Kidnapped to Freedom

Jude Knight

Published by Titchfield Press

Copyright 2016 Judith Anne Knighton writing as Jude Knight

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, except for including brief quotations in a review.

Cover image: A frigate off the coast near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Michael Zeno Deimer

ISBN: 978-1511797948

Dedication

To my readers, and especially to the winners of made-to-order stories who gave me the specifications for this and other short stories.

Table of Contents

1      1

2      5

3      8

4      11

5      16

6      21

Bluestocking Belles      25

Published books      27

Coming in 2016      32

Connect with Jude Knight      36

Kidnapped to Freedom

Stolen from her Georgian plantation just ahead of being sold down the river, Phoebe faces the high seas to be reunited with her brother and sister, and the master’s son she once loved. Why then, are her dreams filled with the handsome, masked pirate who captains her rescue ship?

1

P

hoebe hurried from shadow to shadow behind the row of cabins. The full moon had risen. She was late. Why did Massa Paddy have to send for her tonight, of all nights! He was drunk, which was no surprise, for he’d been drunk since the Master died. The drink, though, had left him limp, for which he blamed her, until the punishment he administered excited him enough to finish.

Then he’d collapsed on top of her, and it had taken time to edge out from beneath his weight.

Beneath the constant susurration of the cicadas, she could hear murmurs of conversation inside the cabins. He wouldn’t look for her when he woke; he would assume she’d gone back to the cabin she shared with the children.

Had he made her miss her chance? Their chance—for she wouldn’t go without the children.

Phoebe felt some of the tension leave her when she saw them waiting for her behind their cabin. Venus balanced little Patricia on her hip, and Joe cradled Baby. Jake ran to meet her, taking her hand for the few steps back to her family.

Now, if only whoever it was had waited. If only it were true and not a trap. Phoebe hoisted one of the bundles she and Venus had hidden here earlier this morning, before the day’s exertions had begun.

“Jake, take this bundle, and Venus, give me Pat-a-cake, and take the rest of our things.” The three-year-old didn’t stir during the transfer, just settled her head into the curve of Phoebe’s neck. She slept like a rock, that girl, just like Massa Paddy, who’d sired her.

She led her little flock down the path into the woods. She was putting a lot of trust in the letter the peddler had slipped to her three weeks ago. But what choice did she have? Miz Nettie was going to sell them to the slave trader—Phoebe and all the five children left to her.

When she’d first made the threat, Phoebe had hoped it was just the sorrow speaking. Miz Nettie had been wild with grief since her husband, Mist’ Chan, fell from his horse and died, followed in short order by Ol’ Massa Blake, his father, who took apoplexy when her husband turned up dead.

At least, Miz Nettie had been wild since the will was read.

But she meant her threat. Massa Paddy said the trader was coming this way next week. He was sorry, he said, because he was fond of Phoebe, but her sewing skills meant she would fetch a high price and find a good place, so she wasn’t to worry.

Not to worry? Not to worry about her children being taken from her and sold away, probably down the river? Venus, at nearly twelve, was old enough and pretty enough to catch a master’s eye, and Joe already did a man’s job in the fields, but at least here, Massa Paddy had a reason to treat him fair, as long as she accommodated his needs.

Please, God, let the letter be true, please, God. It had been her constant prayer these last weeks. Please, God, it was from her brother, as it seemed to be. It would read like nonsense to anyone else opening it, but she knew.

“To the gentle Lady of the Lake. Sir Morien bids you, on the night of the first full moon after the natal day of the loathsome Sir Kay, to go to the place where the Parfait Knight shared his tales of chivalry, and from thence, to seek the Holy Grail.”

She read, but not well. She couldn’t ask for help, but she managed to puzzle most of it out. The names she’d seen before, long ago when she learned to read. What was ‘natal day’? She fretted over that one for a week, until she overheard a visiting preacher comment how sad it was that the Master had died on his natal day.

Sir Morien—the name Mist’ Phineas had given her brother, Cudjo, in the long sagas they had played out at his direction in these very woods. Mist’ Finn was the Parfait Knight, of course, and they readily agreed to refer to his older brother, Mist’ Chauncey, as Sir Kay. The Holy Grail, to them all, was freedom.

