I’m participating in a couple of promotions this December, and needed Grasp the Thorn set to Free before they started. It took the retailers next to no time to respond, so it is free now. Grab it while you think of it, and while you’re at it, get the rest of the series!
Folks, for this WIP Wednesday, I want to trial a blurb. I’ve tried to embed a trigger warning (not the note at the end–that’s just a courtesy to people who like ballgowns). Let me know if you think it works. The thing is, I deal with some pretty nasty stuff, but off stage and mostly by implication. Have I gone too far?
The Darkness WithinTo 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 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 put Serenity and others in dreadful danger. To save her, he must lose her, for if he draws on his hard-won skills to stop the abuse he discovers, she will recoil from the darkness of his soul.
Note: This book is largely set within a cult, so is not a typical Regency.
In honour of sending Hook, Lyon, and Sinker out for beta reading, here’s another snippet. My hero and Mrs. Dove Lyons chief guard are in Hyde Park, watching Lady Laureline from afar.
Your birth is the equal of hers,” Titan argued. “You have money enough for a wife, too—you only work because you want to. As to your legs, they won’t matter to someone who cares about you.”
Angel shook his head. Titan was wrong on all counts. Except, perhaps, the money. He had won some exceptional prizes while at war, though they were all invested and he wouldn’t see any return from them until the first one paid out—though the date for that was fast approaching. And he’d inherited his mother’s share of the Sicilian vineyards, which thrived under the stewardship of his cousins, but he’d written to ask them to keep the money in Sicily while he decided what to do with the rest of his life.
At the moment, the job stood between him and destitution, which would be uncomfortable, even if short lived.
As to family, his Sicilian family wasn’t good enough for the Warringtons, so why would it be good enough for Somerville? Angel certainly didn’t regard his father’s family as his own. They had cut their son off without regret when he married Angel’s mother.
Which left his feet. He could not be as sanguine as Titan about Laurel’s opinion of the poor mangled messes he carried around beneath his ankles. Or that of any other woman, for that matter.
“Perhaps,” was all he said.
“She’s out to purchase a husband,” Titan commented. “You are a fool if you don’t try to win her.”
Angel had been trying to ignore his friend, but that remark about a husband riveted his attention. Yes, she had been visiting Mrs. Dove Lyons, but Angel had convinced himself that she must have been on some errand other than the obvious. “Purchase a husband? Why?” He waved his hand towards the path along which Laurel and her escort were currently approaching. “I mean, look at her. She is beautiful, charming, clever…”
His eyes fixed on her, he ran out of words.
“Mrs. Dove Lyons does not share her clients’ secrets,” Titan told him. “But I have been told to meet Lady Laureline at the ladies’ door the evening after next and take her to a room from which she can view three possible husbands. After that, I have a contest to arrange, with the prize for wager on the outcome being the hand of the lady in marriage.”
Angel had trouble getting out the words through the anguish that filled his chest. “What sort of a contest?”
Laurel and her brother were nearly level with them. Laurel caught his eye, smiled at him, and lifted a hand in greeting. He bowed and Lord Somerton touched his hat, as did Titus. Then they were past, out onto the London streets on their way home. She glanced back over her shoulder, and Angel waved again. He watched her ride away down the street, his heart warmed by her smile.
“She recognized you,” Titus observed.
“From yesterday,” Angel insisted. “She knows me only as Nereus, the lame musician.”
“Let me ask Mrs. Dove Lyons to include you in the possibles,” Titus said. “If she says no, you will be no worse off.”
Angel couldn’t answer. He had too many thoughts clamoring for room on his tongue. He fixed his crutches under his armpits, and began propelling himself toward Whitehall and the Lyon’s Den. Titan kept pace, but didn’t speak, for which Angel was grateful.
After several minutes, he had his ideas in a row, but still he didn’t speak them out loud. Instead, he found himself arguing with himself.
