Mist of Midnight (33 page)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I
feel thankful and blessed to have a number of wonderful people who graciously contributed their many talents to this book.

Jenny Q of Historical Editorial twice brought her pen and insight to the completed manuscript and I can't envision writing an historical novel without her fine insight into story development.Special thanks to Dr. James Taneti, author of
Caste, Gender, and Christianity in Colonial India: Telugu Women in Mission.
Dr. Taneti offered guidance as the book was developing and read the manuscript to ensure the material was handled with accuracy and sensitivity. A huge thanks to Dr. Alex Naylor and Finni Golden, historical advisers and residents of Portsmouth, England (in a house dating to 1600!), both of whom were instrumental as I wrote and developed the novel. They not only helped keep my history straight, they helped me keep my English English, and not American.

Danielle Egan-Miller, Joanna MacKenzie, and Abby Saul of Browne and Miller Literary Agency are among the rare agents who are also great editors and this book was a skeleton of itself
before they came alongside with excellent advice. Thanks, too, to the entire hardworking team at Howard Books who help bring these books to life and to market, including the careful attention of Senior Editor Beth Datlowe Adams.

Friends Serena Chase, Debbie Austin, Renee Chaw, and Dawn Kinzer deserve a healthy and thankful shout-out for their focused comments as the book developed and their friendship in the difficult patches. My newest editor-in-residence, Miss Parnel Bennetts, native of Hampshire, read the book both as a lover of Gothic romance and as a local expert. Special love and thanks to Ben Bennetts and the late, lovely M.M. Bennetts for all their help.

I could never have written this book without my wonderful husband, Michael, and all THREE of my children now that we've added a wonderful son-in-law to our family.

Photograph © Studio B Portraits

Sandra Byrd is a noted author of historical fiction, including the first book in her Tudor series,
To Die For: A Novel of Anne Boleyn
. She lives near Seattle, Washington. Visit SandraByrd.com.

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Sandra Byrd

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First Howard Books trade paperback edition March 2015

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Interior design by Jaime Putorti

Cover design by Peachpie Design Studio

Cover images by Mark Owen/Arcangel Images and Shutterstock

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Byrd, Sandra.

Mist of midnight / Sandra Byrd.

pages cm

1. Young women—Fiction. 2. Inheritance and succession—Fiction. 3. Great Britain—History—Victoria, 1837–1901—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3552.Y678M57 2014

813'.54—dc23

2014007378

ISBN 978-1-4767-1786-9

ISBN 978-1-4767-1787-6 (ebook)