The Unexpected Wife by Caroline Warfield 💕 Book Tour & Gift Card Giveaway 💕 (Historical Romance)

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When the Duke of Murnane accepts an unofficial fact finding mission to Canton on behalf of the queen in 1838 he expects work to heal him. He certainly doesn’t expect to confront his wreck of a marriage in such an exotic locale, or to find the love of his life. Zambak Hayden follows her brother to China to escape pressure to make a suitable marriage. When she finds the brother drawn into the world of greed, smuggling, opium, and corruption she resolves to both sort out the truth and to protect her brother from becoming prey to all of it—if only she could stop yearning for the one man she can’t have. Can love survive when troubles and war explode around them?

Alone as the shadows of his room turned to full dark, cold truths haunted her. The reports she’d gathered for her father had to be weighed against her childish and impulsive behavior. She had worried her parents, she had complicated the Elliots’ lives and career, and her actions did little to change her brother, still bent on self-destruction. Worst of all, she feared she led Charles to take risks he shouldn’t have.
One other thing took shape and came into focus so sharply she couldn’t turn away. She loved Charles Wheatly, heart and soul. A desperate laugh—half sob, half hysteria—escaped her at the thought. She finally fulfilled her mother’s fondest wish and found a man she could respect and love—one that offered little hope of a respectable future. She had no idea what to do with the thought. As it turned out she had little time to consider it.
“Who is here?” Charles demanded. He stood outlined in the light from oil lamps in the corridor behind him. Caught between love and fury over the fear he caused, she flung herself from the chair.
“Thank God!” She didn’t know whether she would hug him or slap him until she threw herself into his arms and was being kissed senseless.

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Award winning author Caroline Warfield has been many things: traveler, librarian, poet, raiser of children, bird watcher, Internet and Web services manager, conference speaker, indexer, tech writer, genealogist—even a nun. She reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows where she lets her characters lead her to adventures in England and the far-flung corners of the British Empire. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart.