THE ROYAL NANNY
by Karen Harper
GENRE:
historical fiction
BLURB:
In 1897, a young cockney nursemaid takes her first
train ride, leaving London for the lush and sprawling Sandringham Estate,
private home to Britain’s royal family. Hired by the Duke and Duchess of York
to help rear their royal children, Charlotte Bill is about to become privy to
all the secrets families hide, and caught between the upstairs and downstairs
worlds.
EXCERPT:
Truth
was, I used to wish the widowed Dr. Edwin Lockwood, my former employer, would marry me, though I knew that was quite
out of the question. But when I first
went to work at his house as nursemaid, I was only thirteen and such a
dreamer. People think I’m a no-nonsense
person, but I still harbor flights of fancy in my head and heart, and to mean
something to someone else is one of them.
But
in the nearly ten years I worked in London, I knew it was not that I loved the
doctor, but that I did love his two little daughters and hated to leave them,
especially after I’d been promoted to nurse after five years there. Now his new wife didn’t want me about because
her stepchildren doted on me. But the
doctor gave me a good character, which the Duchess of York’s friend, Lady Eva
Dugdale, had somehow seen. So here I
was, headed to the Duke and Duchess of York’s country house to help the head
nurse of two royal lads, one called David, nearly four years of age, the other,
Bertie, a year-and-a-half; and a new baby to be born soon.
Beat
down the butterflies in my belly and practiced saying, “Your Grace, milord,
milady, sir, ma’am,” and all that. What
if Queen Victoria herself ever popped in for a visit, for the duke was her
grandson—well, there were many of her offspring scattered across Europe in ruling
houses, but he was in direct line to the British throne after his father, the
Prince of Wales. And since the Prince
and Princess of Wales often lived on the same Sandringham Estate, so Lady
Dugdale said, I wager I’d see them, right regular too, that is if the head
nurse, name of Mary Peters, let me help her with the royal children when their
kin came calling.
“Ticket,
please, miss,” the conductor said as he came through the carriage. I had a moment’s scramble but handed it to
him and had it marked. When he passed
on, I put it as a keepsake in my wooden box of worldly goods, which sat on the
floor next to my seat. The carriage
wasn’t too full, not to Norfolk with its marshy fens and the windy Wash my papa
had described to me. Oh, I was so
excited I could barely sit still. I was
to disembark at a place called Wolferton Station where someone was to meet
me. I was just so certain everything
would be lovely, and fine and grandly, royally perfect.
AUTHOR BIO:
NEW
YORK TIMES and USA TODAY bestselling author Karen Harper is a former university
(Ohio State) and high school English teacher. Published since 1982, she writes
contemporary suspense and historical novels about real British women. Two of
her recent Tudor era books were bestsellers in the UK and Russia. A rabid
Anglophile, she likes nothing more than to research her novels on site in the
British Isles. Harper won the Mary Higgins Clark Award for DARK ANGEL, and her
novel SHATTERED SECRETS was judged one of the Best Books of 2014 by Suspense
Magazine. The author and her husband divide their time between Ohio and
Florida. For more information please
visit: www.karenharperauthor.com
Giveaway:
A copy of The Royal Nanny
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1 comments:
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