Tell us about your latest book. Who are the main
character(s) and what can readers expect when they pick up Last Duke Standing?
Princess Justine Ivanosen is going to be queen of Wesloria sooner than
she hoped—her father, the king, is dying from tuberculosis. Because he is
declining, a marriage becomes very important. The Prime Minister is dead set
against having a young woman ascend the throne without a man to guide her, and
her mother is still smarting over Justine’s disastrous affair with a charlatan,
the reveal of which has left her without great prospects at home. The Prime
Minister convinces the queen that they ought to employ a matchmaker to make
quick work of it. They can ship her off to England to apprentice with Queen
Victoria, bring some suitors around to court her there instead of here, where
all of Wesloria will be watching, and give strict instructions that she is to
return with a fiance. The prime minister won't leave the selection of the lucky
fellow to chance, and persuades one of his old cronies to send his handsome son
to London to keep an eye on the selection process.
William Douglas, the future Duke of Hamilton, has been flitting around
Europe for ages. He’s met the princess before, but she was hardly more than a
snippy girl who didn't like losing parlor games. The last thing he wants to do
is babysit that child. But he discovers the girl in his memory is now a very
attractive grown woman. She’s still a challenge, however—she likes to be called
Your Royal Highness a lot more than he likes saying it, and expressly forbids
him from offering his advice. He’s one of those people—if someone says don’t do
it, he’s going to do it. And he has some advice about every man that comes to
meet her.
Lady Aleksander, the matchmaker, sees that these two might be perfect for
each other. The only way to find out is to bring some gentlemen around that she
knows will unite Justine and William. But they are too busy pretending they
aren’t falling in love to even notice.
Who was your favorite character to write in THE
LAST DUKE STANDING and why?
I like all the main
characters. Justine and William were so meant for each other. Little sister
Amelia has some growing up to do. Beckett Hawke and Donovan are back from A
Royal Wedding series. But I really enjoyed creating Lady Aleksander, the
matchmaker. She is the third point of view in this book, and her observations
of what is happening is like the Greek chorus—she can see clearly what the
leads can’t see. It liked that she’s in her forties, very much in love with her
husband, and she just wants everyone to have what she has. She makes no
apologies for who she is or what she does and she has the patience of Job. She
also likes to eat. We have that in common.
What do you like about writing in the historical
subgenre? What are the challenges?
I fell in love with
historical fiction when I was a girl. Castles and princesses were a long way
from a ranch in West Texas, but I loved the stories of balls and gowns and the
idea of a rich gentleman. I was surrounded by farmers and ranch hands, so the
idea of a pretty dress and fancy dinner had a fairy-tale appeal. I loved
history in school, and I minored in British history. The fairy-tale appeal
still persists—through the last election and the pandemic, it was a great
relief for me to slip off to another world where people were genteel and the
biggest problem they had was the strict rules of etiquette putting a damper on
their moves. The challenge of writing historical romance today is to make it
interesting for the new generation of readers. There is a lot more competing
for their attention than there was for mine at a similar age. But a good love
story is a good story, no matter the era.
Who are some authors you look to for inspiration?
One of the best romances
I ever read was Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman. It is a history of Wales,
and of King Llewellyn and his very young wife Joanna. The history is dark and
bloody, but they truly loved each other.
I have also found a
renewed admiration for Julia Quinn. I can look back at her Bridgerton series
now and see how clever she was at giving us a large family with a lot of issues
to enjoy for years. She must have taken excellent notes from her own books to
keep up with all the twists and turns in that family.
What is your writing routine like? Do you have a
specific place you write? Time of day?
My routine is to do it
every day. I usually do some physical exercise in the morning, but once I’ve
done that, and picked up the house, and done my Wordle, I get to work. I write
every day. I have an office, but the pandemic has made me sick of it. So I move
around the house now. I am done with the day’s work by the time school is out—I
used to be able to keep my head in two places (the book and family) but I can’t
do that anymore. I don’t know what happened to my ability to multi-task, but it
has been obliterated. So I work as much
as I can during school hours and then hit the wine fridge like any red-blooded
working mom.
What’s next for the Royal Match series?
I am just finishing The
Duke Not Taken. It’s about Princess Amelia, who is also sent to England under
Lady Aleksander’s care to find a husband. Amelia really wants a husband and a
family. Her problem, however, is she’s too much of a straightshooter for most
people. And she’s not willing to settle. Enter the Duke of Marley, who has to
be the only man in one hundred square miles who is not the least interested in
a beautiful, rich, young princess. He has his reasons…
THE
LAST DUKE STANDING
Author:
Julia London
ISBN: 9781335639868
Publication
Date: February 22, 2022
Publisher:
HQN Books
Book
Summary:
When Crown Princess Justine of
Wesloria is sent to England to learn the ropes of royalty, she falls under the
tutelage of none other than Queen Victoria herself. She’s also in the market
for a proper husband—one fit to marry the future Queen of Wesloria.
