Sealed With a Kiss: Juliana Gray and Giveaway

JULIANA GRAY is the award-winning author of the Affairs by Moonlight trilogy. Her debut, A Lady Never Lies, is a nominee for 2012 Book of the Year by RT Book Reviews. The trilogy concludes with A Duke Never Yields, which has won starred reviews from Kirkus and Booklist and a 4 ½ star rating from RT. She enjoys dark chocolate, champagne, and dinner parties, and despises all forms of exercise except one.

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Ah, Valentine’s Day: that particular revolution of the earth set aside for lovers! But there are two people unlucky in Cupid’s books this time around, and I’m afraid their immediate prospects for amorous celebration are Not Good.

The Duke of Wallingford has decided it’s high time he abandoned his rakish ways and proved to his meddling grandfather that he’s quite capable of managing his life without bringing disgrace upon the family. Together with his brother Roland and his best friend Phineas Burke, he sets off to a remote castle Italy for a year of seclusion from the fashionable world and its temptations.

But temptation, alas, comes to him, in the form of the charming, lovely, and hilariously outspoken Miss Abigail Harewood, who’s come to Italy with her sister and cousin for a secret retreat of their own. Naturally, the sparks begin to fly, and when a certain private encounter ends in a cloud of goose feathers rather than a haze of ecstasy, both of them find it hard to apologize…

Miss Abigail Harewood to the His Grace, the Duke of Wallingford:

I really am most abjectly sorry….

(crossed out in heavy black lines and crumpled into ball)

Honesty, and a clear-eyed sense of my own culpability, compel me to…

(torn into very tiny pieces and tossed in the dustbin)

For indeed you are dear to me, dearer than I dare admit, either to myself or to you. I don’t quite know why this should be. Of course, you’re splendidly handsome, with all that glorious dark hair and your darling midnight eyes and your lovely mouth; but then so was that stableboy in the inn where we had our first rendezvous. Your figure is pleasing (well, to be perfectly frank, it’s more than pleasing—it’s positively tingle-inducing, though we unmarried ladies aren’t supposed to know about tingles), but my sister Alexandra’s footman was a sturdy young chap as well, and I was quite happy with only an experimental kiss from him. You’re rich and powerful and quite thunderously ducal, and you already know how that commanding voice of yours gives me the most delicious shivers, but since I have no intention of ever marrying, these worldly matters are hardly enough to fascinate me.

It’s just you, I suppose. You, all cross and towering over everybody, looking as if you’ve just meted out justice to some especially abject criminal. You, looking at me so sternly when I know you want to take me in your arms, I know you want to do things to me I’ve only read about in naughty books. (Speaking of which, I do have a number of questions for you, once we’re on speaking terms again.) You, talking to your horse when you don’t think anybody’s watching, looking so unexpectedly lost and tender. You, with so much hidden inside, so many astonishing things that you never show anybody. I want to know them all. I want to know why you’re here, why you think you need to test yourself like this. I want to know you. I want to lie with you, and wake with you, and make you laugh over the breakfast table. I want to be your Abigail; I want you to be my Wallingford. Oh, God, I just want to find…

(shredded into many, many minute pieces and tossed in the fire)

Check out Abigail and Wallingford's love story in A Duke Never Yeilds 

Impatient with the strictures of polite British society, Miss Abigail Harewood has decided to live life on her own term — and the first thing she requires is a lover. When the commanding Duke of Wallingford arrives on the doorstep of her leased holiday castle, she thinks she's found the perfect candidate: handsome, dashing, and experienced in the art of love.

But tempting Wallingford into her bed proves more difficult than she imagined. Restless and dissatisfied with his debauched life in London, the formerly rakish duke is determined to spend a year chaste. But as Abigail tries her best to seduce him, Wallingford finds his resolve crumbling in the face of her irresistible charm... and her alluring secrets.

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Check out whats up for grabs.

Up For Grabs:

• 2 lucky winners will win a copy of If You Give a Rake a Ruby

To Enter:

• Leave a meaningful comment or question for Shana.
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**Don't forget to head over to Romancing Rakes For The Love of Romance to check out Wallingford's letter. 

Good Luck  =)

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