Lyon’s Den Connected World

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Spotlight on Dared by a Lyon

By Anna St. Claire

When American-born Ashlyn March reluctantly agrees to swap places with her daring heiress cousin and attend a house party during the London Season, she anticipates some awkward social moments—but not a broken carriage, an injured coach driver who’s actually a fourteen-year-old boy, and a thunderstorm that leaves her stranded at the doorstep of the most charmingly handsome man she’s ever met.

Gabriel Dawson, the Earl of Ravensthorpe, is no stranger to the games played at Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s notorious den—but nothing could have prepared him for the mysterious beauty who appears at his estate, soaked through and full of secrets. She’s clever, capable…and utterly captivating. As a gentleman, he offers her shelter. As a man, he finds it hard to keep his heart guarded.

Caught together by the storm, Ashlyn and Gabriel can’t deny the blossoming attraction between them. Even his own shadows of grief seem to lighten in her presence.

Ashlyn has always been gifted at healing others. Whether it’s a bird with a broken wing, a silent child, or a man who has lost belief in love—she gives herself generously. But the one thing she can’t give Gabriel…is the truth. Not without risking everything.

In the world of the Lyon’s Den, every game has a price…and love might be the greatest gamble.

https://www.amazon.com/Dared-Lyon-Lyons-Connected-World-ebook/dp/B0GHRC481K

Excerpt from Dared by a Lyon

Gabriel did carry his own guilt for drinking heavily after the accident. But after the first year, he’d stopped drinking himself into a stupor every night. In fact, he rarely drank anymore except around the anniversary. But rather than explaining himself, he asked, “Did you read my missive? We have been invited to a house party sponsored by Mrs. Bessie Dove-Lyon.”

“I’m afraid you will have to attend alone. Caro needs me here,” she said. She turned to leave but then said, “I wish you’d stay with Caro and me, here.” Her voce had a thread of frustration. “Son, it was a horrible and tragic accident. But it wasn’t your fault.”

“It wasn’t? For the past three years, I have been haunted by their deaths…If I had been there…” He shook his head.

“Son, you can’t know if your presence in that carriage would have saved your sister and Max or Juliet. It was a horrible accident. But it wasn’t your fault,” she said. “There were several men there, including a doctor, and they couldn’t save them.”

He nodded––logically, he knew that, but it was hard to reconcile his mind with his heart. He blew out a breath. “I realize that you think I spend all my time at the Lyon’s Den when I’m in London. Maybe that was true the first year. I drank and gambled more than I should have. However, I’ve changed that. I did visit the Lyon’s Den on this trip to London, but not to drink. While there, I met with our solicitors on Caro’s behalf. I also met a group of investors and went with them to the Lyon’s Den, mostly to find out as much as I could about some unique investment opportunities. I am serious about making certain Max’s estate grows as much as it can for Caro. As her uncle and guardian, I do this because I love her and want to protect her.”

“I understand,” the countess said softly.

The heavy brass knocker sounded at the front door and echoed upstairs to the study. Gabriel and his mother were silent for a moment as they exchanged a look.

“It’s very late,” he said, checking his pocket watch. “Who could be out at this late hour? Are you expecting someone, Mother?”

She shook her head, her eyes reflecting the worry that he, too, was feeling, for it was almost three years ago on a similar night when a tragedy killed half his family.

Without speaking, they left the study and made their way downstairs.

They arrived in the foyer just as their butler, Higgins, opened the front door. But a heavy gust of wind suddenly caught it and slammed it against the wall. Higgins caught the door in his usual unflappable manner and held it open. Welcome to Ravenswood Manor. How may we be of help?”

Two young women stood in the doorway, both bedraggled and covered in mud.

“Thank goodness someone is at home.” The younger, dark-headed woman said in a melodious voice. “Kind sir, we are in dire need of assistance. Our carriage overturned in the storm and slid down a steep hill a few miles down the road. We managed to escape with the horses and make it here, but our driver requires medical attention.”

My God, it happened again, Gabriel thought. Well, this time, he would do everything in his power to help this young woman and her servants. “I am Lord Gabriel Dawson, the Earl of Ravensthorpe, and this is my mother, Lady Elsa Dawson, the Countess of Ravensthorpe,” he said, stepping forward. “Please, come in, and let us be of assistance.”

