Book series

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Mysteries to solve in WIP Wednesday

Another excerpt from Hold Me Fast, which should be finished this week. (I’m editing, but I also have to write the very end. The villain is dead, but the story isn’t over until my couple are happily married.) In the following excerpt, Jowan has been turned away at the house where Tamsyn lives, and decides to hire an investigator.

“There is another matter,” Bran said, with a nod of encouragement to Jowan.

Wakefield raised an eyebrow.

Jowan wasn’t sure where to start. “The singer, Tammie Lind. I need to know… That is, could you find out…” What? If she was a prisoner? It sounded ridiculous to his own ears, and he could only imagine what Wakefield would think of it.

“The lady is actually Tamsyn Roskilly, the daughter of our father’s housekeeper,” Bran explained. “She left Cornwall when she was sixteen, promising to keep in touch. She failed to write, even to her mother. When her mother died, shortly after our father, we informed her through the Earl of Coombe, her patron.”

Wakefield, who had been toying with his pen looked up at that, his focus sharpening.

“We received no reply even to that,” Bran continued. “When we called on the Earl of Coombe, we were denied entry. It is possible that the lady has brushed the dust of her homeland from her feet and wants nothing to do with anything from her past. My brother fears that letters from home might have been kept from here, or that she is being suborned in some way, or both.”

“Bran puts it very well,” Jowan agreed. “We will leave her alone, if that is her choice. But we owe her a rescue if she needs one.

“The Earl of Coombe has a dark reputation,” Wakefield told them. “I can tell you that without any investigation at all. How much it is still deserved, I do not yet know. When he was last in England, he was infamous for his parties and his liaisons, and known in certain circles for dissolute behaviour beyond that normally expected of a young British aristocrat. I have not followed his activities on the continent, but I know who might have done so. I can ask. Also, I have another client who has asked me to investigate his current activities. I can report on what I find to you, if you wish.”

“If you would,” Jowan said.

“As to Miss Roskilly, or Miss Lind as she is now known, I should be able to find out what you want to know. You might not like any answers I find for you, however. Coombe was well known for his ability to corrupt innocence, and I cannot imagine that any young woman in his power would escape his attentions.”

Jowan shut his eyes against the roaring in his ears. His sweet Tamsyn in the hands of a villain! He didn’t want to imagine it but was beseiged by a kaleidoscope of scenes of her calling for help while a malign presence assailed her.

“Jowan?” Bran’s voice anchored him back in the presence and allowed him to catch his breath.

“Find out, Wakefield. It is better to know the worst rather than be haunted by speculation.”

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Spotlight on Hook, Lyon and Sinker

Hook, Lyon and Sinker

When Lady Laureline Barker asks Mrs. Dove Lyons to find her a husband, she does not expect one of her choices to be the man she admired years ago, when she was still a schoolgirl—the man who rescued her from drowning. He is also a war hero, famed for trading his own freedom and health for the safety of others.

Laurel is committed to a contest, with the winner taking her and her dowry. Can she back out? And will he still want her if she does?

Angelico Warrington doesn’t expect Laurel to remember him. Even if she does, why should she favor him over other suitors? She is the respected sister to an earl, the only flaw on her reputation that she refused to marry a jerk who has been putting off the wedding date for five years.

Angel is a musician in a gambling den, unable to walk without crutches, and with no place in the Society to which Laurel belongs.

This apparently ill-assorted couple are a perfect match, but history must repeat itself and secrets be revealed before they can win their happy ending.

Preorder price only 99c. Published this coming Wednesday. https://www.amazon.com/Hook-Lyon-Sinker-Lyons-Den-ebook/dp/B0CSF79RMD

Excerpt:

One of Titan’s men came to tell Carter and Angel that the first contest was about to start. While they had been talking, some of the servants had rolled out a large square piece of furniture. Angel couldn’t imagine its purpose until he approached closely enough to see that it was an open-topped box about ten feet across. It was lined with something that must be impervious to liquid, for the box was full of water almost to the top. A score or more toy ships sailed on the surface.

“Gentlemen,” said Titan, “if you will take your places, please.” He directed Angel to one side of the box, and Carter to the opposite side. Angel picked up the sling he found waiting for him. The bowl full of smooth blue stones told him what the game comprised before Titan explained.

Carter’s stones were red, Angel noticed. Half a dozen gentlemen took their places along the remaining sides of the tank, and two of Mrs. Dove Lyons men stood flanking each of the players.

Other gentlemen crowded in behind the spotters, though several of Titan’s wolves kept them back from behind Carter and Angel.

