Author: judeknight

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Spotlight on Knight of Darkness

Knight of Darkness:
Knights of the Anarchy (Book One)

By Sherry Ewing

Sometimes finding love can become our biggest weakness… 

Wymar Norwood understands responsibility. His two brothers have been in his care since his parent’s death. With his title and lands stripped from him by the usurper Stephen, he aligns himself with the Empress Matilda, the rightful Queen of England. If he can win her favor and become her champion knight, he prays all will be returned to him.

Lady Ceridwen Ward of Norwich is out to prove not only to herself but the Empress that she is more than capable of protecting those she loves. She hides herself in the guise of a knight and follows along with her men to Lincoln to raise her sword for the Empress’s cause. But life can become complicated, especially after your identity is revealed.

But Wymar and Ceridwen have a common enemy who is bent on revenge. They will need to search their souls and overcome grief in order for their love to survive life’s greatest test.

Buy Links or Read for #FREE in Kindle Unlimited:

Dragonblade Link: https://amzn.to/47Gu0Hp

Learn more on Sherry’s website at: https://www.sherryewing.com/books/knight-of-darkness-the-knights-of-the-anarchy-book-one/

Excerpt from Knight of Darkness

He shivered at her touch for ’twas most unexpected. He was even more surprised when she leaned toward him. She hesitated but an instant before she placed a chaste kiss upon his lips. She must have realized the inappropriateness of her impulsive gesture for just as suddenly as her kiss had occurred, she jumped from his lap and began to leave the river’s side.

“I should not have done that,” she tossed over her shoulder as she climbed up the bank.

“Ceridwen,” he called to her.

“Here is your mantel,” she answered, barely looking at him as she tossed the garment into his face.

He whipped it away and reached for her hand. ’Twas then he saw her tears cascading down her cheeks when she raised her face to meet his. “Tears on so fierce a warrior as you?” he teased her gently as he wiped them away with his thumb. He hoped the words would spark her indignation. Surely that would be enough to distract her from her sadness and fear. But to his dismay, her tears did not abate.

“I am a woman before all else and even I can have a moment of weakness.” She turned away from him even though he did not let her go.

“You are hardly weak, Ceridwen. In fact, I have never met another woman with the courage to enter battle as you have done.”

“But I was weak back there,” she shouted pointing toward the river. “I should never have kissed you, let alone gone into the woods without my guards to protect me.”

“Are you truly crying over such a little kiss or are you more upset with yourself for what almost happened to you?” he questioned. He turned her around and saw the anguish upon her visage.

“Perchance all of it! I do not make it a habit of kissing men, I assure you.”

He tried to make light of the situation. “I never assumed you did with the meager sampling you gave me. ’Twas not the kiss of an experienced woman.”

“’Tis not the first time I have been kissed.” She defiantly lifted her chin as though to prove the truth of her words.

“Then ’tis apparent you have only been kissed by a relative or someone who knew not how to pleasure a woman.”

“Are you mocking me?”

“Mayhap I am. I have the distinct feeling you should be kissed often and I may be the man to show you how ’tis properly done.” He pulled her closer.

“Do you honestly think you are man enough?” She did not seem to object to him pulling her closer into his embrace, although she was not agreeing to anything like him giving her a demonstration either.

“Now ’tis you who are but jesting with me. I can assure you that you will not go wanting whilst in my bed.”

“I never said I would bed you. We were talking about a simple kiss, and nothing more,” she protested.

“There is nothing simple about a kiss, when it is done properly. Why, I am told if you put in enough effort, the act can be most pleasant.” He took a step closer and heat radiated between them like a burst of fire.

“What is it you are doing?”

His arm snaked around her waist and he pulled her completely up against his body. “Testing the theory that I am man enough for the likes of a Viking shield maiden like you.”

“I am no Viking shield…”

“…who talks entirely too much.”

Wymar lowered his head and he watched whilst her eyes widened in surprise. She may be fierce on the outside but he had the distinct feeling that despite what she had said, she had not much experience with a man. His lips gently brushed against hers. Teasing her to awaken the woman hiding just beneath the surface of the fierce warrior she had chosen to become. His name passing her lips whispered between them on her breath. He almost smiled in satisfaction that he had been right.

’Twas enough for him to continue his exploration of her mouth and from her response as he deepened their kiss, she was more than willing to allow him to instruct her on the art of kissing.