This was her third note in the twelve years since Mist’ Finn had run away, taking her younger sister and brother with him. The first, some eighteen months after they had left, was just five words. ‘We found Avalon. All safe.’ The second, five years ago, had offered escape ‘at the abode of the Lady of the Lake.’ The little harbour where Mist’ Finn had kept his sailboat might as well have been on the moon, for all the chance she had of reaching it that particular week.

But this time, the meeting point was right here on the plantation.

They were heading for the Woods House, behind which, in stolen moments, Mist’ Finn had taught the three of them to read, using the books about the Arthurian legends he so loved.

Please, God, she was not too late. Please, God, it was not a trap.

2

V

al waited in the shadow of the trees. It must be at least thirty minutes past moonrise. She wasn’t coming. Again. Five years ago, he had waited the whole night and come back again the next. This time, if he couldn’t carry Phoebe off tonight, he’d have to give up. It had taken all his powers of persuasion to convince his crew to make one try. They weren’t privateers. The letters of marque that let them take an American ship while the United States and England were at war wouldn’t cover a land raid on a plantation. If she didn’t come now, the men wouldn’t agree to a second attempt.

There! Someone was coming. He straightened in anticipation. Yes, it was her—twelve years older and a mature women, rather than the girl he remem-bered—but even in the moonlight, he couldn’t mistake her.

She wasn’t alone. He couldn’t take a herd of children with him! What was she thinking?

He stepped out from the sheltering trees. The mask would hide his face, and his voice had never been the same since the last time he had been close enough to Phoebe to speak, when Chan tried to strangle him for the presumption.

“Are you Phoebe?” He was twelve years older, too, and a man changed more from seventeen to twenty-nine than a woman did, but he couldn’t risk being seen and recognised by anyone on the plantation.

She nodded. He noted that she gathered the children protectively behind her, but the older boy, his face grimly intent, evaded the sweep of her arm and stepped in front. Brave little bantam rooster.

“I was commissioned to take one woman to her brother in Canada, not a passel of brats,” he said.

“Can’t leave without ma babies, Sir.” Her voice was barely a whisper, but determined.

Her children? All of them? His brother’s children, then, possibly. Probably. He surveyed them quickly. Yes, the little bantam had the Blake look, and the girl rocking the baby could be a darker version of the childhood portrait of his mother that hung in the parlour.

The men wouldn’t like it, but he was taking them all, and be damned.

He met the eyes of each in turn as he said, “You must be quiet. Not a sound. Do everything I say, and I will take you to your uncle in Canada.”

“Perry, give the signal.” He gave the command over his shoulder, not waiting to see if it was obeyed. Perry could be trusted to carry out the raid with maximum noise and minimum damage. He didn’t want anyone actually killed, but he did hope many slaves would take the chance to escape in the confusion, masking the disappearance of one maid and her children.

He led the way down to the creek, where Jimson stood ready to row them back out to the coast and the waiting ship.

3

P

hoebe startled awake at the knock on the door. Three of the children still slept on the bed in the small, but luxurious, room. No. Mist’ Finn had called it a cabin. Venus and Jake were awake, but unmoving, in the tangle of little bodies, watching her with anxious eyes. She smiled to reassure them and wished she had someone to reassure her.

Another knock.

When she opened it, the little man who had shown them to this cabin nodded at her. “The cap’n wants to see ye, Ma’am.”

He’d called her ‘Ma’am’ last night, too. Unaccountably, being addressed so courteously made her even more nervous, as if an overseer hid just out of sight, waiting to punish her for aping a lady.

“Do I come with you?” she asked.

“He’ll come to ye, Ma’am. In a few minutes, like. To have breakfast with ye and the nippers. He thought ye might want to have a wash first.” The man handed her the jug he was holding, filled with steaming hot water, and crossed the cabin to place the towels draped on his arm across the back of a chair.

He turned in time to save the jug as the ship lurched, and she lost her balance.

“Ye’ll get yer sea legs soon, Ma’am,” he said, not unkindly, and put the jug into a hole obviously made for it, next to a basin in a hole of its own.