Then Titan said, “Go,” and Angel picked up his sling, fitted a stone, and hurled it at a ship. It was harder than it appeared. For one thing, it took considerable force to sink a ship. For another, any lesser hit sent the target careening across the water, rocking the other ships and setting them sailing in unexpected directions. All that movement started waves, which complicated matters still further.

The watchers roared when a lucky shot from Angel sank an already-damaged ship, and again a few moments later, presumably for Carter, though Angel was not about to take his eye from his current target.

As he continued to launch stones, someone came to fill the bowl. Was he getting better? He had the impression he was sinking ships more rapidly, but perhaps it was just that time had slowed as he slung stone after stone, not pausing to see the effect, but moving on the next.

Every now and again, though, another stone hit a ship he was aiming for just before or after his own. If the ship sank, the spotters yelled out the name of the man who was responsible. Twice, there was a dispute, but Angel didn’t allow that to distract him, either.

Then Titan shouted, “Time! Put down your slings, gentlemen.”

Angel replaced his sling on the side of the box and looked across the water to Carter, who nodded and smiled. Angel had no idea whether he or Carter had won. He returned the nod and the smile. Carter was a decent man.

Angel’s eyes drifted up to the ladies’ gallery, where Laurel stood, watching the first of the contests that would decide her fate. Carter was a decent man, but he wanted a mother for his daughters.

Laurel deserved more. She deserved a man who adored her.

 

 

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A cunning plan on WIP Wednesday

 

My hero abducts my heroine in Hold Me Fast. The image above belongs to one of the stories that inspired mine.

It was time, then. Jowan mounted his horse. “Wish me luck, Bran.”

“Always,” Bran replied from the back of his own steed, extending his hand. Jowan shook it and Bran rode off, away from the main ride.

After a nod for the boy on lookout, Jowan nudged his horse into a swift walk. So far, so good. Coombe kept coming. Jowan kept his head down so that the hat would shade his face. The conspirators had calculated that Coombe would not give Jowan a second look, given he was on a side ride and not likely, at his current pace, to reach the main ride before all of Coombe’s retinue had passed.

Good. Coombe was beyond the intersection of the two rides. Jowan gave the horse the signal for a trot, then a canter. One. Two. Three. By the time he counted to fifteen, he was pulling the horse up alongside Tamsyn, clasping her around the waist, and lifting her to sit on his pommel. The clever lady had already kicked her feet free of the stirrup, and so the transfer took a count of two, but that was enough time for one of Coombe’s men to react, forcing his horse foreward to block Jowan’s escape.

The horse Drew had provided for the rescue shouldered the other horse away out of the way and bounded away, reaching a gallop within a second. Ten strides and they were through the gate. They slowed and turned left, continuing to reduce speed. Drew had assured Jowan that the horse would be able to stop within ten yards of the gate, and so two of Jowan’s accomplices waited at that point.

The horse was still moving, if slowly, when Jowan let Tamsyn down into Drew’s arms. By the time he had dismounted himself, Tamsyn had abandoned her riding cape to Prue Wakefield and was donning the hat Prue gave her—a stylish flat hat that tied on with a scarf and hid part of Tamsyn’s face.

Jowan tossed Tamsyn up into the saddle of one of the two horses that a boy was holding, and himself mounted the other. Meanwhile, Prue had put on Tamsyn’s cape and Drew tossed her up on the horse Jowan had abandoned, and was mounting behind her.

“Thank you both,” Jowan called to them as they rode off along Park Lane. Jowan led Tamsyn in the opposite direction. They had organised several more decoys, and would fire off one of them as soon as they reached the corner of Cullross and Park. Drew’s horse would go one way along Park, and the near identical horse that was standing at wait would go the other. They’d repeat the ploy at three more corners, until sixteen chestnut geldings spread out across London, all around 16 hands high and all bearing a rider in a black coat and top hat, with a passenger sitting on the front of his saddle. All those decoys had to do was stay out of reach of Coombe and his men, but even if they were caught, they all had good reason to be out on the roads on such a day.

Meanwhile, Jowan must trust them to know their work, for his part of the plan was to turn off into a street away from the shell game of the multiplying horses, where a hackney waited that would take them west to Bran and the travelling carriage.

“We will go to Southall tonight,” he told the woman in his arms. “It’s two hours, so we will not need to change the horses.”

“They are lovely horses,” Tamsyn said, her voice distant as if she was thinking of something else. “We will send these beauties home to their owner,” he told her. “We turn here, and there, up ahead, is our transport for the next step. It’s not the final, though. The hack will take us to the last vehicle of the day.”

Tamsyn giggled. “It is like the children’s game. Stop the music, and if there is not a horse to plop down on, you lose.”

