The Lost Wife

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: Señora Sabasa Garcia, by Francisco de Goya

ISBN: 978-1523220113

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      10

4      19

Bluestocking Belles      22

Published books      24

Coming in 2016      28

Connect with Jude Knight      33

1

He was a heavy lad, this Royal Marine. Graham Peters wasn’t small himself, and his own wounds were on the mend, or he’d never manage to half drag, half carry the injured captain along the narrow mountain path, barely more than a goat track, that led to the village. He’d been living there for three months, recovering his strength, since a skirmish with the French had left him among the dead beside the road that curved far below them in the valley.

Senorita Bucktin had her usual spies out. A ragged boy popped out from behind a rock, flashed Peters a cheeky grin, and scurried away up the slope, ignoring the zigzag of the track in favour of the shorter route.

Peters paused for a rest where the path turned, and looked back down to the valley, where the stark detritus of today’s battle was made vague by distance. He’d read the signs as well as he could: the lad here would confirm whether or not he was right.

From the looks of it, a French ambush like the one that nearly killed him; this time of a detachment of invalids under a light guard, being sent back from the battle the senorita’s roving band of boys had been talking about for the past week.

Control of a fort on the pass at the head of the valley was changing hands back and forth. The British took the fort, then lost it, then took it again. Perhaps they had lost it once more, or perhaps the French marauders that attacked the captain and his column had been trapped on the wrong side of the battle lines.

Certainly, they were not burdening themselves with prisoners. The captain was fortunate that his head wound had left him as white and still as death, clearly fooling whoever had been charged with ensuring that no one left the valley alive.

“My men?” The captain asked suddenly, as he had a dozen times already. And Peters answered as he had each time, though the captain clearly did not retain the information. “I’m sorry, captain. You were the only one I found.” The only one he had found alive, anyway.

This next bit was the steepest. He looked up at it doubtfully, and was delighted to see the two remaining men who lived in the village making their way down towards him. Jose had only one arm, and Pedro was older than Methusulah, but between the three of them, they could keep the captain on his feet, on the path, and on the climb.

Senorita Bucktin was waiting at the top, where the path more or less levelled for the village square, which was more of a rectangle on two levels, with the houses the locals called basseri clinging to the hillside above and below, and the most substantial house of the village at the far end. The senorita’s house, and also the village school.

She was some sort of relative of the leader of the band of guerillas that had collected Peters from among the corpses after his own ambush, but had been raised in England, daughter of an English father and Spanish mother. Peters was grateful for that, since he had but a few words of Spanish, and those picked up during the weeks she had nursed him back to health.

“The only survivor?” Senorita Bucktin asked now, but did not wait for an answer. “Bring him this way. I trust you have not strained your shoulder, Sergeant Peters. I will be taking a look at that after I have seen to my new patient. An English soldier, is he?”

“My men?” the captain asked again.

“A British Royal Marine, ma’am. A captain by his rank markings. He is not saying much, ma’am. Fair mazed, he is. Couldn’t even tell me his name.”

“Captain,” Senorita Bucktin said directly to the marine in her clear unaccented English, “we are taking you into the house, and I am going to see to your head. Your rescuer is Sergeant Peters, your helpers are José Garcia and Manuel Ruiz, and I am Senorita Teresa Bucktin.”

The captain stopped the determined shuffle that had brought him up from the valley, and for a moment consciousness returned to the one eye showing as he stared at the senorita.

“Teri?” he asked, ducking so he could peer under the hat she wore. Then his eyes rolled up in his head, and he crumpled and would have fallen if Peters hadn’t already been half carrying him.

For a moment, Senorita Bucktin froze. She was so white, Peters wondered if she would faint, too. But she shook her head quickly, as if to dislodge something, and began briskly giving orders in both English and Spanish.

Bring the captain inside, Peters understood. Make up a bed. Fetch warm water to bath his wounds, and her medicine chest from her chamber.

2

Teri kept busy. If she were busy enough, she would not have to think. At first she had seen a patient, not a man. She had focused only on how he let Sergeant Peters take the weight of him, on his wounded head: the bruising, the blood, and the makeshift bandage that concealed one side of the man’s face. It was not until she looked into his one light blue eye that she had recognised him.

