The Raven’s Lady

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: Smugglers, studio of George Morland, 18th Century

ISBN 978-1511797917

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      6

3      13

4      18

5      19

6      23

Bluestocking Belles      25

Published books      27

Coming in 2016      31

Connect with Jude Knight      36

The Raven’s Lady

Felix returns home in disguise after thirteen years away from home. He plans to catch a smuggler, then take up his viscountcy. He does not expect the smuggler to be Joselyn, his childhood sweetheart.

1

I

n the past eight years, Felix Maddox had spent more hours staking out suspects than he ever wished to remember. He couldn’t count the number of nights he’d spent awake, knowing he’d go into battle the next morning. He had even been imprisoned for six months.

This evening, as a guest in what should be his own home, was probably not the most interminable he had ever suffered through. At this moment, though, it certainly felt like it.

The lady he was supposedly here to consider as a wife was pretty enough, he supposed, if one liked milk-and-water misses who never looked up from their plates, and who answered every conversational sally with a monosyllable or a giggle.

She had, sadly, changed from the lively child he remembered. But that was long ago, almost another life. She had been nine, and he fourteen, the last time they parted.

The only interesting thing about her now, as far as he could see, was the raven she kept as a pet. He remembered the raven, too. He’d been the one to rescue the half-fledged bird from a cat, but Joselyn Bellingham had tended it, fed it, and captured its affection.

He’d been startled earlier in the day when the raven flew in the library window, fixed him with a knowing eye, then marched out the door and along the hall, to tap at the door of Miss Bellingham’s sitting room until she opened and let it in.

Now though, at dinner, any sign of originality was absent. And as for his cousin, the fat oaf who had inherited the viscountcy when Felix was reported dead, the man’s conversation was all on-dits about people Felix didn’t know and off-colour jokes that were inappropriate in front of a lady, to say nothing of not being funny.

Miss Bellingham rose to leave the gentlemen to their port, and Felix forced his face into a pleasant smile, preparing to get fat Cyril even drunker and pump him for any knowledge he had of the Black Fox, the smuggler Felix had been sent to investigate.

A waste of time, in his opinion. Cyril could not organise a bunfight in a baker’s shop. The condition of the lands and buildings on the estates of Maddox Grange showed the man was a total incompetent.

Felix couldn’t blame Cyril for thinking he was the viscount. Felix had decided to remain dead, to more easily find the traitors who had given him up to the French. The released prisoner, Frederick Matthews, was no threat to them, until all of the sudden, they were behind bars. Then, Colonel Webster, one of Castlereagh’s men, had approached him and said the identity he had painstakingly created could be used to help England win the war.

He’d stayed in that identity even after Napoleon was exiled to Elba, sure the emperor would not accept his defeat. The right decision, as it turned out, but Waterloo had finished Napoleon’s ambitions forever, and Felix was now home to reclaim his own. Just this one last job before he retired from the shadowy world he had inhabited with Webster and his ilk.

Felix had nothing against smugglers, who simply sought to make a living, but he hated, with a passion, the type Webster was after: those who had smuggled French spies onto English soil. And the Black Fox—the smuggler leader on the patch of coast that belonged to Maddox Grange—was, by all accounts, the worst of the worst.

“So what did you think of her? Nice tits, eh?” Cyril made cupping movements under his own, not inconsiderable, dugs.

Felix resisted the urge to punch the fool. “She is very quiet,” he said.

“Yes, that’s an advantage, don’t you think,” Cyril agreed. “Who wants a chattering woman? And she’s a good housekeeper, don’t you know? And used to living in the country, so you could just leave her at your estate. You did say you had an estate, Matthews?”

“Yes, I have an estate.”

After the meeting with Webster, he’d been sitting at his club considering his options when Cyril Maddox came in with a group of cronies. That wasn’t so surprising. The Maddoxes had been members of Brooks’s since it opened. He hadn’t recognised Cyril; he hadn’t seen him since they were boys. But the group sat right behind him, and he’d soon realised that the supposed viscount was talking about raising money by selling Felix’s childhood friend.

“Does Miss Bellingham have a fortune, Maddox?” one of the others asked. “I’m not interested in a chit without a fortune.”

