She is Beauty, but is he the Beast?
THE SNOW BRIDE (THE KNIGHT AND THE
WITCH 1) https://amzn.to/2MZZan0
UK https://amzn.to/2H1tYzY
EXCERPT
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Excerpt England, winter, 1131
Magnus forced his aching legs to move and dismounted stiffly
from his horse. The still, freezing cold made his teeth ache, and as he
tethered his mount, he wondered yet again what he was doing here. It was less
than a month to Christmas, and he could have been with Peter and Alice at
Castle Pleasant, preparing for feasting and singing and watching his
godchildren.
And then a deep, abiding ache, bedding down in the great
hall alone. He would never force a woman to lie with him—he had seen too much
of that in the crusades.
He limped forward through the pristine snow. Peter had his
Alice now, a clever, black-haired wench who feared nothing and no one,
including him. Had his friend and fellow crusader not known her first, he might
have had a chance with Alice.
She saw through the outer armor and shell of a man to what lay beneath.
But she loves her crusader knight, Peter of the Mount,
and I have no chance or right there.
As the palfrey snorted and jangled its harness behind him,
he knelt in a white heap of pitted frost and reached out with his good arm to
brush snow off the small, cracked statue of a saint. This was an old, wayside
shrine on a track to nowhere of note, and the wooden figure huddled in its
stone niche was old, its paint peeling. This battered saint would understand him,
one ugly brute to another.
“Holy one, grant me my prayer.”
He stopped, aware of the chill silence around him—the bare
trees, the white landscape, the empty road. He had nothing to offer the saint,
no flower or trinket to sweeten his request.
As his knees began to smart, then burn, then freeze on the
unyielding, icy ground, Magnus tried to marshal his thoughts. What did he want?
She is Beauty, but is he the Beast?
THE SNOW BRIDE (THE KNIGHT AND THE
WITCH 1) https://amzn.to/2MZZan0
UK https://amzn.to/2H1tYzY
EXCERPT
https://bit.ly/2yV95Cb
REVIEW https://bit.ly/38ynFzh
Excerpt 2
A woman of my own. Someone to return to.
Alice
cared and had urged him most ardently to stay with her and Peter, but pride had
made him refuse them both with a smile. He did not begrudge the handsome couple
their joy, not after their many trials. But the dark of winter and Christmas
especially brought his own desolation home to him most keenly, sharper than an
assassin’s blade. He was nine and twenty, a grizzled warrior, battle-scarred
and wounded.
Feeling sorry for yourself, Magnus? Brace up, man! Be a
Viking, as your granddad was. You have your wits and your balls, all working.
The lasses in the stews make no complaint and do not charge so much. You have
land, a strong house, good fellowship, and two hearty godchildren.
“Splendor in Christendom, let me have my own family! A lass
who loves me!”
His voice rang out, startling a lone magpie into taking
flight from a solitary elm in a blur of wings, but the drab and well-worn saint
gave no sign of hearing. Peering into the calm, carved face, Magnus wondered if
the saint was smiling, and then he spotted his own reflection, clear in a
frozen mirror of ice by the shrine.
He scowled, knowing very well what he looked like, and spat
to the left for luck. With his knees creaking, he staggered to his feet and
remounted his eager horse. When he passed this way again he would leave gold,
he vowed, but for now he wished only to slink away. He needed to find the
village before nightfall and speak to the council of old men—it was always old
men—who had sent word to his manor of Norton Mayfield, begging for help, any
help, to track and to defeat a monster.
Lindsay Townsend