It could not be David. David was dead. He had disappeared from their hotel a week after their wedding, and his body had been washed up on the shore weeks later. If his best friend, Richard Hemsworth, had not chanced to be in the same town where David left her, who knows what would have become of her? David was dead. Richard had identified the body, and her uncle, David’s mother, and Richard’s father, the solicitor to whom David had been articled, all assured her it was true. Even if he wasn’t dead, he had lied to her—promised that the ceremony in Scotland was a true marriage, when her uncle assured her she could not marry without her guardian’s permission.

But in her heart he was her husband still, and that poor foolish organ was hammering with jubilation that he was alive, and fear he would not survive his wounds.

She maintained her outward calm as she washed the wounds. He had been creased by several bullets, and had broken open stitches in his leg from a previous injury. The head injury was the worst of it. Something had blown up close to his head, sending vicious splinters into his face and scalp. She pulled them out one by one: some lumps of steel, some wood. Several of the village women stood by, and held him still whenever he surfaced to something approaching consciousness, but each time the pain sucked him back under.

At first, she thought the eye a bloody ruin, but as she washed away the blood she found he had been unbelievably lucky. No, not lucky. Thank you, God, she whispered. Thank you, David’s angel. And she kept on thanking every saint she could think of, starting with the Blessed Virgin, as she sewed shut the still seeping cuts in and under the brow that had covered him with blood.

It took a long time, and still she was uncertain she had all the splinters. For good measure, she resewed the older wound on his leg. The lesser wounds she left open to the air. The greater wound on his head she spread with a poultice made from mountain lichen and honey, and bandaged to protect the poultice and hold it in place.

“Will he live,” Peters asked.

“It is in the hands of God, Sergeant Peters,” Teri answered, and she fetched the rosary that had belonged to her Spanish mother and sat by David’s bed to petition Heaven to bestow the gift of life.

In the small hours of the morning, she fell asleep, her head on the bed next to David’s hand. She dreamt that they were lying in bed together in the Maryport inn where they spent the week after their wedding at Gretna, talking about their future, David stroking her hair. She woke bereft, as she had at many previous dawns, her heart clenching around her loss and then relaxing again as she remembered the miracle of yesterday. David was alive!

He was still unconscious, however. Teri checked his temperature and his breathing… both normal. Unconscious, or sleeping? Certainly, he’d had the look of an exhausted man, near the end of his endurance.

“Sleeping will help him to heal,” she decided. And then what? She still could not comprehend how he could be here, and alive. She went to find Sergeant Peters. He, too, was an early riser, and could be set to watch David while she carried out her duties. There were goats to be milked, bread to set rising, and the children’s exercises from yesterday to mark before they arrived for today’s classes.

Imanol arrived partway through the second hour of lessons, when the older children were hearing one another read, and she was drilling the younger on their times tables. As usual, he materialised as if by magic, leaning against the wall beside the door.

Teri called the most reliable of the village maidens to take over the arithmetic lesson and went to find out what Imanol wanted, scolding when she found he’d pulled Sergeant Peters from watching the sleeping man. “Head injuries are tricky, Imanol. He cannot be left.”

“I needed the skills of the good sergeant, hermanita. The injured man sleeps. And I have work for you, too. Fetch your medicines and bandages, Teresa, and come to the kitchen to see to my men.”

She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “You go watch my patient, and I will deal with your men.” Should she tell him the identity of her patient? No. Not until she had been able to talk to David. Then she could decide whether she needed to deal with Imanol’s prickly sense of honour and his ideas about what was due to her.

She had three men to treat in the kitchen, one little more than a boy. An encounter with a French patrol, they told her, as she washed and stitched sabre slashes and extracted a bullet from one man’s thigh while the others joked about the difficulty he would have sitting.

“And other things,” the youngest one said, and collected a buffet from the oldest. “If the Wolf heard you talk like that in front of the senorita, you would never sit again,” he growled.

They all called him El Lobo—the wolf. The French had begun it, but the Spanish had picked it up. Senor Juan Imanol Maria Mendina de la Vega, that elegant courtier, was gone—destroyed in the same fire storm that took his jauregi, his mansion, and the grape vines that had been his family’s pride. He had brought Teri here to this mountain village, and melted into the mountains with others bent on revenge.