“A competence, rather. In trust till she turns twenty-five or marries,” Cyril said. “If she had a fortune, Peckridge, I’d be marrying her myself! But two thousand pounds, gents! That’s worth an investment of five hundred, surely? And she’ll have control of it herself in less than three years. A sin against nature, that is.”

“Twenty-two? That’s pretty old! What’s wrong with her? Second-hand, is she?” The others all sniggered.

Cyril was indignant, more on behalf of his sale than in defence of Miss Bellingham. Felix was indignant enough on that cause for both of them. He remembered Joselyn Bellingham, remembered her well. She was Cyril’s cousin, not his, the daughter of Cyril’s mother’s sister, left to her aunt’s care after the death of her parents, “and as shy and modest a lady as you could wish to find,” Cyril proclaimed.

Even if he hadn’t had his mission, Felix might have spoken up at that point, for the sake of the child he remembered. As it was, he introduced himself (as Frederick Matthews), apologised for overhearing, and announced that he was interested in two thousand pounds and would be willing to consider taking a wife. It worked, and here he was, drinking his own port, in his own house, and listening to Cousin Cyril describing a lady in terms that made him see red.

Suddenly, he could stand it no longer. His investigation into the Black Fox would have to wait for tomorrow. “I’m tired, Maddox,” he said. “I think I’ll turn in.”

2

W

hen Felix got to the room assigned to him—one of the guest rooms on the west frontage of the house—he couldn’t sleep. Perhaps a stroll in the woods: scene of many a childhood game when he and his widowed mother had lived here with his grandfather. And a slightly older Felix often stole out on a night such as this, when the moon was nearly full, to trap game in the woods, or just to watch animals living their secret lives while the world slept.

No sooner thought than done, he let himself down from the window and was soon slipping into the shadows under the trees. As he had so many times before, he chose a trunk to lean against, stilled his movements, and slowed his breathing to wait for what the night had to show him.

There was a fox, trotting purposefully along the path. An owl swept by on silent wings. Two deer stepped daintily out of the undergrowth, then startled as they caught the fox’s scent and leapt backward again, crashing away into the deeper shadows.

No. Not the fox. Someone was coming from the house. Without moving a muscle, he prepared for action. A figure, but not large enough to be Cyril. The hope that he could clear this whole matter up this first night had died, but his curiosity remained. Where was the lad going? For the person hurrying along the path was no more than a boy, surely; short and slender, with a youthful gait.

On impulse, Felix followed, using all his woodcraft to stay silent and undetected, but still keep within sight of the boy.

They took the fork leading down to the cliffs. Below, on the beach, easily visible in the moonlight, people milled around several rowboats in the surf. He’d found the smugglers after all! No legitimate cargo would be unloaded on a remote beach in the middle of the night.

The boy turned onto the path down the cliff face, but Felix would be seen if he tagged along. He concealed himself in a rocky outcrop, where he could watch both the beach and the path from the village. If the smugglers planned to take the cargo inland tonight, that was the most likely direction for whatever transport they had arranged.

As time wore on, however, it became clear the cargo was being stored in the old cave complex Felix used to explore as a child, before his mother married again and took him away. Good. He could bring a troop to watch until the smugglers came to retrieve the goods, and catch them all.

Oddly, the boy Felix had followed seemed to be directing the whole enterprise, people came to him, as if for orders, and several times, Felix saw him run into the surf to catch and redirect someone.

The rowing boats went back for another load, and another. The night was beginning to lighten in the east before the last of them had its cargo removed, and disappeared back into the waves.

Below, the smugglers began to slip away, singly and in small groups.

Something strange struck Felix, about the faces that looked up at the cliff before beginning to climb the path. No beards or moustaches. Not even the shadows one might expect after a day’s growth. His mind took a while to interpret what his eyes were telling him. Women. Every smuggler he could see was a woman.

His eyes on the boy, he shook his head to dislodge the wild thought. No. Not Miss Bellingham. That milk-and-water miss could not possibly be a smuggler. The boy—or the woman, in fact—could be anyone in the house, or could easily have come from one of the farms beyond. But he was definitely a she. As the light strengthened, the way she moved, and the curves inside the breeches she wore, became more and more obvious.

