I WON!

2017 e festival of words I won in two categories.

BEST ROMANCE - The Minstrel's Lady  

A novel about a pair of musicians, who come to London at the invitation of their friend, Mark Smeaton, only to arrive just a few days before he is arrested for adultery with Queen Anne Boleyn.

Fearing for their own safety, they decide to leave, go home to the country, but the bridge over which their coach is travelling collapses in heavy rain, and everyone is killed, except Rose. But she is badly injured and has no memory of the accident or her life before it.

When a nobleman claims her as his missing bride, she has no reason to doubt him.

BEST HISTORICAL - Pestilence: Once Loved

This is the third in the series, The Pestilence, but can be read alone. It concerns some of the ordinary people who emerged at the end of the black death, to find the country almost deserted.

Rebecca is a prostitute, driven out of her home town by a terrified mob, looking for someone to blame for the pestilence. After hiding with her adult son, they continue on their journey, hoping to start a new life where nobody knows about Rebecca's history or profession. What they find is evidence that Rebecca's eldest son is alive and well and living as an earl.

Rebecca's longs to tell him the truth, but will that truth destroy the very essence of who he is?

Pestilence - The Second Wife

Book one of the series tells of Charlotte, the daughter of a wealthy merchant who is thrilled when the handsome Lord Robin Eversley asks for her hand in marriage.

She suspects that her main attraction for him is her love of children and his primary reason for marrying her is to find a mother for his damaged daughter. But that means nothing to Charlotte, as she loves the child almost as much as she loves him.

Determined to build a happy life for them both, she has only just found the love of her life, when the black death threatens to tear him away.

Pestilence - The Scent of Roses

Book Two in the series tells of Lady Felice Sutton, who agrees to marry Lord Christopher Waterford, despite his fearsome reputation, to save her beloved father from penury and debtor's prison.

She is grateful and determined to make him a good wife, but his distrust of women make her efforts almost impossible and when he finds his peasant mistress dead, he is convinced that Felice has poisoned her. Felice's growing affection for her enigmatic husband is shattered when she learns just how merciless he can be.

But the black death teaches him what it means to lose the love of an honest woman.

ALL THREE BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE IN A BOXED SET

New Book - The Gorston Widow

THE GORSTON WIDOW

 

Robert Hayward is the newly created Earl of Haverstock, given Abbey lands and a title by King Henry VIII as reward for his assistance in securing the King’s divorce. He is just getting used to the honour and the sudden rise in status, when the King presents him with a new countess to go with his other gifts.

 

Lady Miranda Gorston has lands adjacent to Haverstock Abbey and is well known for her public and devout mourning for her late husband. Each day she visits the small churchyard attached to Gorston Hall to pray over his grave and all who see her are impressed with her devotion to his memory. 

But nobody knows the real reason Miranda visits that graveyard and her new husband is no exception. He feels that once they marry she should give up her public grieving and concentrate on her new marriage, but she refuses and will not explain why. He knows she did not love Lord Gorston, so why does she continue to mourn him? Why does she put their future happiness at risk to do so? 

Robert does not feel he can stay and be made to look a fool, that people will be saying Lord Gorston is more important to his wife than he is. He returns to London and there remains, until five years later when Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, informs him that his wife has been entertaining another man and orders Robert to return to his marriage on threat of excommunication. 

But Miranda’s visitor is not what he seems and Robert finds the man’s presence only causes even more questions for which no answers are forthcoming.