Book series

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Kidnapping on WIP Wednesday

In Unexpected Magic, due for publication on June 16th, my heroine is saved by being kidnapped by a dragon. Is it out of the boiling kettle into the fire? Or something else?

***

Delia had no idea how much time had passed before she surfaced into consciousness. It was long enough for her to be somewhere else—somewhere she did not recognize. She was lying on her side on a grassy slope, looking down from a height across a body of water to the steep side of a mountain.

She moved cautiously, lifting herself up on her elbow. Every part of her ached, though she could see no visible wounds, and her limbs moved without increasing the pain. A glance told her that the lake, or perhaps river, had mountains on both sides, and that the gentle slope beneath her dropped away suddenly a dozen paces from her hands.

As she looked around, she realized she was not alone. The other occupant had been unseen behind her until she turned her head. He took up the full width of the slope and most of the length, and even so, his forelegs draped over the edge of the drop, as did his tail.

He—she could not have said why she thought the dragon was male, but she could not think of him by any other pronoun—gazed at her with large, calm, yellow-brown eyes. Perhaps she was still in shock, for she did not feel afraid. The dragon could have eaten her in one gulp, but he had not done so. Not yet, in any case. Indeed, if one looked at the situation dispassionately, he had saved her from the Welsh mage.

“Thank you for saving me,” she said.

The dragon inclined his head, as if acknowledging her comment. He was rather beautiful—a deep emerald-green, shading to mint-green on his belly and throat. His wings, folded now against his sides, were the deep green of his body but laced with gold, and the spine ridge that ran from the tip of his tail to the horns behind his ears was also gold.

As to his shape, he was everything she had ever imagined a dragon could be. On first sight, she had compared him to the chicken-house dragon, but up close and now that she was calm, she could see how wrong she had been. It was like comparing a pigeon hatchling to an adult peacock, or a rat to a thoroughbred horse. The same number of limbs, ears, eyes, and so on, but on one functional and on the other, elegance personified.

“Where are we?” she asked him, sitting up and looking around.

The dragon stood and walked away, heading along the ledge and around a corner. With no other viable option, Delia followed him, but stopped at the threshold of a cave whose entrance was so high that the dragon had gone ahead of her into the gloom, crouching and moving forward with his head down and his body nearly touching the ground.

A sudden burst of flame in the interior had her leaping backward. She looked longingly around at the landscape, but could see no signs of habitation, no hint of a possible rescue. If she ran, the dragon could catch her in moments.

He saved me from the mage, she repeated to herself, and stepped resolutely into the cave.

After several steps, it opened out into a great vaulted cavern. The dragon had lit a fire in the middle, and by its flickering light, Delia could see several smaller caves around the perimeter of the spacious central area.

It was cooler here underground, but the fire was not necessary. Except to see by, she supposed. But those tawny eyes had slitted pupils, like a cat’s. Did the dragon need light to see by?

She could not afford to be soothed by the sudden notion that he had lit the fire for her convenience. The dragon was a dangerous beast. He had already killed at least one person in front of her eyes—for she did not see how the man who had been holding her could have survived, and the mage might well have died from being thrown against the wall. Furthermore, the dragon had brought her here for an unknown purpose.

But he seemed mild enough at present. He lifted a forearm, claws outstretched—it took her a moment to realize he was pointing to one of the caves, for his paw, with its outstretched claws, looked nothing like a pointing hand.

But he waited patiently, his eyes moving back and forth from her to the cave in the direction of his gesture.

Once she guessed what he wanted and obeyed, she found the cave had been set up with an untidy bed of bracken covered unevenly with a blanket. “Who lives here?”

She did not realize she had spoken out loud until the dragon made a noise that sounded more like a gurgle than a roar, and she looked at him to find that he was gesturing to her.

“I live here?” she asked. “You set this up for me?”

The dragon nodded.

 

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Memories on WIP Wednesday

It’s almost my last chance to post a work-in-progress excerpt from The Lyon, the Lady, and a Fine Pair of Boots. This bit is told from the point of view of the hero, who is valet to a retired officer with bad memories. Click on the link for the blurb and buy links. The book is on preorder, and will be published on June 3rd.

***

Jake Flynn eased his employer out of the hackney. Captain Harraway was rocky on his feet, but still more or less mobile, with Jake propping him on one side and guiding him. Jake fumbled in his pocket for money to pay the jarvey. He’d managed to sequester a few coins from the captain’s purse before the man could lose the lot, which he usually did.

Tonight was like almost every other night in the months since the captain had recovered from his injuries enough to stagger to the nearest gaming hell. He drank, he gambled, he lost.

Mind you, he normally didn’t drink quite so much. Tonight, he had been celebrating, and his friend Podger had been buying, for the envelope with Captain Podger’s name on it had been handed over, and Podger was endearingly grateful.

