kidnapping

by

Spotlight on The Forgotten Daughter

When the old Earl of Clarion leaves a will with bequests for all his children, legitimate and not, listing each and their mothers by name, he complicated the lives of many in the village of Ashmead and beyond. One of them was left out. She is the third of The Ashmead Heirs.

Eli may not be her idea of a hero, but he’ll solve her problems or die trying

Frances Hancock always knew she was a bastard. She didn’t know her father was an earl until her mother died. The information came just in time. She and her mother’s younger children were about to be homeless. She needs help. Fast. What she wants is a hero.

Eli Benson, the Earl of Clarion’s steward, took great pride in cleaning up the mess left behind by the old earl’s will. When a dainty but ferocious young woman with the earl’s hair and eyes comes demanding help, his heart sinks. She isn’t in the will. She was forgotten entirely. And the estate is just getting its finances back in order. But he knows a moral obligation when he sees one. He may not be her idea of a hero, but people count on him to fix things. He’s good at it. Falling in love with her will only complicate things.

Eli will solve her problems or die trying. It may come to that.

PREORDER LINK: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09PGSYJ3Q/

Excerpt

Eli dismounted instead of riding around to the stables and climbed up to investigate. The girl, a bit of a thing, didn’t come up to the footman’s shoulder, but she confronted him with a straight back and commanding voice. Though slender, she had the look of someone used to hard work. She wore a plain, rather rumpled gown. He suspected she had been traveling for some time. An unadorned straw bonnet covered her head.

“Is there a problem here John?”

“Aye Mr. Benson. I was explaining to this person—”

“I demand to see the earl,” the chit said at the same time. She had cheek for one so young.

“May I ask your business with the earl?” Eli studied her closely. Her face had character. He’d give her that. Perhaps she was older than she first appeared.

“Who are you?” she asked, fire flashing from her eyes. Her very attractive green eyes… Oh no.

“Show some respect, girl,” John said. “This is Mr. Benson, the steward. I’ve been telling you—Mr. Benson will see to whatever it is. The earl isn’t here.”

“Steward, is it? Then you’ll have to help me.” Disappointment inched across her face driving the determination to the side, but not away. She glared up at the footman.

“I’ll deal with this, John. Please care for my horse,” Eli said.

She bounded past John into the foyer where she came to an abrupt halt, wide eyes taking in the magnificence that was Clarion Hall’s entrance: the parquet floors, the marble mantle, the gleaming banister curving upward beside carpeted stairs…

She spun toward Eli, that fire raging in her eyes. “The earl will help me. He has to.”

She pulled the ribbon on her bonnet and took it off, shaking her head and loosening a fall of hair. Glorious auburn hair… Oh no.

Eli’s peace had just been upended by a problem—one cursed with Caulfield hair and Caulfield eyes. One encased in the dainty body of a beautiful young woman with the heart of a warrior.

Damn.

Meet Caroline Warfield

Award winning author Caroline Warfield has been many things: traveler, librarian, poet, raiser of children, bird watcher, Internet and Web services manager, conference speaker, indexer, tech writer, genealogist—even a nun. She reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows where she lets her characters lead her to adventures in England and the far-flung corners of the British Empire. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart.

Website:   http://www.carolinewarfield.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/caroline.warfield.1422/

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Caroline-Warfield/e/B00N9PZZZS/

Good Reads:  http://bit.ly/1C5blTm

Book Bub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/caroline-warfield

Twitter:   https://twitter.com/CaroWarfield

Book Page: https://www.carolinewarfield.com/bookshelf/the-forgotten-daughter/

Caroline’s Other Books

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Caroline-Warfield/e/B00N9PZZZS/

Bookshelf               http://www.carolinewarfield.com/bookshelf/

A Dangerous Nativity, a novella prequel to both her Children of Empire and Dangerous Series is available for free at:

Barnes&Noble   Kobo   Amazon  Smashwords

by

Tea with David

The servant showed David Wakefield onto the terrace, where Eleanor Haverford waited.

The visit to the child in the nursery upstairs had calmed him, somewhat; his anger was banked though the duchess had no doubt it still burned under the controlled exterior.

“How did you find Antonia?” she asked, indicating that he should take the chair beside her.

“Worried about her mother.” He jerked as if he would leap to his feet again, but controlled the impulse. “What are you planning to do with her? Keep her here?”

Eleanor had already decided that the little girl would be better with her aunt, and would persuade David to that point of view if he did not agree, but he needed to hear that she acknowledged his claim. “It is not up to me, David. I am just a family friend. You and her aunt must make this decision, since her mother is… unavailable.”

He relaxed, fractionally, but at the last word he let out a huff of air that sounded almost like a sob. “Unavailable,” he repeated, bitterly.

“You intend to go after her, I assume.” Eleanor made it a statement, not a question. He had declared his intention an hour ago, when he had burst in unannounced, demanding to see his lover’s daughter and swearing vengeance on the Marquis of Aldridge.

“Yes. Yes, of course. I already have men on the docks trying to find the ship’s destination. Sailors talk. If the captain told his men, someone will know.”

“What can we do to help?” Eleanor handed David a cup of tea and began piling a plate with small savouries. He would need food and drink, and was unlikely to stop again today to find them.

“Your family has helped quite enough,” David snapped, then lowered his hazel eyes, so like those of her two sons, his half-brothers. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace. That was uncalled for.”

“You are upset, David. I am sure that Aldridge did not intend–”

David’s manners were usually impeccable, and it was a measure of his distress that he interrupted her. “Of course he didn’t. He would never deliberately put Gren in danger. Or Prue either, I suppose. I don’t blame him for choosing the wrong ship for your younger son’s journey. I blame him for suggesting that Prue left of her own accord.”

That raised Eleanor’s eyebrows. “Of her own… he thought it was an elopement?”

“Yes. He had the nerve to suggest Gren has legitimacy and wealth and so…”

“For an intelligent boy, my son Aldridge can occasionally be extremely stupid. No wonder you are cross with him.”

That, as she had hoped, fetched an amused quirk of the lips, though the smile did not reach his worried eyes.

David finished his tea, and stood to leave. “I’ll go after Prue, Your Grace, and Gren, too. Will you send Antonia to her aunt? She is at home there, and the wait will be easier for her. I’ll send word as soon as I can; as soon as I know whether they are…”

He trailed off, and the words he did not say hung between them. Dead or alive. Murdered or merely kidnapped.

In the months to come, Eleanor clung to the promise her husband’s base-born son had made her. No news at all was surely better than certain news of the deaths of her younger son and the young woman she had come to love almost as a daughter. But where were they, and had David found them?

This scene doesn’t appear in Concealed in Shadow, but it clearly happened. Here’s where it fits. After the end of Revealed in Mist, David arrives in London and finds that Prue has been missing for over a week and that the Marquis of Aldridge, heir to the Duke of Haverford, was the last person to see her. He questions Aldridge, to find that Prue had gone down to the wharves to farewell Lord Jonathan Grenford, Aldridge’s younger brother. Aldridge has his own jaundiced view of the couple’s disappearance. David ends up punching the man and storming off. It was inevitable that, after initiating the investigation into the ship on which Gren and Prue left, he’d head to Haverford House where Prue had left her daughter visiting for the day with the Duchess of Haverford.

I’m currently researching and writing character outlines and heroes’ journeys for Concealed in Shadow.