Meet Sherry Ewing:

Sherry Ewing picked up her first historical romance when she was a teenager and has been hooked ever since. An award-winning and bestselling author, she writes historical and time travel romances to awaken the soul one heart at a time. When not writing, she can be found in the San Francisco area at her day job as an Information Technology Specialist. You can learn more about Sherry and her books on her website where a new adventure awaits you on every page at www.SherryEwing.com.

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Accepting the mission on WIP Wednesday

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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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Tea with a proud Grandpapa

One of Eleanor’s favourite times of day, when they were in London, was after the afternoon callers had left, and before she had to prepare for whatever entertainment the evening would bring.

When they were in residents at one of her husband’s country estates, the pace of life was quite different, with earlier mornings, far fewer evening engagements, and callers only a few times a week. Or not at all, if the weather was inclement.

But in London, the late afternoon was one of the few spaces of time in any day that she and James could be alone. Alone or, as now, with a very special visitor. Only their grandchildren were allowed to intrude on their special time together. Twice a week, they would invite one, or at the most, two, of the growing tribe of offspring, from both her family and his.

Today’s guests were the two daughters Ruth had accepted as her own when she married Val, the Earl of Ashbury. The shy demure little misses Eleanor and James had first met during Val’s tempestuous courtship of James’s daughter were much more confident now, and they adored their Grandpapa. And their Grandmama, but especially their Grandpapa. And no wonder, Eleanor thought, as she watched James gallop the girls around the room, first Mirrie and then Ginny. He adores them. He adores all our little ones, and I adore him all the more for it.

Should she point out that the girls were growing a little large for pig-a-back? No, for James, excellent though he was, was only a man, and would ring the room three more times each, just to prove how strong he was. “When you are done, my loves,” she said, instead, “I have tea and cake, and after, a new book to read to you all.”

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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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The day a lioness attacked the Royal Mail

A print of the oil painting that commemorates an unusual danger of the road.

If ever there was a time to change the timeline of a story so that I could include a little known snippet of truth is stranger than fiction, this was it. Researching for the journey to London that my hero and his brother make in Hold Me Tight, I came across a story about a danger that the coachmen of the Royal Mail could not have expected. They were prepared for highwaymen, storms, obstacles left deliberately or accidentally on the road, even attacks by dogs. They could not have expected what happened on 20 October 1816.

It was winter, a Sunday evening, and already dark when the mail coach pulled up outside the Winterslow Hut on the outskirts of Salisbury. Before the guard and coachman could deliver the mail, something large attacked one of the horses. The horses began kicking and plunging, and the passengers, alarmed, leapt out of the coach and raced into the inn, locking the door, leaving the driver, and the guard, Joseph Pike, shut outside.

In the dim lamplight, it took the two men a few minutes to figure out what was happening. A lioness had attacked Pomegranate, one of the lead horses, She was clinging to the horse’s throat with her claws dug in, and was raking the horse with her hind feet. Pike reached for his gun, but was stopped by the owner of a travelling menagerie, who begged them to let him and his men try to contain the beast. He sent his dog to draw the lion off. When the large dog attacked, she abandoned the horse to deal with this new threat.

The people from the menagerie managed to chase the lion into a granary and confine her there. A local paper at the time said:

Her owner and his assistants followed her upon their hands and knees, with lighted candles, and having placed a sack on the ground near her, they made her lie down upon it; they then tied her four legs and passed a cord round her mouth, which they secured; in this state they drew her out from under the granary, upon the sack, and then she was lifted and carried by six men into her den in the caravan.

The mail was delayed by a mere 45 minutes.

I’ve been delayed by wondering if I can move my story back three years without overcomplicating things. I didn’t want my hero and his brother (especially his brother) to be old enough to serve in the long war against Napoleon. Ah well. This snippet of history is not going to go away. I’m sure I can use it in another story.

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Ruined heroine on WIP Wednesday

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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.

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Coming in 2024

 

This is very much the story so far. I’m already signed up for an anthology in July, as well. And all the stories on the top row are already written (except for an epilogue for Inviting the Wild, which I plan to finish before Wednesday), so I hope to have time for Concealed in Mist and an Unpitied Sacrifice. Mind you, by June I need to be started on my Roman Empire time travel series for 2025. So we’ll have to see how the year goes.