Then, the raven swooped down to land on the beach beside her, and removed all doubt. Miss Bellingham’s pet cawed at her, a loud raven alarm call, and she looked anxiously up at the cliff. A few quick orders to the remaining women on the beach, and they all scattered, some heading for the path, and some for the narrow way around the cliffs that had been uncovered as the tide fell.

Now what did he do? He stiffened his shoulders. Woman she may be, but also a smuggler. He would do his duty, of course. Even though once, long ago, she had been Joselyn, the girl-child who dogged his footsteps, and whom he would have died to protect.

Miss Bellingham led a few other women up the cliff face, and stopped to speak with them a few paces from where Felix hid. The raven swooped in to join them.

“It will be enough, Matilda,” she was saying. “The money we raise will pay your rent, and the other tenants’, and keep Cousin Cyril from casting you out.”

“For another quarter, miss,” the woman called Matilda said, dolefully. “We canna keep doing this here smuggling, though. If’n the Black Fox catches us, or the excise, we’ll all hang.”

Miss Bellingham nodded, her brows drawn anxiously together. “By next quarter, perhaps I will have thought of something else.”

“Master Felix had no business dying in foreign parts,” Matilda declared.

“I do not suppose he did it on purpose,” Miss Bellingham said. Was it just his imagination, or did her tone sound wistful?

“If’n he’d lived, tha’ could have wed him,” another woman suggested. Felix recognised her; she was a servant at the grange. “Tha’ always said he promised to come back and wed thee.”

“He was fourteen, Betsy. Even if he had lived, he would have long forgotten a few words said in haste when his mother took him away.”

“Mayhap you should marry that man your cousin brought home,” Betsy said.

Miss Bellingham gave an inelegant snort. “If I were inclined to marry, and I am not, I would certainly not marry any friend of Cousin Cyril.”

“He’s a well-enough-looking young man,” Betsy insisted, “and polite, too.”

“He is prepared to pay my cousin to get his hands on my trust fund. In any case, I do not think he still wishes to marry me.”

“Only for that you’ve gone out of your way to discourage him,” Betsy said.

Miss Bellingham giggled. “I just listened to everything Cyril said he liked, and did the opposite.”

Why, the little minx. Certainly, Miss Milk-and-Water was unrecognisable in the laughing maiden before him. He had told Cyril he preferred women with opinions, who could think for themselves and hold an intelligent conversation. He might have added that he wanted to wed a lady who put the welfare of his tenants ahead of her own, as this delightfully grown-up Joselyn clearly did.

The women were splitting up, Miss Bellingham and Betsy taking the wood path, followed by the raven, and the other women heading along the clifftop to the village. He watched them out of sight, but stayed where he was. He had a lot to think about. Miss Bellingham was clearly not the Black Fox, even if she was a smuggler. And she was far more the Joselyn of his memories than he had believed.

The sound of shifting rocks attracted his attention.

Two men emerged from another rocky outcrop some distance down the cliff, and walked up to the junction of the two paths, talking as they came. One was Cousin Cyril, the other a dark, burly man who walked with the distinctive roll of a sailor.

“It’s my cousin, I tell you,” Cyril insisted. “That damnable bird follows her everywhere.”

“I don’t care who it is,” said his companion. “She’s on my patch, and I’ll have her cargo, and I’ll kill anyone who gets in my way, and so I will.”

“Look here, Fox!” Cyril was clearly alarmed. “You can’t kill my cousin. I’ve got a man up at the house who’s willing to pay good money to marry her.”

At the scent of money, the Black Fox—for it must be he—pointed like a hound. “How much is the wench worth?”

“Two thousand pound. And this Matthews is willing to stump up five hundred to have the rest free and clear.”

“Two thousand, eh? That’d go a long way to sweetening your exile!” The Fox laughed. “Worth more dead than alive, I’d say.”

Cyril shook his head. “She’s made a will leaving the lot to her sister’s children. Not that the brats need it. They’re wealthy orphans; inherited a packet when their parents died. I need her alive, I tell you.”

“You could marry her yourself.”

Cyril shook his head. “I tried that. She won’t have a bar of it. And I’ve no wish for a wife, anyway.”