The young woman turned toward him, and his breath hitched as he beheld her face. Exquisite… Even completely drenched and covered in mud, she was a beauty. Those eyes… He’d never seen eyes that shade of blue. Nay, not blue…but violet. And they were mesmerizing. Gabriel felt an overwhelming urge to take her in his arms, to protect her.

“Thank you, my lord, my lady’” she said breathlessly with a curtsy. “My name is Miss Elizabeth Vickers, and this is Alice, my maid. We were on our way to a house party being given my Mrs. Dove-Lyon near Bath when our horses were spooked by the storm, causing our driver to lose his hold on the reins.”

Gabriel could tell be her accent that she was not English, but American. “Higgins, please see to the driver and send one of your men to fetch Dr. Baker.”

“Yes, my lord,” the butler said, turning to the two footmen who were standing at the ready and giving them instructions.

“Miss Vickers, will you and your maid come warm yourself by the fire?” Gabriel’s mother said with a kind smile, gesturing to the drawing room down the hall.

“Thank you, my lady,” Miss Vickers said in that soft, melodious voice. She glanced at Gabriel and seemed to hesitate. Unconsciously, she bit her lower lip, and he once again felt the overwhelming urge to sweep her up in his arms. “Except I should not leave our driver,” she added, “for he is but a child of fourteen.”

“Your driver is fourteen?” Gabriel said.

Miss Vickers blushed, her expression one of distress. “I promise, we had no idea when we departed. His father was supposed to drive us…” Her voice faded, and she looked as though she were about to burst into tears. “Please, can you help him, my lord?”

“Of course we will help him,” he said just as the footmen carried the boy inside. “Please do not worry––we’ll see to everything.”

“Thank you, my lord,” she breathed, and he wished he could carry her into the drawing room himself and set her in front of the fire…

“My lady, shall I go with them?” Alice asked.

Just as Miss Vickers was about to reply, Mrs. Flinters, their housekeeper, bustled up to them. “My lord, my lady,” she said.

“Mrs. Flinters, this is Miss Elizabeth Vickers and her maid, Alice. Can you have the blue room readied? Miss Vickers, her maid, and their driver have been in a carriage accident and will be staying with us for a while,” the countess said.

“Of course, my lady.” The housekeeper smiled and directed the maid to follow her. “Come with me, child.”

Alice looked at Miss Vickers, who gave her an encouraging nod to go with Mrs. Flinters.

Gabriel knew that between Higgins and Flinters, they would do what needed to be done with their usual efficiency and kindness.

“Please, Miss Vickers, come warm yourself by the fire, and we’ll see you to your room soon,” his mother said in a gentle voice, taking the young woman by the hand and drawing her along.

Miss Vickers glanced at him over her shoulder, as though looking to him for guidance.

Something shifted inside his chest. Something he’d never felt before. “We’ll take care of everything, Miss Vickers. Please do not worry. You are safe.”

She nodded, and her lips curved into a grateful smile. She regarded him a moment more with those luminous violet eyes. “Thank you, my lord,” she whispered, then turned to go with his mother.

He blew out a deep breath, as though he’d been holding it. Perhaps he had.

 

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Spotlight on Temptress and the Lyon

A woman on the brink of ruin. A man risen from the grave. A marriage neither of them planned, but both may die for.

Twelve years ago, Alyssia Prudence Whitcombe lost the man she was promised to marry since birth and learned how swiftly hearts can be broken. Now, with scandal snapping at her heels and her family’s future at risk, she makes a desperate choice: She will find a stranger to wed at the most dangerous gaming hell in London. A marriage of necessity. A contract. Nothing more.

She never expects that stranger to be Giles Bishop, the boy she once loved, the heir thought dead, the man who vanished without a trace.

Theodore Giles Bishop has spent years in the shadows, waiting for the moment he can reclaim the life that was stolen from him. Hardened by exile and secrecy, he means to bide his time, until he spies Alyssia standing in the Lyon’s Den, wagering her future with breathtaking courage. He makes a reckless choice: He will win her hand or die trying.

But some choices open old wounds.