She and the children were washed and tidied before another knock heralded the man from last night. He was still masked, his eyes glittering at her, his chin and mouth showing, but the rest of his face covered in black cloth.

The little man scurried in behind him, carrying a laden tray that smelled of bacon.

Venus, who had been looking a little ill, gave a piteous moan. Before Phoebe could react, the masked man, moving with blinding speed, had grabbed the jug, now emptied of wash water, and placed it under Venus’ chin. He was just in time, and Jake was the next to say, “Phoebe, I don’t feel too good.”

Phoebe hurried to feel his forehead. What could be wrong with them? They were never sick!

Some of her fear must have conveyed itself to the masked man, because he said, calmly, “Seasickness, Miss Blake. They will recover once they are used to the motion of the boat.

“Jenkins, remove the bacon, will you? Miss Blake and I will have breakfast in the wardroom with whichever of the children is well enough to join us.”

He was holding the jug with one hand and calmly supporting the vomiting girl with the other. “Oh, and Jenkins, bring some buckets, please? I rather think this young lady may have imitators.”

4

T

his was not how Val had imagined their reunion; him with a bucket under the chin of one of the children Phoebe had borne his brother, while she tended to another child who, by the look of him, had a different father. He shuddered to think what her life had been like.

If he’d stayed, could he have protected her? He had asked himself the question many times. At seventeen, he’d been half-inclined to blame Phoebe for being selected by his brother. His jealousy had made it easier for him to agree to run with the others after Chan had caught them together and then refused to let Phoebe out of his sight.

The more Val mixed with the freedmen of colour in the Maritime States, the more he realised how arrogant and stupid he had been. And after he’d rescued Perry from some privateers and heard his anguish at some of the things his sister had been through, he’d felt even worse. He and Perry made a raid on the Georgia plantation that held Perry’s sister and won her free, and Val had been planning to do the same for Phoebe ever since.

Phoebe had never encouraged Chan. And he’d known that then.

Reassured that seasickness was natural, and the children weren’t dying, Phoebe was saying something: apologising for her children being sick, promising to clean up after them, trying to take the jug so she could tend to both children at once. Did she think he would beat her because the ship’s lurching disturbed their stomachs? Yes, in her experience, that was probably normal behaviour for a white man.

“No need to apologise, Ma’am,” he said, as gently as he could. “It takes most people a while to catch their sea legs. Some experienced sailors are sick for the first days of every trip.”

Jenkins brought more water and buckets. “They’ll be better on deck, Cap’n,” he suggested. “I could set a hammock for ’em, out o’ the way, like?”

Val had hoped to keep Phoebe from the crew’s sight. She was lovely, and they were men. But, he reminded himself, they were men he trusted, for the most part.

“See it done, Jenkins. Ma’am, once the children are settled, you and I need to have a talk.”

The oldest boy, the smaller girl, and the baby joined them for breakfast, while Jenkins sat with the middle boy and the older girl. Both the afflicted looked better for being out in the fresh air, though it was too early to challenge their stomachs with food.

Phoebe looked uncertainly at the table.

“Serve the children,” Val suggested, “then you and I will serve ourselves. Shall we try them on porridge? It is a bit like grits, but made from oats.”

The children found porridge very much to their liking. The oldest boy, who Phoebe called Joe, spooned porridge into the baby, and the littlest girl fed herself.

Val filled a plate for Phoebe, who looked surprised when he gave it to her.

“Where I come from, gentlemen serve ladies,” he told her.

“I ain’t… I am not a lady. I am just a seamstress. A slave and a seamstress.”

“Not a slave now. Not anymore,” Val said. “And not just a seamstress, either. You are the older sister of Joseph and Benita Copeland, proprietors of one of the finest hotels in St John’s, Toronto, a free woman, and a lady of considerable wealth in your own right, Miss Blake.”

Phoebe shook her head, a sharp negation. “Not ‘Blake.’”

She clapped her hand over her mouth, as if to catch the words, then dropped it again and straightened her back. “You say I am free and wealthy. Then I will not bear that man’s name. Let his widow keep it.”

