Today, the lovely Ellie Thomas is back to tell us a little about her latest release, An Unlikely Alliance. Welcome Ellie!
Thanks, lovely Ofelia, 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.
My trio consists of a not-quite couple, Abe and Clem. At the start of the story, these two have been circling warily around each other for some months. Then Clem meets Humphrey, promptly seduces him and introduces him to Abe. To everyone’s surprise, Humphrey provides the emotional connection for a three-way relationship.
Humphrey is an unassuming young gentleman in his early twenties. Both he and Clem are orphans, but Humphrey is fortunate enough to be surrounded by a caring family. When in London, he lives with his motherly Aunt Cecelia in Holborn. Humphrey makes himself useful by squiring his female relatives around the ballrooms of the London Season as an essential spare man.
My other two MCs, Abe and Clem are secure in their sexuality. Until meeting them, Humphrey is somewhat necessarily closeted. The male-dominated world of boarding school and university allowed him some leeway for release. But now he’s reached adult life, the risk becomes too high. Humphrey is too unworldly and respectable to risk entering a molly house to pursue his desires. He’s reduced to the occasional romp with old friends to let off steam, while carefully concealing his true nature
Until he meets Clem and then Abe, Humphrey is unaware of sexual and emotional possibilities.
These encounters are life-changing for Humphrey, and enable him to express his needs openly. Being a modest young man, he remains unaware that his open, genuine and caring personality provides the key for this trio to work.
An Unlikely Alliance
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.
Book Links An Unlikely Alliance:
Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D2KS5XRZ/ref=sr_1_1?sr=8-1
Universal Book Link:
https://books2read.com/u/mgyyzz
Publisher:
https://www.jms-books.com/ellie-thomas-c-224_420/an-unlikely-alliance-p-5073.html
Add to Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/211941026-an-unlikely-alliance
Add to Bookbub:
https://www.bookbub.com/books/an-unlikely-alliance-by-ellie-thomas
Book Links Regency Lovers Trio stories:
Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D2KR4KY6/ref=sr_1_1?sr=8-1
UBL:
https://books2read.com/u/mVnngp
Publisher:
https://www.jms-books.com/trios-c-29_298/regency-lovers-p-5078.html
Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/212074123-regency-lovers-trio
Bookbub:
https://www.bookbub.com/books/regency-lovers-trio-by-ellie-thomas-and-alexandra-caluen
Bio:
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.
Website: https://elliethomasromance.wordpress.com/
Facebook reader group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/8308047409266947
Twitter: @e_thomas_author
Bluesky: @elliethomas.bsky.social
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19835510.Ellie_Thomas