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
I’ve put all books published under my Titchfield Press imprint into the Smashwords sale. That includes my series Lion’s Zoo, The Return of the Mountain King, and The Golden Redepennings. The sale runs from March 1st to March 7th. All novels and collections will be half price, and novellas that are normally priced at $1.49 will be free! Click on the link and scroll down to see the books.
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?
I’ve just sent The Lyon, the Lady and a Fine Pair of Boots to the publishers. It’s a book that starts with a funeral and ends with two weddings, and here’s the funeral.
***
A village in Oxfordshire, 1816
The old bag was really dead.
Katherine Fivepence had spent the last few days expecting Lady Miller to sit up, grab her favorite cane, and start laying about her while berating them all for actual and imagined deficiencies.
Even after the coffin lid went on. Even during the funeral service in the little church. It was just hard to believe that the menace who had overshadowed Kat’s life for so many years had finally gone the way of all humankind.
Now Kat stood in the graveyard, ignoring the drizzle and the small cluster of menservants and villagers, watching the first clods of earth going into the grave on top of the coffin. None of the other maids. Miss Miller had decreed that females did not attend funerals. She and her sisters were seated in the ladies’ parlor at home saying prayers, and the female servants had all been sent to the servants’ hall or their rooms to also pray for the soul of their dead mistress.
Kat wasn’t with the other maids because they scorned and envied Kat in equal measures. Envied, for Lady Ellen had taken her as her personal attendant. Scorned for several reasons, not least because she was an indentured orphan and because Lady Ellen was the unwanted daughter and sister of the house.
As for praying for Lady Miller’s soul, Kat figured her prayers would not make a blind scrap of difference to Lady Miller’s destination. In fact, if God was a just God, like the vicar always said, then Lady Miller was even now roasting away in the hottest pit of hell.
Anyway, Kat hadn’t wanted to miss the funeral and burial. To her, it was a celebration, and if English maids were permitted to dance on graves, she would have done so, as soon as the grave was filled, a mound of raw earth in the center of a neat row of cemetery plots, each with a carefully tended garden, rails or neat hedges to demarcate its borders, and a tombstone of praises for the dead or pious wishes for their eternity or both.
These were the former dignitaries of the village, whose descendants made it a point of pride to ensure their ancestors could compete with their neighbors in death, as they had in life. Elsewhere in the graveyard, other plots were also devotedly tended, but with less attention to impressing others, living and dead. And the entire graveyard was neat. The sexton made sure that even the graves of those whose descendants had long moved away to the village were regularly scythed, the tombstones weeded.
Kat had a favorite corner, where she lingered after church on Sunday, slipping away from under the housekeeper’s eye while the other maids chattered and flirted. A willow tree hung over a family grave, where six generations of Simpsons had been committed to their final rest—the last more than two centuries ago.
Kat, who had never had a family, enjoyed reading the tombstones and imaging their lives. Simpsons no longer lived in the village, and Kat sometimes indulged herself in speculations about where they might have gone.
But wait. The committal was over. The vicar was strolling off toward the vicarage, and the sexton was ordering the grave filled in. She had better hustle to return to the manor and join the other servants in the parlor. The solicitor, who was strolling alongside the vicar all dressed in black, was heading to the same destination, and when he arrived, he would be reading Lady Miller’s last will and testament.
Miss Miller had ordered the whole household to be present for that solemn event. Miss Clara Miller was cut from the same cloth as Lady Miller, though she had had limited scope as a dictator while that tyrant was alive. Even so, everyone in the household knew that crossing her was almost as stupid as angering her mother.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GFY9FDMJ
Certain that the Marquess of Teign is behind her cousin’s disappearance, investigator Melody Blackmore enters his mansion disguised as a man. Tasked with discovering how Teign’s sons are leaving their tower prison or having food and other items brought in, she soon realizes that the sons are also the marquess’s victims. As her interest in the eldest of the brothers grows, she joins them all in a campaign to bring Teign down.
Allan Sheppard, the Earl of Kemble, is the eldest of Teign’s ten sons. He is weighed down by his frequent failures to protect his brothers from Teign’s beatings and abuse, but determined to keep them as safe as he can until his youngest brother is no longer under Teign’s guardianship.
All they must to do is fool the most recent investigator sent to find out their secrets. But Mel Black is not like the others, and Allan finds that an alliance with her gives the brothers the chance to not only survive, but to thrive.
However, Teign will stop at nothing to punish his sons for escaping him. Only Allan’s and Melody’s growing commitment to one another keeps them steadfast as they uncover evidence of evil beyond imagining.
