Spotlight & Giveaway: A Love by Design by Elizabeth Everett

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Elizabeth Everett to HJ!

Hi Elizabeth and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, A Love by Design!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

A LOVE BY DESIGN is the final installment in the Secret Scientists of London series. It features an engineer heroine, Maggie, who simply wants to do her job well. In her way stands a men’s rights organization, misogynist board members, and the man who broke her youthful heart. Our hero, the Earl Grantham, has only ever loved Maggie, but he abandoned her years ago for reasons he has never explained. His plans to win her back are thwarted when he finds Maggie is working for his political nemesis. This second-chance romance examines the question of how much a person changes over time and what happens when your lifelong dream bumps up against a lifelong love.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

“Margaret had followed the steps of this dance dozens of times.
Step one. A man told her what to do.
Step two. She asked why.
Step three. He told her what to do again. Because she must not have understood him the first time. She certainly couldn’t be questioning him. Impossible for her to not defer to him.
He was a man.
She was a woman.
It so followed that he was correct.
One, two, three, and four. Back and forth and to the side. Over and over again until it sank into his brain that she was questioning him. That she did not defer to him.
Astonishing.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

I did a great deal of research into bridge engineering for this book. First, it turns out that bridges are beautiful. I spent way too much time ogling bridges when I should have been writing! However, no matter how many diagrams I examined and videos I watched, I still have a fear of standing in the center of a bridge. Isn’t that odd?

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

What I love about the hero, Grantham, is that he falls in love with Maggie at the tender age of eight when she punches him in the stomach and knocks him to the ground. Her apology is in the form of a secret she shares with him, and young as he is, Grantham understands the sentiment behind what she does. Secrets are the ultimate form of currency, and she trusts him with hers.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

I really enjoyed writing the scene where Grantham brings contraception to Maggie, fully intending to make love to her, then gets cold feet. The image of Maggie grabbing onto Grantham and ordering him back to bed while he turns in circles trying to get her off his back had me giggling the entire time I wrote the scene.

What ailed the man?
Without warning, Grantham spun round and grabbed his boots.
“I forgot I have to go do something important.”
He had to what?
“You have to what?” she asked.
Without bothering to sit, he pushed his feet into the boots and could only fit them in halfway so he wobbled like a colt as he grabbed his cravat. “Very important thing to do that requires me to leave right now,” he babbled.
Leave?
“You,” said Margaret as she slid off the bed, “…are going nowhere.”
“You can keep the lemon,” he offered, trying to unhook his coat while shoving his feet even farther into his boots. “Use it for lemonade or somesuch. Lemon tart. Pie. Good with tea.”
A strange but important though occurred to her.
“Really must, ow! Margaret! What are you doing?”
He was going nowhere. To be certain of this, Margaret had launched herself at him, and grabbed him around the neck, clinging to his back.
“You take your clothes off and finish what you have started,” she said.

Readers should read this book….

This book is an ode to women who just want to do their job but keep being delayed by shortsighted sexism. Women engineers put up with some of the same obstacles in 2022 that they did in 1843 which is outrageous. Still, we can read about one of the good guys – and have a laugh while we do. If you are looking to giggle, swoon, shake your fist in the air, and get a bit warm under the collar – A LOVE BY DESIGN is for you.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I am doing a new series with Berkley Romance, The Damsels of Discovery, which follows women scientists outside the haven of Athena’s Retreat. The first book, about a woman apothecary and a private investigator is out in 2024 and I am currently working on the second book in that series.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: One copy of A LOVE BY DESIGN for one U.S. only winner.

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Excerpt from A Love by Design:

Maggie had returned.

Of course, she was now known as Madame Margaret Gault.

Try as he might, Grantham could never twist his tongue around the name.

Almost his whole life, he’d called her Maggie.

His Maggie.

From upside down, he watched as she turned the corner of the carriage house, the wind unfurling the hem of her simple bronze pelisse. A brown capelet hung about her shoulders, and a matching muff hid her hands. Catching sight of him, she paused, tilting her head so he caught a glimpse of lush auburn curls peeking out from beneath her tea-colored bonnet trimmed with bright red berries. Margaret’s fair skin showed no hint of the freckles that had once plagued her every summer, and thick brown lashes shielded her hazel eyes.

She was unusually tall for a woman; nevertheless, she moved with effortless grace, and not even the blazing clash of colors adorning Violet next to her could detract from her beauty.

For she was a beauty, Margaret Gault. Once wild and graceless, she’d bloomed into a woman of elegant refinement.

A woman who was more than met the eye.

A woman who would rather feast on glass than give him the time of day.

For eleven years, the first day of summer meant Margaret would be waiting for him beneath the willow where they first met. She and Violet attended the Yorkshire Academy for the Education of Exceptional Young Women together. While Violet came home to her large, affectionate-and very loud-family, Margaret had no one waiting for her at home. Her father had died of a stroke when she was ten and her mother had little interest in Margaret’s whereabouts or well-being.

