A peek into the pages--Sweet Auralie

More about the Sweet Lenora Series  I've been sailing with Anton and Lenora as I work on the final, full length novel that will finish their story. The book is written in three parts, and I've just finished the second part and made a small dash into part three. I'm going to set it aside in a bit, so I can work on my romantic comedy,  but these characters will occupy a little part of the garret even as I do that. 
The book's working title is Sweet Auralie and part two is called From the Ashes, it begins in San Francisco in 1859, several years after Anton and Lenora return from their first journey to China aboard Willow (which constitutes part one of the book.)
Since I haven't shared for a while, here's a short peek at some of From the Ashes, written in Lenora's voice--


As I passed this room, the door shut, I wished again we had never altered our home and that Anton and I could go back to a simpler time, when the cottage had been his and mine and there were no others to count on us. Ah, but to not have Auralie? I could scarce imagine my life without our little girl. And Robert? No, I would not expunge the short and precious days with him, though I paid for them now with such fierce pain. Yet I often thought about the young woman I had been when we first arrived in San Francisco, the woman so full of desire and passion, who knew so well what she wanted from her life. Was she still there, hidden inside the shroud of the older, wiser, and infinitely sadder woman I had become?