In each of his infrequent visits, he was wilder and more distant. Would the Imanol she loved return when the French were finally driven from these lands? Sometimes, she feared he was gone forever.

3

David surfaced slowly from a dream in which he had returned to his home village and found Teri waiting for him. He lay with his eyes shut, waiting for the surge of grief to subside. Every time he had that dream, the pain was rawly new, all the more real for being a memory. He had no idea how he’d come to be in the ocean, but the sharp-eyed sailor who saw him, and the captain who ordered him fished aboard, had his gratitude, even if they would not turn back to return him to shore.

He worked his passage to the Azores, then found another boat and worked his way home, all the while expecting his wife to be waiting with her mother or his until he returned.

She was gone. Her mother had died, and Teri had run off with another man, his mother told him. He could not believe it, but everyone in the village told the same tale, even Richard, who had been his dearest friend until they both fell in love with the same woman. Even Teri’s own uncle.

Somewhere, deep down, he still did not believe it, and she filled his dreams night after night, even after ten years. She even invaded his delirium, for he vaguely remembered a pain-filled clamber up mountains, a giant of a man with a soothing lowland Scots burr, and Teri, waiting for him at the end of the climb. And again, in the night, he could swear he’d woken and stroked her silk-soft hair, stray wisps that had escaped her tight plait clinging to his fingers as they had in that one blissful week of marriage.

His head hurt like the devil, and his throat felt as if his entire regiment of marines had tramped through it with sandy boots. If he was in a hospital, it smelt like no hospital he’d ever entered: crisp clean linen and fresh mountain air. Had they brought him to a convent?

David opened one eye, cautiously. He was in a whitewashed room, sparsely furnished. Everything from the deeply recessed window with the arched top to the tiled floor to the brightly-coloured hand-crafted spread to the gaudily painted crucifix on the wall suggested he was still in the mountains between Spain and Portugal. A dark man with a thin face and neatly trimmed beard lay at his ease on the other bed, his hands behind his head and his near-black eyes watching David thoughtfully.

“Water?” David’s voice came out in a croak, and the man unfurled and crossed unhurriedly to a jug on a table beside the bed before David had time to think that he should have asked in Spanish.

He tried to sit up, but the man scolded. “No, no. Let me help, English. If I let you open your wounds mi hermanita will be cross.”

David subsided, more from lack of strength than from compliance, and the man supported his head while David sipped, absorbed in the small miracle of the liquid sliding over the parched surfaces and soothing them.

“My men?” he asked, when he could speak. Not just the small company of marines, all with some injury, that he took to defend the cartloads of wounded, but all the injured men for whom he had been responsible. All gone? All?

He had asked the giant, too, he remembered, and this man gave him the same answer.

“I am sorry, English. The good Sergeant Peters found only you alive.”

In the cruel economy of war, only a fool left living enemies behind him, and a band scrabbling for survival in this unforgiving landscape could not afford prisoners. Both sides made the same cold calculations, but still, the massacre of a baggage train of wounded men turned David’s stomach.

“Murdering bastards,” he said, and this fetched a nod from the Spaniard—or was he Portugese? Could be either this close to the border.

“Their time in these mountains is short,” the man consoled. “We are taking one fort after another with the help of you English . And we will hunt down the ‘murdering bastards’ to the last man.”

“But I forget my manners.” The man drew himself up and bowed with an elegance that was ill-suited to the peasant clothing he wore, though he wore it with a flair that transmuted it into something more appropriate to a gentleman.

“I am Imanol Mendina de la Vega. Welcome to my humble residence, and that of my hermana.”

Hermana. He had said something similar earlier. Long ago, David had learnt a little Spanish to please Teri’s Mama, stranded as she was as a widowed Spanish lady in the very English household of her brother-in-law. But he did not know that word.

He shifted his head on the pillow, the closest he could come to a bow. “David Markinson, Captain of His Majesty’s Royal Marines.”

Something fierce suddenly surfaced in Imanol’s dark intent eyes. “Markinson? Is that a common name in England?”

“Not particularly. It is more common in Scotland. My family are border people.”

“Border? Ah. Between two kingdoms. And what is the name of this border town you come from, Captain Markinson?”

