Love British Romantic Suspense in the tradition of Mary Stewart? Try "Night of the Storm" - excerpts

PROLOGUE

Andrew sat on the cliff below the castle wall and watched the sky. Far below, the Aegean was a deep rust in the setting sun. Wind gusted against his back. At his feet barley and rockroses, a cushion of yellow vetch growing in the ruins, small red and white flowers whose names Melissa would know.

Down on the beach men moved, dark shapes against the sand. A small boat rode at anchor. Stiffly, Andrew shifted position. From the corner of his eye he saw a stocky, dark-haired man standing a bottle of retsina down on a rock, wiping it carefully with a handkerchief. He nodded a greeting.

Then, to his left, another movement -

Two men looked down at him. One pushed at his body with a foot. 'He's out cold, no problem. Do it.' The other spun the cap from the bottle, poured the contents over Andrew, put the bottle between the sleeping fingers. Then they both rolled him over the edge.

A rattle of falling scree, then silence.

CHAPTER 1

England, 1996

'I should have known I'd find you here.'

The cool voice cut through the beat of straining wings. Gulls, oystercatchers and sanderling were exploding from an English estuary, darkening the ice-blue March sky. Katherine Hopkins had just marched straight across the sands, disturbing hundreds of birds roosting on the beach.

'And a good day to you, too,' Melissa said dryly, squinting up at the tall figure. Freezing and cramped after lying motionless behind a breakwater for hours, she had just lost a shot: a vital consideration since nature photography was part of her living.

'You're full of surprises, Katherine,' she observed now through chill-flayed lips. 'I thought you only liked your animals stuffed or sautéed.'

'Always so sure of yourself,' answered Katherine, 'Always so right.' She ignored the sights and sounds of alarm around them: birds did not buy anything. Coming to look the site over in private, she had been intensely irritated to realise that Melissa Haye was there first.

'But you've never actually beaten me. I always win in the end. Don't I?'

Melissa shrugged and snapped the cap onto her 600mm lens, fingers tingling with returning life. Unlike her own windswept hair, not a strand of Katherine's dark chignon stirred in the crisp air. Looking over business-dynamo Katherine Hopkins, the trousers tailored to those sleek legs, the scarlet jacket and silken cravat, Melissa wondered why an intelligent woman should find it so hard to accept that anyone was different from her.

What was done was done. Because of local opposition and a campaign spearheaded by Melissa herself, Katherine had failed to build one of her Total Woman Centres on this estuary. To Katherine the horseshoe of cliffs, the closer profile of river and sea, sands and reedbeds, mudflats and marsh, was a barren landscape, evocative as the moon but unproductive.

'Remember the paper which "no longer required" you?' Katherine continued, grinding a razorshell under one green boot. 'Remember the "lost" photo commissions? That was down to me. A couple of phone calls in the right places was all it took.'

'Now you've reminded me...' Melissa scooped a beanbag camera-support, hat and veiling into jacket pockets, her back icy where Katherine's shadow fell. It would be great, she thought, if Katherine could let the past alone, but, on and off, Kate Hopkins had been trying a long time to block her career. Looking back, Melissa acknowledged that Katherine's vindictiveness had actually spurred her on by making her do more, try harder. She laughed softly.

'I never thanked you for that, did I?' She glanced up again at her nemesis. They both knew why Katherine detested her. It had nothing to do with Melissa's work.

Katherine's patrician cheekbones turned a delicate pink. 'What is your problem?' she demanded. 'Total Woman Centres provide a service for thousands.'

At fifty pounds an entry ticket, Melissa wondered how many thousands were being favoured. Katherine though was a woman with a mission: already, at thirty-four, one of the wealthiest women in Britain, with her 24-hour shopping and healthcare stores established in every major city in Europe. Her business didn't need more expansion, but Katherine was greedy.

'A pity, then, that the people here voted to leave things as they are.' Cradling her camera, sweeping a rapid look over the area she had been stalking to make sure she would forget none of her photo gear, Melissa rose stiffly to her feet. The waders would not settle now until she and Katherine were gone.

'You can't possibly pretend it ends now,' snapped Katherine. 'This is a prime site...'

'I know.' The estuary was a focal point for local families. In summer, these sands rang with children's voices. In winter, mudflats and saltings upstream tingled to the cries of curlew.

Melissa smiled, then frowned, the taste of sea-salt catching for an instant in her throat. 'We should go.' Accustomed to numbness in her legs after a photo-shoot, she started to limp briskly towards the dunes.

'....perfect for the sensitive development I had proposed -'

Abruptly Katherine broke off, instinctively shying away as a storm of Brent geese flew in overhead. Melissa stopped, throwing back her blonde head to track the birds gossiping and grunting in flight: an everyday miracle. 'Amazing!' she murmured, thirst and cold forgotten.

The dark chattering swarm sharpened her responses to the estuary. Andrew should have been here to see this, she thought, hands tightening on the camera.

Memories, too strong to be denied, welled in her. As grief threatened to break out again, it helped Melissa to know that Andrew's favourite place was safe: that she and the local people who had once been Andrew's neighbours had made it safe.

'Wide-eyed enthusiasm doesn't work with me. Is that how you won the locals over, turning on the little girl charm?' Pausing when she did, Katherine was looking at her sidelong.

Melissa clicked her tongue and chuckled: she was actually grateful for Katherine's presence and sharp comments. 'You'll never know. Meetings are over, and so is the voting. People like their sand and "mud" as it is.'

'So it would seem.' Green eyes showed gold for an instant as Katherine acknowledged that unpalatable fact. Dismissing the estuary development from her immediate calculations with a brisk shake of her head, Katherine moved when Melissa did, keeping pace with her opponent as they left the beach and began to thread through the tall, twisting corridors of dunes.