Can love reclaimed be stronger than love lost? Or will the shadows that once tore them apart claim them both again?

 

Meet Tanya Wilde

Award-Winning and International Bestselling author Tanya Wilde developed a passion for reading when she had nothing better to do than lurk in the library during her lunch breaks. Her love affair with pen and paper soon followed after she devoured all of their historical romance books!

When she’s not meddling in the lives of her characters or pondering names for her imaginary big, white greyhound, she’s off on adventures with her partner in crime.

Wilde lives in a town at the foot of the Outeniqua Mountains, South Africa.

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A funeral and two weddings in WIP Wednesday



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.

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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.

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Fated meetings on WIP Wednesday

 

I have a preorder link for A Lyon’s Dilemma! So I thought I’d share an excerpt, since it will stop counting as a Work-In-Progress in a little over three weeks, on July 30th.

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The half-sisters had never been friends, though only a few months separated them in age, and they had been raised in the same nursery. Adaline supposed she could not blame her father’s wife for being resentful, but it was not Adaline’s fault her father kept a mistress, nor that he brought his love child into his own house after her mother died giving birth to Adaline.

Emmeline’s resentment was copied from her own mother, and had been given further force because Adaline and Emmeline resembled one another so much. Emmeline, even though she was the younger by four months, had held a childish belief that Adaline had copied Emmeline’s looks to spite her. According to Emmeline, that justified wearing Adaline’s clothes to play naughty tricks on the governess and other servants.

Adaline had suffered many punishments for things she hadn’t done, and for lying about her guilt. And then Emmeline was caught in the act, and Adaline was sent away to school. “For your own sake,” her father had said. Adaline had enjoyed school well enough. But it was an exile, nonetheless.

Her own childhood experiences made her all the more determined to ensure that Melody never had cause to doubt that she was loved. Sad to say, that goal had been aided by Richard Beverley’s death. He had been a poor choice as a husband, as it turned out, though better in the circumstances than none at all. He had been shaping up to be a miserable father, and none at all was definitely preferable.

“Are any of the gentlemen going to be my new father?” Melody asked. The schoolroom party was taking advantage of today’s fine weather to walk to the pond to feed the ducks, and Adaline had elected to join them. She looked around to see if anyone else had heard the question, but Melody and Adaline had dropped behind the rest.

“I do not think so, darling,” Adaline said. “But remember I told you I have seen a matchmaker who will be looking for a husband for me.” Not Kempbury. Damn Kempbury, for invading her mind and setting her pulse beating just for him, as it had once before, long ago.

Melody frowned, thoughtfully. “I do not think I would want someone else to choose me a husband,” she said.

Adaline had certainly not done very well on her own, but she kept that thought to herself.

Ah! Here was the pond. Oh dear. And here was Kempbury. He had obviously come here for some privacy and solitude. He had a propensity for going off on his own—Adaline remembered that about him. She almost giggled at the thought of his dismay when his refuge was invaded by ten children of assorted ages, four nursemaids, two governesses and Adaline.

He nodded to her with distant courtesy, and then turned his gaze on Melody. All thought of laughter fled. But no. He would not guess. Melody was only a child. And even if he wondered, he could not be certain.

Besides, what could he do? Melody was legally a Beverley, and Adaline was her mother.

He narrowed his green eyes, while Melody stared back at him, her head to one side, her own very similar green eyes alight with curiosity.

“Might you be Miss Beverley?” he asked.

“Melody, make your curtsey to the Duke of Kempbury,” Adaline prompted. Melody, her most winning smile to the fore, curtseyed. “I am Melody Beverley, sir,” she said, “and this is my Mama.”

His expression, which had warmed while observing her daughter, chilled again as he looked at Adaline. “Mrs. Beverley and I were acquainted a long time ago,” he said.

“A very long time ago,” Adaline agreed. “Before you were born, Melody. Look, Miss Winchard has bread for the ducks. Get in line for your share, my dearest.”

Melody bobbed another curtsey, briefer than the first and said, “It was a pleasure to meet you, Your Grace,” then rushed off before he could reply.