Val admired her clear diction. She had always had a facility with languages and could speak English as good as his, but he was fascinated by how quickly she dropped the slave patois. It took a few moments for him to process what she’d actually said. “Widow? Chauncey Blake is dead?”

“Yes. You knew him?”

She was quick. Now Val should tell her who he was. But the same impulse that led him to retain the mask ruled him still. “I did,” he said, “to my sorrow.”

Had their father not intervened, Chan would probably have killed Val twelve years ago. Twenty-four years to seventeen is not a fair match. Val’s last memory of his brother was of his face twisted in anger and hatred, as he struggled against the restraining arms of the overseers to come back and beat Val some more.

There had been no word of Chan’s death from Val’s friends in Charleston. Mind you, since they found themselves on opposite sides in the war, the correspondence had been sporadic, at best.

“When did he die?”

“Three weeks ago. He was thrown by his horse and broke his neck.”

“There’ll not be many who will grieve, I imagine,” Val said. “His wife, his father. Maybe some of his friends.”

“Miz Blake, she be happy to be a widow, I think, except Ol’ Massa Blake lived just a week longer than his son, so she loses everything but her widow’s portion. She’s mad enough to spit. She’ll be still madder when she finds us gone. She thought to get a good price for us from the traders.”

It was a lot to take in. His brother dead. His father dead. His sister-in-law disinherited, and planning to sell Phoebe—and who else?

“Who inherits?” Val asked. Chan and Nettie had no children, he knew, but his father had a low opinion of most of the Blake cousins.

“Phineas Blake,” Phoebe said. “Mist’ Chan’s younger brother. He’s been gone a long time, but Ol’ Massa Blake, he never changed his will.”

5

O

ver the next few days, Phoebe found herself telling the captain a little about her life. He sought her out when she was on deck, insisted that she and the older children take their meals with him and his officers, invited her to walk with him in the evening.

At her request, he called her Mrs Morien and assured her that her brother and sister would be waiting to welcome her home. Beneda—she called herself Benita now—was a widow with a child, “though not likely to remain single for long, Joseph says. A number of men have expressed an interest.”

Joseph was the name Cudjo now used. He was, Captain Val said, enjoying the life of a highly eligible bachelor too much to settle down, much to the despair of the local ladies and the exasperation of his sister.

To Phoebe, the stories seemed like the legends Mist’ Finn had told her long ago—she could not comprehend the life her sister and brother led. Cautiously at first, and then greedily when he laughed and complied, she asked for more and more details, more and more tales about this strange, new life to which Captain Val would deliver her.

Venus and Jake were soon over their illness. Phoebe had little to do, apart from keeping the younger three entertained and out from under the feet of the crew, helped by the two older children. The trip was a holiday such as they had never known. All but the youngest were used to working until they dropped. For an overseer, Paddy O’Keefe had been indulgent to the children of his reluctant mistress, even giving his daughter his name. But they had to work as hard as any of the others, and he would not have lifted a finger to save even his own get from the traders.

Not like Finn. Finn had taken a beating for her, had stolen her brother and sister away to save them when Ol’ Massa Blake had decided to sell them. Joe was Mast’ Chan’s get, and Patsy and Baby were O’Keefe’s. Jake and his sister, dear, lost Mina, were bred on her by another slave, at Ol’ Massa Blake’s command. Quaco, or Jacob, as the white owners called him, had been a kind and gentle man, and she’d been fond of him. But Finn was the one she dreamt of, the one she thought of when she woke in the night.

She hoped that Venus was Finn’s daughter, made in that one week they’d had before Mast’ Chan had found them together. She’d taken a beating for that, and so had Finn. But Mast’ Chan couldn’t take the memories from her.

Finn, his head full of knights and chivalry, hadn’t wanted to bed her. But Mast’ Chan had already announced his intention to have her when he got back from a trip to Charleston, and she wanted her first time to be with someone who would be kind. That’s what she’d told him: someone who would be kind. She didn’t tell him that she loved him. She knew better than that.

And he was kind, too, though the first time had been awkward and clumsy. Two virgins together, they had to work out how things fitted. She’d giggled, she remembered, and he chuckled, too, but the smile froze on his face as he entered her, and the discomfort he caused was nothing compared to the dawning wonder on his face.