In this excerpt from An Unpitied Sacrifice, we see Harry and Valeria settling into married life.
Waking up in Harry’s arms every morning was very nice. Not nice in the way it had been in that small village in the Spanish mountains, when they both woke with an urgent need to express their love in the most physical of ways.
Harry had either lost all desire for her, or he understood the mere thought of such intimacy shook Valeria’s frail hold on her emotions. And on her senses and her digestion. Bursting into tears, passing out, and throwing up would kill the mood, especially if she did all three at once.
It was a hurdle she would have to get over. They would have to get over, for they were married for life, and she refused to allow that fiend Antoine to ruin Harry’s life as well as her own. So far, though, she had not even been able to find the strength to raise the topic.
But they were together, she and Harry, and he had accepted her two extra children. She had everything she had hoped for during the journey to England. That she now hoped for more was testament to the courage Harry was giving her. Let them get the other women settled and then they could address her fears, and perhaps overcome them.
She smiled at the thought, and Harry, who at some point during her cogitations had opened his startlingly blue eyes, smiled back. “Good morning, my love,” he said. “A penny for your thoughts.”
“I was just thinking how nice it is to wake up in your arms, Harry,” she told him.
“Very nice,” he agreed, and saluted her cheek with a friendly kiss, such as a brother might give a sister. And as he rolled onto his back and stretched both of his arms above his head, there was a knock on the door.
“Isabella with our coffee,” Harry said. So far, the Spanish woman was working out very well as her maid.
Harry slipped out from under the covers, shrugged into his banyan and crossed to the door. “Good morning, Isabella,” he was saying as he opened it, and then, “Tom! Valeria, it is my man Tom with our coffee. Welcome back, Tom. You’ve heard then, about our changes?”
Valeria could hear the murmur of a reply, but not the actual words. Harry replied with instructions.
“Tell Mrs Rodriguez that Mrs Redepenning will need her in fifteen minutes. I’ve taken the next room for my dressing room, and will meet you there at the same time. You might like to familiarize yourself with the room while Mrs Redepenning and I drink our coffee. I have a meeting this morning, and shall be going out at ten o’clock.”
“Business, Harry?” Valeria asked, as he came back across their room with the tray holding the coffee pot, cups, and other coffee makings.
“A meeting with my father and a lawyer,” Harry said. “What are your plans this morning, dearest?”
Valeria groaned. “A final fitting for some of my gowns, including the one for your godmother’s ball.”
“Poor Valeria,” teased Harry, handing her a cup of coffee made just the way she liked it. “After my meeting, shall I come and pick you and my sisters up and take you out for tea and cakes? As a compensation for the torture you’ve suffered?”
“It is torture!” Valeria protested, laughing. She frowned, trying to think of an explanation that made sense to her, as well as Harry. “Fashion the way Susan knows it is almost a weapon. At the very least, it is a language that all of Society knows and that I must learn. The fabrics themselves, the trimmings, the colours, even the cut—all say something about my status and wealth, and therefore yours.”
“It sounds like nonsense,” said Harry.
Valeria huffed out a breath and shook her head. “It matters to too many people for me to treat it as nonsense, my dearest love. We shall raise our children with all the advantages of being part of the Redepenning family, but even the Redepennings cannot fly in the face of social opinion. If my clothing helps Society to accept me, then that shall ease the way of our children. I can do this, Harry.”
“I am confident you can,” Harry agreed. “If you think it important, my love, then I shall stop teasing. Just don’t let Susan bully you.”
Valeria chuckled. “I have not changed that much, Harry,” she told him.
In April, I have a story in the collection “Dukes in Spring“. Here’s an excerpt.
***
Mima’s sister Marge had locked herself in the tower and was refusing to come out. Papa said she would give up when she was hungry, but Mima asked the servants, and had discovered that Marge had given orders. All the cisterns were stocked with fresh spring water, the wine store replenished, and the larder fully stocked.
The artful woman had told the servants she was merely preparing against the possibility that the evil Townswells might break the marriage agreement and attack the Ruthermonds.
Of course, they believed it, for no one thought this proposed marriage was anything except a trick by the wicked inhabitants of Keldwood Cross. So, they had willingly provided the stores their lady could easily live on for months, if she did not mind an almost endless supply of preserved food.
No one had ever said that Lady Margherita Ruthermond was stupid. Spoiled, yes. Willful, certainly. And determined not to, as she put it, sacrifice her happiness on the altar of the family feud. As always, Mama sided with Marge, and when Papa growled that she and her daughter were both selfish termagants, she took to her bed.