Mrs. Dove Lyons has no reason to agree. Her reputation won’t be enhanced by such a match. I can’t pay her—not at the moment, anyway. Her guests will object if I am included among them. But, as Titus said, if she refused him, he would no worse off.
Laurel will demand I am removed from the running. Again, if that happened, he would have lost nothing.
I cannot compete against able-bodied men in a game of strength or speed. Probably not skill either. I’ll just make a laughing stock of myself. But even in the last month, Angel had seen that most of the wagers at the Lyon’s Den involved foolish things. Insect races. Contests to eat or drink some disgusting substance or far too much. Card tricks. And if he did look a fool, what of it? Was Laurel not worth the risk?
Better not to try than to try and fail. That was a gloomy thought too far, even in his current mood. His father’s motto had been nothing venture, nothing win, and Angelo had tried to live up to it all his life.
Before he could think again, he found himself saying, “Yes, Titan. Please ask Mrs. Dove Lyons if I might be a contender. If you think it would help, tell her how I know—how I knew, Lady Laureline.”
The gambling den’s chief wolf grinned and clapped Angel on the shoulder, hard enough that he had to brace himself against a fall.
“There speaks The Mer-king,” he said.
While Cordelia watched, helpless to prevent it, the two footmen grabbed Spen by the arms and dragged him backwards, easily ignoring his struggles.
Oh Spen. She would cry later. The remaining footmen were moving on her, and she would not put it past them to drag her, too. Perhaps her uncle could do something to help the man she loved. “Gracie,” she said to her maid, “let Aunt Eliza know we are leaving. I want you and her downstairs at the front door with our belongings as quickly as you can make it.”
She fixed one of the footmen with a stare she had seen the Duchess of Haverford use on a gentleman who was in his cups and making a nuisance of himself. “You will go with my maid to carry our bags. You may need someone else to help.” She applied the look to his companion. “You will conduct me to my coachman and other servants so I can order them to have my father’s carriage brought around.”
For a moment, she thought they would be difficult, but they must have concluded her instructions fitted within the commands of their marquess, for they nodded and obeyed.
She had to get Aunt Eliza out of here before that horrid man did something nastier still.
Oh, Spen.
No. She could not let herself break down. That evil monster could not hurt Spen too much. Her beloved was his heir. And in a few short months, Spen would be twenty-one. No wonder he had warned her they might have to marry in defiance of the marquess! She wished they had known the man had misunderstood who Spen planned to marry.
Again, fear and grief threatened to overwhelm her. Again, she thrust them away.
She could break down after she had safely removed her people from this house.
***
I’m currently going through the wonderful Cynthia’s developmental edits on Weave Me a Rope. It is getting closer! Meanwhile, here’s another excerpt.
How did my goose girl equivalent come to be looking after sheep in the grounds of the castle of his betrothed? Amnesia seemed unlikely. And the goose girl trope of the thieving maid stealing her identity didn’t make sense to me, in a Regency context. (Though I’ve found a use for it.) So I have influenza, a snowstorm or avalanche, and a young man who doesn’t like fuss. This is how The Sincerest Flattery begins. (Don’t you love the cover?)
“Ride on ahead, Tris,” Percy begged. “Let them know I have been delayed.” At least, that is what he intended to say, though his stuffed up nose and raw throat garbled the words.
His brother apparently understood, for he shook his head. “I shouldn’t leave you, Percy. I won’t leave you, at least until after I’ve spoken with the physician.”
“Can’t keep a lady waiting,” Percy insisted, but he might have saved himself the trouble. Tris might be ten months his junior, and mostly content to go along with his old brother’s plans and schemes, but when he dug his toes in, there was no moving him.
A knock on the door. Perhaps it was the physician? It was the innkeeper’s wife, with a tray. “Some chicken soup for the young lord,” she offered.
Percy didn’t want food, but Tris insisted that he would recover more quickly if he kept up his strength. So he succumbed to having his pillows plumped so that he could sit up, at least enough to have the tray put on the bed.
