Hold Me Fast
She has paid for her fame with her heart and her dreams. What must she pay for peace and love?
Childhood sweethearts Tamsyn Roskilly and Jowan Trethewey are ripped apart when her mother and his father conspire to sell Tamsyn to a music-loving earl. He promises to make her a famous singer, and to keep her from Jowan.
Hold Me Fast starts seven years later, when Tamsyn has become Tammie Lind, a sensational singing success. Jowan, now baronet in his father’s place, hears she has returned to England after a lengthy and successful tour of Europe and beyond. He travels to London to speak to her, but the earl continues to stand in their way.
However, Jowan discovers that Tamsyn has become addicted to drugs and alcohol, supplied by the earl who has seduced, debased, and abused her. Their childhood romance may be over, but now he owes her a rescue.
As he and his friends nurse her through withdrawal and help her make a new life in their home village, Jowan and Tamsyn fall in love all over again. But Tamsyn does not believe she is worthy of love, or that Jowan can truly overlook her past. And the wicked earl is determined to take her back.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DBXN9GYJ/
https://books2read.com/u/3GLkPQ
Published 19th September
(Hold Me Fast is a reinterpretation of the border stories about the man stolen by the queen of the Fae to be her lover and her musician (in some versions) or her knight (in others). Brave Janet wins him by holding on to him as the queen changes him into one monstrous shape after another, until he returns to her own, the magic vanquished.)
An excerpt from Hold Me Fast
Tamsyn was absent during the auction but appeared briefly at the start of the supper. Jowan recognized the man with her as the Earl of Coombe, but he had changed over the past seven years. Then, he had been a gentleman in his prime, elegant, and sophisticated but also handsome and charming. To the sixteen-year-old Jowan, he had represented the fashionable world—that circle of superior beings who sometimes passed through their village, pausing only long enough to look down their noses at the locals. Jowan had hated that he found the man impressive and somewhat intimidating.
From a distance, he looked much the same, but as Jowan worked his way through the crowd to approach, he realized how much the man had aged in the last seven years. The firm skin beneath his eyes had become bags and his neck had relaxed into jowls, his waist had expanded, and his hair had receded from his forehead.
He was moving from group to group, introducing Tamsyn and stopping to chat for a few minutes. Jowan placed himself in a group with Lord Andrew and several others, waiting for the man to reach them, but Coombe turned the other way and was soon lost in the crowd.
No matter. Jowan would follow as soon as he had finished the conversation he was having with Snowden about enquiry agents. But when he did, he found that Coombe was on his own.
Jowan, having concluded that Tamsyn was nowhere in the ballroom, asked Lord Andrew to introduce him to Coombe.
“Not a nice man,” Lord Andrew warned him. “Aunt Eleanor decided to tolerate him for the sake of Miss Lind’s singing, but he would not normally be invited to any of her entertainments.”
“We met some years ago,” Jowan explained. “Miss Lind was a childhood friend. I had hoped to speak to her.”
Lord Andrew shrugged. “As long as you’re warned,” he said.
Coombe was holding forth to a group of men about his European tour. When Lord Andrew and Jowan approached, his eyes darted sideways, as if he was about to work another disappearance. He must have thought better of it, for he greeted Lord Andrew, saying, “Winderfield. I trust your belle-mere is happy with the performances this evening.”
“I believe Her Grace is well satisfied,” Lord Andrew replied. “Coombe, I wish to make known to you Sir Jowan Trethewey from Cornwall.”
“Lord Coombe and I met long ago,” Jowan said, with the minimum of polite bows. “You may remember your trip to Cornwall, my lord, since you collected such a treasure there.”
“You were no more than a gormless boy, Trethewey,” Coombe replied. Up close, the signs of dissipation were even more obvious, from the threading of broken veins on his face and discolouring his eyes.
Obvious, too, was the hostility in those eyes.
Jowan ignored it. “Yes, and Miss Lind was no more than an innocent girl. I hoped to pay my respects to my old friend.”
“Miss Lind was tired, and an associate has taken her home,” said Coombe. “However, you are wasting your time, Trethewey. I can assure you that Miss Lind has no interest in revisiting her girlhood.” His eyes narrowed and he shifted into a threatening stance, setting his shoulders, and leaning forward. “Leave her alone. That is my last word on the subject.”
He turned his body to shut Jowan out, saying to Lord Andrew, “I do not wish to be rude, Winderfield, but I consider it my duty, as Miss Lind’s protector and patron, to keep such annoyances from her. She has moved far beyond past acquaintances such as impoverished baronets from the remote corners of nowhere.”
Jowan didn’t bother to hide his grin at the lame attempt at an insult, and Lord Andrew, seeing his expression, rolled his eyes. “Lord Coombe, I am surprised to hear you insulting my friends under my father’s roof,” he said.
“Perhaps you might give Miss Lind my compliments on her performance,” Jowan said to Coombe’s back. “Drew, thank you for the introduction.”
Bran was waiting within sight, and Lord Andrew walked with Jowan to join him. “I’m sorry that didn’t work out as you hoped,” he said. “Miss Lind is Cornish, is she? I wonder what she really thinks about meeting you again.”
“You think Coombe was lying?” Jowan asked.
“I think he lies as easily as he breathes,” said Lord Andrew. His eyes were alive with questions, but he had no chance to ask them before another of Her Grace’s guest stopped to talk to him about the evening’s cause. “Duty calls,” said Lord Andrew, and left Jowan and Bran to talk.
Jowan told Bran what had happened. “That last song was for me,” he said. “It’s one her Granny used to sing to us both.” But then why, having recognized him and sung to him, did she run off before they could meet?
“She can’t have known you were going to be here,” Bran argued.
That was true, and Jowan had followed Tamsyn and the village choir to enough festivals and competitions to know the next question to ask. “Are the musicians still here?”
They were, having a supper of their own in a little room off the ballroom, and someone soon pointed them to the conductor. “Miss Lind’s last encore,” Jowan asked him, after he had introduced himself. “Was that unplanned, as far as you know?”
“It was, as a matter of fact,” said the conductor. “We had the accompaniment for ‘Say, Can You Deny Me’, but at the last minute, she told me she was going to sing something else. I didn’t know the tune. It was Welsh, was it? Sounded a bit like Welsh.”
“Not Welsh,” said the man who had sung the duet with Tamsyn. “Pretty, though.”
“Very pretty,” Jowan agreed. He thanked them for their music and left the conductor with a guinea to share with the others.
“That last one was for you,” Bran conceded.