AUTHOR NOTE

      I was thrilled when Louise Allen and Sarah Mallory asked me if I’d be interested in working with them on a mini-series of stories to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo.

      I’ve mentioned this pivotal battle in a couple of my books before, but never actually taken any of my heroes or heroines to the battlefield itself.

      My journey with Brides of Waterloo began in April 2012, when Louise Allen and I met up in the grounds of Ickworth House in Suffolk, where several historical re-enactment groups had set up camp. I was taught how to make cartridges, watched a cannon being loaded and fired (and learned how to protect my ears from the blast!), saw what an infantryman would have carried in his pack, and what the inside of an officer’s tent would have looked like.

      Over the next few months we spent hours e-mailing each other as we created the fictional unit known as Randall’s Rogues and shared pictures of what we thought our heroes should look like (all for the purposes of continuity, of course!). We even met up to double-check all those little details which ensured that our heroes and heroines could walk in and out of each other’s stories with ease.

      If you’d like to see pictures of our day at Ickworth, or find out more about the background research for this series, you can visit our Facebook page: facebook.com/WaterlooBrides