The Widow Wore Plaid (The Widows’ Club Book 6) by Jenna Jaxon and Meet the Author #Books #Historical @Goddessfish

Jenna’s books are simply as amazing as her covers.

The Widow Wore Plaid (The Widows’ Club Book 6) by Jenna Jaxon released in December in the Historical Genre.

The Battle of Waterloo made them widows, but each has found new happiness. And Jane, Lady John Tarkington, intends to keep her freedom, even if love—and one particular gentleman—are determined to claim her heart . . .

It is a truth rarely acknowledged—at least in public—that a wealthy widow is free to pursue a great many adventures. For two years, Jane has privately enjoyed her independence. Why should she remarry, even when the gentleman proposing is as wonderful as Gareth, Lord Kinellan? She entreats him never to ask her again. But as her Widows’ Club friends—now all joyfully remarried—gather at Castle Kinellan, Jane begins to wonder if stubbornness has led her to make a terrible mistake . . .

Kinellan needs a wife to give him an heir, and he wants that wife to be Jane. They are perfect together in every way, yet she continually refuses him. Just as he is on the point of convincing her, a series of accidents befall Gareth and point to an enemy in their midst. He has promised Jane a passionate future filled with devotion, but can he keep them both alive long enough to secure it?

Throwing up his hands, he groaned and sagged against the wall, his banyan sliding half off him. “Have your way with me, woman. I surrender myself into your hands. Do with me what you will and I swear I will enjoy it.”

Panting, she stepped back from him, seeing the sculpted muscular form, strong arms, and dark eyes glazed with smoldering desire as if for the first time. This man wanted her, or had wanted her to be his wife for a long time. No one would ever make her feel this way again, mo matter how many lovers she might take. She could look for the rest of her life and not find a man as kind or generous or loving as he. And she had all but thrown his love away with both hands. The revelation devastated her and she hung her head.

“Jane?” Kinellan straightened, peering into her face.

Sobbing, she threw her arms around him, laying her head on his broad chest, the only place she wanted it to be. Tears pricked her eyes. The fast beat of his heart beneath her ear should have given comfort, but did not, for her own heart was tearing asunder. The trickle of tears became a flood.

“Darling.” He slipped his arms around her, cradling her close. “What is wrong?”

“I…I don’t want to leave.”

“Sweetheart.” He cupped her chin and turned her face up to his. A thundery frown marred his brow. “Who has asked you to leave? Was it Aunt Prudence? Fiona?”

“N…no.” Jane sniffed, trying to blink back the tears and regain her composure.

“Someone else?” His frown grew darker.

She nodded. “You.”

The Author

Jenna Jaxon is a best-selling author of historical romance, writing in a variety of time periods because she believes that passion is timeless. She has been reading and writing historical romance since she was a teenager. A romantic herself, Jenna has always loved a dark side to the genre, a twist, suspense, a surprise. She tries to incorporate all of these elements into her own stories.

She lives in Virginia with her family and a small menagerie of pets–including two vocal cats, one almost silent cat, and a cocker spaniel who thinks he is a cat.

When not reading or writing, she indulges her passion for the theatre, working at a private university as a professor/director. She often feels she is directing her characters on their own private stage.

Jenna equates her writing to an addiction to chocolate because once she starts she just can’t stop.

Can you tell us about the series as a whole?

Amazingly, I’ve been writing the Widow’s Club series since January 2011. I’d come up with the idea for the series after hearing The Weather Girls’ song “It’s Raining Men” on the radio as I drove in to work one morning. From there I devised the basic idea for first book, To Woo A Wicked Widow, but kind of put it on the back burner.
In January 2011 I attended my first meeting of the Chesapeake Romance Writer’s group and for their workshop that day, they did an exercise called Post-It Note Plotting. That’s where someone gives the group an idea and everyone helps you plot the book, putting the plot points on post-it notes so you can move them around to achieve the best plot. I threw out my idea for The Widow’s Club and the group helped me plot that first book. I kept the post-its on my desk, literally for years, until one day I decided I needed to go on, sit down and write the damn book! Many revisions, queries, and pitches later, I got an offer from my current agent who very quickly sold the series to Kensington.
To my horror, Kensington wanted to bring out the first three Widows’ Club books in a single year! So I got to writing fast and furiously. As a result, Wedding the Widow and What a Widow Wants both dove-tail into some of the plot points of To Woo A Wicked Widow because the heroines all those books meet or at least “dally” with their future husbands at the house parties which were the main point of their “club.” This meant certain events had to happen at specific points in the second and third books and I had a devil of a time keeping all the timelines straight! LOL
Much Ado About A Widow took a completely different tack, as while the heroine does meet her prospective husband at the same house party as the other women, at the beginning of the fourth book, the heroine is actually betrothed to another man. This book is fast paced, with four different plot threads that all converge on the heroine more than half-way through the novel. It was a lot of fun to write, and I think it truly is my favorite of all the Widows’ Club books.
In book five, The Widow’s Christmas Surprise, I brought back a widow from book one, who had eloped with one of the gentlemen at the house party. But he was a rake and a villain, and I knew she wasn’t going to be happy with him, so that heroine got to be a widow twice before finding her happy ever after. The book was harder to plot than the others, for several reasons. First, as the heroine had been pregnant at the end of book one, the timing of her child’s birth had to be consistent with when she got pregnant in the first place. That mean the story had to begin in May of 1817. That made the fact it was to be a Christmas book more difficult, and that difficulty was compounded by the fact of history that Princess Charlotte, heir to the throne of England, died in childbirth in November 1817 and the country went into mourning. Not a jolly Christmas at all, but I managed to make it so for the Widows’ Club members.
The final book of the series, The Widow Wore Plaid, is the only one set outside of England. And it is the only book of the series where the heroine didn’t meet her hero at the initial house party in book one. (Jane’s original hero was the man she was with in book one, but along the way she fell in love with Kinellan and I couldn’t persuade her otherwise.) This book was a great deal of fun to write as it, like Much Ado About A Widow, is an action-adventure type of romance, which I love to write.
Now that the series is complete, I hope to continue with some of the minor characters, perhaps in a short spin-off series down the road. My no-longer-widows are just too fun to leave for long!