She willingly allowed him to help her down from her horse and see her into the hack.

So far, so good.

 

 

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Meeting the Matchmaker on WIP Wednesday

Here’s a short excerpt from the book that’s out on 20th March, Hook, Lyon, and Sinker

Mrs. Dove Lyon was not as Laurel had imagined her. Laurel had expected someone garishly painted and indiscreetly clad in gaudy colors. After all, she ran a gambling establishment which also offered other entertainments of the most scandalous kind.

The person who joined Laurel was clothed all in black and veiled. Her garb would not have looked out of place on the most dignified of Society’s fashionable matrons, and was far less revealing than many gowns worn by such august ladies. Her language and carriage too, as she invited Laurel to sit and asked her preference for beverage, were those of a lady.

The knowledge comforted Laurel. Perhaps this desperate scheme might work after all.

Once Laurel had her tea, Mrs. Dove Lyon came directly to the point, without any polite evasions. “Why have you asked to see me, my lady? Do you wish for me to find you a husband?”

Blunt and to the point. Also surprising, for Laurel had agreed to Benjamin’s request that the broken betrothal should not be made public just yet. Laurel thought he wanted to give Tiber time to talk Laurel into reversing her decision, as she had last time, but she had agreed anyway. It suited her to keep the gossips at bay for a week or so.

Her hostess must have guessed at her thoughts, because she said, “Lord Tiberius Hastings was here last night, and he is indiscreet when in his cups. Most of the gentlemen present will now be spreading the news that you have jilted him. Mind you, his loose tongue will work to your advantage, for he was bemoaning his own stupidity in putting off the wedding once again. And, making it clear that his chief regret was losing your dowry.”

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Tea with her husband and a problem

“Surely there is something we can do, James,” said Eleanor, the Duchess of Winshire to her husband. “It is outrageous that young Laurel must marry within a matter of weeks or lose her inheritance from her father.”

James shook his head. “Her father has been dead for years, Eleanor. If she was going to object, she should have done so before now. The fact that she has said nothing, and taken no action to challenge the will, means that the courts are unlikely to even listen to her at this late stage. And certainly not before the deadline of her twenty-fifth birthday.”

Eleanor sighed, impatiently. “She says she did not know about the provision, and indeed, how should she? Girls are not encouraged to attend the reading of a will, and apparently neither of her older brothers saw fit to enlighten her. Her youngest brother, who inherited when the older two died, was overseas with the army. He assumed that Laurel knew. Her fiance of the time should have known, but I gather he had not bothered to read the marriage settlements. Whether he really intended to marry her or not, I have no idea, but he has certainly lost his opportunity now.”

James frowned. “Is she certain, dearest? Would she not be better to marry the man she knows than to make herself and her dowry the subject of a contest in a gaming hall?”

Eleanor’s sigh was heartfelt. “So I suggested to her,” she said. “But Laurel says that she would rather be penniless and dependent on her brother for the rest of her life than to exchange another word with that snake, by which I take it she meant her former betrothed.”

“You might remember, Eleanor, that Mrs Dove Lyon’s has had great success as a matchmaker. Perhaps she will manage another of her love matches for your young friend Laurel.”

Eleanor managed a still deeper sigh. “If there is nothing we can do about the will, I suppose we must leave it to that woman. But James, if Laurel is not happy with the outcome of the contests, I am determined that we shall offer her a refuge.”

“Of course, dearest,” said her lovely husband.

***

Find out what happens to Laurel in, Hook, Lyon, and Sinker, currently available at the preorder price of 99c, and published on 20th March. It is part of the Lyon’s Den series, and also a reinterpretation of The Little Mermaid, in the spirit of my A Twist Upon a Regency Tale series.

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Backlist spotlight on To Mend the Broken-Hearted

The ebook of To Mend the Broken-Hearted is set to Free at all retailers for the month of March, starting now. In fact, since the first in series, To Wed a Proper Lady, is only 99c, and the other two novels are $3.99, you can buy all four novels in the series for under $10, and add the 2 novellas and 1 set of vignettes in Paradise Triptych, plus the novella Melting Matilda, for less than $3 more. That’s a lot of reading!

To Mend the Broken-Hearted

Ruth is a healer, not a social gadfly. She’s glad to leave the foreign world of the ton to run an errand for her sister-in-law. She doesn’t expect to be caught up in a smallpox epidemic, nor to meet the man of her dreams.

War and betrayal have wounded Val beyond bearing. The woman who arrives at his retreat with patients who need shelter says she’s a healer. But he is beyond healing. Isn’t he?

