rare bird, a woman of independent means and a lot of freedom (as long as she plays within the rules of a proper Georgian lady) she stands to lose it all in an unwise marriage.

Marrying the wrong kind of man—domineering, commanding, difficult—would be lethal to her happiness and freedom.

Lord Anthony, the Marquess of Darkefell, (Yorkshire) is domineering, commanding and difficult, strong both physically and in spirit. He is committed to his position and his family (which consists of his mother, the dowager Marchioness, and his brother John and John’s new wife) so when a series of deaths happen on his land and rumors of a werewolf seen, sheep slaughtered, all that kind of nonsense happen, he is beside himself with fury. When his brother’s silly wife, Lydia, invites her friend, Lady Anne Addison, to investigate, he sets himself to the task of distracting her from snooping into his family’s affairs. No outsider is going to poke around his family business.

He has one secret weapon that he discovers early on; Lady Anne Addison is powerfully attracted to him. He can befuddle her senses by using that passionate attraction, and does so every chance he gets, using kisses and caresses to confuse and divert her focus away from the murder. It becomes a tug of war between two intelligent, rational and stubborn people.

But Anne is really not a pushover, even faced with her indubitable sensual attraction toward the extremely dark and handsome Lord Darkefell. She has matured since she let herself be pushed into an engagement when she was eighteen. The knowledge that she would be miserable that very moment if her marriage had occurred makes her cautious. Men rule the world, maybe, so why would she put herself in a man’s power, especially one with a mercurial temper accustomed to making people do whatever he wants?

In other words, someone like Darkefell.

I was given a gift with Lady Anne and Darkefell, in that I was allowed the opportunity to have their passionate and tumultuous relationship develop over the course of the first three books, Lady Anne and the Howl in the Dark – April 2009, Lady Anne and the Ghost’s Revenge – August 2009, and Lady Anne and the Gypsy Curse – November 2009. I hope readers are as entertained by these two unlikely lovers as I am!

I have a brand new website to celebrate this wonderful new series. My website is: http://www.donnaleasimpson.com/