Don’t tell my other characters this, but Sophie Harlow might be my favorite heroine that I’ve written. She is a sassy girl.

You wouldn’t think that I had any fondness for her, considering the awful things I subject her to. She gets jilted on her wedding day on the first page of the book. And then she is forced to attend hundreds of weddings as a writer for The London Weekly. And even worse—she has to report on all the details of the wedding of the man of her dreams to someone else.

And still, she manages to have a sense of humor. That’s why I like her.

Miss Harlow, Heroine

One of the first things I had to figure out is how she became a writer. After all, that wasn’t really done in those days. Well, actually, it was! Sort of. There are more than a few instances of women that turned to writing to support their families because their husbands were idiots who mismanaged the family funds or because they were widowed. Options for income were limited, and writing was grueling, but the best of the lot. Sophie has a chant: Seamstress or servant, governess or mistress….or writer.

After Sophie is jilted at the altar (I might add that this is a personal horror of mine that my fiance is well aware of. No jokes, baby!), she moves to London with her best friend, Lady Julianna Somerset. Together they live on Julianna’s funds provided by her late husband, but it’s not much. On a whim, Sophie calls on the newspaper editor/proprietor about a position as his secretary. She leaves with a job as the author a column reporting on weddings entitled Miss Harlow’s Marriage In High Life.

So this jilted small town girl becomes a big city darling thanks to her own wits and daring. And from there she might even become a duchess.

Confession: I’m bored with rakes. Shocking, I know. After reading one too many stories about a breathtakingly handsome, promiscuous, gambling drunkard with a black heart and a tortured past, I craved something different. I wanted a hero who was good.

Part of why I write romance novels is to create the book I want to read. I was not going to commit 5 months and hundreds of pages to the trials and tribulations of a bored (boring) aristocrat. Instead, I created a hero who is a good man—too good, in fact! The whole plot hinges on his being too perfect, too polite, too honorable, and unfailingly a man of his word.

The Duke of Hamilton and Brandon is a notoriously upstanding gentleman. And, let’s face it, he is breathtakingly handsome. This double duke is frequently known just as Brandon. He never places wagers he won’t win, he never drinks to excess and he never makes an ass of himself over a woman (well, we’ll see about that!). Most importantly, he is a man of his word and a man of honor and thus would never ever break his engagement to the perfect Lady Clarissa Richmond even though he is swiftly falling deeply in love with Miss Sophie Harlow.

I had a lot of fun making Lord Brandon slowly unravel and come undone. I had such a delightful time writing a scene where he got drunk and made an ass of himself over a woman (really, it has to happen to all heroes). His honor and decency are the obstacles and he’s got to become more of a bad boy—while still being the good man she fell for—in order to win his girl.