“Drug her, marry her, and then kill her before you run,” the Fox advised.

For a moment, Cyril looked interested, but then he shook his head. “Too complicated. I couldn’t have the banns called. Even if I had time to wait—and the real Viscount Maddox could turn up at any time—no one here would believe she was willing. I’m just lucky I heard two men discussing his unexpected survival and his petition to the courts to be recognised as viscount. It has given me a little warning to sell everything off. Once the courts notify me, I’ll not be able to touch a penny.”

“A special licence?”

“Expensive. And chancy—she could still refuse me at the church. No, getting this Matthews fellow to court her is the best plan.”

“Or…” The Fox fell silent, clearly thinking deeply.

“Or?” Cyril prompted.

“I could buy her off you. I’ll pay four hundred pound, mind, and not a penny more! But I’ll be able to sell her to the Barbary pirates, a fair-haired virgin like that. She is a virgin, I suppose?”

Cyril nodded, eagerly.

“Yes,” the Fox continued. “It’s only fair, the trouble she’s caused me, taking cargoes on my patch. Yes, and I’ll take my pick of the other women she had with her.” He grinned, an evil leer that made Felix shiver. “Some to sell, and some to use on the way.”

“Four-fifty,” Cyril said, “and you have a bargain. What’s the plan, then?”

The two men moved out of earshot, still talking. Felix hurried after as soon as they cleared the open ground and went into the trees, but they had horses tied in a small clearing, and he caught up only to see them ride away.

Time to return to the house, then, Felix thought. And past time for a conversation with the lady smuggler.

3

W

hen Felix got back to the house, he could not find Miss Bellingham. However, he found the servant, Betsy.

“Tell Miss Bellingham, please, that I heard her cousin, Cyril, and the Black Fox plotting against her, and I need to see her now. I’ll wait in the library.”

After a shocked moment, Betsy hurried upstairs, and a few minutes later, Miss Bellingham entered the room.

She’d clearly been interrupted before she could complete her change of clothes. She’d put on a dress, but her hair was caught back in a long plait that brushed her rump as she walked. Betsy came in at her shoulder, and their glares were identical.

“Mr Matthews? What’s this about my cousin?”

“Not Matthews,” Felix told her. “My name is not Matthews. I was sent here to investigate the Black Fox for the Crown. I followed you last night, and I saw you bringing in your cargo.”

Now the women had identical looks of alarm.

“It is not what you think,” Miss Bellingham said. “I am not the Black Fox. And the womenthey were just following my orders. I am the leader. Arrest me. Let them go.”

“No, Miss,” Betsy objected. “We all agreed. We’re all in this.”

“None of you are in this,” Felix said. “I’m not after you. I want the Black Fox. In any case, Miss Bellingham, I don’t wish to arrest an old friend, and I certainly don’t intend to arrest the wives and daughters of my tenants.”

Betsy was bewildered, but Miss Bellingham was examining him with narrowed eyes. “You are dead,” she told him.

“No,” he said.

She was shaking her head. “We were told you were dead.”

Joselyn still got a white, pinched look around her lips when she was angry, Felix noted, and two bright spots of colour on her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not sure what he was apologising for.

“You should be. I cried. I wore black for a year. Why are you not dead, Felix?” And then she was in his arms, punching his shoulder and fighting back tears. “I am so glad you are not dead.”

He tightened his arms around her, but Betsy cleared her throat, and Miss Bellingham pushed away.

“You be Viscount Maddox, seemingly?” Betsy asked. “Come to take yer own, is it?”

“After we catch the Black Fox and Cousin Cyril, yes,” Felix said. He was finding it hard to focus on the job ahead of them, given how wonderfully Miss Bellingham filled his arms, and how empty they now felt without her. The idea of redeeming his boyhood promise was growing more and more appealing.

“Where have you been? Why have you waited so long to come home?” That was his Joselyn, ever pestering him with questions.

“I will answer every question you have,” he told her. “But we don’t have time today. Today, we have to decide what to do with your enemies.”

Quickly, he told the two women what he’d overheard. Then he had to repeat it for most of the rest of the household. Not, however, the valet or the butler who, Joselyn said, were from London and were Cyril’s men through and through. The local people, she said, could be trusted.

