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About Dark Blue Waves by Kimberly Sullivan
Title: Dark Blue Waves
Author: Kimberly Sullivan
Genre: Time-Travel Romance
When you wake up in Bath, England two hundred years in the past, how far can a love of Jane Austen get you?
Janet Roberts dreams of an academic career in literature, so she can hardly believe her good fortune when she’s accepted into a Jane Austen graduate seminar in Bath, England. Settled in Georgian splendor among her seminar colleagues, Janet and her classmates live, eat and breathe Jane Austen.
An accident interrupts this idyll when Janet regains consciousness in her own room—back in Regency England. For a scholar of nineteenth-century literature, this should be a dream come true.
But Janet quickly learns there’s a world of difference between scholarly knowledge of the written page and maneuvering real life as a reluctant time traveler.
Her burgeoning friendship with Emma Huntington eases her entrée into nineteenth-century society. However, Emma’s brother, the handsome, proud and frustratingly magnetic Sir Edward, is far less welcoming.
While desperately attempting to make sense of her dilemma, Janet treads a thin line between trying to blend into her new world and not being unmasked as the imposter she is. Can she discover the way to return to her twenty-first century life? After working so hard to create a rewarding nineteenth-century life for herself and opening her hart to friendship and love, does she even want to?
Excerpt from Dark Blue Waves
© 2022
Kimberly Sullivan
Janet slid her legs over the side of the bed, pushed bare feet into her slippers and walked over to the window, pulling back the curtains. It was still dark, with only a glimmer of light along the horizon signaling the start to the new day. The fading night sky was clear. An ideal day for riding – something she had learned young, alongside her mother who loved to ride.
Nothing cleared her head better than a gallop through the countryside. She wished she could go off on her own, before everyone was up. Instead, she sat at her table and dipped her quill into the inkwell. Scratching the quill against parchment, she recorded her observations from last night as the sun emerged and cast its golden light upon the waters of the pond.
Penning her thoughts cleared her head, and she felt better when Turner entered the room.
“Miss Jane! You are up so early. Why did you not ring for me?”
“There was no need. I was enjoying the silence before the start of the day. I feel refreshed now.”
“I have brought you one of Miss Emma’s riding habits for your morning excursion.” She stroked the fabric. “This should fit you beautifully.”
Janet felt a wave of nausea. “This is how I am supposed to ride? A dress and jacket? Won’t the dress get caught up in the horse’s legs?”
“Miss Jane, the extra folds get tucked under your legs when you are riding sidesaddle. Surely you must do the same in the New World? There is even a petticoat that will cover what the habit cannot.” Her cheeks flushed. She looked down. “Your ankles, my dear. It would be most inappropriate to have them on view for all to see.”
How had Janet failed to consider the riding habit and sidesaddle when agreeing to ride with Emma? How many BBC films had she seen? And what exactly had she expected to wear to ride two hundred years ago? Surely not a jockey’s silks. How on earth could she ride in this get-up and not kill herself? No, she couldn’t risk it. She’d allow Turner to dress her, and then bow out at the moment of saddling. It was hardly worth risking a broken neck—quite literally—in exchange for a bit of exercise.
Turner was pulling tight the stays of the torturous corset Janet had hoped would be unnecessary for riding. She should have known better. The habit was swept over her head. A little jacket was added afterwards. Its tight arms limited mobility. Aside from its more somber colors, the habit appeared to Janet almost the same as the dresses she wore on a daily basis. How in God’s name could women ride in this get-up? How she longed for her no-nonsense, twenty-first-century riding britches and boots.
Janet sat sulkily at the breakfast table, long before the rest of the family was ready. She drank her coffee slowly, devising ways to extricate herself from her morning ride without causing offense. A headache? Upset stomach? An attack of Mrs. Bennet-like nerves?
“You are up already! You must be eager for our ride,” said Emma as she breezed into the breakfast room. Elegant in her riding habit and certainly capable of sitting expertly in it in her sidesaddle, Emma took her seat across from Janet. Janet wondered how to explain the sudden change of mind to her friend. She poured coffee into Emma’s empty cup. As soon as they had finished breakfast, they walked the short distance to the stable.
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About Kimberly Sullivan
Kimberly grew up in the suburbs of Boston and in Saratoga Springs, New York, although she now calls the Harlem neighborhood of New York City home when she’s back in the US. She studied political science and history at Cornell University and earned her MBA, with a concentration in strategy and marketing, from Bocconi University in Milan.
Afflicted with a severe case of Wanderlust, she worked in journalism and government in the US, Czech Republic and Austria, before settling down in Rome, where she works in international development, and writes fiction any chance she gets.
She is a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association (WFWA) and The Historical Novel Society and has published several short stories and two novels: Three Coins and Dark Blue Waves.
After years spent living in Italy with her Italian husband and sons, she’s fluent in speaking with her hands, and she loves setting her stories in her beautiful, adoptive country.
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