Spotlight & Giveaway: Unlaced by the Highland Duke by Lara Temple

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Lara Temple to HJ!

Hi Lara and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Unlaced by the Highland Duke!

 
Hi, thanks so much for having me on you author spotlight!
 

To start off, can you please tell us a little bit about this book?:

Unlaced by the Highland Duke is a Highland Regency romance and part of the Lochmore Legacy series where four authors write about two Highland families during different time periods: Victorian, Regency, Tudor and Medieval. I wrote the Regency story, about Benneit Lochmore, a widowed duke with a young son, and Jo Langdale, a poor relation who comes to act as companion to his son. They are both surprised by the growing feelings between them and do their best to resist them but the friendship and lust between them keeps breaking down their defenses. And of course there is a Happily Ever After…
 

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

This discussion takes place in a Stone Circle when Benneit catches up with Jo who is trying to leave Lochmore:

‘I’m too plain, Benneit…’
‘Stop saying you are plain. What does that even mean? That you don’t look like a doll on a shelf? Well, you don’t. You look like Jo and I can’t stop looking at you. I have spent more time looking at you against my will, and searching for you against my better judgement, and lusting after you against my very sanity. I see you. Just as you see me.’

What inspired this book?

The idea for the series came from Harlequin and the contacted all four of us authors (Janice Preston, Elisabeth Hobbes, and Nicole Locke) with the stories of the Lochmore and McCrieff families. I loved the Jane-Eyre-ish idea of a poor widow finding herself once again shunted between relations and this time in a remote Scottish Castle but this time falling in love with both her employer and her charge. I channeled an amazing hiking trip I took to the Isle of Skye to really put my love of the Scottish Highlands into Benneit and Jo’s love story.

How did you ‘get to know’ your main characters? Did they ever surprise you?

They constantly surprise me! I don’t plot my books and so it’s the characters who take the lead and I follow them like a movie – writing down how they react and interact. That’s one of the things I love the most about writing – I get to experience the excitement of finding out what they do, how they fall in love, how they hurt each other and themselves ‘as it is happening.’

What was your favorite scene to write?

This is a tough question – it’s hard to choose favourites! I loved writing the scenes after Jo and Benneit realize they care for each other but have too much respect for his soon-to-be-fiancé (Tessa McCrieff) to act on that attraction and emotion. There is such tension and longing and despair but also respect and understanding. I really wanted that combination to work and I hope it did!

What was the most difficult scene to write?

In this book I took particular care with the scene that reveals the hero’s vulnerability. I always draw on personal experiences or emotions but in a case where I am talking about a trauma or a phobia I’m particularly careful to respect the depth of the wound or emotion. I won’t say anymore because that’s telling!

Would you say this book showcases your writing style or is it a departure for you?

I think it’s absolutely my style even though I usually add a little more action or excitement in my writing. This time the setting and the nature of my book in the series meant it was an intimate cast and setting – it takes place mostly at Lochmore Castle and the surrounding area so I had to invest that area with all the emotions and drama of their challenging love story. I used the castle and the beaches and countryside as characters they interact with.

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

I want them to take away the feeling of having sunk into another world, other lives, and loved being there. I want them to feel that even if you think you are plain and insignificant, there are others who see you for what you really are – beautiful, fascinating, worth loving…

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have planned?

I’m still in the middle of my Regency series, the Sinful Sinclairs, about three siblings from a scandalous family who are wary of life and love. The Earl’s Irresistible Challenge was out in January and the second book, The Rake’s Enticing Proposal, is out in July, and the third will be out this year as well. I loved writing this series, especially since I got to revisit (in my mind at least) my memories of traveling in Egypt.

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: I’m giving away five ebooks of Unlaced by the Highland Duke (or if you’ve already read it, an ebook of the first in my Sinful Sinclair series – The Earl’s Irresistible Challenge). Thanks so much for taking part!

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Do you love reading about places you are familiar with or do you like books to take you someplace you’ve never been?

