Guest Post with Author Megan Frampton and Giveaway

Meet Megan Frampton, author of Put Up Your Duke.

Megan Frampton writes historical romance under her own name and romantic women’s fiction as Megan Caldwell. She likes the color black, gin, dark-haired British men, and huge earrings, not in that order. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her husband and son.

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Thanks for having me here!

Put Up Your Duke, my new release, is based on the trope of a marriage of convenience—a “marriage entered into for a personal or family advantage, as for social, political, or economic reasons, usually without love and sometimes without the expectation of sexual relations.”

Historical romance authors writing within a super-restricted time period, such as the early Victorian era, have to be inventive to get the hero and heroine alone together: A broken carriage wheel, a convenient storm stranding them together, an escape to the terrace, a masquerade.

So putting the hero and heroine into a marriage of convenience at the book’s outset means they can be alone with it being scandalous—the problem then is trying to keep them from being intimate before they’ve fallen in love.

In Put Up Your Duke the heroine Isabella is completely terrified on her wedding night, and because the hero Nicholas isn’t a complete unfeeling monster, they don’t consummate that marriage that night. Or the next night; Nicholas decides he wants to wait until she’s ready, and until she asks for it, before anything happens.

The beauty of a marriage of convenience is that by the time they’re ready for things to happen, they’re already married, so they don’t have to wait or find any kind of excuse for being alone.

Here are some of my favorite MOC books (Mary Balogh has many of them!):

Lisa Kleypas’s Devil in Winter
Mary Jo Putney’s The Bargain
Mary Balogh’s Slightly Married
Mary Balogh’s The Ideal Wife
Mary Balogh’s The Temporary Wife
Cheryl St. John’s His Secondhand Wife
Carla Kelly’s Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand
Carla Kelly’s With This Ring
LaVyrle Spencer’s Morning Glory
Adele Ashworth’s My Darling Caroline

He was once happily bedding and boxing, but in the newest DUKES BEHAVING BADLY novel, Nicholas Smithfield has inherited a title and a bride…

To keep his estate afloat, the new Duke of Gage must honor an agreement to marry Lady Isabella. Stunningly beautiful, utterly tempting, she’s also a bag of wedding night nerves, so Nicholas decides to wait to do his duty-even if it means heading to the boxing saloon every day to punch away his frustration.

Groomed her whole life to become the perfect duchess Isabella longs for independence, a dream that is gone forever. As her husband, Nicholas can do whatever he likes-but, to Isabella’s surprise the notorious rake instead begins a gentle seduction that is melting every inch of her reserve, night by night…

To his utter shock, Nicholas’s discovers that none of his previous exploits were half as pleasurable as wooing his own wife. But has the realm’s most disreputable Duke found the one woman who can bring him to his knees-and leave him there?

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Check out the Duke's Behaving Badly series:

  

“The Duke of Gage, my lord,” Lowton intoned before bowing and stepping aside to let the man enter.

Isabella kept her eyes down, not looking at him, hoping that if she didn’t see him, he wouldn’t exist.

That didn’t work even in fairy tales, but for a just a few moments she could pretend, couldn’t she?

“Your Grace,” her father said, stepping forward. Isabella felt her mother’s elbow in her ribs and rose. “May I introduce my wife, the Countess of Grosston, and my daughter, Lady Isabella Sawford.”

Isabella raised her head, her usual expression set on her face, only to wish, when she saw him, that Margaret had also included the information that the new Duke of Gage was incredibly handsome.

Isabella was not small, but the duke appeared to be at least six inches taller than she. Probably even more; he towered over her father, who was himself larger than the average man. He had dark blond hair that swept back from a strong widow’s peak, and piercing blue eyes—currently focused on her—above his autocratic nose. The intensity of his stare made it seem as though he might see inside to her very soul. His face was lean and sharply planed, his cheekbones strong, and he held himself with a command that he had to have been born with, not just assumed when he’d found himself suddenly a duke.

And his form; he was broad-shouldered and lean-hipped, and his long legs were encased in slim trousers that clung to his body in an almost indecent way. Or perhaps it just looked indecent because his whole self was so powerfully, handsomely male, and it was hard not to think of indecent things when one beheld him.

He was very plainly dressed, not wearing the fobs and signets and such that the last duke had worn. But he didn’t need any ornamentation; the severity of his dress only highlighted the strong, sensuous beauty of his face.

No wonder certain ladies found him intriguing. It would be hard to imagine any lady—not just certain ones—wouldn’t at least give him a second, if not a third, glance.

At this moment, in fact, she was staring back at him as thoroughly as he was looking at her.

Check out what's up for grabs.

Up For Grabs:

• 3 Signed copies of Put Up Your Duke

To Enter: 

• Please fill out the Rafflecopter form.

Good Luck! 

Special thanks to Megan Frampton & Tasty Book Tours for sponsoring this tour-wide giveaway.

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