Two for Waterloo!

Waterloo is a big deal in British history. European history, really. It marks an end and a beginning, and changed the way Europe looked for a hundred years. So when I was asked to write two novellas to commemorate the event, how could I resist? I read so many stories of bravery and heartbreak in my research for these books, I wanted to do the conflict and the people who took part in it, as much justice as I could.

Samhain asked me to write a novella, so I came up with “It Started At Waterloo.” Waterloo wasn’t all about the soldiers. Heroism off the field was provided in plenty by the surgeons, who learned some revolutionary techniques in treating seriously injured patients. 

It Started At Waterloo

Does she love him enough to let him go?

After three straight days working beside surgeon Will Kennaway to treat the wounded of Waterloo, Amelia Hartwell collapses on the nearest bed to sleep. Surely she can be forgiven for not caring that the warm body sleeping next to hers is Will’s.

Amelia’s status-hungry mother, however, couldn’t be more pleased to have an excuse to get the painfully shy, socially awkward Amelia married off, albeit to a less-than-ultra-rich husband.

Will doesn’t keep his title a deep, dark secret. His little-known earldom simply affords him the financial freedom to focus solely on healing the sick. But now that he has a wife to think about—and to admire, thanks to her unstinting bravery at Waterloo—he reluctantly takes up the mantle of earl to do his duty.

Missing her meaningful work as a nurse, Amelia finds herself floundering in society’s glaring spotlight, wondering if Will regrets being forced to marry. Perhaps it might even be better to give him his freedom, even if doing so will break her heart…

Warning: Steamy, battlefield kisses under a tent canvas lead to steamy scenes in the bedroom.

Coming June 16th from bestselling and award winning historical romance author Lynne Connolly
Preorder and Read an Extract From:
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And then there is Dreaming of Waterloo...

Fenella has introduced the concept of the boxed set. I didn’t take the plunge until last year, but a contemporary collection, “The Naughty List,” brought me up to date. The books sell like whoa and damn, so when I was approached to write a story with a Waterloo theme, I was more than ready. Even more so that the authors I’m working with are enthusiastic, knowledgeable and friends. Mind you, working on a box set has proved the downfall of not a few friendships, but this one cemented ours.

We all had our separate jobs, and we’ve all done them. As well as presenting a fully written and edited novella, we introduced a new London club to the scene. That was my job. A club for officers who served at Waterloo, called The Incomparables, set up in St. James’s, on the site of a club that had gone bankrupt.

Our heroes are all members, but they have very different backgrounds. I wrote about a soldier nicknamed “Lucky.”

Paul “Lucky” Sherstone was a younger son who inherited his title from his brother, but remained a soldier. After an injury early in his soldiering career, he never sustained another scratch. Men vied to be in his regiment, and Wellington threw him into every difficult encounter, turning him into a lucky mascot for the army.

Not surprisingly, Paul arrives home a complete wreck. Dashingly handsome, a popular commander, but inside he’s feeling the strain. And he arrives home to a wife he barely knows. They married before he left for the army. Now Hetty is used to running her own life, and so she doesn’t exactly wait for Paul with open arms.

I loved writing about this couple, and now I’ve started, I want to do some more! The box set isn’t out yet, but we’ve hit the Amazon.com bestseller lists already, so I’m a bit (a lot!) excited about this one.

Here’s the details. Oh yes, and the set is 99 cents or the local equivalent!

The Incomparables: 6 Heroes of Waterloo and the 6 Ladies They Adore

This limited edition box set includes 6 scorching romances that commemorate the 200th anniversary of the June 18, 1815 Battle of Waterloo.

From the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in Brussels to the Battle of Waterloo and beyond, join these six unforgettable heroes as they journey back from the physical and emotional trials of war and discover the passion that thrills the body can also heal the heart. 

Coming June 18th from bestselling and award winning historical romance authors Cerise DeLand, Sabrina York, Suzi Love, Lynne Connolly, Suzanna Medeiros and Dominique Eastwick.

Preorder and read extracts from:
Amazon
Kobo
All Romance Ebooks

Our Blog: http://incomparablesclub.blogspot.com/

Our Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/736061146513329/

Read more about this steamy collection!

Interlude with a Baron by Cerise DeLand

Emma wants only an interlude with the man she’s adored for years. But Drayton Worth has spent five years riddled with guilt for hurting her—and he’s determined to have more than a few nights in her bed.

Tarnished Honor by Sabrina York

Daniel Sinclair is a broken man with war wounds that are physical and spiritual. He’s weighed down by grief and guilt and tormented by his tarnished honor. When he meets Fia Lennox, a beautiful and brave Highland lass in dire need of his protection, he sees in her his chance for redemption…or utter damnation. Because despite his valiant attempts to resist her, he cannot.

