Giveaway & Dear Annabelle Virtual Blog Tour for SEDUCING MR. KNIGHTLY by Maya Rodale

SEDUCING MR. KNIGHTLY

Writing Girls Series #4

Maya Rodale

RCJR eZine

Guest Post

Dear Annabelle,

I am in desperate need of your advice.  The love of my life is the publisher of The London List and each Tuesday appears, filled with gossip and scandal, offering job postings and matches for the lovelorn--and most enticing of all, telling the tales and selling the wares a more modest publication wouldn't touch. It seems she is hell bent on printing every one of my peccadilloes and hangs out my dirty laundry week after week.  I do not know how to win back her trust.  Desperate to for any grand gesture to prove that my love for her has always and will be true.

The Honorable,

Barron Benton Gray---LORD GRAY’S LIST by Maggie Robinson.

Dear Lord Gray,

I shall sheepishly attempt to offer you advice. You see, I am also guilty of publishing romantic secrets in a popular London publication. In an effort to win the attentions and affections of my employer, Mr. Knightly, I requested tips from the readers of my advice column. And then…I tried them. And wrote about them. Eventually Mr. Knightly realized my scheme…At this point I cannot disclose much more and still maintain my modesty!

As for you, good sir, you may try hiding all her pens and paper. Or I suggest you really give the love of your life something to write about, like how noble, considerate, charitable and romantic you are (instead of your peccadilloes and dirty laundry). In time she and her readers will see that your actions prove your love. How could she resist?!

Yours,

Annabelle from Seducing Mr. Knightly

Reprinted with permission from The London Weekly

Maya,

I’m asking authors to share a favorite recipe with readers.  It can be one you make all year long that friends and family rave about or a holiday recipe tradition.

All the best,

Christine

This author (Maya, not Annabelle) can never, ever resist my grandmother’s (and mother’s) recipe for Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cake. You can find the story and the recipe here: http://www.mariasfarmcountrykitchen.com/recipe-old-fashioned-chocolate-cake/

OLD-FASHIONED CHOCOLATE CAKE

Courtest of 

Maria'S Farm Country Kitchen

Ingredients:

2¼ cups sifted flour—organic cake flour, if you can find it

2 teaspoons baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup butter

2½ cups brown sugar, firmly packed

3 eggs

3 one-ounce squares unsweetened chocolate

½ cup sour milk or buttermilk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup boiling water (the secret to its moistness!)

(Note: You can also try substituting the boiling water with boiling coffee. My friend Mark Kintzel made me a cake once that tasted much like this one, but he used coffee instead of water. It was his mother’s recipe.)

Directions:

1. Start the oven at 350 or 375 degrees. Grease the bottoms and sides of three 8-inch cake pans (I use only two), and dust with flour. Sift the flour, measure it carefully, and sift it again with the baking soda and salt. (Tip from the magazine: Sift the flour once onto wax paper. Fill the measuring cup to slightly overflowing, cut off the excess to make level, and dump it into the sifter again with the soda and salt.)

2. Cream, or work, the butter in a bowl with your hands until it’s soft and airy. Then add the sugar a little at a time, and continue creaming until fluffy and light. Add the unbeaten eggs, one at a time. Beat the batter hard after the addition of each egg (it’s OK to use a fork or a spoon).

3. Put the chocolate in a measuring cup and melt over boiling water. When melted, add to the batter. Use a scraper to get every bit of melted chocolate from the sides of the cup. Mix thoroughly.

4. Sift one-third of the flour into the batter, stir in well. Add half of the sour milk or buttermilk and stir slightly. Repeat, ending with the flour.

5. Mix in the vanilla extract and the boiling water.

6. Pour batter into greased cake pans and don’t be alarmed at the thinness of the batter!

7. Bake 25 to 30 minutes.

8. Remove from the oven and turn the cake pans upside down to release the cakes onto a rack to cool.

9. When cool, spread the frosting (see below) between the layers and pile it high on top of your cake. Cover the sides. Sprinkle the top with shaved bitter chocolate (or not—we like it without, too!)