After ranting for three days, Papa sent for Mima. “You shall have to go in Margherita’s place, Mima,” he decreed. “Someone has to marry the Townswell cub, or we have broken the agreement.” He shuddered.
“Would that be such a bad thing?” Mima asked. “After all, we have been ignoring the Townswells for three hundred years, except for a few broken bones here and there. We can go back to doing so again, can we not?”
Papa shook his head. “It’s more than a few broken bones, though, Mima, isn’t it? Wrecking the Lion and Harp, beating the Ruthermond steward until the doctor feared for his life, blowing up the bridge across Coombe Water.”
He held up both hands, palms out. “You are going to say that was all the Townswells, but for everything they did, our people did something as bad or worse. And if I find the fool who led the attack on a Royal Mail coach because they mistook it for a Ruthermond carriage, I shall have their guts.” He thumped a fist into a hand to emphasize his point.
Mima, who knew perfectly well that the idiots in question were her two youngest brothers, kept her mouth shut.
“The riot in Coombe was the last straw,” said Papa, with a sigh, “and you know as well as I do, it was as much our people’s fault as it was theirs.”
Two packs of young hotheads, both the worse for drink. But property had been damaged and a Coombe innkeeper who had tried to stop the violence had been knocked unconscious.
Even worse, the daughter of another neighbor, the Duke of Norcross, had been caught up in the riot. As far as Mima knew, the lady had not been physically hurt, but she had been shoved, and she had been scared. Since her father had powerful allies in both Houses of Parliament, and the ear of the Prince Regent besides, neither Papa nor Harwood had been able to brush the riot into oblivion.
“I am sorry, Mima,” Papa said. “But now that the Prince Regent is involved, and some of my fellow lords are talking about sending in an outside magistrate… I had no choice but to sign the agreement that his highness demanded. If I do not produce a bride for Harwood’s son, I will be foresworn. Even worse, the agreement says that, if one party defaults, he must pay a fine of ten thousand pounds and surrender the disputed lands in Coombe. Do you want to hand Harwood a win of that magnitude?”
So, Papa had bowed to pressure from the Crown and his peers and had put his pride on the line, Marge had thrown a tantrum, and Mima was to be the human sacrifice to save them all. That is, if Marge did not appear to do her duty.
I’m just sending An Unpitied Sacrifice out to beta readers, and thought you might like an excerpt. My hero and heroine are together for the first time in five years. And what do you think of the cover?
The floor of the small room was as hard as Harry expected, and he’d grown used to occupying soft beds in the past couple of years. However, he was warm enough, and if he could not sleep, he had much to think about, both planning for the future and anguishing over his darling’s past.
His determination to stay under the same roof as Valeria was rewarded in the early hours of the morning when she came to see him. He was drowsing when the opening of the door jerked him upright, and the unique smell of his own woman soothed the battle instincts that had roused him. There she was, peering around the door, a candle in her hand.
“Harry, are you awake?” she whispered.
“Yes. Is there a problem, beloved? What can I do to help?”
“Nothing. That is, there is no problem. It is just that I could not sleep. So much to think about.”
“I am the same.” He shifted so he was leaning against the back of the chair and lifted the blankets. “Come and sit beside me, beloved, and share your worries and your hopes with me, and I shall do the same with you.”
The fact she did not hesitate gave him hope for the future. She put the candle on the little table beside the chair, sat on the floor beside him, and even accepted his arm around her and leaned back against his shoulder.
Harry tucked the blankets around her with his other hand.
“Lord Renshaw was nice to my friends,” Valeria said. “They like him.”
“Alex,” he corrected. “He is your brother, so you can call him Alex, as his other sisters do.”
Alex had argued about Harry staying, but not as much as Harry expected. He had left for home without Harry, promising to tell Father Valeria really was whom she claimed to be, and Harry was refusing to be parted from her again.
“Tell Father we shall call to see him tomorrow morning,” Harry had said.
“Your brother is protective of his family,” Valeria said. “When I called in the afternoon, he was suspicious of me, and not very nice. But tonight, he discovered I really am your wife.”
“Therefore,” Harry said, continuing her line of thought, “you are part of his family and he will protect you. And the children. And even your friends and their children. That is how Alex is.”
“I think I like Alex,” said Valeria. “I understand being protective.”
Harry nodded. In that way, Alex and Valeria were very much alike. Both would cheerfully give their life to protect those they regarded as their own, and both could be hostile to any perceived threats.
