An Honorable Gentlemen by Regina Scott

How exciting to have Gwendolyn Allbridge, the heroine from An Honorable Gentleman, a November 2011 release from Love Inspired Historical written by Regina Scott, with us today.

1. Tell me the most interesting thing about you.

I help my father manage Blackcliff Hall, one of the most beautiful estates in Cumberland. From the top of Blackcliff Fell, you can see for miles. There are salmon in the streams, deer in the woods, and everywhere the fiery colors of autumn right now.

2. What do you do for fun?

Live! Forcing all the numbers associated with the estate to make sense, keeping up the gate house where my father and I live, growing and preparing the produce from my small garden, getting the Hall ready for the new owner--there are very few tasks that I don’t enjoy. Well, I don’t enjoy it when someone is sick and a villager comes for me and my mother’s cures. I love making people feel better, but I don’t like that they were sick to begin with. I’ve seen too much of that.

3. What do you put off doing because you dread it?

I’ve put off making any more of my mother’s cures since she died a year ago, especially her horehound syrup. She was the village midwife. With the nearest physician over twenty miles away, she did a lot more than bring babies into the world. Everyone loved her. They expect me to follow in her footsteps, but how can anyone live up to her skills?

4. What are you afraid of most in life?

Having to leave here. This is my home! It doesn’t matter that things have run down a bit with the last estate owner passing away. I know Sir Trevor Fitzwilliam, the new owner, will set things to rights. He has to! The village depends on the prosperity of Blackcliff. They won’t last another winter without some help!

5. What do you want out of life?

To give it my all and someday reach heaven to hear “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

6. What is the most important thing to you?

My father and my home. And Sir Trevor Fitzwilliam, but don’t tell him I said that. He can be quite puffed up with his own consequence when he wants to. And then, at times, he doesn’t seem to believe in his future at all. Perhaps that’s why God sent him here to Blackcliff, to find what really matters.

7. Do you read books? If so, what is your favorite type of book?

I read the Bible, and my friend Ruth Newton and I share books we get from the lending library in Carlisle. I like stories about real people overcoming great odds. I don’t much like the gothic stories like those by Mrs. Radcliffe. A spooky old estate? Really! I live with that every day! All her heroines really needed was a good dog at their sides and a loaded pistol in their pockets. That’s how I met Sir Trevor when he showed up at the estate in the night.

8. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I would make myself faster and more clever so I would have half a chance of keeping up with everything!

9. Do you have a pet? If so, what is it and why that pet?

I have Dolly. Father would scold me terribly for mollycoddling her, as she was bred to protect the property. Truly, would you baby a 160-pound mastiff? She’s the biggest of the breed ever raised in the Evendale Valley, and my constant companion. People think she must be vicious given her size and her brindled color. But she’s a sweetheart.

10. If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?

I’d go back to before my mother contracted consumption and stop it from happening. And perhaps shake some sense into Sir Trevor’s parents as well. Imagine not bringing your child into a family, a place where he can feel loved! But then, maybe that’s why he met me!