Book links at Books2Read https://books2read.com/Broken-Hearted
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Accepting the mission on WIP Wednesday

Generated with the help of hotspot.ai

In Hold Me Fast, my hero chooses to go looking for his childhood sweetheart:

“Tamsyn is back in England,” he said, more to himself than to his brother, testing the words out loud as if hearing them would make them truer. She was still seperated from him, as much by her chosen lifestyle as by three hundred and fifty miles and seven years. But she was, at least, in the same country.

“You should go to London,” Bran said. “Find out why she stopped writing. Find out why she didn’t come home.”

She stopped loving him. The thought cut the way it always did, lacerating his heart yet again. But what else could it be? She had a ticket she could have used at any time. The Earl of Coombe might have stopped franking her letters, but he did keep his promise to make her famous. She had just been on her second tour through Europe, for crying out loud. She must have money to burn, plenty to buy her own tickets, frank her own letters.

Her silence was her message to Jowan, and all the more fool him for the hope that lingered, somewhere in the remote corners of his mind and heart.

“I must assume she changed her mind,” and if his jaw was set and his foot tapped with the tension in his frame, his voice was commendably even.

“Or she thinks you did,” argued Bran. “Look, Jowan, the girl you told me about isn’t one who would cut you without a word.”

Why was Bran pressing this? Couldn’t he see how much it hurt? “She changed,” Jowan pointed out. “Or I was wrong.”

Bran shook his head. “You are not wrong about people. You recognised me right off. In any case, you haven’t let her go. If you’re right, this is your chance to dig out the last of your hope and start to heal. If I’m right, the lady might need to be rescued.”

Jowan was still thinking about the pain of losing all of his hope, and Bran’s last few words took a moment to make sense. “Rescued?”

“If she wants to come home and can’t? For whatever reason? Yes. Rescued.”

Jowan shook his head. “How can I leave? We haven’t finished the shearing and then it will be planting time. I’ve the plans to sign off for the new mine.” He shrugged. “You know the list as well as I.”

“And how to make it all happen,” Bran pointed out.

Jowan put his knife and fork down while he thought about that. Bran was right. He could stay here with Jowan’s authority, and do everything Jowan would do himself. “I could go to London,” he said, testing the words on his tongue.

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Covers for A Twist Upon a Regency Tale, season 2 (plus a Lyon’s Den book set in the Twist universe)

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Ruined heroine on WIP Wednesday

AI generated by hotspot.ai

And when I say ruined, I mean ruined. Poor Tammie. She was Tamsyn Roskilly long ago, and in the first scene of the book her boyhood love is thinking about going to London to find her. I’ve just started her book, Hold Me Fast, which is inspired by the folk tales Tam Lin, Thomas the Rhymer, and a host of stories about the Fairy Queen stealing away a musician to play at her feasts.

Every so often, Tammie Lind was struck by a sudden moment of clarity—a step into reality, as it were. Moments when she saw the company she was with, and her own behaviour, through the eyes of Tamsyn Roskilly. It was a sort of haunting, for Tamsyn had been killed long ago, smothered under Guy’s manipulations and Tammie’s own weaknesses.

Today, Tamsyn gazed with scorn at the fellow denizens of the laughing gas party. Ether was the drug of choice today. Tammie herself was as high as a kite, floating high above such mundane concerns as tomorrow’s rehearsal and the foolish fellow pawing at her. He was a peer of some sort. A boy with pretensions to being a songwriter. Guy would own him within a few weeks, and Tammie was part of his bait.

The boy was far too drunk on ether to do more than squeeze and prod. Tamsyn was indignant on her behalf. Silly Tamsyn. Tammie had not owned her own body in more years than she could, at the moment, count. She tried it anyway, numbering the years on her fingers, but she became lost in the mystery of whether a thumb counted as a finger and forgot the question.

She was vaguely aware that Guy was free from Tamsyn’s scorn. Tamsyn avoided looking at him. Wise Tamsyn. As usual, Guy sat a little apart, the untouchable Lord of Coombe, amused at the havoc he had caused. He seldom indulged in more than a taste of the various substances he supplied to his sycophants and the people, like Tammie, that he owned.

Tamsyn despised them all, and she hated Guy. Reality was overrated. Tammie no longer bothered with such emotions. She lined up for another turn at the gas, to nail Tamsyn’s soul back in the coffin of her imagination, but Guy stopped her with a word to the attendant.

“No more for Miss Lind. She has a rehearsal tomorrow. Tammie, time for bed.”

Tammie wanted to whine and howl. Instead, she turned obediently towards the stairs, but the sudden movement set her off balance, and as she steadied herself, she saw Guy nod towards the boy, who followed her to her room.