Because he knows simply everyone, William, Lord Douglas (the
notoriously rakish heir to the Duke of Hamilton seat in Scotland, and decidedly not husband material), is on
hand as an escort of sorts. William has been recruited to keep an eye on the
royal matchmaker for the Weslorian Prime Minister, tasked to ensure the
princess is matched with a man of quality...and one who will be sympathetic to
the prime minister’s views. As William and Justine are forced to scrutinize an
endless parade of England’s best bachelors, they become friends. But when the
crowd of potential grooms is steadily culled, what if William is the last
bachelor standing?
PROLOGUE
1844
When Justine was
fourteen, her father took her to the mountainous north country of Wesloria. He
said he was to meet with coal barons because they were restless and in need of
appeasing. Why? Justine had wondered.
“Because coal barons
are always restless and in need of appeasing, darling,” he’d said, as if
everyone knew that.
She’d imagined large,
heavily cloaked men, faces covered in soot, pacing their hearths and muttering
their grievances. But the coal barons were, in fact, like all well-dressed
Weslorian gentlemen with clean faces.
They peered at her
with expressions that ranged from disgust to indifference to curiosity.
“Don’t mind them,”
her father had said. “They are not modern men.”
Justine and her
father were housed at Astasia Castle. It was a fortress that jutted out
forebodingly from a rocky outcropping so high on the mountain that the horses
labored to pull the royal coach up the steep drive. It was purported to be the
best of all the accommodations in the area, afforded to Justine and her father
by virtue of the fact Justine’s father was the king of Wesloria, and she was
the crown princess, the invested heir to the throne.
Justine said the castle looked scary. Her
father explained that castles were built in this manner so that armies and
marauders could be seen advancing from miles away, and runaway brides could be
seen fleeing for miles.
“Runaway brides?”
Justine had been enthralled by the idea of something so romantic gone so
horribly awry.
“Petr the Mad watched
his bride run away with his best knight, and then watched his men chase them
for miles before they got away. He was so angry he burned down half the
village.” Her father did not elaborate further, as the gates had opened, and
the castellan had come rushing forward, eager to show the king and his heir the
old royal castle he proudly kept.
Sir Corin wore a
dusty blue waistcoat that hung to his thighs, the last four buttons undone to
allow for his paunch. His hair, scraggly and gray, had been pulled into an
old-fashioned queue at his nape. He kept a ring of keys attached to his waist
that clanked with each step he took.
He was a student of
history, he’d said, and could answer any question they might have about Astasia
Castle, and proceeded to exhibit his detailed knowledge of the dank, drafty place
with narrow halls and low ceilings. A young Russian prince had died in this
room. An ancient queen had lost her life giving birth to her tenth child in
that room.
Sir Corin showed them
to the throne room. “More than one monarch’s held court here.”
Justine was
accustomed to the opulence of the palace in Wesloria’s capital of St. Edys.
This looked more like a common room of a public house—it was small and dark,
the king and queen’s thrones wooden, and the tapestries faded by time and
smoke.
Another room, Sir
Corin pointed out, was where King Maksim had accepted the surrender of the
feudal King Igor, thereby uniting all Weslorians under one rule after
generations of strife.
“My namesake,” her
father said proudly, forgetting, perhaps, that King Maksim had slaughtered King
Igor’s forces to unite them all.
They came upon a
small inner courtyard. Stone walls rose up on three sides of it, but the outer
wall was a battlement. Sir Corin pointed to a door at one end of the battlement
that led into a keep with narrow windows. “We use it for storage now, but they
kept the prisoners there in the old days. Worse than any dungeon your young
eyes have ever seen, Your Royal Highness.”
Justine had never
seen a dungeon.
“Is this not where
Lord Rabat was beheaded?” her father asked casually. To Justine, he said, “That
would have been your great-great-uncle Rabat.”
“Je, Your Majesty,
the block is still here.” Sir Corin pointed to a large wooden block that stood
alone, about two feet high and two feet wide. It looked to have been weathered
by years of sitting in hard sun and wretched winters.
“Oh, how terrible,”
Justine said, crinkling her nose.
“Quite,” her father
agreed, and explained, with far too much enthusiasm, how a person was made to
kneel before the block and lay their neck upon it. “A good executioner could
make clean work of it with a single stroke. Whap, and the head would tumble
into a basket.”
“If I may, Your
Majesty, a good executioner was hard to come by. More miners in these parts
than men good with broadswords. Fact is, it took three strikes of the sword to
sever Rabat’s head completely.” Sir Corin felt it necessary to demonstrate the
three strikes with his arm.
“Ah…” Justine
swallowed down a swell of nausea.
“Three whacks?” her
father repeated, rapt. “Couldn’t get it done in one?”
Sir Corin shook his
head. “Just goes to prove how important it is to keep the broadsword sharp.”
“And to keep someone
close who knows how to wield it,” her father added. The two men laughed
roundly.