But his head hurt to much to lift it, and the spoon felt as if it was made of steel and ten times the size. In the end, Tris fed him, a spoonful at a time, until he covered his mouth after the sixth spoonful. “Enough. Let me lie down, Tris. There’s a good chap.”
The innkeeper’s wife, who was hovering, asked, “Did you understand him, my lord?”
“He has had enough, and wants to lie back down,” Tris explained. “I daresay your head hurts, old chap.” He had picked up the tray and handed it the woman, and was supporting Percy with one arm, while rearranging the pillows with the other. “You should let me stay and nurse you, Percy.”
Percy shook his head, a slow and tiny movement from side to side, so as not to burst his pounding head right open.
“Are you twins, my lord?” the innkeeper’s wife asked, as people often did. They were not identical, but they looked very alike. It was an impertinent question, but Tris lacked the arrogance to give her rebuke any of the other Verseys would have offered. It was one of the things they all loved about Tris.
“We are not,” he said.
Another knock on the door, and this time it was the physician. Tris hustled the innkeeper’s wife away and fetched Martin while the doctor did his examination. That was a relief. If he had brought Martin to listen to instructions for Percy’s care, then Tris intended to follow his brother’s instructions.
This was a journey to meet the girl to whom Percy was betrothed. It would be rude to keep Lady Aurelia waiting, and Percy could already tell—was unsurprised to hear the physician telling his brother—that he would be a week or more in bed with this wretched cold.
This ague, rather, which is what the doctor called it. It didn’t seem to matter. Nothing did except for the wretched head, the throat, the blocked nose, the cough that seemed to twist his ribs inside his chest and tear his muscles.
The doctor droned on, and Percy heard bits and pieces in between bouts of coughing and musings about Lady Aurelia. Her miniature was pretty. His father had met her and said she was a comely chit. She had never had a Season, but then she was only seventeen, just a few months younger than Tris.
Their parents had signed the marriage agreements. The wedding was to be in six months. No one seemed to think it necessary for the two principals to the marriage to actually meet before they gathered in the church to be made man and wife.
Still, when Percy came up with the scheme to ride north and introduce himself to the lady and her family, the duke his father did not object. All he said was, “Comport yourself like a Versey, xxxtitlexxx. And take young Tris with you.”
Of course, that didn’t prevent his father from organising their travel, complete with a train of carriages branded with the crests of the Duke of Dellborough and full of servants. Percy and Tris abandoned them on the first day out from home. So here they were, travelling on horseback with just Martin to attend them, a couple of days behind the letter announcing their visit and at least four days ahead of the carriages with the rest of their servants and luggage.
The doctor had apparently finished, and was turning back to Percy. “Rest, Lord xxx. That’s the best—the only possibly medicine. I have left instructions for various ways to soothe your symptoms, but sleep is what you need more than anything.”
He left, taking the innkeeper’s wife with him. Tris took Percy’s hand and looked into his eyes, worried. “I do not want to leave you,” he said.
Percy squeezed Tris’s hand. “Lady Aurelia,” he said, though it sounded more like “Laay Aweia.”
Tris sighed. “Yes, I know.”
“I will look after Lord xxxtitlexxx,” Martin assured Tris.
Still Tris stayed, supervising the administration of the potion the doctor had ordered, which contained something in it that soothed the throat and sent Percy into the prescribed sleep. Next time he surfaced, Tris wasn’t there, which was a good thing, but Percy could not remember why. It was a woman who spooned stuff down his throat—chicken soup and some more of the potion. He thought she washed his face, too, but he was sinking back into sleep, his last thought as he succumbed, “The innkeeper’s wife!” Yes. That was who she was.
***
Aurrie was the first to see the man as he came up the drive, hunched over his horse’s neck. It was a beautiful piece of bloodstock. That was her first impression, her eyes drawn to the horse ahead of the gentleman.
