Mary Jo here. As always, I'm delighted to interview sister Word Wench Anne Grace on her delicious new book. The Rake's Daughter is second in her Brides of Bellaire Gardens series. Besides being a lovely romance, it's a moving story of friendship and sisterhood.
The book was released yesterday, July 26th.
MJP: Anne, will you tell us about the set-up and setting for this series?
AG: The series is based around a large private garden in Mayfair, with access only from the back of the houses that surround it. In some of these house live young women, young women who will one day become brides . . .
MJP: How did Leo, Lord Salcott, a sober and hard working young lord, find himself landed with the guardianship of a young woman he's never even heard of?
AG: It was a mistake. The father of the two young women, the Rake of the title, meant to leave the guardianship to Leo's father, naming him "Josiah Leonard Thorne, the sixth earl of Salcott." But Leo's father was the fifth earl, and seeing both Leo and his father had the same Christian names, and his father had predeceased the rake, the document was legal.
MJP: Tell us about the two half-sisters, Clarissa and Isobel.
AG: Clarissa is the legitimate daughter. She is plain, shy, a little plump, and an heiress. Isobel, her illegitimate half sister, is beautiful, outspoken, and penniless.
The two lonely, motherless little girls met by accident, just before their ninth birthdays, and defying their father, who planned to dump the newly bereaved Isobel in the nearest orphanage, decided to stay together. You can read part of this scene here. The two sisters grew up together in the country, and are very loyal to each other.