id="ud2b4b7d7-310a-5498-b049-1c50d14de218">
‘Be quiet and listen.’
His chin tilted down. His brows rose. ‘Yes, Miss Cherroll?’
‘I will not stay here.’
He waited, his gaze locked onto hers.
‘My sister needs me for the children,’ she said.
‘I understand completely,’ he said, his voice agreeable, and stepped to the door. ‘You can take my carriage to visit them as often as you wish.’
One stride and he would be out of her vision.
‘It is not a problem at all. Send your maid in Warrington’s carriage for your things. The housekeeper will be with you shortly to help you select a room.’
He was gone by the time she opened her mouth.
Bellona’s story was formed while I was writing my previous book, A Captain and a Rogue.
I first envisaged her as wanting to be like the Grecian heroine Laskarina Bouboulina, who owned a large warship and would have been active around 1822, when Forbidden to the Duke begins. I also planned for Bellona to be a bit of a Robin Hood in spirit. With knife and archery skills that can protect her from many dangers—except the most surprising ones.
But Bellona became a different character from the warrior I first imagined. When this story begins she’s on the path to separation from the security of her family and making her own world. The new hobby she finds at the end of the book wasn’t planned until the words were being written, but I feel it truly expresses who she was meant to be, and the part of her she’s hidden from herself.
I hope you enjoy Bellona and Rhys’s journey, and that you see them as I do—two people who have to step out of the roles they were born into and rise to be the beginnings of a new legacy.
Forbidden
to the Duke
Liz Tyner
LIZ TYNER lives with her husband on an Oklahoma acreage she imagines is similar to the ones in the children’s book Where the Wild Things Are. Her lifestyle is a blend of old and new, and is sometimes comparable to the way people lived long ago. Liz is a member of various writing groups and has been writing since childhood. For more about her visit liztyner.com.
To Juanita Ballew, ‘Sis’, a real heroine.
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The pudgy-eyed gamekeeper pointed a flintlock straight
