GUEST POST ~ An Unlikely Alliance by Ellie Thomas #GuestPost #Excerpt
I am extra thrilled to have the lovely author Ellie Thomas visiting my blog today to tell us about her shiny new release. The “extra” is due to my having had the great fortune to be able to read the beta version of this story, and even that early version lands it firmly on my favorites list. You don’t want to miss this brilliant first book in a new series. I heartily recommend it!
✨ GUEST POST ✨
Thanks, lovely Addison, for having me as your guest again! I’m Ellie, and I write MM Historical Romance novellas.
Today I’m chatting about my new MMM Romance, An Unlikely Alliance, written for JMS Books’ Regency Trio submission call.
An Unlikely Alliance is both an individual release and will also be published together with two other fabulous stories, As Many Stars by K.L. Noone and The Hunting Box by Alexandra Caluen. Three times the fun! These stories are the 20% off new release sale at JMS Books until May 10th.
When the Trio submission call was announced, I felt compelled to rise to the challenge of an MMM Regency story!
It felt natural to set my story in London, where, despite draconian laws, there was a vibrant gay community in the city’s streets, molly houses and coffee shops. Thanks to my 1806 Mogg map that I use for all my Regency London stories , I’m up to speed with the city’s districts in that period, so it was just a question of selecting a specific area to set my story.
Then as these things tend to happen, I came across a blog by author Liz Lloyd about a notorious and ancient inn, The Old Red Lion. The building spanned the Fleet ditch, both very much in disrepair by Regency times. The inn was particularly infamous in the 18th century as the lair of criminal gangs. When cornered they would make their escape by secret stairs to the Fleet River, onto the Thames and out of the grasp of the authorities.
Archaeology proves these were not just apocryphal tales. When the inn was demolished in the 1840s, secret passageways and several human bones were discovered in the basement.
Although the criminal element in The Old Red Lion was best avoided, this colourful location inspired one of my three main characters in An Unlikely Alliance.
Abe Pengelly, known as Abe Black or Abe Blackheart, is a man in transition. At twenty-seven, he’s the oldest of my trio and the most street-wise. He was born and brought up in a Covent Garden brothel, the son of Lucy, a courtesan, and an unknown father, possibly of Mediterranean or North African origin. His mother was a popular girl at the time and can’t quite remember.
Abe started his career as a housebreaker, then a receiver of stolen goods and latterly has moved onto the more reputable trade of buying and selling information.
His headquarters is an upper room in the crumbling Old Red Lion. Abe enhances his fearsome reputation by wearing an old-fashioned red velvet coat over his prizefighter physique. Rather than adopting a Regency crop, he keeps his hair long, like an 18th century pirate or a buccaneer, complete with gold rings in his ears.
Abe’s swashbuckling appearance is deliberately at odds with his calculating intelligence. It’s no fluke that he’s taken the opportunity to graduate towards respectability, and is even employed by the military headquarters at Horse Guards at Whitehall.
He might have used his physical presence to fight his way up the ladder but he’s not a mindless street thug. His status as a tough guy means that he can express his sexuality without inhibition and he’s also capable of great personal loyalty. His closest relationship is with his mother Lucy, with whom he shares a home. His teenage ambitions were entirely shaped by the desire to earn a sufficient sum for his beloved mother to retire from the brothel.
Now established, in his mid-twenties, and encouraged by his mother to settle down, Abe already has a professional and personal involvement with Clem, a professional secretary, which never quite seems to develop further. This changes when they meet Humphrey, an innocuous gentleman, who completes their trio.
An Unlikely Alliance
by Ellie Thomas
Release Date: May 4, 2024
Publisher: JMS Books, LLC
Genre: Gay Interracial Historical Spicy Romance (MMM)
Length: Novella / 27,314 Words / 119 Pages
An Unlikely Alliance is sold as an individual novella and is also included in the Regency Lovers Trio together with two other novellas from K.L. Noone and Alexandra Caluen
🛒 Purchase Links
An Unlikely Alliance by Ellie Thomas
The Regency Lovers Trio ~ 3 Stories, 3 Authors
Blurb
During the final week of February in 1808, Clement Metcalfe has a brief and heated encounter in the back room of a busy London coffee house with bashful gentleman Humphrey Atkinson.