Tamsyn had made a mistake seven years ago, and since then, Tammie had paid and paid and paid. The boy was making a mistake now. Tammie felt a distant pity for him, but in the end, she would do as Guy ordered.

She took his hand. At least tonight was only the seeming of the thing. He would sleep off the ether and by the time he woke, she would be at rehearsal. Everyone would believe he had been favoured by the Devon Songbird. Perhaps he would believe it himself.

Sooner or later it would be true. Guy had used her that way before and she knew how it went. Blackmail material or bribery or simply yet another way to soften the boy’s resistance and break his spirit until he was putty in Guy’s hands.

Tammie was desperately trying to claw her way back to the floating sensation, but the harder she tried, the further it receded. Perhaps a shot of the gin she had hidden in her room. Guy had taken the last of her secret laudunum.

The boy threw himself at her as soon as she closed her bedchamber door. He clawed at her gown, increasingly frantic as the buttons refused to open for him. “Patience, my lord,” she soothed. “Lie down on the bed, and I shall prepare myself for you.”

He blinked at her, swaying on his feet, his surge of energy draining away.

“Lie down on the bed, my lord,” she repeated. She would sleep in the dressing room tonight. It would not be the first time.

She found the gin where she had hidden it, in a bag concealed within the folds of the new gown Guy had chosen for her to wear for a command performance at one of Society’s balls. Thank whatever diety looked after harlots and drunkards for this season’s fuller gowns.

Just a couple of fingers. She would be watched more closely now that he had her booked for so many performances. This would have to last until she could bribe or blackmail someone into supplying her with another bottle.

Without it, she would be dependent on Guy for each dose. He knew she needed a small drink of laudanum before a performance—on stage or in a drawing room. Just enough to quiet the jitters. Then, afterwards, if he was pleased with her performance, there would be something more powerful as a reward.

Tamsyn had tried to give up the substances that Guy insisted Tammie needed. More times than Tammie could count. Twice, she refused until he forced it down her throat. Once, she managed to evade her minders and hide until the craving turned to cramps and nausea, then vomiting as pain seized her whole body, then bad dreams so bizarre that they exceeded anything that she’d experienced while under the influence.

In one of those, the monsters that invaded the refuge she’d found proved to be men sent by Guy. Or perhaps the monsters were unreal and the invaders retrieved her while she was unconscious.

Whichever it was, Tammie woke up in the house Guy was renting at the time, in the half-floating half-dreaming state that said he had already given her something.

Tammie never allowed Tamsyn to run away again. Giving up opium and alcohol was hard enough, but worse was being brought back when she thought she was free.

It hurt too much to think about it. Tammie poured another two fingers. “You have had more than enough today,” Tamsyn scolded. “You will pass out if you drink that, too.”

“Fair point,” Tammie conceded.

She slid open the door. The boy was sound asleep on the bed, flat on his back, snoring. Tammie moved him so that he lay on his side, with a pillow behind his back to keep him from rolling. There. If he vomited, it would go on the sheets instead of drowning him. She patted his cheek. “Run as fast as you can, my lord,” she whispered. “The Earl of Coombe is not your friend. He is not anyone’s friend.”

Even if he had heard, he would not listen. She returned to the dressing room, tossed down the gin, stretched out on the maid’s pallet, and waited for oblivion.

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Tea with Arial and a story

The Duchess of Winshire had been one of the early supporters of Arial, Countess of Stancroft, as she attempted to establish herself in Society. The courageous lady had faced down gossip and scandal, fomented by her wicked cousin and her husband’s nasty step-mother. Her dignity and grace under fire had won Eleanor’s admiration and her heart, and her door was always open to Arial.

Today, Arial was seeking her help. “It is for my sister Rosalind, Your Grace,” she explained. “She has been abducted. My husband had ridden after her, and so has her betrothed, Lord Merrick. One of the neighbours saw her being taken. The silly old biddy did not raise the alarm until we after we had discovered that Rose was missing. We think we know where she has been taken, and I trust Peter and Merrick to get her back, but I need to manage the gossip! It is too late to put a gag on the neighbour, so we must instead, I think, make Rose out to be the heroine that she actually is. I will tell you the whole story, and then I hope I can count on your help.”

Eleanor did not hesitate. “You have my help, Arial, but please, tell me what actually happened.”

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This kidnapping takes place in Inviting the Wild, which is about going to the publisher in the next dayRose attempts to prevent the abduction of the elderly gentleman next door and is carried off as well. More about that closer to July, when the book is due for publication.