 
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Excerpt from Unlaced by the Highland Duke:

This scene is when Benneit, the Duke of Lochmore, comes to summon/convince Jo to come down to the ball after she tells the maid she doesn’t want to come down…

Benneit hesitated and then held out his arm. ‘Come.’
Jo went, stepping into the lie that he wanted her there, that she looked lovely in her borrowed gown, that unlike those horrid balls years ago she would not be invisible, unremarked, overlooked. That she was not merely an impecunious widow-cum-governess invited to the ball as an act of casual kindness but the Jo that Jamie saw in her – wondrous and wise and worth caring for.
Her head dipped and she watched the tips of her slippers. They were the only thing she wore that were originally hers and they were a little scuffed. There would be no hiding them, not even under her lovely dress.
He stopped abruptly at the head of the staircase and she wavered and almost slipped on the top stair. His other hand caught her at the waist.
‘Steady. Not even falling downstairs will be acceptable as an excuse not to attend. Look at me. Are you crying?’
Oh no. She could feel the tears straining to slide down her cheeks. She had not counted on sympathy. She was not experienced enough with it to counter it as she did indifference and criticism and anger. She shook her head.
He led her back to her parlour and her heart and mind raged. She had won her battle not to go to the ball, but she didn’t want to win. She did not quite understand what was growing inside her but it was fierce and hot and it wanted to go down to the ball. With him.
‘Here, look at me.’ His voice was soft and she closed her eyes and shook her head but he raised her face and she felt the cool press of linen on her eyes and cheeks, absorbing her tears.
‘Is it so very bad?’ he asked. ‘I know you never enjoyed balls when Bella was coming out, but it is different now. You aren’t Miss Watkins, being shunted between relations. You are Mrs Langdale and my guest. I won’t allow you to be slighted, you know.’
‘That isn’t it.’ She touched her fingertips to her eyelids, stopping the tears. She was growing weak. In the past she never would have allowed this to happen. It was his fault.
‘Then what?’ His voice was so gentle it ached.
‘It is foolish.’
‘Tell me anyway.’
She grasped for something, anything to say. Strangely what came was the truth, just not the whole truth.
‘I never had pretty dresses when I married Alfred. His mother died a week after the wedding and we wore mourning, and two weeks before the year was up he fell from his horse. I thought…I wish he might have seen me in such a dress…’
As the silence stretched she forced herself to look. He was very close, she could see the peculiar grey-green of his eyes, the colours of the cliffs and sea beyond.
‘I am sorry for him, too. But he was a lucky man to have you even so briefly. A smart man, too.’
He raised her hand, just touching it with his lips, his hair dark against the pale orange of her skirts. His words rang inside her like the vibrations of a bell and she fisted her other hand against the impulse to touch the silk of his hair. It was not an effusive testimony to her transformation by the dress, but it struck her as so much more personal. Like Alfred, though in a different way, this man saw her. It was not enough, leagues and leagues from what she craved, but it still warmed her.
‘Thank you, Benneit.’
His hand tightened on hers as he straightened, but he dropped it and stepped back, holding out his arm as he had before.
‘You are welcome, Jo. Come. Now more than ever I will not allow you to hide. Once I do the perfunctory dances with the dragons and their offspring, we will share a dance for your Alfred. Tell me you can waltz.’
‘Yes, your grace, I can waltz.’
‘Good. Your fate is sealed.’

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

Unceremoniously packed off to Scotland to care for the Duke of Lochmore’s young son, practical widow Jo Langdale fears she will be ignored as always. But the deep connection and heated passion that develops between her and Benneit is far more dangerous! When Benneit is expected to propose to another, how dare Jo dream of becoming his duchess?
Part of The Lochmore Legacy: a Scottish castle through the ages

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Meet the Author:

Lara Temple writes strong and sensual Regency romances about complex individuals who give no quarter but do so with plenty of passion. She lives with her husband, two children, and one very fluffy dog and they are all very understanding about her taking over the kitchen table so she can look out over the garden as she writes and dreams up her Happy Ever Afters.
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