Spotlight & Giveaway: Never Wager with a Wallflower by Virginia Heath

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Virginia Heath to HJ!

Hi Virginia and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Never Wager with a Wallflower: A Novel!

 
It’s great to be here! Thanks for inviting me to help celebrate the release of Never Wager With a Wallflower, the final book in the Merriwell sisters trilogy.
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Like all the Merriwell Sisters books, Never Wager With a Wallflower can be read as a standalone but for those who have been following the sisters for the last few years, Venus Merriwell is the youngest and perhaps the most idealistic and romantic of the three. Except when this story starts, after a series of disappointments, Vee (who hates her real name!) has become disillusioned with romance and fears her prince will never come. The only true love in her life is the bursting-at-the-seams Covent Garden Asylum for Orphans where she volunteers every day. The orphanage desperately needs more space and Vee hope they will soon be able to expand it into the building next door which has been promised to them by a benefactor.

Galahad Sinclair’s lifelong dream is to open a gamblers’ pleasure palace. After years of struggling in both his native New York and now in London, he’s finally purchased the perfect building to turn that dream into a reality. The only fly in the ointment is that the building he’s bought also happens to be next door to the orphanage run by Miss Venus Merriwell, a sanctimonious woman he has avoided like the plague since she’d thought he was a burglar and subsequently flew screaming through the air and flattened him five years ago. Venus seems to think that his building should be hers! And with the help of her loyal orphans, sets about sabotaging all his plans to turn his building into his dream.

But while Venus and Galahad lock horns, will either of them take the ultimate gamble and learn to love thy neighbor?
 

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

• “After Tommy’s hammer missed my head but nearly broke my foot, I was down a leg when the pigeons escaped and tried to peck my eyes out, so something had to give. Thankfully, before my butt hit the floor a handy stew pot kindly broke my fall.” Galahad squeezed his eyes shut as the needle jabbed again. “Now that the good doctor here has dug the bulk of that pot from out from inside of me, he’s practicin’ his embroidery while he closes the hole.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• Galahad Sinclair is the first American hero I have ever written!
• The hero’s nemeses in this story are orphaned twins Tommy and Sydney Claypole who do whatever they can to ruin all Galahad’s plans are inspired by Fred and George Weasley from the Harry Potter novels.
• In the Merriwell Sisters stories Venus Merriwell ages from a naïve 18 in book 1 to 27 by the end of book 3, so you really get to see her evolve from a slightly annoying girl to the my favorite leading lady of the series.

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

Galahad has been seriously attracted to Vee since she flattened him 5 years before this story starts. He definitely falls first. Venus begins to see him differently thanks to the way he deals with her orphans.

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

Seeing as I’ve already alluded to the pigeons and introduced you to the Claypole twins, here’s a tiny snippet of one of the funniest scenes in the book…

“There has been an incident.” Mrs Witherspoon met her at the door of the orphanage the moment Vee walked through it at eight. “Unsurprisingly, it involves the Claypoles.”
“Oh dear.” When Tommy had been doing so well of late too. “Another silly prank?” If it involved spiders again, she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t strangle him.
“If you call breaking and entering and injuring a person silly.” The older woman’s expression was grave as she wrung her hands. “The reverend has had to summon the physician.”
“What!” Because the matron had quickened her pace, Vee did too. “Is the injury that bad?”
“One of them is bad enough to need stitches.” Which rather suggested there were multiple injuries involved. “I pray the stiches are enough to stop an infection setting it.” Which rather suggested the wound which needing stitches was big.
Mrs Witherspoon gestured towards the office where both Tommy and Sydney stood shamefaced like two sentries outside. The dried blood of several small nicks and cuts marred their freckled faces, but even wounded she had little sympathy for them and wagged her finger at them in outright disgust. “I shall deal with you two later!” The twins withered some more at her outrage as she marched passed to slam her palm against the office door.
“I’m not sure that you should go in there yet!”
Mrs Witherspoon’s panicked warning came a second too late and Vee was confronted with the sight of Galahad Sinclair spreadeagled face down over the reverend’s desk, his naked backside practically staring her in the face.
“Oh my goodness!” Her hands flew to her mouth too late to prevent the high-pitched sound which came out. While they were too late for that, they were in time to clutch her suddenly beetroot red cheeks. That it never occurred to her palms to cover her staring eyes when she couldn’t find the strength to avert her gaze only made her face heat hotter. “Oh my goodness!”
The door swung shut behind her and still she stared. “What on earth has happened?”
Her wayward eyes were so fixed on the taut, firm bottom displayed to the world in all its glory, it took them at least half a minute to realise that the reverend and the physician were also in the room, and a goodly few seconds more to notice the inch long wound on the exposed left buttock that the physician was in the midst of stitching.
After what must have been an eternity of gawping, Vee had to go into battle with her eyeballs to wrench them away from Galahad’s pert posterior to focus his pinched face.
“He was ravaged by pigeons by all accounts,” said the reverend enjoying the surreal spectacle more than a man of the cloth should.