Whipped Cream Frosting

You can make this with or without the cocoa. We prefer it without.

Ingredients:

1½ cups heavy cream

¼ cup sugar (I use powdered)

2 Tablespoons cocoa

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

Mix (do not WHIP!) all ingredients in a bowl. Set in your refrigerator to chill for 2 hours at least. Longer is OK. Then beat until mixture is so thick it holds its shape and will stand in peaks. Whipping with an old-fashioned hand mixer takes 10 to 15 minutes, and is good exercise for the arms.

Mom tip: It took me years to understand that you simply can’t frost a cake when it’s still hot. It will break apart and crumble into the frosting. Patience—in cooking, baking, and in life—is sometimes hard to learn, but often worth the effort. However, I still have to work on it!

Product Details

• ISBN-13: 9780062088949
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Publication date: 10/30/2012
• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Pages: 384
• Sales rank: 44,252
• Series: Writing Girl Series , #4

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Overview

He's the only man she's ever loved . . .

For ages, it seems, advice columnist Annabelle Swift has loved Derek Knightly, editor-owner of The London Weekly, from a distance. Determined to finally attract her boss's attention, she seeks advice from her loyal readers—who offer Annabelle myriad suggestions . . . from lower-cut bodices (success!) and sultry gazes (disaster!) to a surprise midnight rendezvous (wicked!).

She's the only woman he's never noticed . . .

Derek never really took note of his shy, wallflower lady writer. But suddenly she's exquisite . . . and he can't get Annabelle out of his mind! She must be pursuing someone, but who? For some inexplicable reason, the thought of her with another man makes Knightly insanely jealous.

Office of The London Weekly

The first thing Knightly noticed upon entering the writers’ room: Annabelle did not sigh. The second thing he finally noticed: she had always sighed when he strolled into the weekly gathering of writers.  It was routine, like clockwork that he never realized until the watch broke.

            For a moment he faltered.  She had sighed; he had kissed her; now she did not sigh.  The facts explained nothing.  Logic and reason failed him. He wracked his brain thinking back over her columns—had there been clues he missed?  He tried to tell himself it mattered not.

But his mind wandered to Annabelle.

His gaze strayed to Annabelle.

He craved Annabelle.

Yet his decision had been made and obligations remained.  Both Lord and Lady Marsden were becoming impatient with him.  He drank tea with the lady, drank brandy with the gentleman.  He visited the jeweler but found himself unable to find something suitable. Something that declared, I belong.  You can’t ignore me. None of the diamonds, rubies, or sapphires were large enough.

This morning he’d learned that the editor of The London chronicle had been arrested for printing an editorial that questioned the Inquiry…and that relied on facts gleaned from penny-a-liners employed footmen.

It was clear to Knightly what he must do—would do, because he was a man of action.

Given all that, he should not care the slightest about a sigh, or lack of one.  And yet here he was, standing mutely in front of his staff, pondering the absence of a sigh.

He scowled, mightily.

He would not be undone by the absence of a pretty girl’s sigh.

That’s when he noticed that Annabelle wasn’t where she was supposed to be, or where she always was.

They had a routine, he and his staff, and today she had disrupted it, tremendously.  He would walk in.  Annabelle would sigh.  He said, “Ladies first,” and then meeting would commence with the Writing Girls rattling off their reports one after another, seated side by side in a neat row.

Today, Annabelle sat between Owens and Grenville.  Knightly narrowed his eyes—was Owens the Nodcock? How else to explain why Annabelle sat beside him, and touched his had when he leaned over to whisper something in her ear? Something that made her blush and smile.

“What the devil is going on?” He asked, irritated, and itching to put his fist through the wall.  Or into Owens’s jaw.  “No one answered. “Miss. Swift, why are you over thee?”

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