It was potentially a problem, because—though Podger had promised to keep the identity of his savior secret—the man was loquacious when in his cups. Jake was worried about what Waterford might do when he discovered Captain Harraway was the reason all his blackmail materials—and therefore his sources of income—had disappeared overnight.

Not that the captain was concerned. When Jake had suggested finding a way to return the envelopes anonymously, he had been told he was worrying about nothing. “What, after all, can he do, Jake? If he makes a fuss, he shall be outing himself as a blackmailer, and if he tries to have us arrested, we’ll just deny we were ever there.”

I doubt it will be that easy, Jake thought. Waterford will find a way to take revenge, I’m certain of it. The captain’s problem was that he thought like a decent man. Waterford didn’t, and neither did Jake, come to that. Which was just as well, because it would help him protect his employer.

“Come on, captain. Time for beddie-byes,” he encouraged, as Captain Harraway wobbled uncertainly on one step after the other, leaning heavily on Jake one minute and lurching against the wall the next.

At least the captain had not been losing tonight, and at least, however drunk he might be, he never forgot his promise to Jake, that he’d only lose what he had with him, and only cash. No wagering his possessions. No writing promissory notes. A decent man, that was Jake’s captain.

Thanks to that promise, they still had food in the pantry and the month’s rent, which was due at the end of the week. Though perhaps that was not a good thing. If they lost their place to live, the captain might finally consent to leave London. Jake had ridden out to Ealing to have a look at the place the captain had inherited. It was a fine mansion no more than two hours from London, and the nice bit of land with it made a tidy income.

Some pretty scenery, too. The captain had enjoyed painting at one time, to hear him tell it, and certainly some of the drawings he made when they were out on reconnaissance made their way into reports and from there into battle plans. There were even a couple French spies who owed their capture to sketches by the captain that had been circulated among the officers attached to arrest orders.

A pity he ignored all suggestions to take up painting again.

“We should move to your estate,” Jake said, and not for the first time. He’d not intended the captain to hear, but the man’s ears were sharp.

“Too many memories and not enough,” he said. “Leave it, Flynn.”

When his employer called him “Flynn”, Jake knew better than to argue.

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An excerpt for WIP Wednesday – Unexpected Magic, coming soon

This is the opening of the first book in my new series, Many Kinds of Magic. In Unexpected Magic, my heroine’s life is upended all in a day, starting with a miniature massacre in the henhouse.

***

On the morning that changed everything, Cordelia Nettleford was woken by a cacophony from the henhouse. The sound of panicked hens squawking blue murder suggested that a fox or a stoat had somehow managed to enter the enclosure, despite the protection charm that should have prevented any such invasion.

Delia groaned, and reached for the clothes at the bottom of her bed. The hens were her special charge—or one of her special charges. No doubt everyone else in the manor was snuggling back down under the blankets, smugly content in the knowledge that it was not their problem.

“And I shall be blamed if this means fewer eggs,” she grumbled, as she dressed any-old-how under the covers, left the bed, wriggled her toes into an extra pair of socks, grabbed a warm wrap, lit her lantern with one of the fire spells that waited on the mantel, and hurried downstairs.

The hens kept up their noise as she pulled on a coat, boots, mittens, and a knitted cap, and let herself out the back door, first grabbing the wooden club that rested in the umbrella stand. Were there fewer hens? It sounded like it. She hoped they had not been massacred. Probably they had not. Probably some of them had taken to the high perches out of the way and were hiding there, pretending to be feathered statues so the fox—or, as it might be, the stoat—did not come after them.

It was so early that dawn had barely touched the edges of the sky above the hills, though a full moon gave sufficient light for her to see beyond the lantern’s reach. Not enough for the other person out this morning to seem more than a darker shape within the shadows under the stable eaves. Delia froze in place, peering into the gloom with no success.

The voice was a relief. “Miss Nettleford? Are you going to check the hens?”

It was Millie Pickard, the stable girl, carrying her own club. She was a workhouse brat, taken on when she was twelve to work in the stable. Delia had been teaching her to read, though not where Delia’s mother could see. In Mama’s view, the daughter of even such an impoverished manor should not associate with stable hands.

Delia, on the other hand, felt the need to do something useful beyond the manifold duties that her mother had abdicated onto her slim shoulders,  duties for which Mama nonetheless still took credit.

Marriage was clearly not going to be an option. She was, after all, twenty-three years of age and those gentlemen who had seen her at local assemblies had long since ceased taking an interest.

By teaching Millie, she was making a difference to one other person, and it was an accomplishment all her own. Not something Mama would claim as her work.