When Felix had finished his story, the servants were of a single mind.

“You can’t go, then, Miss,” said Betsy. “We’ll have to let the Black Fox have the cargo.”

“We can’t risk you, Miss,” one of the other servants said, and the others murmured their approval.

Joselyn turned to Felix. “I suppose they are right. But I hate letting Cyril and the Black Fox win.”

“I might be able to help there,” Felix said. “What if we went ahead with the move, as planned, but set an ambush for the Black Fox and our delightful cousin?”

They couldn’t settle their plans immediately. Joselyn would need to bring in the farmer’s wives who, with Betsy the housekeeper, were her chief lieutenants. And Felix needed the officers of the troops who awaited his orders in the nearby town.

“I’ll send messengers,” Joselyn said.

“We can’t risk Cyril finding out,” Felix warned. “Is there somewhere else we can meet?”

Joselyn and her supporters fixed him with identical expressions of exasperation. “We have a place,” Joselyn said patiently. “I will give your officers the direction.”

The servants went to carry out Joselyn’s orders, but Felix lingered, and so did Joselyn. Betsy, the last to leave, looked at her mistress uncertainly.

“Go, Betsy,” Joselyn told her. “I will just have a word with Lord Maddox and be along shortly.”

But when they were alone, she was silent. Was she shy, all of the sudden, his brave Joselyn?

On the clifftop, she had referred to the last time they’d seen one another; that long-ago morning when his mother had carried him off to the other end of England. Should he start there?

“Joselyn,” he said. “I came back to redeem my promise.”

Joselyn laughed, her mouth turning up in a smile, but something unreadable in her eyes.

“No, you did not, Felix. You came back to catch the Black Fox.” And then, suddenly sober, “After eight years of silence, Felix. Eight years!”

All his excellent reasons for staying away turned to dust on his tongue in face of the angry tears pouring down her cheeks. In a moment, he had her in his arms, and was kissing the tears away, murmuring apologies and endearments.

Finally, they drew a little apart. “I have made your shoulder damp,” Joselyn said, brushing at it ineffectually.

“We had better join the others, my love,” Felix said. “We have a busy day ahead of us.”

“Your love, Felix? You hardly know me. And I am still angry with you,” she continued sternly. “Do not think to butter me up with a few kisses.”

“After the ambush, I will tell you my whole story, and make whatever penance you assign. But, yes, you are my love. Now and forever, Joselyn. Show me the way to this meeting place. We can argue later.”

4

T

he planning session devolved into an argument over a different topic: first Felix against Joselyn, and then—when Joselyn convinced the others of the sense of what she said—Felix against the officers and part-time smugglers alike.

Felix did not want Joselyn taking her usual place down on the beach at the head of her women. Indeed, if Felix had his way, all of the women would be replaced with his trained soldiers.

Joselyn and her helpers agreed that the soldiers would form the main part of the workforce on the beach, disguised in skirts and concealing shawls to keep their masculine features from giving away the ambush. But, Joselyn insisted, she needed to be there, head uncovered and face seen, so the villains would believe they had her trapped. And her supporters insisted on joining her.

She was right. Felix knew she was right. He hated placing her in danger, but she was essential to the success of the plan.

Reluctantly, he had to agree.

By the time Cyril returned from his errand, all was prepared. Tonight, they would trap the Black Fox.

5

C

yril clearly expected an outcome much more to his liking. He could hardly contain his glee when both Joselyn and Felix claimed weariness early in the evening and retired to bed. They had to hastily conceal themselves behind trees when he came crashing noisily down the path towards the clifftops, muttering to himself about tonight being the last night.

Reaching the clifftops themselves, they watched him hurry away down the path towards the village.

“I don’t want you going down there, Joselyn,” Felix told her. He wasn’t going to stop her. She had as much at stake as he—more, given her love for these people. But he wanted her to know he was reluctant.

Had she been this frightened for him, knowing he had gone to war? If so, he’d have to spend the next fifty years making up for his unthinking cruelty in staying away so long. He smiled at the thought of that, and she smiled back.

“I will be careful. And if the smugglers come this way, you will be in more danger than I.”

