The Angel’s Announcement, a Holiday Homicide by Caroline Warfield

They found the shepherd eight days before Christmas. Dead. Sybilla and Seth have a week to solve it. Will they heal the hurt that lies between them?

Sybilla Somer was seventeen when Seth Caulfield disappeared without a word. For nine long years she wondered why. Now he’s back and she needs his help to solve a murder. There is no one else to do it. 

Seth hadn’t been much older when Sibby’s father and brother drove him out with shouts of “bloody presuming bastard.” They delivered him to press gangs in Great Yarmouth. He assumed she knew. She didn’t, and she certainly didn’t care that his birth was irregular. The navy set him to helping the ship’s surgeon, a stroke of luck. He has returned a warranted surgeon himself.

When Sybilla and Seth are thrown together to solve the murder, to care for a small angel with a broken ankle — and to face the hurt between them, will the work and the season heal what lies between them?

Meet Sybilla

With her father dead, her worthless brother now viscount, and the big house rented out to uncaring tenants, the estate and half the shire relies on Sybilla Somer the spinster daughter for care and leadership. She loved a man once, but he left her. Now she is on her own. At least she was until Seth reappeared.

Meet Seth

Seth Caulfield always knew he was a bastard. The woman he loved, though far above his touch, never cared. When her father separated them ruthlessly, he spent nine years in His Majesty’s navy. He didn’t expect to become a surgeon, to receive a bequest in his sire’s scandalous will, or to discover that he was one of the notorious Clarion bastards. Memories—and hope—drew him home.

Excerpt from The Angel’s Announcement

“Why did you come back?” Sibby demanded. She had asked him that three times now. He choked on an answer and filled her bowl with stew. Hungry as she was, she licked her lips and stared at it, sending a frisson of desire through him.

This isn’t the time for that, Caulfield.

“Slice that bread, if you please, Sibby. There’s a bigger question than the one you asked.”

She did as she was asked, her brow drawn up in a question. She didn’t speak.

“You never asked me why I left. Maybe we should start there.” He accepted a plate with slices of warm bread she had slathered with butter. It ought to be delicious, but he had never felt less like eating in his life. Considering some of the things he had endured, that was saying much.

Sibby waved her spoon in the air. “You disappeared. I went to the fishing shack the afternoon after the one when we, erm, enjoyed each other, expecting to see you, but you never came.”

Her face and tone made it a bald accusation of desertion. They had been young, so very young. Seth opened his mouth and closed it again.

“All right, then why. Why did you disappear without a word, and why did you reappear?” She put her spoon down and glared.

“Why not ask your brother?” he retorted.

“Samuel? What does he have to do with it?”

“You really don’t know?”

Suspicion flooded her expression. “Tell me,” she whispered.

He sank against the back of his chair. “I went to Somerton Hall to ask your father’s permission to marry you.”

“You felt honor bound.” Sibby didn’t appear pleased by that notion.

“I loved you desperately,” he shouted and drew in breath to calm himself. “I wanted you so badly I went, hat in hand, like a damned fool and offered to marry a viscount’s daughter and live with her over a store.” He shook his head at the innocent he’d been.

“He threw you out, and you ran. I’d have run with you if you had asked.” More accusation laced with hurt echoed in the words.

“Oh no. Your father was shrewder than that. He knew you were young and obstinate enough to try it. He beat me with a horse whip and turned me over to Samuel.”

“Samuel? My brother always resented you. You were smarter than he for one thing. Did he beat you as well?”

Seth grunted. “Samuel and the stable master were none too gentle when they hogtied me, bound me over a horse, and took me to Great Yarmouth. They gave me to a press gang.”

Sibby blinked, and her chin quivered. “Press gang? Forced into the navy?” She put her serviette on the table and swallowed. “No one told me.”