She was thinking about Finn one evening, about a week into their journey, taking out her memories, one by one, to examine them and gloat over them and tuck them safely away again. The older children had wandered off to the kitchen, where the cook always welcomed them, avowing his intention to put some beef on their bones before the ship arrived in Halifax. The little children were settled in the cabin—the captain’s cabin, she realised now. Captain Val was sharing with the first mate, a man of colour he called Perry, who he treated as an equal and a friend.

She was thinking of Finn, not the captain. Not of how he helped her up a ladder earlier in the day, and his hand had lingered for a moment on her hip; not of the way his eyes followed her whenever she was on deck. If she were honest with herself, she knew he watched her, because her eyes sought his every time she came on deck. Why did memories of Finn’s boyish face turn, unaccountably, into Captain Val’s masked face, with the firm, square angles of his cheek and chin, and the amused quirk that seemed to always linger in one corner of his mouth?

The first mate’s roar startled her, and she whipped around, cringing and protecting her head with her arm. But his anger was for a sailor who had abandoned a rope without properly coiling it, and he passed Phoebe without a glance to explain to the sailor, in precise, incisive terms, what could happen if the rope tangled when it was needed, and how long the sailor would spend mending sails in penance, so he would never forget again.

Phoebe, who had expected a careless blow, if not an outright beating, felt something uncurl inside her, a soft, tentative tendril of… what? Hope? Comfort? A sense of safety?

Too early for the last. The captain had warned her that American privateers or the American navy might stop the ship at any time until they made port in Canada. But here, yes, here on this ship, she felt safe.

The sailor made excuses and apologies as he recoiled the rope correctly.

“I were that tired, Mister Peregrine, and it were near the end of my deck time, and then Mickey saw fins off the bow, and I went to see. I meant to come back, Mister Peregrine, honest. It won’t happen again, Sir, that it won’t.”

Peregrine? That was the name of one of the black knights in Finn’s Arthurian Tales—Sir Morien, Sir Peregrine. Others, too. What a fitting name for a man of colour.

She said that to the mate as he passed on the way back to his watching post.

“Peregrine was the name of one of the knights from Africa in the stories of King Arthur.”

“Yes,” the mate replied, “that’s what Val said when he gave it to me. He fair loves those stories, Mrs Morien.”

A polite nod was the only response she could manage. Her mind was racing. Val. Short for Percival? Percival was the perfect knight, the Parfait Knight of the tales, the role Finn had sought with all the poetry in his soul.

6

A

s Phoebe crossed back to the rail, adding up all the little clues she’d noticed this past week without being aware of them, Val came from below and made a straight line for her.

“Good evening, Mrs Morien.” The slight husk in his voice had been turning her knees to water all week. Quickly, before her fears choked the words in her throat, she said, “Finn, when are you going to take off the mask?”

The captain went completely still. Then, slowly, he raised his hands to the back of his head, fumbled with the strings of the mask, and let it fall into one hand.

A man changes a great deal between seventeen and twenty-nine. She knew him, though. She should have known him a week ago, by his eyes alone. She clamped firmly down on the hurt, that he’d felt the need to hide from her. He owed her nothing. She owed him everything. He had saved her brother and sister. He was in the process of saving her and her children. He clearly wanted not to acknowledge her, and he had every right.

“You do not need to wear the mask,” she told him. “I understand. I have no claim on you, and I will not be a nuisance.” She made to pass him, but he put out a hand to stop her.

“No, Mrs Moriel… Phoebe. No, that isn’t it at all. I was… The Blakes have done so much wrong to you, to your family. You must hate us all, especially me. I don’t blame you. I left you in that place. I knew what Chan was like, and I walked away. I wore the mask to make you more comfortable. No. That isn’t true. I just didn’t want to see your eyes when you rejected me. You stay here. Enjoy the fine evening for a while longer. I’ll go.”

She was so stunned that he was halfway to the hatch before she found her voice, hurrying after him with her hand out. “I don’t hate you, Finn. I don’t blame you.”

He turned, but wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I blame myself.”

