October 17, 2021 by judeknight

Spotlight on Defiant Daughter

The Ashmead Heirs

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.

One sleepy village

One scandalous will

Four tormented heirs

The Defiant Daughter — Buy now! Only 99c until release on 21st October

Madelyn assumed marriage as an old man’s ornament would be better than life with her abusive parents. She was wrong.

Now the widowed Duchess of Glenmoor, she wrestles with ugly memories and cultivates a simple life. She is content. At least, she was until her half-brother returned to Ashmead bringing a friend with knowing eyes and coal black hair to capture her thoughts.

Colonel Brynn Morgan’s days as an engineer in his father’s coal mines in Wales are long behind him. With peace come at last and Napoleon gone, he makes a life for himself analyzing the reports about military and naval facilities worldwide for a shadowy government department. What income he has is committed elsewhere. He has nothing to offer a wife, much less a dowager duchess.

More lies between the duchess and the man she wants than money and class. They have personal demons to slay.

PREORDER LINK: https://bit.ly/TheDefiantDaughter

Giveaway

To celebrate the launch, Caroline will give a copy of any of her books to one randomly selected person who comments. They can choose from the books found here:

Bookshelf

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.

Visit Caroline’s Website and Blog Meet Caroline on Facebook Follow Caroline on Twitter Email Caroline directly Subscribe to Caroline’s newsletter Amazon Author

Good Reads Bluestocking Belles BookBub

October 21, 2019 by judeknight

Tea with Harry

London

1919

Harry leaned his head into the wind. London’s weather proved as appalling as his grandfather remembered. He had three hours before the train left again, and he had been too restless to sit in the station. He left his friend Mac on a bench sipping a mug of hot black coffee while he wandered the streets his ancestors once walked.

He found himself drawn to an elegant square in Mayfair, and a grand old mansion. He couldn’t explain what drew him; it was just a feeling really. He stood for a long while staring up and the magnificent old place, while traffic zoomed by behind him, wondering if it could possibly be a private residence. Many of the grand houses had been turned into hospitals or schools. Some even housed museums. He gave into impulse and knocked on the door.

A man in the formal clothing of an earlier time greeted him. How odd, he thought. He soon found it even odder. “Welcome, Lieutenant Wheatly. Her Grace is waiting for you,” the strange man said.

“Her Grace?” Harry parroted.

“Yes. If you would follow me,” the man said. What else could Harry do? He followed.

The man led him to an elegant sitting room where a tiny woman with silvery hair and sparking blue eyes greeted him and invited him to sit. A wave of her hand brought a liveried footman with a cart containing tea and cakes. Conversation seemed unnecessary while they served Harry. What are these people? Reenactors?

“Pardon me, er, Your Grace, but what era are you meant to represent?”

“Era Harry? You are visiting me in 1819, but I’m getting ahead of myself,” the woman said.

Harry clamped his jaw shut. 1819? She must be mad.

“Let me explain. I am the Duchess of Haverford. I’ve known your family for generations. Why, your great grandfather visited me earlier this month. Of course he is just a gangly adolescent at the moment, and having rather a difficult time of it at Harrow.”

“My great grandfather? Randolph Wheatly?” He had been the last of Harry’s line to live in London, the first to migrate to Canada. Randolph Wheatly died in 1893 when Harry was a toddler.

The duchess beamed at him as if he were a particularly bright school boy.

“The very one! You see, I know your family well, and so when I sensed your distress I had to reach out to you. It must be a very great distress indeed to come to me across… a century is it?” She gazed at him expectantly.

“A century. Surely you know it is 1919 and this…” he gestured around him with one hand, his expression troubled. “Confusing. What it is is confusing.”

The duchess chuckled. “I imagine it is. Let’s just say I knew you needed sympathy and a cup of tea and leave it at that. Don’t try to understand the rest.”

Harry felt his shoulders relax. It had been a long while since he had enjoyed such elegance. The chair and the tea were a far cry from army fare, and finer and more comfortable than even Rosemarie’s cottage—though he’d trade them in a heartbeat to be back with her.

“Suppose you tell me why you are in London and what troubles you,” the old woman said.

“I’m not staying here. I’m merely between trains,” he began. When she looked confused about “trains,” he wondered if he ought to explain the concept but decided not to. “I’m on my way to France to search for Rosemarie. We became separated in the last year of the war.”

“So much grief in time of war,” she murmured sympathetically. “I’m distraught to hear we’re at war with France again a hundred years from now. Does it never end?”

“Actually France was our ally. We fought the Germans for almost five years.”

“Which Germans?” she asked looking as puzzled as Harry felt. He recalled that the various German states unified late in the 1800s, long after this woman’s time.

He stared at her. Can this all be real? Surely not. “All of them, Your Grace,” he muttered.

She said something under her breath about never trusting Prussians, but she smiled up at him immediately. “Tell me about this Rosemarie. Why are you searching for her?”

“I need to reserve space on a repatriation ship to bring her to Canada. For that I need a marriage certificate. But I can’t marry her if I can’t find her. I’ve been given leave and I’m on my way back to Amiens to search for her and Marcel.”

“And who is Marcel?”

“Her son. Soon to be mine, I hope,” he replied.

“How wonderful! You are a fine young man, Harry Wheatly. Your great grandfather will be proud of you.”

“Now you best hurry. You won’t want to miss that… train, did you call it?”

He surged to his feet. “Yes train, and I most certainly don’t want to miss it. Thank you for the tea, Your Grace. It has been entertaining.”

“I’m glad to give you a respite. Now go find your Rosemarie, and God go with you.”

Moments later he stepped out of the mansion onto a busy street and rushed away dodging cars and rain puddles in the direction of St. Pancras Station.