Love After Waterloo by Suzi Love
When Lady Melton and her son join Captain Belling and the last wounded soldiers evacuating from Waterloo to London, she expects clashes with army deserters but doesn’t anticipate how falling in love with the antagonistic captain will change her life.

Dreaming of Waterloo by Lynne Connolly

They called him “Lucky,” but not all injuries are physical ones. Plagued by headaches and living nightmares, Paul, Lord Sherstone returns to London to a wife he doesn’t know and an estate he has to manage. He daren’t let her close, even though he is falling in love with her all over again.

Married and abandoned in a month, Hetty learned to manage a large estate and fend off would-be lovers, but a threat emerges much closer to home and from an unexpected place. In need of help she turns to Paul but since his return he has only shut her out. Refusing to give up on the man she fell in love with five years ago, Hetty has to persuade her husband to let her into his bed—and his heart.

The Captain’s Heart by Suzanna Medeiros

A man who is determined to fulfill his duty at the expense of his own happiness, a woman who wants only one taste of true passion, and a case of mistaken identity. Can Captain Edward Hathaway and Grace Kent overcome the guilt that continues to haunt them both and find true love?

For Love or Revenge by Dominique Eastwick

Captain Roarke Wooldridge is about to find out that sometimes love does heal all wounds.But when his need for revenge collides with desires he never believed he would feel again, will he be able to put aside the scars of Waterloo to embrace his future?

It Started at Waterloo

It Started at Waterloo
The more I learn about the battle, the more there is to learn! I have two novellas coming out in June, so I hope you'll indulge me by letting me talk about them. First is "It Started at Waterloo."
Waterloo was where a lot of modern surgical practices started. So many things were discovered, and not least was the beginnings of proper clinical practice. Unfortunately, much of the surgery practiced during the campaign was of the "cut and run" variety. Limbs were lopped off on the premise that it was better to save the person than save the limb. The surgeons became proficient at quick surgery, so as to minimize the effects of shock, but many patients died, nevertheless.
I don't go into too much detail in "It Started at Waterloo," because after all, this is a romance, rather than a treatise, but I do indicate how difficult it was for the surgeons at the battle. My hero is a civilian surgeon, of which there were quite a few. He didn't join the army, because then he might have had to admit his real name, and he prefers to operate under a less exalted one, but when the war is over, he finally has to face the prospect of his new life, even though his greatest desire is to continue his surgical career.
His new wife has no choice but to work with him. Thrust into an unfamliar situation, she has to cope as best she can.

It Started At Waterloo

Does she love him enough to let him go?
After three straight days working beside surgeon Will Kennaway to treat the wounded of Waterloo, Amelia Hartwell collapses on the nearest bed to sleep. Surely she can be forgiven for not caring that the warm body sleeping next to hers is Will’s.
Amelia’s status-hungry mother, however, couldn’t be more pleased to have an excuse to get the painfully shy, socially awkward Amelia married off, albeit to a less-than-ultra-rich husband.
Will doesn’t keep his title a deep, dark secret. His little-known earldom simply affords him the financial freedom to focus solely on healing the sick. But now that he has a wife to think about—and to admire, thanks to her unstinting bravery at Waterloo—he reluctantly takes up the mantle of earl to do his duty.
Missing her meaningful work as a nurse, Amelia finds herself floundering in society’s glaring spotlight, wondering if Will regrets being forced to marry. Perhaps it might even be better to give him his freedom, even if doing so will break her heart…

Product Warnings

Steamy, battlefield kisses under a tent canvas lead to steamy scenes in the bedroom.

 

You can pre-order the book at Samhain here, and it will be on sale at Samhain and all other outlets on June 16th

Waterloo in a nutshell

I’ve been taken up with two anniversaries that fall this year. The first one is the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo.

Although I tell people I write books set in the Georgian period, my real speciality is the earlier period, the 1750’s. So when I was asked to write a couple of novellas to help commemorate the event, I had a lot of research to do. And what fun it was! Of course I do have quite a lot of information on the Regency, since I’ve written books set in that time before, but the details of Waterloo, the nitty-gritty, are fascinating. The letters, records and accounts are legion, especially in this bicentenary year.

At university I had to read Thompson’s “Europe Since Napoleon,” which is still as interesting as it ever was, but my real interests lay in the lives of the people, how it affected them and what they did afterwards.

So I plunged into letters and newspapers. Utterly riveting. I could have read for a long time, but I had books to write!