“For what? For trying to protect me and being half killed for it? For saving my brother and my sister, no matter the risk to your own escape? For coming back for me?”

“I came before. The first time, I couldn’t get onto the plantation. They had men out with dogs. The second time, we sent you a message, and I waited on the beach, but you didn’t come.”

“I had the message.”

“You couldn’t get away, I imagine.”

Phoebe shook her head. Mrs Blake had miscarried a child and, in her anger, had her husband’s mistress beaten so badly Phoebe had lost the baby she was carrying. It was after that, Phoebe had been sent to Quaco.

Finn—no, Val—Val saw the shadows in her eyes.

“It is over now. You are a free woman and a wealthy one. You never again need to do anything you do not wish.” He turned to lean on the rail, looking down at the water folding back from the racing hull.

Phoebe leaned beside him, content to be silent.

After a while, Val spoke. “Phoebe, I know it’s too soon. I don’t want to press you. I won’t press you. You need time to get your family settled, to learn what it is to be free and respected and loved. I want to give you that time. But may I write to you? May I visit from time to time?”

Was he asking what she thought he was asking?

“Yes,” she answered briefly, and he turned to her with a smile that lit his whole face.

“I have never forgotten you, Phoebe.”

She smiled back, ready to tell him she had never forgotten him, but Mr Perry called him to come and see something on the horizon, outlined by the setting sun, and he left her standing at the rail, watching the water.

Val was right. It was too soon. She needed to get to know her brother and sister again. She needed to get her children started in this life as free people.

But in her heart, the tendril of hope threw off a couple of new leaves, and set down a strong root into the memories of the boy who had once been her champion.

THE END

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Bluestocking Belles

The Belles are seven very different writers united by a love of history and a history of writing about love. From sweet to steamy, from light-hearted fun to dark tortured tales full of angst, from London ballrooms to country cottages to the sultan’s seraglio, one or more of the Belle’s will have a tale to suit your tastes and mood.

The Belle’s blog, The Teatime Tattler, publishes at least twice weekly, with exclusive news, interviews, and scandals set in and around the Regency.

The Belles have committed to publishing at least one box set per year. Proceeds from some of the Belles’ joint projects go to the Malala Fund, to support education for young bluestockings around the world.

Find the Bluestocking Belles online:

www.BluestockingBelles.net/

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Malala Fund

The Bluestocking Belles have chosen the Malala Fund as the charity we support, and to which we donate communal royalties. Periodically, we take on projects intended to directly support this cause, which exemplifies our personal values and intentions: the right of girls and women to do whatever they choose with their lives.

For more information about the Malala Fund and the founder, Malala Yousafzai, winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, go to  www.Malala.org

Holly and Hopeful Hearts

When the Duchess of Haverford sends out invitations to a holiday house party and a Twelfth Night ball, those who respond know that Her Grace intends to raise money for her favourite cause and promote whatever matches she can.

Seven assorted heroes and heroines set out with their pocketbooks firmly clasped and hearts in protective custody. Or are they?

Jude has two stories in Holy and Hopeful Hearts: A Suitable Husband, and The Bluestocking and the Barbarian. They will be published as stand-alone stories in 2017.

Jude’s published books

See the excerpts page on Jude’s website for first chapters of all the following stories. http://judeknightauthor.com/excerpts/

Candle’s Christmas Chair

When Viscount Avery wants a chair for his invalid mother, he finds that the best invalid chair maker in Bath is Minerva Avery, who has been haunting his dreams for three years since she rejected his courtship. He has until she finishes the chair for his mother to convince her to change her mind. If he says it with flowers, will she understand?

Min is a carriage-maker’s daughter, educated beyond her station. Once, she dreamed of stepping into the fairy tale world of the ton, only to have her dreams crushed when she found the handsome guardsman was courting her for her fortune. Now the man she cannot forget is back, handsomer and more charming than ever, and he seems determined to raise those false hopes all over again. But she only has to hold out until she finishes the chair he has commissioned.

Farewell to Kindness: Book 1 of The Golden Redepennings

Hidden from the earl who hunts them, Anne and her sisters have been accepted into the heart of a tiny rural village. Until another earl comes visiting.