Violet and Grantham had been Margaret’s family. The three of them had been the best of friends until one hot afternoon when Margaret had smiled a certain way and the ground went out beneath his feet. A year later he was soldiering in Canada and Margaret lived in Paris and their summers together were nothing but a memory he pulled around himself like a blanket on cold lonely nights.

“Good afternoon, Grantham,” Violet greeted him, seemingly unaffected by his headfirst dive into her rosebushes. She wore a shocking yellow day dress beneath a burgundy velvet paletot and atop her head sat a garish blue bonnet topped with a life-sized stuffed parrot.

Swallowing a barrelful of curses, Grantham tried wriggling out of the bushes, every single thorn piercing his flesh a hundredfold as Margaret stared without saying a word.

“Ahem.” He cleared his throat as he managed to get to his feet despite being trapped in the center of one of the bushes. As he pulled a branch from his hair, a shower of wrinkled brown rose petals drifted down his shoulders. “You are especially . . . vibrant today, Violet. I brought this for Baby Georgie.”

He thrust the torn, dirtied rabbit at Violet, who received it with a bemused air. One of the buttons had come off and the silk was stained green and brown.

“Madame Gault,” he said, bowing to Margaret. “So lovely to see you again.”

No matter how strongly Grantham willed it, Margaret did not speak to him in return. Instead, she bent her knee a scant inch in a desultory curtsey, her lush mouth twisted like the clasp of a coin purse, no doubt to hold inside the names she was calling him in her head. He had a good idea what some of them were, considering he most likely had taught them to her.

Grantham hadn’t seen Margaret for thirteen years until their reunion-if one could call it that-a year and a half ago in the small parlor of Athena’s Retreat. He hadn’t exactly met the moment then, either-although to be fair, there’d been a hedgehog involved. The handful of times he encountered her since, she’d avoided meeting his eyes with her own, as though he were an inconsequential shadow cast by their past.

Someone to be dismissed.

Someone who had broken her heart and whom she would never forgive.

“See who is come to live in England for good.” Violet linked her arm with Margaret’s and beamed at her friend.

This was news.

When Margaret had come to stay at Athena’s Retreat a year and half ago to complete an engineering project for her father-in-law’s firm, Grantham had hoped she’d stay but she returned to Paris after three months. He’d asked Violet if Margaret might ever return, but Violet had doubted it.

“She’s one of the only women engineers in Europe with an excellent reputation. Why give up a dream hard fought to come back to England and fight all over again?” Violet had asked.

Something had changed, however, and now Margaret was home.

His heart leapt in his chest and the bitter orange flavor of hope flooded his mouth.

“Clean yourself up and come inside for tea,” Violet said to him now.

Margaret did not echo the invitation. Instead, she tightened her hold on a stylish carpet bag and accompanied Violet and Arthur into the building.

There are moments in life when the world shifts as though a door has opened somewhere out of sight. Whether a person runs toward that opened door or not depends on how fast they’re stuck in place. Grantham considered for a moment how painful it would be to get himself unstuck.

Although the tangle of branches in front of him twisted menacingly, he pulled a deep breath of resolution into his lungs alongside the scents of rosehips and crushed greenery. Gritting his teeth, he made his way through the thorns toward the open door.

Excerpted from A Love by Design by Elizabeth Everett Copyright © 2023 by Elizabeth Everett. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved.

Book Info:

You couldn’t design a better hero than the very eligible and extremely charming Earl Grantham. Unless, of course, you are Margaret Gault, who wants nothing to do with the man who broke her youthful heart.

Widowed and determined, Margaret Gault has returned to Athena’s Retreat and the welcoming arms of her fellow secret scientists with an ambitious plan in mind: to establish England’s first woman-owned engineering firm. But from the moment she sets foot in London her plans are threatened by greedy investors and—at literally every turn—the irritatingly attractive Earl Grantham, a man she can never forgive.

George Willis, the Earl Grantham, is thrilled that the woman he has loved since childhood has returned to London. Not as thrilling, however, is her decision to undertake an engineering commission from his political archnemesis. When Margaret’s future and Grantham’s parliamentary reforms come into conflict, Grantham must use every ounce of charm he possesses—along with his stunning good looks and flawless physique, of course—to win Margaret over to his cause.

Facing obstacles seemingly too large to dismantle, will Grantham and Margaret remain forever disconnected or can they find a way to bridge their differences, rekindle the passion of their youth, and construct a love built to last?
Book Links:   Amazon |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Elizabeth Everett lives in upstate New York with her family. She likes going for long walks or (very) short runs to nearby sites that figure prominently in the history of civil rights and women’s suffrage. Her series is inspired by her admiration for rule breakers and belief in the power of love to change the world.
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