He was a gentleman, as witnessed by the greatcoat he wore against the cold bearing five capes and the top hat that he retained on his head despite his collapsed position. Was he hurt? She cut across the lawn while the horse followed the curve of the drive, and reached the arch to the stableyard just before the rider.
He had managed to draw himself up. His face was hectic with fever and his eyes looked through her without seeing her.
“Sir,” she called out, and for a moment his eyes focused on hers. “Lady Aurelia,” he said, clearly. “Profound apologies…” And then his eyes rolled back and he slumped again, this time so fully that the top hat finally fell.
NOTE: I don’t appear to have referenced Percy’s heir by title in the books where he has been mentioned, so I’ll have to think of one for the heir to the Dellborough dukedom. My first drafts can be fairly messy
Do you intend to deprive me of all comforts?” Spen asked his father, to prolong the conversation and keep his father’s attention from the window.
“I intend to do everything necessary to bend you to my will, you ungrateful scoundrel,” the marquess replied. “Where is your brother?”
“How would I know?” Spen asked. “He was here when I was locked up. He was sent home with a broken arm. Has he gone back to school? Home to Rosewood Towers?” He couldn’t help the scorn that colored his voice
He braced himself as his father swung a hand back for a blow, but one of the servants shouted. “There are ropes my lord. I think it’s a ladder.”
“Haul it up and look, man,” the marquess scolded.
“I cannot, my lord. Someone is on it.”
The marquess strode to the window, his eyes narrowed. “Coming up or going down? But why? Ah! I see.” He grabbed the loose bar and pulled it out, then stuck his head through the gap to look down the tower wall.
Spen managed two paces towards the marquess before men grabbed him and dragged him backwards again.
“It’s a boy,” the marquess was saying, sounding bewildered, then chortling, “No, a girl dressed as a boy.” He pulled his head back and glee in his eyes as he said, “and I think I know her name.” He held out his hand. “Someone. Pass me a knife.”
“No!” Spen shouted as he struggled, but the two men holding him didn’t let go. “No, my lord. Don’t do it!”
The marquess managed to get one arm and his head out the window. Spen could see him sawing back and forth as he continued to speak. “Did you think I would not hear Milton has interfered with justice for that trespasser who was spying for your little slut?”
He snorted. “The magistrate had the nerve to tell me I could not have had him hanged or transported for his villainy, and my imprisonment of the man was punishment enough. My illegal imprisonment! Can you believe it? Who does the magistrate think he is? Ah.” A shriek from below, short and sharp, coincided with the marquess’s sigh of satisfaction.
He moved to the second rope, and Spen imagined Cordelia clinging to the rungs as the ladder, collapsed with one of its uprights gone, twisted and turned. “Don’t,” he moaned.
“What do I find when I stopped at the village inn on my way here,” the marquis went on, “but the magistrate with Milton’s solicitor, and both of them demanded to know what I have done with Milton’s niece. I told them I did not know what they were talking about. Now, of course, I do.”
He pulled back again, to grin at Spen. “Three quarters cut through. Let us leave the bitch’s destiny to fate, shall we? If the rope holds, she spins for a while until I feel like sending someone to retrieve her. If the rope breaks, she dies.”
Another scream came as he finished speaking. The marquess looked out of the window again. “Oops,” he said. His grin was wider as he turned back into the room. “Well, my son. It seems your impediment to the marriage I wish is no longer a problem.”
***
This scene comes from my reimagining of Rapanzel, Weave Me a Rope. It’s with the publisher, and I’ll let you know as soon as I have a publication date.
Eleanor knew the signs. Anthony was worried about something. (She was so pleased that he had agreed to allow her to call him by his first name. He had been Aldridge since he was a babe in the cradle, but it made her stomach ache to call him Haverford, which was the proper way to address him, now. Haverford — her son’s father and her husband for nearly forty years — had always insisted on the formal address, and to address the son she loved by the title of the man she ha… that she did not love would be unpleasant, to say the least.)