Rede lives to avenge the deaths of his wife and children. After three long years of searching, he is closing in on the ruthless villains who gave the orders, and he does not hope to survive the final encounter. Until he meets Anne.

As their inconvenient attraction grows, a series of near fatal attacks draws them together and drives them apart. When their desperate enemies combine forces, Anne and Rede must trust one another to survive.

A Baron for Becky

Becky is the envy of the courtesans of the demi-monde - the indulged mistress of the wealthy and charismatic Marquis of Aldridge. But she dreams of a normal life; one in which her daughter can have a future that does not depend on beauty, sex, and the whims of a man.

Finding herself with child, she hesitates to tell Aldridge. Will he cast her off, send her away, or keep her and condemn another child to this uncertain shadow world?

The devil-may-care face Hugh shows to the world hides a desperate sorrow; a sorrow he tries to drown with drink and riotous living. His years at war haunt him, but even more, he doesn't want to think about the illness that robbed him of the ability to father a son. When he dies, his barony will die with him. His title will fall into abeyance, and his estate will be scooped up by the Crown.

When Aldridge surprises them both with a daring proposition, they do not expect love to be part of the bargain.

Hand-Turned Tales

Dip in, and try my writing for free: four very different tales with a variety of heroes, heroines, villains, and settings.

In The Raven’s Lady, Felix returns home in disguise after 13 years. He plans to catch a smuggler then take up his viscountcy. He does not expect the smuggler to be Joselyn, his childhood sweetheart. (Short story: 5,500 words)

In Kidnapped to Freedom, Phoebe is stolen away from her plantation by a handsome masked pirate. But all is not as it seems. (Short story: 5,100 words)

All that Glisters is set in New Zealand in the 1860s, a time when gold miners poured into the fledgling settlement of Dunedin. Rose is unhappy in the household of her fanatical uncle. Thomas, a young merchant from Canada, offers a glimpse of another possible life. If she is brave enough to reach for it. (Short story: 13,000 words)

The Prisoners of Wyvern Castle is a gothic historical romance set in the world of my novels and novella. Rupert has been imprisoned by his wicked sister, and forced to wed. His new wife, Madeline, has likewise been threatened into saying her vows. Forced into marriage, they find love, but can they find freedom before it is too late? The Prisoners of Wyvern Castle is a prequel to Revealed in Mist. (Novella: 23,500 words)

Gingerbread Bride

Lieutenant Rick Redepenning has been saving his admiral’s intrepid daughter from danger since their formative years, but today, he faces the gravest of threats–the damage she might do to his heart. How can he convince her to see him as a suitor, not just a childhood friend?

Travelling with her father’s fleet has left Mary Pritchard ill-prepared for London Society, and prey to the machinations of false friends. When she strikes out on her own to find a more suitable locale to take up her solitary spinsterhood, she finds adventure, trouble, and her girlhood hero, riding once more to her rescue.

Gingerbread Bride is a novella in The Golden Redepennings series

Revealed in Mist

Prue's job is to uncover secrets, but she hides a few of her own. When she is framed for murder and cast into Newgate, her one-time lover comes to her rescue. Will revealing what she knows help in their hunt for blackmailers, traitors, and murderers? Or threaten all she holds dear?

Enquiry agent David solves problems for the ton, but will never be one of them. When his latest case includes his legitimate half-brothers as well as the woman who left him months ago, he finds the past and the circumstances of his birth difficult to ignore. Danger to Prue makes it impossible.

Coming in 2017

A Raging Madness: Book 2 of The Golden Redepennings

Ella survived an abusive and philandering husband, in-laws who hate her, and public scorn. But she’s not sure she will survive love. It is too late to guard her heart from the man forced to marry such a disreputable widow, but at least she will not burden him with feelings he can never return. She prays he will learn to tolerate her.

Alex understands his new wife never wished to remarry. And if she had chosen to wed, it would not have been to him. He should have wooed her when he was whole, when he could have had her love, not her pity. But it is too late now. She looks at him and sees a broken man. He hopes she will learn to bear him.