Readers should read this book….

If they adore an enemies to lovers, boy next door, slow burn but spicy romcom.

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

I’m currently working on my next Regency romcom series for St Martin’s Press- Miss Prentice’s Protegees. Its about 4 friends who all met at the same school for girls which teaches the impoverished ladies on the periphery of the gentry how to become governesses, social secretaries and lady’s companions. The 1st book, All’s Fair in Love and War is already on pre-order and I’m writing the 2nd- Look Before You Leap.
 
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: One print copy of NEVER WAGER WITH A WALLFLOWER giveaway, US Winner Only

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Enemies to lovers is my favorite romance trope and Never Wager With a Wallflower is very definitely an enemies to lovers story, but what is your favorite romance trope?

 
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Excerpt from Never Wager with a Wallflower: A Novel:

“Do we have an accord Mr Sinclair?”

As Lord Mallory was still talking to his back, Galahad wandered over to the farthest window to inspect the flaking wall and allow the silence to stretch a little bit longer. It was a tactic his grandpa had taught him back home in New York to encourage others to nervously fill the void and bare their hand.

His companion didn’t disappoint.

“It would be prudent to shake on it today, Mr Sinclair, as I doubt these impressive buildings will take long to sell on the open market.”
Gal rapped the most precarious looking crack on the wall with his knuckles and, as he had hoped, a huge chunk of plaster slipped and shattered on the floor by his feet. For good measure, he kicked the rotting piece of skirting board he had selected on purpose beneath the leaking window frame, and it instantly splintered into dust too.
That was when he shook his head.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. Because his wily Grandpa also taught him that sometimes no words worked far better than all the clever words in the world. He didn’t need to turn around to know that despite the cold, the seller was sweating as he awaited his verdict. So profusely he could almost hear it leaking from the man’s pores.

“I could drop another five hundred, Mr Sinclair, but that is my absolute limit.” Which miraculously put him at the absolute top end of Gal’s. “You’ll be getting a steal for that price. An absolute steal. I doubt you’ll find anything any cheaper in Covent Garden.”

It might well be pushing the limits of his pocket, but a steal didn’t even begin to describe it.

Three adjacent four storey townhouses in the beating heart of London’s pleasure capital, for just shy of six thousand pounds, was the deal of the century! Neglected empty husks they may be, but the shells were as sound as sound could be. He’d been hunting for a year for something, all smaller, twice the price and nowhere near as well situated as this trio of matching beauties.

He had never been one for dancing, but while his expression remained blandly unconvinced, inside he was twirling pirouettes while his mind was already adjusting his original plans and drawing up new ones. Because as his canny Grandpa also often said plans, like dreams, should never be set in stone and shifted with the tide, so a wise man kept them adaptable. Especially
when the opportunity exceeded all his expectations! And boy, this did!

Three buildings! All in a row!

Five minutes in and his whirring mind knew already that he had to knock them all into one grand space. Uniquely theme every floor. Music, singers, dancing girls and a bar that never ran dry on the bottom level to attract all the fun lovers as they tumbled out of the nearby theatres. Gaming tables on the second and third. Affordable and raucous on two for the occasional gambler or those with limited budgets out for a good time. Higher stakes, more exclusive and intimate on three so that those serious about their wagering wouldn’t have to waste time with the hobbyists. That floor would be the holy grail. Swanky and luxurious and by invitation only. Served by a separate, guarded but gilded staircase which rose majestically from the lobby for all to see—but for only the chosen few to climb. Something to aspire to, because the British loved nothing more than to feel superior to their fellow men.