As to why Millie was here with her in the dark, no doubt Millie’s fellows had decided it was her job—an orphan, and a girl at that—to leave the warm rooms in the loft above the stables and find out what the noise was all about.

“Yes. That protection charm was only applied a week ago. It must have something wrong with it.” Delia kept walking to the henhouse, and Millie fell into place beside her.

“It was one of Madam Greensmith’s charms,” the girl objected. “Her charms are famous.”

“The hens are complaining about something,” Delia pointed out. Though as they walked it sounded like fewer and fewer of them, and when they came through the orchard gate only two or three of the eighteen hens that should be there still raced, flapping their wings and squawking, up and down the run, chased by something Delia could not quite make out.

“Not a fox,” she said. It was too small for a fox. Too small for a stoat, too, she thought, but moving so fast it was hard to make out. What is it?

In a dozen more paces she was standing by the run, and the little creature had stopped, mainly because it had caught, and was ripping the throat out of, another hen. “Millie,” she said. “Run and get the carry cage for chicks. I’m going to have to try to catch it.” Clubbing the beast was not an option. Not given what she now recognized.

“Miss Delia,” said Millie, in the heat of the moment forgetting that the correct form of address was Miss Nettleford, “is that what I think it is?”

“It is. It’s a dragon,” said Delia.

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Spotlight on backlist The Darkness Within

To save her, he must lose her

Ever since he escaped his childhood abuser, Max has killed for a living—first as a sniper and assassin in the war against Napoleon, and later ridding the world of those whose power on those around them allowed them to commit evil without fear of punishment.

The dead burden what is left of his soul, and he wants to retire, and kill no more. When a search for a missing comrade takes him into a religious community, he feels as if he has found a home for the first time in his life.

But there are cracks in the innocent surface the village shows its visitors. Max discovers hints at what lies beneath even as he falls for Serenity, who has recently been appointed Goddess-Elect, the designated virgin to take her place as three-month wife of the community’s leader, the Incarnate One.

The secrets of the community are worse than the secrets that burden Max’s soul. They put Serenity and others in dreadful danger. To save her, he must lose her, for if he draws on his hard-won skills, she will recoil from the darkness of his soul.

More about The Darkness Within

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Guerilla warfare in the Peninsular War

My heroine in An Unpitied Sacrifice was part of the Spanish resistance to Napoleon’s invasion. This resistance was not only in the hands of regular forces. Ordinary Spanish people also fought against the invaders. These guerilleros, as they called themselves (from which we get the name guerrilla), constantly harassed the French army. One Prussian officer fighting for the French said: “Wherever we arrived, they disappeared, whenever we left, they arrived — they were everywhere and nowhere, they had no tangible center which could be attacked.”

For the most part, until the last stages of the war, the French were undefeated on the open battlefield, but their tactics and plans were less successful against irregular troops who could disappear into the population with ease and who knew the country like the back of their hand.

They were given official authorisation and support by the Spanish command, who in 1808 decreed the formation of guerrilla troops, and in 1809 gave them the right to keep any money, supplies and equipment they were able to take from the French.

In one notable case in 1811, a force of between 3000, and 4,500 men ambushed a French convoy, defeating 1,600 troops and taking 150 wagons of supplies and 1,050 Spanish and Portugese prisoners. The convoy was valued at 4 million reales.

In 1812, the reported number of guerilleros was 38, 520, divided into 22 bands. Counter measures proved largely ineffective, as they have against guerrilla warfare ever since.

It might have taken the allied armies to finally push the French out of Spain in 1813, but many historians argue that the Spanish irregular forces made it possible.

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Spotlight on An Unpitied Sacrifice

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” Edmund Burke

Brought together by war, Valeria Izquierdos and Harry Redepenning had only a few short months as a couple before the war parted them again.

That war is long over when she brings a group of war brides and children to England. Her friends seek their soldier husbands. Valeria wants to find Harry or, if Harry’s long silence means he is dead, his father. Her eldest child deserves to know his English family.

Harry has never forgotten, or ceased to mourn, the warrior wife he married in the midst of war, and lost to a French ambush years ago. His courtship of a suitable wife is a practical matter, not involving the heart that has been numb since Valeria’s death.

The Redepenning family greet Valeria with suspicion, but when Harry joyously confirms her identity, they welcome her and her children with open arms—not just Kiko, whose Redepenning eyes mark him as Harry’s son, but also the daughter she adopted and the younger son who origins she has disclosed only to Harry.

But as Valeria, Harry, and the children begin living as a family, another, private, war looms before them. The lady who had been smugly awaiting Harry’s proposal is less than pleased with the couple’s reunion. She and her parents set out to destroy Valeria’s reputation, and find willing accomplices.