Justine looked around
for someplace to sit so that she could put her head between her legs and gulp
some air. Alas, the only place to sit was the block.
“Steady there, my
girl. I’ve not told you who ordered the beheading,” her father said.
Sir Corin clasped his
hands together in anticipation, clearly trying to contain his glee.
“Your
great-great-aunt Queen Elena!”
Queen Elena had
beheaded Lord Rabat? “Her husband?”
“Worse. Her brother.”
Justine gasped. “But
why?”
“Because Rabat meant
to behead her first. Whoever survived the battle here would be crowned the
sovereign.”
“Ooh, a bloody battle
it was, too,” Sir Corin said eagerly. “Four thousand souls lost, many of them
falling right off the battlement.”
Justine backed up a
step. A quake was beginning somewhere deep inside her, making her a little
short of breath. Her knees felt as if they might buckle, and her skin crawled
with anxiety, imagining the loss of so many. “Could she not have banished him?”
“And have him slither
back like a snake?” Her father draped his arm around her shoulders before she
could back up all the way to St. Edys. “She did the right thing. Why, minutes
before, she was on the block herself.”
“Dear God,” Justine
whispered.
“But at the last
minute the people here saved her,” her father said. “She sentenced her brother
to die immediately for his insurrection and stood right where we are now to
watch his traitorous head roll.”
“Well,” Sir Corin
said. “I wouldn’t say it rolled, precisely.”
The two men laughed
again.
“Don’t close your
eyes, darling,” her father said, squeezing her into his side. “Look at that
block. Elena was only seventeen years old, but she was very clever. She knew
what she had to do to hold power and rule the kingdom. And she ruled a very
long time.”
“Forty-three years,
all told,” Sir Corin said proudly.
“Queen Elena learned
what every sovereign must—be decisive and act quickly. Do you understand?”
“I don’t…think so?”
Justine was starting to feel a bit like she was spinning.
“You will.” Her
father dropped his arm. He wandered over to the block to inspect it. “We almost
named you Elena after her. But they called her Elena the Bi—Witch,” he said.
“And your mother feared they might call you the same.”
“You said she was a
good queen.”
“She was an excellent
queen. But sometimes it is difficult to do the things that must be done and
keep the admiration of your people at the same time.”
The spinning was
getting worse. She gripped her father’s arm. “Why?”
“Because people
expect a woman to behave like a woman. But a good queen must sometimes behave
more like a king for the good of the kingdom. People don’t care for it.” He
shrugged. “No king or queen can make all their subjects happy all the time.” He
suddenly smiled. “You look a bit like Queen Elena.”
“The very image,” Sir
Corin piped up.
Later that day
Justine saw a portrait of Queen Elena. She wasn’t smiling, but she didn’t
appear completely unpleasant. She simply looked…determined. And her dress was
elegantly pretty, with lots of pearls sewn into it.
Later still, when her
father and his men had retired to smoke cigars and talk about coal or some
such, Justine returned to the courtyard alone. No one was there, no sentry
looking out for marauders or runaway brides. She looked up at the tops of pines
bending in a relentless wind, appearing to scrape a dull gray sky. She walked
up the steps to the battlement and gazed out over the mountain valley below the
castle. She spread her arms wide, closed her eyes and turned her face to the
heavens.
That was the first
time she truly felt it—the pull from somewhere deep, the energy of all the
kings and queens who had come before her, rising up to the crown of her head,
anchoring her to this earth. She felt the centuries of warfare and struggle, of
the people her family had ruled. She felt the enormous responsibilities they’d
all carried, the work they’d done to carve a road to the future.
Her father had often
said that he could feel the weight of his crown on his shoulders. But Justine
felt something entirely different. She didn’t feel as if it was weighing her
down, but more like it was lifting her off her feet and holding her here. She
didn’t believe this was a conceit on her part, but a tether to her past. She
would be a queen. She knew that she would, and standing there, she felt like
she should be. She felt born to it.
A gust of wind very
nearly sent her flying, so she came down from the battlement. She paused just
before the block and tried to imagine herself on her knees, knowing her death
was imminent. She imagined how she would look.
She hoped she would
appear strong and noble with no hint of her fear of the pain or the unknown.
Being queen was her
destiny. She knew it would come.
But she hadn’t known
then it would come so soon.
Excerpted from The Last Duke Standing
by Julia London. Copyright © 2022 by Dinah Dinwiddie. Published by arrangement
with Harlequin Books S.A.
Author
Bio:
Julia London is a New York Times and
USA Today bestselling author of over fifty novels of historical and
contemporary romance. She is the author of the popular Highland Grooms series
as well as A Royal Wedding, her most recent series. Julia is the recipient of
the RT Bookclub Award for Best Historical Romance and a six-time finalist for
the prestigious RITA award for excellence in romantic fiction. She lives in
Austin, Texas. Visit her at www.julialondon.com.
Social
Links:
Facebook: Julia
London
Twitter: @JuliaFLondon
Instagram: NA
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