Locked in a marriage of convenience, Ella and Alex soon discover they are more well-matched than they thought possible. But then the couple’s blossoming trust is ripped apart by an enemy determined to destroy them both. Two lost souls must together face the demons of their past to save not just their one hope of love but their very lives.

Concealed in Shadow

The story of Prudence and David continues in Concealed in Shadow.

When Prue disappears with David’s half-brother, he is determined she must have met with foul play, whatever interpretation Aldridge might put on it. But finding her again may mean choosing between his country and his woman.

Here are the first three paragraphs.

***

The ship had been at harbour for four days now, after a stormy passage from London. The sailor who brought their daily allocation of food and drink would not answer questions, but Prue guessed they were docked somewhere in Ireland. Certainly, the polyglot shouting that filtered into the ship's hold had been flavoured these last few days with the musical lilt of Gaelic, and of Irish-intoned English.

She and Gren were shackled to the same wall bolt, with enough play in the chains that they could reach the narrow bed, the bucket that did for amenities, and the food and drink their jailors periodically sent.

They had not seen those jailors since the day of their capture. Were Wharton and Jo Palmer still aboard? Had Aldridge raised the alarm? Would David be able to find trace of them? Prue fretted away the long hours wondering.

A Suitable Husband (first published in November 2016 in Holly and Hopeful Hearts)

As the Duchess of Haverford’s companion, Cedrica Grenford is not treated as a poor relation and is encouraged to mingle with Her Grace’s guests. Perhaps among the gentlemen gathered for the duchess’s house party, she will find a suitable husband? Marcel Fournier has only one ambition: to save enough from his fees serving as chef in the houses of the ton to become the proprietor of his own fine restaurant. An affair with the duchess’s dependent would be dangerous. Anything else is impossible. Isn’t it?

The Bluestocking and the Barbarian (first published in November 2016 in Holly and Hopeful Hearts)

James must marry to please his grandfather, the duke, and to win social acceptance for himself and his father’s other foreign-born children. But only Lady Sophia Belvoir makes his heart sing, and to win her, he must invite himself to spend Christmas at the home of his father’s greatest enemy.

Sophia keeps secret her tendre for James, Lord Elfingham. After all, the whole of Society knows he is pursuing the younger Belvoir sister, not the older one left on the shelf after two failed betrothals.

With Mariana Gabrielle

Never Kiss a Toad

[A Victorian romance continuing family stories begun in the various Regency books of Jude Knight and Mariana Gabrielle.]

David "Toad" Northope, heir to the Duke of Wellbridge and rogue in the mold of his infamous father, knows Lady Sarah "Sal" Grenford, daughter of the once-profligate Duke of Haverford, will always hold his heart.

But when the two teens are caught in bed together by their horrified parents, he is sent away to finish school on the Continent, and she is thrown into the depths of her first London Season.

Can two reformed rakes keep their children from making the same mistakes they did? The dukes decide keeping them apart will do the trick, so as the children reach their majority, Toad is put to work at sea, learning to manage his mother's shipping concern, and Sal is taken to the other side of the world, as far from him as possible.

How will Toad and Sal's love withstand long years of separation, not to mention nasty lies, vicious rumors, attractive other suitors, and well-meaning parents who threaten to destroy their future before it has begun?

(Never Kiss a Toad is being published one episode at a time on Wattpad, and will be published complete as an ebook later this year or early next.)

Connect with Jude Knight

Jude Knight writes stories to transport you to another time, another place, where you can enjoy adventure and romance, thrill to trials and challenges, uncover secrets and solve mysteries, and delight in a happy ending. Meet strong determined heroines, heroes who can appreciate a clever capable woman, villains you’ll love to loathe, and all with a leavening of humour.

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Table of Contents

Candle’s Christmas Chair

Farewell to Kindness: Book 1 of The Golden Redepennings

A Baron for Becky

Hand-Turned Tales

Gingerbread Bride

Revealed in Mist

Coming in 2017

A Raging Madness: Book 2 of The Golden Redepennings

Concealed in Shadow

A Suitable Husband (first published in November 2016 in Holly and Hopeful Hearts)

The Bluestocking and the Barbarian (first published in November 2016 in Holly and Hopeful Hearts)

Connect with Jude Knight