At that moment, the Black Fox split his forces and attacked from the sea, as well as the clifftop. For a few minutes, Felix was too busy to worry about Joselyn, but once the thugs on the clifftop were subdued, Cyril among them, he hurried down the path to the beach, where clumps of people wrestled in the moonlight.

As he reached the sand, a sudden loud shout stopped him in his tracks. “I have the woman, and I’ll kill her if you try to stop me.”

It was the Black Fox, his arm around Joselyn’s neck, brandishing a pistol in his other hand. He was backing towards a rowboat, two of his henchmen flanking him.

“Not another step!” the Fox shrieked, as the soldiers followed him. The rest of his crew were gone, subdued by the soldiers or Joselyn’s women. But no one dared approach these three.

Felix’s heart was in his throat, blocking his breath and pounding like the French cannon at Waterloo. He couldn’t attack without risking Joselyn, but if he didn’t stop them, they’d take her with them to who-knew-what horrid fate.

The impasse was broken by a loud caw. Immediately, and so fast Felix couldn’t afterward untangle the order, a large, black, feathery missile hurled itself into the Black Fox’s face, Joselyn gave a twist and vicious upward punch into a portion of the Fox’s anatomy that made Felix wince, two shots rang out, and the two henchmen fell.

Within seconds, it was all over, the smugglers captured and the raven marching up and down the beach, cackling with satisfaction at its own timely intervention.

Felix, with difficulty, restrained himself from wrapping Joselyn in his arms in front of half his tenants and all his soldiers. He’d never been so frightened in all his life. Thank God she was safe!

The Black Fox was hauled off into custody, along with his surviving men, and Cyril, his co-conspirator. They would face the magistrate on the morrow.

Joselyn and Felix walked home together through the dawn. The raven had flown off about his own affairs, and Joselyn’s two lieutenants had gone on ahead, the housekeeper arm in arm with the farmer’s wife.

“Joselyn,” Felix said, “I have explanations to makeand excuses. I let everyone think I was dead because that was the best way I could serve in the war against Napoleon, but I didn’t think about how it would affect you. Dare I hope you will forgive me? I will spend a lifetime making amends, if you will permit.”

Joselyn was silent for a long time. He was wrong then. He had hoped she was beginning to like the adult him, at least a little.

Eventually, she spoke. “You seem very certain we would suit.”

“I know we would suit,” he said. “Certainly, you suit me. I did not think there was a woman in the world who so combined courage, intelligence, and spirit with beauty and kindness. I wish for a chance to convince you I can make you happy. May I court you, Joselyn?”

She was silent again, but a quality in the silence gave him hope, and he waited patiently.

“I did not know there was a man in the world who valued spirit and intelligence in a woman. I have not before met a man who would allow me to lead my troops into battle, even though he wished to protect me.”

“I didn’t want you to go,” Felix admitted.

“But you respected me enough to agree,” she said, then fell silent again.

After a while, she said, “I daresay, now that my last surviving relative is dead, my trustees will find me somewhere else to live. I cannot, of course, stay here as a unmarried woman, in the house of a bachelor to whom I am not related.”

That was true, Felix supposed, his heart sinking. He hadn’t thought of that. Would she leave him, then?

“I never knew… Felix, you really do want me, don’t you? Not just my money?”

“Joselyn, I’ve not taken my officer’s pay in eight years, and it has all been soundly invested, along with my prizes. Believe me, you are the treasure I want, not your money.” He moved to take her back into his arms, but Joselyn stopped him with her hand.

“Then I wonder,” she looked down shyly, “if you would consider marrying me first, Felix, and courting me after?”

6

S

o it was that Joselyn Bellingham and Felix Maddox were wed as soon as the banns could be called. If there were some who questioned the sudden change in viscounts, and wondered at the reappearance of one who had been thought dead these six years, the older servants and villagers soon put them right. If some said the bride should not have lived in the groom’s house that last fortnight, Viscountess Maddox’s supporters told them to hush their mouths. And if some raised their eyebrows when the bride was escorted down the aisle by a large raven, Viscount Maddox didn’t care a jot. After all, he said, the raven had both found and saved his bride, and that was all there was to that.

THE END

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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