Mission Accomplished!

I finished the rewrite of Chapter One a day earlier than I hoped and am preparing to dive into Chapter Two. Since I am much too busy to write a scintillatingly interesting post about writing, I'll give you some writing instead.

Here's the new first page of Unbridled:

Berkshire, England – March 1839

Lady Rosalind Brighton’s first thought on seeing the man who awaited her in the drawing room was that she would marry him in a trice. The second, equally absurd, was that he’d forgot the flowers.

“I am sorry to have kept you waiting, sir,” Rosalind said from just inside the doorway. “I was on my rounds when you arrived.”

His head turned at the sound of her voice—breathier and more apologetic than she’d intended—and his eyes widened a fraction beneath black, slanted brows. As she crossed the gold Aubusson carpet, one of the few remnants of her estate’s former opulence she had not yet been forced to sell, he rose from the white and blue damask settee.

“So said your housekeeper, my lady.”

By some miracle, she neither stumbled nor gawked despite her surprise. He was Irish. Though muted, his Gaelic lilt was unmistakable. The low, vibrant tenor rolled across her skin like a sandpapery caress.

Other facts crowded her senses in rapid succession. His face and hands were tanned. His dark, wavy hair grazed the top of his white cravat, unevenly cut and a trifle too long for fashion. And though she’d thought him tall, at closer range, she realized he was not exceptionally so, but only seemed that way due to the broadness of his shoulders and trimness of his waist, both accentuated by the strained fit of his black wool coat.

Not another gentlemanly suitor, then, but a common working man in his Sunday best.

Except that there was nothing remotely common about him.

So, are you hooked?