Or women.

He intended to buck the usual trend and throw his doors open to anyone with a purse stuffed with jangling coins. Gal didn’t care who is future customers were so long as they spent their money. Never mind that putting the cat amongst the pigeons in the stuffy, and often suffocating confines, of English society like that also warmed the egalitarian American half of his blood.

He’d snag the entire attic for himself, for his office and apartment because he was all done with temporary lodgings. After more than a decade of roaming, he wanted his own place. His own walls to do with as he pleased. His own décor and furniture. That sense of hearth and home which had been missing for too long. Even the Albany, where his aristocratic cousin had somehow managed to finesse him a suite of well-appointed rooms, had too many rules and caveats for Gal’s liking. And it was too constricting. Too… English.

Mallory’s feet shuffled, his obvious impatience marking him as desperate. “I must warn you—I do have other interested parties.”

Gal quashed the urge to roll his eyes and give this hapless lord a friendly lecture on the dark art of negotiation, because they both knew he was currently the only ready buyer. Mallory’s widowed and childless aunt hadn’t been dead more than a few days and because she had passed miles away in her seaside house in Brighton, the news of her death hadn’t yet reached the capital’s newspapers, so nothing had been advertised. Never mind that British politeness dictated that any potential rival would feel dutybound not to enquire about the future of her extensive and lucrative property portfolio until she was safely ensconced underground.

Thankfully, not hailing from these parts had always been more beneficial than a hindrance, so he wasn’t similarly afflicted, and, as the Brits were so fond of saying, the early bird always caught the worm. That’s why he had taken it upon himself to call upon her only nephew himself bright and early this morning, fresh from his own long and hasty journey back from Brighton last night, to be the first to offer his condolences. Then he’d hinted he might be on the market for some property in Covent Garden if Lord Mallory happened to be in the market to sell off some of his fresh inheritance. Cash of course, because cash was always king no matter what a man’s rank or nationality, and he had it on good authority that Mallory was strapped for it.

Many suspected the reckless young lord might not have two ha’pennies to rub together, a quaint English colloquialism which he loved and used often, but he knew it without a shadow of a doubt. Mallory was up to his eyeballs in debt and trouble.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Book Info:

Never Wager with a Wallflower is the third and final delightful installment in Virginia Heath’s Merriwell Sisters Regency rom-com series.

Miss Venus Merriwell has been waiting for her prince to come since the tender age of fourteen. She wants a man who is a selfless academic like her, and free from all the wretched vices her gambler father enjoyed far too much before he left the Merriwell sisters practically destitute. Unfortunately, after a slew of romantic disappointments, there is still no sign of that prince at twenty-three and the only one true love of her life is the bursting-at-the-seams orphanage in Covent Garden that she works tirelessly for. An orphanage that desperately needs to expand into the empty building next door.

For Galahad Sinclair, gambling isn’t just his life, it’s in his blood. He grew up and learned the trade at his grandfather’s knee in a tavern on the far away banks of the Hudson in New York. But when fate took all that away and dragged him across the sea to London, it made sense to set up shop here. He’s spent five years making a success out of his gaming hall in the sleazy docks of the East End. Enough that he can finally afford to buy the pleasure palace of his dreams—and where better than in the capital’s sinful heart, Covent Garden? The only fly in his ointment is the perfect building he’s just bought to put it in also happens to be right next door to the orphanage run by his cousin’s wife’s youngest sister. A pious, disapproving and unsettling siren he has avoided like the plague since she flattened him five years ago.

While Venus and Galahad lock horns over practically everything, and while her malevolent orphans do their darndest to sabotage his lifelong dream, can either of them take the ultimate gamble—and learn to love thy neighbor?
Book Links: Amazon | B&N |
 
 

Meet the Author:

When Virginia Heath was a little girl it took her ages to fall asleep, so she made up stories in her head to help pass the time while she was staring at the ceiling. As she got older, the stories became more complicated, sometimes taking weeks to get to the happy ending. Then one day, she decided to embrace the insomnia and start writing them down. Now her Regency romcoms (including the Wild Warriners and Talk of the Beau Monde series) are published in many languages across the globe. More than twenty-five books and three Romantic Novel of the Year Award nominations later, it still takes her forever to fall asleep.
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