I decided on a medical theme. The first book has more of a medical background, concerned with a surgeon and his nurse who are forced by circumstances into marriage. But with similar ideals it was only a matter of time before they found their way into each other’s hearts. The second is about a war hero who has what we would call PTSD, a little understood condition at the time. Just because they couldn’t put a name to it, didn’t mean they didn'tt experience it. From the Berserkers of the Dark Ages to the present day, traumatic events have triggered unfortunate responses in some people. So how did they cope with it back then, after Waterloo? Mostly by telling people to pull themselves together, which was no help at all.

I thought it might help to have a quick overview of the battle, and why it was so important. With the plethora of books to commemorate the battle, most either concentrate on a small part of it or go into huge detail, which might be fascinating for me, but isn’t necessarily what the regular reader, somebody who wants a general background, might be looking for. I just ask for some indulgence from my fellow historians, who will doubtless wince at my ruthless elimination of events in my attempt at a broad overview.

Waterloo was a terrible battle. There were thousands of men on each side, with their women, children, camp followers and support staff like medics all waiting anxiously for the outcome. The figures often given are 68,000 British and Allied troops against 74,000 French, and the official date is 18^th June 1815.

But like most messy events involving real people, this doesn’t tell anywhere near the whole story. There were skirmishes before and after, for instance. Nobody shouted “Start!” and “Stop!” at the beginning and end. In charge of the armies were the Duke of Wellington, a brilliant strategist who had turned the fortunes of the Peninsula War around, and Napoleon, a self-aggrandising man, but also brilliant. There are no reliable recorded instances of Wellington meeting Napoleon. That leaves the field nicely free for the novelist because there were many chances for them to do so. The other intriguing thing is that Waterloo was the first time Wellington and Napoleon faced each other on the field of battle.

Wellington was cold in his interpersonal relationships. He hated war, and tried to minimize losses to his men. Napoleon threw men at the enemy, treating them as disposable cannon-fodder.

The battle was further complicated by a torrential downpour the day before, that turned the battlefield into a churning mass of mud and made the quick charges that the Hussars specialised in even more difficult than they were already.

On the 15^th June, Napoleon took position by ejecting the Allies at Charleroi, but although Wellington knew of it, he wasn’t yet sure that this was the main thrust of Napoleon’s army, so he kept a watching brief on it. He didn’t want to commit his army before knowing that another flank wasn’t going to attack from somewhere else. He was also waiting for Marshall Blucher and his troops to arrive for the main engagement. The Prince of Orange’s army was involved in the skirmishes before and during, but not the main battle itself.

He heard about the attack on the 16^th June, at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball. The speed of Napoleon’s advance shocked him into taking action. Wellington’s army could be overrun.

The start of the battle was signalled by a fight at the crossroads of Quatre Bras. In a way this indicated how the rest of the battle would go. A narrow victory for the Allies at a terrible cost. First the French won, then when Wellington sent reinforcements, the Allies won.

By the end of the 17^th, the British army was in position, with Blucher around 7 miles away.

On the late morning of the 18^th, the French attacked the house at Hougoumont, where Wellington had stationed some of his vanguard. The other fortified position, at the farmhouse at La Haye Sainte, was attacked a few hours later. The French managed to cut it off from the rest of the army. By around two pm, it looked like the French were winning.

Then the British cavalry moved in. Although Napoleon’s army had the superior reputation, the mud helped to make things a bit more equal. No horse, however skilled, can move fast when its hooves are deeply embedded in thick mud.

After that, came the infantry’s turn. When Napoleon attacked, Wellington formed the infantry into squares, with the cavalry in the center.

Then Wellington regained the farmouse at La Haye Sainte and the tide started to turn. The Prussians arrived and helped to reinforce an exhausted British army.

Napoleon finally committed his precious Imperial Guard. This was his last throw. By the time dusk had fallen the French army was in disarray and the day was won.

But as I said earlier, they didn’t just stop. It was a bit like putting out a big fire. They had to set a watch and cover the skirmishes and final flickerings of the great French army.

Like Wellington said, it was a damned near-run thing.

On the 24^th June, Napoleon abdicated, and a few weeks after, was once again in custody, this time until the day he died.

After Waterloo? Britain went into economic depression, a lull that was only redressed when the middle class began its inexorable rise to wealth and influence. Lines and frontiers were redrawn. After Waterloo, nothing was ever the same again.

Lynne's books, "It Started at Waterloo" and "Dreaming of Waterloo" will be out in June, in time for the commemoration of the battle. 

https://www.samhainpublishing.com/book/5465/it-started-at-waterloo

"Dreaming of Waterloo" is part of a box set, and will be out soon.