Harry is the hero of Christmas Hope, a wartime story in four parts, each one ending on Christmas, 1916-19.

When the Great War is over, will their love be enough?

A wartime romance in four parts, each ending on Christmas, 1916-1919.

After two years at the mercy of the Canadian Expeditionary force and the German war machine, Harry ran out of metaphors for death, synonyms for brown, and images of darkness. When he encounters color among the floating islands of Amiens and life in the form a widow and her little son, hope ensnares him. Through three more long years of war and its aftermath, the hope she brings keeps Harry alive.

Rosemarie Legrand’s husband left her a tiny son, no money, and a savaged reputation when he died. She struggles to simply feed the boy and has little to offer a lonely soldier, but Harry’s devotion lifts her up. The war demands all her strength and resilience, will the hope of peace and the promise of Harry’s love keep her going?

Buy links:
Barnes & Noble * Kobo * Apple

Amazon: US * UK * CA * AU * IN

See yesterday’s post for an excerpt, a biography of the author, and a link to a blog tour and giveaway.

October 20, 2019 by judeknight

Sunday Spotlight on Christmas Hope

A compelling story of love in impossible circumstances

I loved this book.

Caroline Warfield invariably engages our hearts, and Christmas Hope is no exception. Harry has the heart of a poet; a heart that is sickened by life with the Canadian Forces in the trenches of WWI. Rosemarie is a widow struggling to feed herself and her son, Marcel, while withering under the contempt of small-minded locals. Harry’s hunt for his lost bible brings them together. For Harry, Rosemarie and Marcel come to represent all that is good and peaceful. For Rosemarie, Harry is a light in the darkness.

The book follows them through four years, each ending in a Christmas, as their relationship deepens in brief encounters stolen out of the ruinous war. Even the end of the war does not bring peace for this small would-be family — Rosemarie has been evacuated out of the path of the battles, and she and Harry have lost touch with one another.

Part 4 of the book is set in 1919, beginning as Harry faces repatriation from Wales to Canada, his father’s well-meant interference in his future, and the influenza that devastated the post-war world. Rosemarie leaves her son with his uncle to search for her beloved. Nothing is easy.

I enjoy Warfield’s decent men and courageous women. Harry might just be one of my favourites. I particularly cherished his scenes with Marcel. As for Rosemarie, watching her overcome obstacle after obstacle, including her own self doubt, broke my heart — but I trusted Warfield to mend it again, and she did. Right at the eleventh hour, which is the best time, in a novel.

I strongly recommend Christmas Hope.

Christmas Hope

When the Great War is over, will their love be enough?

A wartime romance in four parts, each ending on Christmas, 1916-1919.

Buy links:
Barnes & Noble * Kobo * Apple

Amazon: US * UK * CA * AU * IN

Excerpt

Harry woke with a stab of fear. He reared up, groping for his rifle, afraid he had fallen asleep on duty.

He sank back into the bed as awareness flooded in. No enemy lurked. He reposed in soft covers in an unfamiliar room, his clothes had gone missing, and he wasn’t alone. A small boy watched him steadily from the doorway. Memory flooded back—fleeing from Lens, frantic to get to Rosemarie. He hadn’t deserted; he’d gotten leave or rather had it thrust on him with orders from Captain Mitchell to come back whole. He remembered a frantic journey, reaching her cottage, falling against the door, and not much else.

“You are dirty,” the boy said, approaching the bed. Harry ran a hand across the stubble on his face. It came away filthy.

“Apparently so. And you are tall, much too tall to be Marcel.”

The boy stiffened in offense. “I am Marcel. I am three.” He held up three fingers.

Before Harry could think what to say next the boy ran to the stairs shouting, “Maman, ‘arry is awake!”

His soldier’s instinct took stock of his surroundings. The room spread out under peaked roof beams. He doubted he could stand upright anywhere but the center of the room; it had only one way out, the direction Marcel had taken. He had slept in an actual bed. Rosemarie’s bed, it has to be. Did we share it? He thought not. If we had, I would certainly remember.

The blankets he lay in were worn and mended, but warm enough and clean—at least they had been until he lay in them. Since whoever took his clothing left his drawers and nothing else, he thought it best to stay nested where he lay. A tiny window at the peak of the roof let in a beam of light. It appeared to be slanted low in the sky. Does that window face east or west? Did I awake at dawn or sleep round the clock?

He could hear the boy talking with his mother and the sounds of pots and pans. Sharp awareness told him one more thing. Somewhere in this haven, fresh bread baked, sweet dough, he thought. His mouth began to water. With that, came the realization of gnawing hunger.

He debated what to do, undressed and feeble as he was. He envisioned Rosemarie fussing over her baking, and an even greater hunger overcame him, one he might do well to tame before he got out from the covers.

Her appearance in the doorway, his own vision of heaven itself, carrying a basin of steaming water, saved him the decision.

She put it on the little three-drawer chest against the opposite wall, along with the towel and rag she had over her arm.

“You’ll want to wash up,” she said. “I’m sorry we have no bathing tub. I found Raoul’s robe in storage,” she added, pointing to a purple robe draped over a trunk. The trunk, Marcel’s pallet at the foot of the bed, and a chest of drawers furnished the tiny room. She looked oddly shy, as if having him tucked in her bed with her late husband’s things nearby made her awkward.

Raoul. He had forgotten the husband, long dead now. The acid of pointless jealousy ate at him, and he could think of nothing to say. He sat up, letting the blanket fall to his lap, and her eyes dropped to the floor, but not before he caught the heat when she spied his naked chest. The jealousy fell away.

For more about the book and a giveaway, go to Silver Dagger Tours. The stops are near the foot of their tour post, and the Rafflecopter is under that.