 

 

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Spotlight on Thrown to the Lyon

When Dorcas Anderson saves Mrs. Dove-Lyon from being crushed by a passing dray it sets up a chain a series of events she could not have imagined. The grateful lady insists on presenting to her rescuer a tinder box containing three tokens. Each can be exchanged for a favor from The Black Widow of Whitehall herself.

She needs the first sooner than she expected, when her dead husband’s twin, brother to a powerful duke, has her and her four-year-old son arrested for theft.

When Mrs. Dove-Lyon asks him to help rescue a wrongfully arrested widow, Ben, the Earl of Somerford, is glad to aid Mrs. Anderson, whom he knew and respected when he was with the army in the Peninsula.

Dorcas uses the second token to enlist Mrs. Dove-Lyon in catching Ben’s attention, little knowing that Ben is already wondering if Dorcas is just the wife he needs.

Ben is too slow to declare his interest. Dorcas’s brothers-in-law threaten, and Mrs. Dove-Lyon may have the answer: Another marriage, this time to a man powerful enough to stand against a possibly malevolent duke.

The plan is set. A game of cards will decide the groom. Can Dorcas use the third token to change the odds? Anything can happen when a lady is thrown to a Lyon.

https://www.amazon.com/Thrown-Lyon-Lyons-Connected-World-ebook/dp/B0DGMYS3W9/

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Spotlight on Only a Lyon Will Do

Only A Lyon Will Do: Lyon’s Den Connected World

By Sherry Ewing

Can a chance encounter turn desire into love?

Asher Tyler, Earl of Rowley, has guarded his life as a carefree bachelor by avoiding romantic entanglements and the debutantes of each Season. When his world is turned upside down by a mysterious woman who saves him from a fall, Asher wishes to know her better but she refuses to reveal her identity. Asher cannot forget the woman at the Lyon’s Den and remembers every delectable detail about her.

Mrs. Patience Moore, a widow with a complicated past and ties to the Wicked Widow’s Club, was disowned by her merchant father when she married without his consent. Now a widow, she lives with her friend, Cassandra, who pays the matchmaking fees of the infamous Mrs. Dove-Lyon, the Widow of Whitehall, to find a husband for Patience.

But Patience doesn’t want an arranged marriage. She wants to fall in love but not with the man who stumbled into her one night at the Lyon’s Den who appears only interested in one thing. She knows his type. She should stay far away from him. Her heart tells her differently.

Mrs. Dove Lyon’s matchmaking brings Asher and Patience together, but the road is complicated. Asher insists he isn’t interested in marriage, his brother is vying for Patience’s affection, and an enemy from Asher’s past is seeking revenge.

Only time will tell if love will win over a woman who is afraid to trust and a man who refuses to see that the perfect woman is right before his eyes.

Learn more on Sherry’s website at https://sherryewing.com/regency-books/only-a-lyon-will-do/ 

 

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Spotlight on In Service to a Lyon

A book in The Lyon’s Den Connected World

By E. L. Johnson

A lowly servant who may be French nobility. A scarred English lieutenant who hates all French. Can these two find love in the Lyon’s Den?

Marie Cadough is a French servant who’s learned to hide who she is. Sent to England as a child to flee the French Revolution, she and her uncle escaped suspicion by working as servants in a London household. But when she is dismissed at the hands of an unreasonable mistress, her uncle finds them new positions in the household of Mrs. Dove-Lyon, the Black Widow of Whitehall.

Lieutenant Samuel Gage is scarred by war. Having lost his closest friend to a duel and seen hearts broken by heartless Frenchwomen, he has developed an irrational dislike of all things French. But when he suffers painful memories from loud music at the Lyon’s Den, a kind servant takes pity on him. He never expected her to be French.

Marie wants to do well at her new employer’s, so when Mrs. Dove-Lyon asks her to pose as a lady and act as a French-speaking companion to a visiting Frenchwoman, Marie agrees. She never expected to fall for an Englishman in the process.

But not all is well. The other servants are jealous of Marie’s rise to success, and Marie’s new friends are keen to discover her origins. A mutual attraction begins to simmer between Samuel and Marie, but their different backgrounds and the stiff social hierarchy of Regency London pose formidable barriers to their blossoming love.