“My family is now your family,” Harry said. “Father will be delighted to have three new grandchildren. He was already excited when I spoke to him, before Alex and I came over last night. Shall we take them with us when we call on Father in the morning?”
“All of them?” Valeria asked. “Rian too?”
“I think it best if we make no difference between them,” said Harry. “Rian shall be my son as much as Enrique. Kiko, as you call him.”
“I named our son Enrique after you,” Valeria said softly. “It means ‘ruler of the home’. Did you know that?”
“Our eldest son rules the home?” Harry asked, smiling at the thought.
“You do, too, Harry. I saw that with your brother. Yes, he is protective of you, but he also accepts your authority and looks to you for guidance.”
Perhaps she was right. Harry had not thought about it, but then he took it for granted that his brothers and cousins would take his lead. He changed the subject. “What does Zorian mean? It is not a name I am familiar with.”
“It is used among the Basque,” she told him. “But I think elsewhere, too. It means ‘happiness’. That is what I wish for him, Harry. That the disaster of his origins does not touch his life. And in general, he is a happy child. As for Marie, her full name is Marie-Therese. Therese for her own mother, and Marie for the mother of us all.”
She was relaxed and warm at his side. He could not see her face, but she sounded as if she was smiling.
“Tell me about them,” Harry coaxed. “Kiko is the leader. Rian is happy. What else, and what of Marie?”
They sat by the light of Valeria’s candle and talked about their children until Valeria’s head grew heavy on Harry’s shoulder. Then he blew out the candle, lowered them both into the nest of blankets, and slept peacefully with her in his arms.
Currently on sale at $1.99: https://books2read.com/ABaronforBecky
Aldridge never did find out how he came to be naked, alone, and sleeping in the small summerhouse in the garden of a country cottage. His last memory of the night before had him twenty miles away, and—although not dressed—in a comfortable bed, and in company.
The first time he woke, he had no idea how far he’d come, but the moonlight was bright enough to show him half-trellised window openings, and an archway leading down a short flight of steps into a garden. A house loomed a few hundred feet distant, a dark shape against the star-bright sky. But getting up was too much trouble, particularly with a headache that hung inches above him, threatening to split his head if he moved. The cushioned bench on which he lay invited him to shut his eyes and go back to sleep. Time enough to find out where he was in the morning.
When he woke again, he was facing away from the archway entrance, and someone was behind him. Silence now, but in his memory, the sound of light footsteps shifting the stones on the path outside, followed by twin intakes of breath as the walkers saw him.
One of them spoke; a woman’s voice, but low—almost husky. “Sarah, go back to the first rosebush and watch the house.”
“Yes, Mama.” High and light. A child’s voice.
Aldridge waited until he heard the child dance lightly down the steps and away along the path, then shifted his weight slightly letting his body roll over till he was lying on his back.
He waited for the exclamation of shock, but none came. Carefully—he wanted to observe her before he let her know he was awake, and anyway, any sudden movement might start up the hammers above his eye sockets—he cracked open his lids, masking his eyes with his lashes.
He could see more than he expected. The woman was using a shuttered lantern to examine him, starting at his feet. She paused for a long time when she reached his morning salute and it grew even prouder. Then she swept her light up his torso so quickly he barely had time to slam his lids shut before the light reached and lingered over his face.
She was just a vague shadow behind the light. He held himself still while she completed her examination, which she did with a snort of disgust. Not the reaction to which he was accustomed.
“Now what do we do?” she muttered. “Perhaps if Sarah and I…? I will have to cover him. What on earth is he doing here? And like that? Not that it matters. Unless he has something to do with Perry? Or the men he said would come?” Incipient panic showed in the rising pitch and volume, until she rebuked herself. “Stop it.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Stay calm. You must think.”
Aldridge risked opening his eyes a mere slit, and was rewarded by a better look at the woman as she paced up and down the summerhouse, in the light of the lantern she’d placed on one of the window ledges.
Spectacular. That was the only appropriate word. Hair that looked black in the poor light, but was probably dark brown, porcelain skin currently flushed with agitation, a heart-shaped face and a perfect cupid’s bow of a mouth, the lower lip—which she was currently chewing—larger than the upper.
The redingote she wore fit closely to a shape of amazing promise, obscured, then disclosed, as the shawl over her shoulders swung with her movements. Even more blood surged to his ever-hopeful member. “Down, boy,” he told it, silently.
“Mama?” That was the little girl, returning down the path. “Mama, I can hear horses.”
The woman froze, every line of her screaming alarm.