“Blackwood,” David said. Once he had thought to spend all his days there; to take his articles with his employer, Mr Hemsworth, to raise a family of children with Teri and grow old in a cottage with roses around the door. After his dreams turned to dust, he had enlisted with the marines, and his mother’s death two years ago severed his last links to the place.

Imanol was scowling, his heavy brows nearly meeting above the bridge of his nose, but his voice, courteous and calm, showed none of the emotion written on his face. “And have you a wife back there in Blackwood, captain? Or a girl who loves you, perhaps?”

“No.” Not that it was any of this man’s business. “Not anymore. I have no-one.” I have a wife somewhere, his heart protested. Not back there in Blackwood, he answered his own objection.

Imanol opened his mouth to say something more, then turned to the door and fell silent.

David shifted his head on the pillow, but couldn’t turn it enough to see who stood there; who was asking a peremptory question in Spanish that was too fast for him to follow. A woman’s voice, and Imanol did not like what she said, for his answer was sharp. They argued for a few minutes more, and David tried still harder to see the woman. He could swear he knew the voice.

The altercation ended with Imanol saying to David, “Be careful, English. She says I must not gut you like a fish, but she does not rule here.” Another sentence or two in Spanish, and he left. David lay back, waiting, and sure enough the woman came into the room where he could see her. It was her. Older. In the clothes of a village woman rather than those of an English lady. But it was Teri. Maria Teresa Markinson, his runaway wife.

While he gaped, lost for words, she rested the back of her hand on his forehead, and picked up his wrist to feel for his pulse. “How is the head?” she asked. “Do you feel any pull from the stitches?”

David grabbed the hand before she could remove it. “Teri.” He struggled to order his thoughts, but they slithered out his grasp and he could only cling to her hand as if she anchored him to reality instead of driving him out of his mind.

“Take your hand off her.” Imanol’s cold voice gave David words.

“She is my wife!” he declared at the same moment that Teri said, “Go away, Imanol.”

“Your abandoned wife,” Imanol sneered.

“No! Is that what you thought, Teri? No. I did not leave you. Not by my choice.”

He had both hands now, but Teri had turned so pale he thought she might faint. Imanol must have thought so, too, for he came into sight, fetched a chair from the table under the window, and set it so that Teri could sit down.

“Perhaps I will not gut you yet, English. Not until you have explained. Ask your questions, Teresa.” He stood with one hand on Teri’s shoulder, and met David’s glare with a slight smile.

“She is my wife,” David said again, stressing the word my.

“They said we were not married.” Teri’s words were so quiet he had to strain to hear them. “They said I could not wed without my uncle’s consent, and so our marriage was not valid. They said you must have known. Well, that is true, you were training to be a solicitor, so how could you not know?”

David was shaking his head. “Lies. All lies. Who told you such lies? That is why we went to Scotland, Teri. I told you, remember? Your uncle would not consent to our marriage, and in Scotland we did not need his consent. We were married. We are married.”

Teri was nodding. “They lied,” she confirmed, and she turned and looked up at Imanol. “They lied to me, Imanol. They said he was dead.”

“Who is this ‘they’?” David demanded.

“My uncle. Your mother. Mr Hemsworth. Richard.”

“They told me you had left; run away with another man. And here you are,” he glared at the Spaniard, “with him. Why did you not wait, Teri?”

Teri was shaking her head, tears filling her eyes, and it was Imanol who spoke. “For what, English, and how? Those she trusted said you were dead and a liar besides. Her mother had died, and your own turned her out when she refused to marry this oh so noble friend of yours. This Richard.”

David, his mind reeling, had no words. All he could do was shake his head and hold onto Teri’s hands, a grip she was now returning as if determined never to let him go again. His poor love. Abandoned and betrayed, or so she thought, then left alone with no one to turn to.

“How did you come to leave,” Imanol asked. The hostility was gone from the Spaniard’s voice, but David could hear it in his own as he told Teri, not the man who had taken her away.

