Title: To Take a Quiet Breath
Series: Rossingley, Book Three
Author: Fearne Hill
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 11/09/2021
Length: 73900
Genre: Contemporary, LGBTQIA+, contemporary, France, gay, slow burn, friends to lovers, civil servant, nerd, ex-con, hurt/comfort, illness/disability, family drama
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Description
This isn’t a romance about chiseled, lantern-jawed college kids boasting V-cut abs. There are no marathon steamy sex sessions, not without having at least one nebulizer on standby anyway.
Marcel Giresse, the thirty-six-year-old Director of Finance at the French Ministry of Justice, is happy to leave all that nonsense to his oldest friend Lucien, the sixteenth Earl of Rossingley. In fact, Marcel is too short of breath and too set in his nerdy ways to ever think about sex at all. Which is a shame because the prisoner serving a sentence for murderer that he’s just interviewed is smart, intriguing, and hot as hell.
Guillaume Guilbaud is approaching forty and has wasted his best years rotting in a prison cell. The only interesting thing that has happened to him since his best friend Reuben was released is taking part in a series of interviews with a disarming and charismatic civil servant named Marcel. As if that friendship could ever materialize into anything, especially as he feels so ill-prepared for his imminent life on the outside.
But after a chance meeting at Rossingley, Guillaume finds himself renting Marcel’s annex and desperately falling for his sweet, chronically ill landlord. Which is crazy, because Marcel is celibate, posh, clever, and fundamentally out of Guillaume’s league. Furthermore, Marcel also has far too many interfering friends and concerned relatives determined to ensure he doesn’t become any more attached to the mysterious ex-con he’s shyly let into his life.
To Take a Quiet Breath is a slow-burn romance because Marcel is too breathless for a romance at any other speed. It’s about two men finding that love can quietly creep up on you no matter how many obstacles are thrown in its path and discovering that as long as an inhaler is readily at hand, anyone can swing from the chandeliers.
To Take a Quiet Breath
Fearne Hill © 2021
All Rights Reserved
“So, Marcel, my darling. You mentioned a new man in your text. Pray tell.”
I sat across from Lucien at his vast kitchen table, sipping a hot chocolate, having declined a Campari quite so early in the day. Because of the planned evening soirée, Lucien’s delightful offspring were spending a couple of nights with his husband’s doting parents, so I was the lucky recipient of the full glare of Lucien’s scrutiny.
“No, Lucien, that’s not strictly correct. You are the one who mentioned a new man, not me. I can assure you, I’m as contentedly celibate as ever, no thanks to my sister’s efforts to find me a suitable partner.”
“Actually, that’s not strictly correct either, darling,” he persisted. “You did say you had met somebody, but in an abstract sense, if I remember.”
“Well, I’m not telling. And more to the point, there is nothing to tell.”
He casually snaked a hand across the table, and then, quick as a flash, the connard snatched my inhaler from in front of me.
“I shan’t give this back to you until you spill the beans.”
I gave him a withering look. “Does Jay know how immature you can be, Lucien? And do I need to remind you that you’re a doctor? For goodness’ sake, you should know better than depriving a sick man of his medication. Isn’t there some ethical code against that sort of thing?”
Twisting the inhaler around in his hand, Lucien pumped it into the air a couple of times.
“Oops. Shouldn’t waste it.”
“Lucien, you are behaving like a brattish thirteen-year-old.”
More pumps in the air. “Gosh! Look, Marcel, it’s nearly run out.”
This wasn’t the first time Lucien had played this game with me, and I doubted it would be the last.
“I do have others in my suitcase, you know. Fortunately for you, so you won’t be tried and burned at the stake for deliberately killing your oldest friend.”
He smiled impishly. “Yes, but I’ve allocated you the room furthest away on the second floor. You’ll die from oxygen deprivation before you manage to crawl there.”
Sighing, I shook my head. “Okay, you win. I’ll continue to sit here, then, and wait until I perish.”
“Or you could spill the beans, darling, and I’ll consider returning your inhaler?”
I took another sip. I’d been outmanoeuvred.
“There really is nothing to tell. As per usual, you are making a ridiculous drama out of a complete non-event.”
The pale blue gaze didn’t budge. I sighed heavily.