He is the third son of a baronet—she is a maidservant in a gambling den. Their worlds could not be more different. But as their desire increases, so does the danger, for scheming servants and Marie’s old employers may ruin all their hopes and dreams for the future.

Will Marie and Samuel find love or remain worlds apart? Find out in a new historical romance from bestselling author E.L. Johnson.

Available on Amazon to buy or read in Kindle Unlimited: https://www.amazon.com/Service-Lyon-Lyons-Connected-World-ebook/dp/B0D971DK45/

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Spotlight on The Lyon and His Promise

By Sherry Ewing

Part of the Lyon’s Den Connected World

A gentleman’s lifetime regret. A widow’s tarnished reputation. Can they repair the past to create a bright future together?

Gyles Hawley, Marquis of Wickes has spent years regretting that he promised a good friend not to woo the man’s sister. Not that the regret shows. Between his duties to his father and the estate as heir to a duchy, he sometimes wished he could live a simpler life as a gentleman-about-town. Inside, though, he still yearns for a girl he could never forget.

Mrs. Josephine Bouchard understands that she must live with her bad choices. Foolishly running away with a man who only desired her money, was only the first. After she became a widow, she continued to make decisions that cost her any possibility of a return to Society. Then a chance glimpse of Gyles makes her wonder if maybe she could find a way.

When Mrs. Dove-Lyon arranges a meeting between Gyles and Josephine, the past and present collide. Only once they resolve their own mixed emotions, can they combat all that Society will try to do to stop them being together.

A ruined widow and a duke’s heir must find a way, for love has once more entered their hearts.

 

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A little mouse of a heroine in WIP Wednesday

Thrown to the Lyon is beginning to gel in my mind.

***

Dorcas Kent hoisted the heavy bag of linens and embroidery thread a little higher on her shoulder. Short as she was, it was hard to keep the bag from brushing the ground, which would be bad enough on any day, but worse when three days of heavy rain had turned the streets into a swamp of mud, dirty water, and other far more noxious substances.

She had walked to the drapery warehouse as soon as the sun had peeped through the clouds. Even if she had had the coins to spare, she was unwilling to risk the table linens she had embroidered in the filthy interior of a hackney. Mr. McMillan would dock the price of damaged linens from her wages and would, moreover, refuse to pay for any work she had done on them. Mr. McMillan was the man who employed her to apply family crests, monograms, or whatever motif buyers desired onto the household linens he supplied.

That was also why she was walking home, keeping one wary eye on the gathering clouds.

She carried two weeks or more of work and therefore a month’s rent, and food on the table for at least part of that month. The loss of even a set of table napkins could leave her destitute. Scraping the bag in the mud would be a disaster. Rain before she reached her room would be a disaster.

So, she readjusted the handle for the umpteenth time and trudged on.

Disaster came looking for her just as she rested for a moment against a stone water trough set a little back from the footpath. She had her back against the trough and the precious bag clasped to her belly as she looked idly at the passersby and wished that she did not have so far to walk.

People must have rushed out to enjoy the brief sunshine, for both road and footpath were crowded. One lady caught her eye. She was clad in deep black, and a veil fell from her bonnet to cover her veil. Dorcas found herself wondering about the widow. Did the heavy mourning represent the truth or a social lie?

Dorcas had worn black for Michael, and then again for Noah. Not, however, quite like the lady she observed. She smiled at the very idea. It was like comparing a sparrow and a peacock—her in her hastily dyed everyday gowns and the clearly wealthy lady who was picking her way cautiously around a puddle in her expensive and fashionable sails and velvets.

The lady was just walking past Dorcas when someone dashed out from the shadows and pushed her, so that she stumbled into the street, right into the path of an approaching carriage.

Dorcas was barely aware of the assailant running away and was not conscious at all of casting her bag down and hurling herself after the lady. She didn’t think, but grabbed a double handful of the lady’s redincote and swung her around, just before the horses, snorting and stamping, reached their position.

For one horrid moment, she lost her own balance as the carriage raced towards her. Then hard hands grabbed her, pulling her to safety. And the lady in black, too, she noticed as a tall strong man with hard eyes set her on her feet, and another did the same for the widow. The carriage had driven on by, the driver hurling imprecations over his shoulder.