Aldridge could hear them too, coming closer through the rustling noises of the night. The quiet clop of walking horses, the riders exchanging a word or two, then nothing. They must have stopped on the other side of the house.
“Sarah.” The woman’s voice, pitched to carry only as far as her daughter’s ears, retreated as she crossed the summerhouse. “Sarah, we must go quickly.”
“But, Mama! The escape baskets!” the girl protested.
“I dare not wake the man, my love. He might stop us.”
Aldridge responded to the fear in her voice. “I won’t stop you. I am not a danger to you.” The woman turned to a statue at his voice, her hand on the framework of the arched entrance, as if she would fall without support. He swung himself upright, wincing as the headache closed its vice around his skull. Though he slitted his eyes against the pain, he kept them open just enough.
“Mama?” The girl’s fearful voice released the woman from her freeze, and she moved to block the child’s sight of him. “Sarah. Watch the house. Do not turn around until I say.”
Eyes open, he could confirm his initial assessment as she spun to face him. Spectacular. Then she shone the lantern straight on him, and he flinched from the light. “Not in my eyes, please. I have such a head.”
She made that same disgusted sound again, then stripped the shawl from her shoulders and tossed it to him, taking care to stay out of arms’ reach.
“Please cover yourself, Sir.”
Aldridge stood warily, and made a kilt of the shawl—a long rectangle that wrapped his waist several times and covered him from waist to thigh. “I beg your pardon for my attire, Mrs…” he invited.
But she was ignoring him. While he’d been tucking in the soft wool of the shawl, so it would hold securely, she’d crossed the summerhouse again and lifted the lid of the bench, tipping the cushions onto the floor, pulling various bundles, baskets, and packages from the recess.
“Mama!” The child sounded panicked. “They are in the house.”
Aldridge, headache forgotten, moved to a better vantage. Yes. Lights moving through the darkened house. And the men were not bothering to be silent, either, calling to one another as they searched swiftly and methodically: the ground floor, then the next, then the attics.
A rustle and chink came from the other end of the garden, then an eldritch groan that cut through his head like a knife.
“The gate!” The woman’s eyes were wide and fearful. Yes, complaining hinges would make that noise, and clearly frightened her more than any unnatural denizen of the night.
“Sarah, come to me.”
At the woman’s soft command, the child brushed past Aldridge and rushed right into the woman’s arms, wrapping herself around her mother’s waist. She was a small thing, not quite short enough to fit under the curve of her mother’s breasts. The delicate features, a miniature of her mother’s, showed fear and a quite adult determination. Aldridge had little experience of children but she was much the size of his cousin’s stepdaughter, who was six or seven.
The woman was holding something against the child’s temple. In a swift movement, he was almost on her, but he held himself apart, afraid of frightening her into pulling the trigger of the small pistol.
Outside, a rough voice spoke in the kind of argot he’d learned when slumming in St Giles. “Keep by t’prads, I’ll see ’tis all bob. I’ll crash the culls if uns’ve banged that Rose.” “Wait with the horses,” he understood the man to say. “I’ll see that all is well at the house. I’ll kill the men if they’ve raped that Rose.” Heavy footsteps retreating down the path. If they were quiet, they could talk.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, keeping his voice low enough to carry no further than her ears.
Her whisper was even lower, and he had to strain to hear. “Praying they will pass us by. For the love of all you hold holy, don’t give us away!”
“You cannot mean to hurt your child.”
“Better death at my hands than what they have planned for her,” the woman hissed. Her free hand, the one around the girl’s shoulders, returned the frantic hug, patting and soothing even as the other hand held the little pistol firmly in place.
“Better we all live,” he retorted.
Today, I welcome new Belle Elizabeth Donne. Elizabeth’s writing is a natural outpouring of a lifelong love affair with English literature. Although she has spent most of her life in Cape Town, South Africa, she now lives in the American Midwest, where she enthusiastically introduces her visitors to the joys of drinking rooibos tea. With a biscuit, of course. 
See the Belle’s website for more about Elizabeth Donne, and to discover her books.
Ten things about Elizabeth (2 of which are false):
1) I am a distant cousin of the actress Charlize Theron.
2) I used to whittle, until I stabbed myself in the hand and almost lost the use of my thumb.
3) I have spent most of my life in West Africa.
4) I went to Europe as an exchange student.
5) I have swum with dolphins.
6) My ancestors were almost all school teachers, generation after generation, going back more than a hundred years.
7) I have done fencing as a sport.
8) I have visited 5 continents.
9) My grandmother was part of a group of spelunkers who discovered a new cave.
10) I love holding corn snakes.