“Do you remember those prison visits I told you about? Well, I met a fascinating man—he was imprisoned for murder, which is obviously dreadful, but…I, ah, I…well, I found myself kind of liking him. A lot actually.”
“Gosh, is he very handsome? Let me guess, he’s tall. Muscular, but not too chiselled. Dark hair, perhaps a touch of broodiness about him? A foreigner? A man with a mysterious past? Sexy deep voice? Sad, haunted brown eyes?”
Goodness, Lucien could be annoying. And he could read me like a book. To be fair, I did used to have a type before I gave up on men for good, and Guillaume fit that type to a tee.
“Ah…yes. Yes, he is very handsome. And…ah…yes, all of those things. But not foreign—French mixed with some Moroccan and Tunisian.”
He smirked. “Not that you’ve been delving into his background or anything, darling.”
I shrugged at him. “But it’s immaterial, Lucien. He’s been released by now, after serving fifteen years. He’s likely halfway back home to Marseilles, which is a hell of a long trip from Ile de Ré. On top of that, more pertinently, is that he probably saw me as a slightly strange, nerdy man who behaved as though every breath would be his last. On one occasion, while he was giving me a tour, I had to hold on to his arm as I was so out of puff. Doesn’t make me particularly attractive, does it?”
Lucien smiled warmly. “Gosh, I don’t know, Marcel. Your breathy, damsel in distress act is quite a turn-on, darling. Particularly when you start coughing your guts up and your lips turn blue.”
“Lucien, mon cher? I shall get my own back on you before the weekend is out. And you know how I refuse to employ swear words? Well, this is me telling you to…ah, expletive off.”
He laughed gleefully, and thankfully, our conversation moved onto less intrusive topics, mainly tonight’s festivities. I was to be the guest speaker at his and Freddie’s prison educational charity’s inaugural dinner, which he was hosting here at Rossingley. No doubt, the great and the good, from whom he was hoping to extract money, would be so suitably bowled over by their lavish surroundings and charming hosts they would readily open their wallets and dig deep.
“Talking of prisoners, how is Rossingley’s resident ex-convict? I thoroughly enjoyed his company when we met at your wedding.”
“Our dear Reuben is marvellous; thank you for asking. Trust you to remember such a pretty young man. He’ll be along later. He has an old friend staying with him, who is quite dashing himself. Freddie is paranoid he’s about to seduce Reuben away from under his nose.”
Finishing my drink, I automatically reached for my scarf, which I thought I’d left on the back of a chair when I walked in. Lucien and I had plans to take a stroll around the lake, and then I was going to head up to my room and catch my breath for a few hours prior to the evening’s entertainment. For all Lucien’s welcome light-hearted teasing, I needed a rest after the travelling, and he knew it as well as anyone.
“Now what have you lost?” he said with mock irritation, watching me fumble around. “If it’s your passport, I’ve already put it somewhere safe out of your reach so you don’t mislay it between now and tomorrow’s flight.”
Goodness, this man knew me far too well. “No, it’s not my passport. It’s my scarf, you know, my mad professor one. I like having it around…”
“Darling, I know you like having it around. You’ve been wearing it for aeons. It will turn up. You probably left it hanging in the hallway.”
He stood and carried my empty mug over to the sink.
“Is this what you’re looking for?” said a deep warm voice from somewhere in the region of the kitchen door behind me. Whoever it belonged to spoke French fluently and with a hint of a familiar sing-song southern accent that reminded me of… For a brief second, I could have sworn my heart stopped beating.
Oh, my goodness, it couldn’t be, could it?
“Gui…Guillaume! Wha…what on earth are you doing here?” I’d jabbered in English; such was my level of confusion that I’d forgotten which language I was speaking.
He leaned casually against the doorframe, my blessed scarf in his hand. Guillaume Guilbaud, in all of his dark, devilishly handsome glory, was in Lucien’s kitchen, standing not two metres away from me. I think I might have actually whimpered.
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Fearne Hill lives deep in the southern British countryside with three untamed sons, varying numbers of hens, a few tortoises, and a beautiful cocker spaniel.
When she is not overseeing her small menagerie, she enjoys writing contemporary romantic fiction. And when she is not doing either of those things, she works as an anaesthesiologist.
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