Clem, a private secretary, is accustomed to grabbing at random interludes to brighten his tedious and underpaid working days following a professional fall from grace. But Humphrey seems to hanker after more than one taste.
So Clem introduces Humphrey to Abe Pengelly, the other semi-regular man in his life. Imposingly dark and dangerous, Abe is an enigmatic figure, with his operations based at the decaying and infamous Old Red Lion Tavern. His endeavours, if not blatantly lawless and criminal, are definitely murky.
There’s an undeniable attraction between the three men that promises passion. However, Clem discovers that his lovers are also willing to exert themselves on his behalf to right past wrongs.
Might this be a case where three is not a crowd but the perfect number?
Excerpt
Humphrey had tried and failed to forget the episode in the coffee house the week before. It wasn’t as though he had the excuse of no other distractions. He barely had a free minute given the number of house guests arriving for the start of the Season. There seemed to be a constant round of relatives expecting him to conduct them in the social round.
At Drury Lane Theatre, Humphrey was entirely distracted during a performance of Hamlet, simply because one of the supporting actors bore a faint resemblance to the man from the coffee house. Only then did he admit he was a lost cause. In conversation with his cousins afterwards, he tried to hide that he couldn’t remember a single scene from the play, even though he’d studied it at school.
So after dinner one evening, when he wasn’t required for an hour or two, he audaciously decided to beard his seducer in his den, or rather the Fleet Street tavern he frequented.
Humphrey was so flustered by his uncharacteristic decisiveness that he changed his waistcoat three times. Although the blond had seemed more interested in what lay beneath Humphrey’s clothing.
He eyed his modest supply of coats with trepidation. Is the green too sober, the blue too frivolous and the buff-coloured one too plain?
In the end, he solved the problem by closing his eyes and picking a garment at random. He didn’t dare glance at the mirror in case that prompted more equivocation.
When downstairs, Humphrey hesitated by the drawing room door, lured by comfortable congeniality versus the pursuit of illicit pleasure. One minute he was about to enter the room and in the next, he was haring out of the front door and down the steps to the street.
He calmed his pace when he reached Holborn, slowed by a steady trickle of early evening foot traffic that thickened as he made his way towards Fleet Street.
I’m just going for a quiet drink, he thought. He might not even be there.
Humphrey halted at the entrance to the tavern, his resolve failing him. His vacillation was overcome by pure coincidence. A group of men required access and their impetus carried him over the threshold. Humphrey removed his crown beaver hat and looked around the unevenly shaped room.
With a combination of disappointment and relief, he concluded that his quarry wasn’t present. Then he spotted him in a corner nook. A second glance proved that he was not alone.
Humphrey shifted from foot to foot. In any given social situation he was a reliable sort of fellow, or so Aunt Cece reassured him. But etiquette couldn’t guide him in this particular situation.
It didn’t help that the man seated beside his acquaintance was equally attractive; well-built and with deep olive toned skin. He made a pleasing contrast to the other’s fair slenderness. His massive build reminded Humphrey enticingly of a bare knuckle boxer in an exhibition bout at the Lyceum.
Humphrey was dawdling indecisively when the blond looked up. Humphrey was neatly hooked by that sultry grey gaze. The man nudged his friend. He whispered a few words in his ear, from which hung a gold hoop. The other man grinned and looked Humphrey up and down in a far too knowledgeable way.
Oh good heavens, has he told him? Humphrey felt hot and cold and flustered all at once. He didn’t know whether to be flattered, alarmed, or horrified. He stood stock still, to the annoyance of another patron, halted in the course of reaching the bar.
“Scuse me, squire.”
“Beg your pardon,” Humphrey said immediately. Unfortunately, his reflex response brought him in front of the table occupied by his coffee house companion.
“Care to join us?” The dark aspected man asked.
The invitation seemed to be loaded with meaning.
About the Author
Ellie Thomas lives by the sea. She comes from a teaching background and goes for long seaside walks where she daydreams about history. She is a voracious reader especially about anything historical. She mainly writes historical gay romance.
Ellie also writes historical erotic romance as L. E. Thomas.
Thank you so much, Addison, for having me as your guest again and for all your support for my story! ❤️❤️
It’s always my pleasure!! ❤️