Romance on the border

Put your feet up and enjoy Alina and Harry's trials. It's a historical romance, as you might have figured out from the cover, and it's set in the Borders between England and Scotland in the year 1543, when Henry VIII is getting old and tetchy. 

Harry Wharton sets off on a mission, stops in Corbridge and gets distracted by Alina Carnaby, daughter of a local landowner. On the spur of the moment he adopts an alias, and Alina is shocked when she learns he calls himself Harry Scott, for her father has a running feud with the Scott family across the Border. It's an exciting story that ducks and weaves around the running feuds of the borders. Alina must face an arranged marriage to John Errington when the only man she wants is Harry. Standing in the church on her wedding day, she hears the words every bride and groom dread...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyui1kfCd_8

http://tiny.cc/g7ddy

Excerpt: 

After two years of boredom confined in the stuffy, tension ridden rooms of King Henry’s court, where the heady mix of perfumes and fright made a man’s head ache, what could be better than being out in the cool night air, with an adventure about to begin? No hanging about at court waiting for greedy men to decide if they should petition the king before dinner, after it or wait until morning.
Harry looked up at the hall. Imposing, but not overlarge, and crenelated. Marauding Scots and greedy English reivers had pushed the owner into building a parapet; something to hide behind while he aimed arrows at his attackers.
He hoped to own something grander than this one day. With a good education behind him, a strong physique and his father’s support, he should manage it before he was much older, and he was prepared to risk his neck to get it.
Urging Bessie up the slope, he wondered if there would be guards peering through the crenels. He didn’t want an arrow in his back. Suddenly wary, he studied the parapet. The length of the wall ran away from him into the darkness of the forest on the other side of the ravine.
Not a guard in sight. He rode on, and halted Bessie before the massive gateway. A beast bellowed in the byre behind him, and another answered.
He looked around. All was in shadow but for moonlight hitting the rounded curve of a high drum tower midway along the wall. He could learn nothing more about Aydon or its young mistress tonight.
‘Come, Bessie. Time to move on.’
Probably just as well. Charming as Alina was, she was not the rich heiress of his dreams. Foolish whimsy had brought him here. He rounded the corner of a farm hind’s cottage. Shadowy grey in the moonlight, the lane stretched away into the distance, heading to the ridge where the Romans built their wall so long ago.
A muted cry reached him, and another.
Harry pulled his horse to a stand. Frowning, he looked around.
He caught the faint sound of hooves thudding against the earth, then the moan and bellow of disturbed beasts.
Harry scanned the fields, and found the moving black dots trotting diagonally towards the wall. The words of the packman resonated in his mind. ‘Lessen o’ course the Armstrongs be ridin’.’
It might not be the Armstrongs, but somebody was riding tonight. Was a raid taking place? Fascinated, he watched six or seven men round up the beasts and chivvy them into one dark, moving mass.
He ought to rouse the owner of Aydon Hall. He turned Bessie and urged her back to the gateway. Strangely reluctant to obey, she pranced on the spot. “Come on, Bessie!”
The mare made up her mind and lunged towards the castle. Harry looked over his shoulder. The moving black circle was much further across the hillside now. Pushing Bessie into a canter, he covered the half mile back to the hall, rounded the corner of the hind’s cottage and ran smack into a bunch of horsemen and cattle blocking the lane.
Bessie flung up her head and stopped of her own accord. Harry scanned the group warily. In the shadows, faces were no more than grey blobs but Harry was certain of three men, though less sure of the cattle that milled around him. The wide door of the byre stood open behind them and the sweet sour odours of penned cattle drenched the night air.
“Get ’im, Will!”

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fair-Border-Bride-Jen-Black-ebook/dp/B005VPXA42

FAIR BORDER BRIDE

This is the cover for my  historical romance Fair Border Bride. It's been up on Kindle since mid-October, and though it is selling in the US, not much is moving via amazon UK. Now this could mean that everyone in the UK buys directly from Amazon.com - or it could mean that I've failed miserably to tell anyone in the UK that it exists! and I think this may well be true!                                                              When the story opens in the summer of 1543, Harry is setting off on his first mission for his father, the Deputy Warden of the English West March, and adopts the alias Harry Scott.  travelling through Northumberland, he meets Alina and follows her home to Aydon only to fall foul of a marauding band of border reivers intent on stealing cattle from Aydon. Things go from bad to worse when Alina's father threatens to kill Harry. Alina is horrified, and Harry escapes only because Matho Spirston, captain of the Aydon guards, decides to help him. Alina fears she will never see Harry again, and attempts to prepare herself to marry a well to do neighbour as her father wishes. But she can't forget him...

There's a book trailer  here 

and a link to some 5-star reviews here

and here's a short excerpt:

Alina’s father  flings Harry into the dungeon at Aydon Castle and threatens him with the Leap next day. Alina creeps out of her bed to visit Harry at midnight when the castle is quiet.

“Tell me,” he said, before he forgot all practical things in the delight of her presence. “Your father threatens me with something called the Leap. What is it?”

“She dipped her head, and he heard her sharp intake of breath. “It’s the ravine, Harry.” She pointed towards the dark bulk of the hall. “On the other side is a ravine. It is deep, with the Ay burn at the bottom. Father…he makes prisoners jump from the precipice outside the hall.”

“Ah.” He raised her knuckles to his mouth, and kissed them to dispel the shadowy presence of Death looming in the darkness behind him. He remembered looking into the ravine the night he rode up here. His tongue probed the cleft between her fingers. She gasped. Harry’s blood sang through his body, and he kissed her knuckles again. “How deep, do you think?”

“Twenty times the height of a man, they say.” She shivered and frowned as she watched him nuzzle her fingers. “There are rocks and trees…”

“And no one survives?”

Her face crumpled. “Oh, Harry, sometimes they do, but they are broken, twisted creatures—”

A deep voice sounded from above, and Alina flung up her head. “Matho, please!”

Matho must have agreed, for she turned back to Harry. Her hand had warmed in his and when he kissed it once more, her other hand snaked through the bars and stroked his face, crept to the back of his neck.

“Ah, Alina,” he murmured. “Would that we had no iron bars between us.”

His flesh hardened. If this was his last night on earth, he wanted some pleasure to beguile his thoughts. He reached both hands through the grill and drew her close against the iron bars and in truth she was not reluctant, even when his hand roamed beneath her cloak, caught a ribbon and her nightgown gaped from neck to waist. His palm found the firm weight and curve of her breast and nestled around it.”