Fortunately, Anthony and Cherry, his wife, were not keen on such formality when family were alone, so she could save the hated title for formal occasions, and even then found ways to address her beloved son without naming him. No doubt, in time, the memories would fade. Should she be fortunate enough to live long enough, Haverford past would be forgotten, and Haverford present would own the name, even in the mind of his predecessor’s widow.
Which was not to the point, but she was doing her best not to question the dear man, and thinking about something else was helping. She offered him another cup of tea, but he shook his head. He did take another shortbread biscuit. Anthony was very fond of shortbread the way the Scots made it. “Mama,” he said, as soon as he had swallowed, “did you know the Earl of Beckworth and his younger brother, Benjamin Famberwold?
“Yes, my dear,” Eleanor was pleased to be able to reply. “An unconscionable pair of rakehells. Even worse than your father, who at least felt a sense of duty to his estates and his country. That pair of reprobates cared for nothing and no one except their own pleasure. There were a number of very unpleasant incidents with innocent girls. No one was safe from them. They were, if you can believe it, worse than Richport, for he at least leaves innocent ladies alone, mostly.”
She frowned, slightly. “Although, perhaps I am being unfair. As I remember it, the younger one had a religious conversion, and convinced his brother to give up his evil ways. They retired to the country to live godly lives, or so we have been told. Certainly, I have not heard a word from them since. Except…” she paused to catch the elusive thought she had glimpsed from, as it were, the corner of her mind’s eye. “That’s it. Beckworth took a wife to the country, and has remarried twice since. Country marriages, I believe. A baronet’s daughter, and the spinster daughter of a viscount.” She frowned, and then brought the rest of the thought to the surface. “A lady in her thirties who had had a single Season in Town, where she did not take. I have heard of no children. Does that help, dearest?”
“It is of interest, Mama. It seems that the religious conversion was not to anything resembling Christianity, and the earl’s lack of children has been countered by a multitude belonging to his brother, who had more than fifty wives, many of them at the same time. I’m telling you in the strictest confidence, of course. We are trying to untangle the legal and moral mess, which also includes depravities I have no intention discussing with my mother, up to and including wholesale murder. Beckworth was in it up to his eyeballs, but the new Beckworth, whomever he may be, does not deserve to have his father’s and uncle’s scandals hanging over his head, and nor does Beckworth’s widow.”
Eleanor nodded her agreement. “Both brothers are dead,” she deduced.
Anthony nodded. “the Famberwolds made the mistake of tangling with one of Lion’s Zoo,” he said.
The former Aldridge, now the Duke of Haverford, is on a Parliamentary committee making enquiries into the scandalous goings on at a village called Heaven, a month or two after the events covered in The Darkness Within, Book 4 in Lion’s Zoo, planned for publication in December 2023
This was not the first time that Eleanor, the Duchess of Winshire, had sat down to afternoon tea with Mrs Moriarty. The young woman was the daughter of an excellent family, but had been ruined—by the rules of Society, at least—several times before she was out of her teens.
She had hidden in the slums to escape from the murderers of her parents. That was the first count against her. Eleanor had heard the cats among her peers saying, “Of course one cannot blame the child, but she survived on the streets for two years. Heaven knows what she did to feed herself. Any proper young lady would have been dead in a week.”
Eleanor, of course, admired Mrs Moriarty for her courage and her resilience.
The second mark on her copybook was her uncle, who had taken her from the slums and, instead of retrieving her reputation and seeing her reestablished in Society, had taken her to Spain to follow the army. Rumour had it she had been a spy and worse. Those who raked for scandal never worried about whether rumour was correct or an outright lie.
Then, when she turned up in London again this summer, she was somehow involved in a vast criminal enterprise. It did not matter to the gossips that she and her husband had been instrumental in bringing down said criminals. Ladies, they said, did not involve themselves with such things.