An old foe of the Redepennings has combined forces with a man who blames Valeria for his brother’s death, and who wants Valeria’s youngest child. A rival of Harry’s from the army would be glad to hurt Harry however he can. These enemies will stop at nothing to destroy not only Harry and Valeria, but also their family.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0GNNV18BP

https://books2read.com/u/479JAA

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A Giveaway Opportunity and some lovely books, including my Grasp the Thorn

Warning: may result in swooning, hopeless daydreaming, and your next favorite read. Air Affair Giveaway!

Leslie Vollard, the author of the book Air Affair, has a giveaway you’ll love.

One lucky reader will receive a grand prize book basket and historical stationery kit, while a second will enjoy a cozy book lover’s basket—perfect for late-night romance indulgence. Plus the “to-do’s” for the Giveaway involve historical romances from other authors, including yours truly.

📚 https://litring.com/giveaway/air-affair-historical-romance-giveaway/

My book in the promotion is Grasp the Thorn, and I’ve made it free until April 3rd. Since Chaos Come Again is on sale as part of my March sales books, this means you can get the first two Lion’s Zoo books for the rest of March at only $1.49. So run, don’t walk, to your favourite bookseller.

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Get the rest of the series on sale–Golden Redepennings going cheap

To celebrate the release of book 6 in the Golden Redepennings series, the previous books are on sale until March 31st.

Farewell to Kindness–Free https://books2read.com/FarewelltoKindness

A Raging Madness–$2.49 USD https://books2read.com/ARagingMadness

The Realm of Silence–$2.49 USD https://books2read.com/TheRealmofSilence

Unkept Promises–$2.49 USD https://books2read.com/Unkept-Promises

The Flavour of Our Deeds $2.49 USD https://books2read.com/FoOD

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March sale on ebooks 8th to 31st

Jude’s March sale books are Chasing the Tale: Volume II, a lunch-time reads collection of 10 stories, Chaos Come Again, the first book in the series Lion’s Zoo, and The Duke’s Price, a novella about a governess who must chose between two wicked dukes to save her pupil.

Chasing the Tale: Volume II https://books2read.com/u/4X8VGL

Chaos Come Again https://books2read.com/CCAgain

The Duke’s Price https://books2read.com/u/4A0gGK

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A Pawn in Someone Else’s Game in WIP Wednesday

Unpitied Sacrifice, which is currently on prerelease, includes a very polite kidnapper. Preorder links at: https://books2read.com/u/479JAA

***

Valeria’s worst fear was not realised. Or not immediately, in any case. She was not taken to Delacroix, but to a small anonymous building in the Whitehall district of London, where she was shown to a bedchamber and left alone.

It was a small room, but pleasantly decorated and furnished, with striped wallpaper in a pleasant pale green, dark green linen curtains, an iron bedstead well provided with linen, blankets, and quilts, a bedside table, a washstand, a small table with a single upright chair, and even an easy chair, upholstered in a print that repeated the colours of the wallpaper and curtains, with pink accents. The room’s one window was too high to offer a view of anything but the upper boughs of a tree and a rectangle of sky

She had been provided with washing water, drinking water, a night rail, a change of linen, and even a book to read—poems by the seventeenth century English cleric John Donne. When the setting sun painted the sky outside her high window, a knock on the door and the rattle of the key in the lock presaged the arrival of her abductor and two other men. The abductor carried a tray, which he put on the table.

“Dinner, Mrs Redepenning. I shall return to collect the tray in one hour. Do you need a woman to assist you with preparing for bed?”

“I shall manage, thank you,” Valeria replied. Her dress laced at the sides and her stays at the front. She did not bother to ask any questions. He had ignored every attempt throughout their trip to London, either not speaking at all or replying on a completely different topic.

The abductor bowed, and began to withdraw. “Wait!” Actually, Valeria did have a question. “How might I address you?”

A quick twitch of his lips instantly suppressed never quite became a smile, but the man’s eyes were amused, only Heaven knew why. “John will do, Mrs Redepenning,” he said.

Valeria inclined her head. “Thank you for my dinner, Mr John,” she said.

It was a pleasant dinner, too. She removed the cover from one plate to disclose slices of tender chicken in a tasty gravy, a variety of root vegetables, peas, and beans. The other revealed a slice of apple pie, presumably to be eaten with the custard in one of the jugs on the tray.

The other jug contained cream, and there was a teapot and a bowl of sugar. Also, a small decanter and a wine glass.

Crockery, glassware, and silverware, too, all of which could be turned into weapons. Did they regard her as such a small threat? Perhaps not. The man John had not, after all, ventured into her room alone.

Perhaps it was that, as John had promised, they were treating her with respect. But what did they want? This was the question that quenched her appetite and kept her from sleeping, although the meal was delicious and bed comfortable. What on earth did they want?