“How can I ever repay you?” The widow held her hands out to Dorcas. “You saved me from serious injury, at the very least. Titan, did you see who pushed me?”

“No, Mrs. Dove Lyon,” said the man who had caught the lady. “I’ve sent a man after him, but he was fast on his feet.”

“And you, Miss?” Mrs. Dove Lyon asked Dorcas.

“Mrs.,” Dorcas commented. “And no, all I saw was his back as he gave you a shove.”

“Mrs…?” Mrs. Dove Lyon asked.

It was at that moment that Dorcas remembered her bag. “Kent,” she replied absentminded as she looked for the bag. Her heart quailed when she saw it lying on the edge of a puddle. “My linens!” she moaned.

Sure enough, when she picked up the bag, she could see that one corner was completely saturated in muddy water.

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Spotlight on Hook, Lyon and Sinker

Hook, Lyon and Sinker

When Lady Laureline Barker asks Mrs. Dove Lyons to find her a husband, she does not expect one of her choices to be the man she admired years ago, when she was still a schoolgirl—the man who rescued her from drowning. He is also a war hero, famed for trading his own freedom and health for the safety of others.

Laurel is committed to a contest, with the winner taking her and her dowry. Can she back out? And will he still want her if she does?

Angelico Warrington doesn’t expect Laurel to remember him. Even if she does, why should she favor him over other suitors? She is the respected sister to an earl, the only flaw on her reputation that she refused to marry a jerk who has been putting off the wedding date for five years.

Angel is a musician in a gambling den, unable to walk without crutches, and with no place in the Society to which Laurel belongs.

This apparently ill-assorted couple are a perfect match, but history must repeat itself and secrets be revealed before they can win their happy ending.

Preorder price only 99c. Published this coming Wednesday. https://www.amazon.com/Hook-Lyon-Sinker-Lyons-Den-ebook/dp/B0CSF79RMD

Excerpt:

One of Titan’s men came to tell Carter and Angel that the first contest was about to start. While they had been talking, some of the servants had rolled out a large square piece of furniture. Angel couldn’t imagine its purpose until he approached closely enough to see that it was an open-topped box about ten feet across. It was lined with something that must be impervious to liquid, for the box was full of water almost to the top. A score or more toy ships sailed on the surface.

“Gentlemen,” said Titan, “if you will take your places, please.” He directed Angel to one side of the box, and Carter to the opposite side. Angel picked up the sling he found waiting for him. The bowl full of smooth blue stones told him what the game comprised before Titan explained.

Carter’s stones were red, Angel noticed. Half a dozen gentlemen took their places along the remaining sides of the tank, and two of Mrs. Dove Lyons men stood flanking each of the players.

Other gentlemen crowded in behind the spotters, though several of Titan’s wolves kept them back from behind Carter and Angel.

Then Titan said, “Go,” and Angel picked up his sling, fitted a stone, and hurled it at a ship. It was harder than it appeared. For one thing, it took considerable force to sink a ship. For another, any lesser hit sent the target careening across the water, rocking the other ships and setting them sailing in unexpected directions. All that movement started waves, which complicated matters still further.

The watchers roared when a lucky shot from Angel sank an already-damaged ship, and again a few moments later, presumably for Carter, though Angel was not about to take his eye from his current target.

As he continued to launch stones, someone came to fill the bowl. Was he getting better? He had the impression he was sinking ships more rapidly, but perhaps it was just that time had slowed as he slung stone after stone, not pausing to see the effect, but moving on the next.

Every now and again, though, another stone hit a ship he was aiming for just before or after his own. If the ship sank, the spotters yelled out the name of the man who was responsible. Twice, there was a dispute, but Angel didn’t allow that to distract him, either.

Then Titan shouted, “Time! Put down your slings, gentlemen.”

Angel replaced his sling on the side of the box and looked across the water to Carter, who nodded and smiled. Angel had no idea whether he or Carter had won. He returned the nod and the smile. Carter was a decent man.

Angel’s eyes drifted up to the ladies’ gallery, where Laurel stood, watching the first of the contests that would decide her fate. Carter was a decent man, but he wanted a mother for his daughters.

Laurel deserved more. She deserved a man who adored her.