“You remember I went to hire a post chaise for our return journey? The last thing I remember is going into the inn yard. When I was next aware, I was on a ship on my way to the Americas. They fished me from the sea, Teri, and I have no idea how I came to be there. I persuaded them to land me at San Miguel, the first place we stopped, but it took time to find a ship heading for England that would take me, and we hit heavy weather. I came as fast as I could, Teri.” He clutched her hands convulsively as he relived the moment when his mother told him ‘the Spanish whore has gone with one of her own kind, and good riddance’.

“I don’t understand.” Teri still drew her brows into a kissable crease when she was puzzled. “Richard asked all over Maryport. And then he went back to identify your body after it was washed up by the sea.”

“Richard? He went to Maryport to find me?”

“I don’t know what I would have done without him. You had our money, David. If Richard had not turned up that same night, I would have been at a stand.”

David met Imanol’s eyes over Teri’s head. Richard. Richard was at every turn of this tale. Rescuing the abandoned wife. Consoling the grieving widow. Offering for the ruined orphan.

“And does he yet live in this village, hermano?” Imanol’s voice was soft but lethally sharp, and Teri turned to him, startled.

“You do not think… but Richard was David’s friend!”

Imanol gestured with his head, and she turned to David, who nodded. “He wanted you, Teri. But I never thought he would stoop to murder and lies. In the end, though, even with me out of the way, you did not choose him.” That would explain the invective Richard heaped on her when David returned, words that broke what was left of their friendship and stopped only when David stopped the traitor’s mouth with his fist.

If he had known then…

“He enlisted with the dragoons and died last fall,” David told Imanol.

“It is for the best,” Imanol reassured him. “For honour would demand satisfaction, and there is the small matter of the French at present. All is well, then Teresa. I will leave you with your esposo and away to my men. Perhaps I will see you on my next visit, hermano. Be good to her or I shall gut you yet.” His dark eyes gleamed with humour as he pushed away from the chair.

“Just like that?” The Spaniard was leaving the field to David? “Wait. What does it mean ‘hermano’?”

The corner of Imanol’s mouth quirked upwards at that, but he slid out of the room without comment.

“Brother,” Teri said. “It means ‘brother’. Imanol is my mother’s son by her first marriage.” She pulled back, mock indignant. “What did you think, David? That I had run off with another man?

He could have said that she had thought him false and a liar, but a week of marriage was enough to give him a small measure of wisdom, and instead he changed the subject. “Come here and give me a kiss, Teri. For I lost you, and now I have found you, and we have ten lost years for which to make up.”

4

Graham Peters had rejoined his regiment in Santander, recently liberated from the French. He’d been absent in the mountains for months, at first recovering, then supporting the guerillas. And his general was delighted with his work, and was sending him back up into the mountains. Just as well. He no longer had the shoulder strength to manage the work he had once done so easily, but he had become skilled at the repairs El Lobo needed to keep his equipment and his wiry mountain ponies functioning.

Captain and Mrs Markinson were taking ship to England from the Santander port—Mr Markinson, rather, for the thigh wound had turned putrid and—though Mrs Markinson’s devote care saved the leg—Markinson would walk with a pronounced limp for the rest of his life.

Peters would miss the Markinsons. He had moved out of the main house after Markinson got back together with his bride, but he still saw them daily. Indeed, when Markinson was at his sickest, Peters had taken over the school so Mrs Markinson could nurse her husband. A fine hash he made of it, but the children learned a little English, and he a little Spanish.

It had taken months before Markinson had been up and about again, though Mrs Markinson’s silhouette hinted that he’d had energy enough for his bride.

Markinson was a lucky man, Peters thought, going home to England with a wife, a child on the way, and the promise of a new career in law. El Lobo had a friend who was a solicitor in London, and who had agreed to take Markinson on. “Take mi hermana away from this war, English,” he commanded.

And so now Peters and El Lobo stood shoulder to shoulder watching the Markinsons being rowed out to the ship that would take them home, and climbing up the side, Mrs Markinson a little ungainly already with the coming child.

Mrs Markinson waved towards the shore, and Peters waved back. After a moment, El Lobo raised one hand in a lordly sweep across the air, then turned away.

“Come, Sergeant Peters. We have a war to win, you and I.”

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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/

Friend us on Facebook:

www.facebook.com/BellesinBlue

Follow us on Twitter:

@BellesInBlue

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)

With Mariana Gabrielle

Connect with Jude Knight