I’m taking one scene from His Reluctant Lady, His Abducted Bride, and Eye of the Beholder and I’m going to swap heroes.  I’ll be using their personalities to see how things would be different.  I’ll be doing this for a couple weeks.  During or after that time, I’ll give Dave Larson, Christopher Robinson, and Gavin Blackheart a chance to give their thoughts on this swap.  While the men wanted to keep their heroines, I decided to make it much more interesting.  The men will have to interact with the other guy’s heroine.

This week, we’re going to look at a scene from His Abducted Bride.  I’ll use Dave Larson in today’s post.  The scene I’m doing today is based off this one I posted on Sunday.

Dave, confident that this will be easy.

His Abducted Bride: Starring Dave Larson and Sandy Davis

Dave strode into the castle, a little uncomfortable as servants bowed as he passed by.  He guessed Gavin was used to this and didn’t think anything of it, but he didn’t care for it.  But he held a missive in his hand that needed to be opened so he went to the planning room where he read through the message.

King Blackheart,

            I couldn’t help but notice everything I’ve worked hard to build over the past year has been wiped away in a single instant.  I don’t know why or how you changed the course of the author’s story, but I demand you put things back to the way they were at once.  Send the author back to where she belongs.  If you don’t, I will.  And you won’t like what I’ll do to you if I have to take matters into my own hands.

King Petros of Reinhold

Dave shook his head.  How many time had he wished he could have trapped Ruth Ann Nordin into Isaac’s Decision so she wouldn’t marry Isaac to Emily?  (Check here for a post on how upset he was at the time if you didn’t read it while I wrote Isaac’s Decision.)  If he only knew Gavin’s secret at the time.

A sudden banging on the door grabbed his attention.  Before he could ask who it was, Sandy yelled, “Open this door!”

“I didn’t lock it,” he called out.

“Oh.” She opened the door and peered into the room.  “Aren’t you going to follow the script?  Gavin locked it.”

He shrugged.  “You want to go back out there so I can lock it?”

“No, not really.”

“So why are you complaining?”

“I’m not complaining,” she insisted as she smoothed her dress.  “I’m surprised, that’s all.  I mean, Gavin never made anything easy for me.”  Clearing her throat, she made eye contact with him.  “I saw the messenger come here.  Who sent you word and where is the missive?”

“I’ll tell you if you tell me how Gavin trapped you in this book.”

“I don’t know how he trapped me here.  That’s part of my problem.  If I knew, I could escape.”

“Why do you authors have to be so difficult?  Can’t you just do what we want?”

She groaned and crossed her arms.  “We’re supposed to be doing this scene as if you just received a threat.  The conversation you want to have is irrelevant.”

“Ruth put a lot of herself into your character.  You sound a lot like her.”

“No, she didn’t.  I mean, there might be some similarities because we’re authors who have to tolerate difficult characters.  That reminds me, I owe her a sympathy card, especially since you tried to frame her for kidnapping you.”

“And it didn’t work.”

“And you tried to get people to boycott her books.”

“Good grief.  His Abducted Bride wasn’t even around back then which means you weren’t around for all of this.  So how can you know this stuff?”

“I went through the archives in this blog to see who I was going to be up against in this immature hero swap idea because three egotistical male characters are having a ridiculous contest to find out who’s the best one.”

He hated the Internet.  All the documentation was still on this blog for people to sort through at their leisure.  With a sigh, he said, “Let’s move on.  You want to know what this letter says, right?”

“Yes, that’s what I’m here.”

He nodded and made a move toward her but pretended to slip and threw it out the window.

She ran over to it in time to see a dog eating it.

“Oops,” he said.

She narrowed her eyes at him.  “You did this because I wouldn’t let Gavin get his way, didn’t you?”

“I’d be justified in doing it for that reason, but the truth is, Gavin gave me specific instructions to make sure you don’t read that letter.” As he left the room, he added, “And I believe in doing what the character wants.”