The final count to her demerit was that her husband was a commoner, a former street boy and current Supervisor with the Thames River Police. A wife took the status of her husband, and so Mrs Moriarty could safely be ignored.
Not by Eleanor, she could not. Eleanor found her to be an estimable young woman.
“Let me pour you a cup of tea, my dear,” she said to her guest, “and tell me more about your place for an agency of hired guards. Moriarty Protection, I think you said.”
Eleanor’s guest is the heroine of One Hour in Freedom, published yesterday.
Once they meant everything to one another.
First, in London’s meanest streets and later in Spain facing Napoleon’s army, where betrayal and lies tore them apart. When the machinations of a criminal compel Ellie Nomikos to seek out Dan Moriarty, she doesn’t know what to expect.
With the mysterious King Nemesis circling for the kill, they must learn to trust one another again. Together, can they discover his identity and bring him to justice before he finds and kills the person most precious to them in the world?
The stakes could not be higher. Their love. Their lives. Their daughter.
Buy now: https://books2read.com/LionZooOHiF
The neutral expression Daniel habitually wore dropped for a moment to reveal surprise, then delight and lust, before he reimposed control over his features.
He stood to one side. “Ellie. Please come in.” The huskiness of his voice sent her body humming, as did his state of dress—or undress. He had wrapped a towel around his waist to open the door, but—apart from that scrap of fabric—he was naked.
She swallowed against a suddenly dry throat and walked past him into the room.
“Give me a moment,” he demanded. He went behind a dressing screen. He is quite correct. We need to talk. Ellie took a deep breath and attempted to distract herself from her sudden lust by cataloguing the contents of the room. A bed. A couple of chairs by the fire, one of which had a half full glass on the little table beside it. She sat in the other chair, and continued her examination.
A clothes press. A side table under the window. Another by the door. Very similar to her own room, so probably a washstand and some pegs for clothes behind the dressing screen.
Daniel was there, too, presumably armouring himself against her lustful eyes by hiding his glorious chest and strong legs under clothing. But the sight was engraved on her eyeballs, and her efforts to think of something else were not working.
He emerged in a pair of trousers, with a shirt worn loose over the top. “Still undress,” he said, “but not quite as scandalous.”
“Not scandalous at all, under the circumstances,” she pointed out.
“Yes, but the household doesn’t know that, do they?” he argued. “Do you want a whisky, Ellie? Lion brings it down from Northumberland. They brew it in the hills there. He has his family seat up that way.”
“I have never tried whisky,” Ellie admitted. “Perhaps just a little. As to the scandal of my presence here, or not… that is one of the things I wanted to talk about.”
A brief excerpt from Weave Me a Rope, which is now with Dragonblade.
They travelled for four days. Spen spent each day chained to a ring that had been bolted to the floor of the carriage. At night, he was released from the ring, but the shackles remained on his ankles. He was escorted to a room in whatever inn the marquess had chosen, then chained to the bed.
No one would tell him where they were going or even the names of the towns they were in. Not that Spen cared. All he could think of was Cordelia. The marquess said she had fallen to her death. The man would tell whatever lies suited him best. Spen didn’t believe him. Couldn’t believe him. Cordelia could not have paid with her life for their glorious afternoon.
Had she been hurt? Had she been taken captive? Was his father, for once in his life, telling the truth?
He kept recalculating how long it would have taken her to climb down the rope. The trouble was, those moments in the tower room when the marquess had been sawing at the rope had stretched out into an eternity. She should have been able to make the descent in a couple of minutes, but had that much time elapsed?
Her scream had been short and cut off. A fall? A small one, perhaps. Or some other shock as she reached the ground.
His mind went round and round, covering the same thoughts again and again. He had asked the guards, but they refused to speak to him. There were four, all unknown to him, two of them with him at all times, day and night. He assumed the two not on duty travelled elsewhere in his father’s retinue or bedded down with the other servants. It didn’t matter. By contrast to his desperate worry for Cordelia, what was happening to him seemed to be unimportant.