As they walked, Melissa moving sure as a skier over soft dry sand and clumps of tough marram grass, Katherine's green eyes flashed up her sand-coloured fatigues and gloves, flitted over the younger woman's delicate complexion, gold brows and lashes, shoulder length silky blonde hair. Her rival would probably have to diet to stop those soft body curves, the round lines of an open face, neat nose, from blurring into flab.

Katherine's lips twitched with satisfaction. Those who thwarted her always paid. Melissa Haye had lost before, but it seemed she had still not learned her lesson. Throughout the last decade, their paths had crossed too often, both professionally and personally.

Andrew Thornhill had been Katherine's personal assistant and occasional lover. Recognising how his attractively-uneven, maturing looks and ready enthusiasm could be a foil to her poised, subtle fire, she had given him the chance of a great career. Yet he had been a disappointment, preferring the safe Melissa Haye.

Katherine's lips tensed, umber sculptured eyebrows drawing together as she negotiated a litter of pebbles and feathers on the narrowing dune path. Although it had piqued her to be rejected for some romping teenager, it had cost her nothing. Andrew had been young, and so could be excused his choice. She had wished him well, and it seemed he had been happy - he had lived with Melissa Haye until his sudden death in Rhodes, two years ago.

Old history. Katherine shook herself, consigning Andrew Thornhill to oblivion, and returned to her present enemy now peeling off her gloves, that prying long lens nestled in the crook of an arm.

'I'm watching you, Melissa Haye. One day you're going to make a serious mistake.'

The threat: always a good sign she was doing her job, reflected Melissa wryly. Behind, the distant tide hissed in her ears like an indrawn breath.

'Then we'll see who pays.'

There it was, a gold-plated promise of revenge. Melissa was surprised at how little she felt.

'Nothing to say?' Katherine liked proof of attention.

Melissa sighed. 'Can't we call a truce for once, Katherine?' Fishing into a trouser pocket for her favourite silver seahorse earrings, she hooked them deftly into her ears whilst cresting a dune-top and dipping down the other side. These silver seahorses were special: Andrew had bought them for her on Rhodes...

Katherine was coming at her again, leaning forward as she kicked through rabbit-marked sand. Her wide, up-tilting eyes were sharp.

'You disgust me,' she said, scornful of any olive branch. Her rapid gaze, fixing on Melissa's silver seahorse jewellery, became dismissive. 'Everything you are. Everything you stand for. Cross me again and I'll finish you for good.'

Katherine pushed past Melissa, striding on towards the track and her black four-wheel drive, towards civilisation and her plans for revenge.

CHAPTER 2

Clutching her camera, Melissa stared out to sea. She no longer thought of Katherine's threats. The past had returned.

Andrew Thornhill, with his straight brown hair, craggy nose and keen smile. Six-one in his stockinged feet, and broadening. He had blushed when he first saw her at the local wildlife group meeting at Wells-next-the-Sea. Later, walking with Melissa by the sea shore, Andrew had asked her out. He was twenty then, Melissa seventeen.

They had lived together for eight years.

Still the memories flowed. His walk, his voice, his scent. His lethal sloe gin. His listening face. His hilarious imitation of a love-struck diplomat. The way he double-knotted his shoelaces. The way he liked 'messing about' round rock-pools. The way he made love -

'Stop this!' The heavy camera trembled on Melissa's arm. Andrew had died two years ago, and still she was struggling to come to terms with it. She had to get away, find a different direction. But there was something she had to do first: a secret, private mission behind her next assignment.

Her bags were always packed. She loved roving - new places, new people. She was due to go to Greece in April, the peak time for the amazing spring flowering and bird migration in the region, stay on the remote eastern island of Asteri, just off the coast from Turkey, whilst she researched her latest travel series: 'Paradise under Threat.' She could bring that trip forward, fly to Rhodes, take the light airplane to Asteri.

It would be expedient to drop out of circulation in England until a certain brunette forgot her. Kate Hopkins had a spiteful memory and a long business arm.

Melissa laid her camera down and sat on the shadowed side of the dunes, nimble fingers digging into the cold sand. The ebbing, mournful cry of a curlew dragged at her insides as she swallowed, faintly nauseated.

Remembering....

Two years ago, due to join Andrew on Rhodes for a holiday, she had been summoned instead to identify his body.

It had been the hardest thing she had ever done: to enter that cold sterile chamber and wait for the fluorescent lights to flicker into hard white brilliance over long grey metal drawers.

Nothing in her twenty-five years of life had prepared her for the moment when the drawer glided open and she must look.

Melissa's father, a merchant sailor, had been lost at sea. At twelve years, when her uncle had met her from school to tell her, Melissa thought she had known the worst. But she was wrong.

Andrew's head was encased in bandages, his face smashed down one side. Staring at the carefully-washed, ruined features, Melissa longed to touch, make him whole; run her fingers through his thick brown hair. She had always loved Andrew's hair.

A fall, the police said. A tragic accident.

'No!' murmured Melissa. Andrew had telephoned from Rhodes the day before he died. With a stab of guilt, Melissa remembered how irritated she'd been at the phone call: unlike some people, she was still working, she had told Andrew. She had not been due to join him on Rhodes, a holiday, for another three days.

Full of news, Andrew had persisted. Forgetting her warning about mosquitoes in early May, he had been first wakened by a biting mosquito, then kept awake by several more insects' buzzing passes next to his ear. Hunting and swatting with a rolled up 'Rodos News,' he had finally given up on sleep and gone walkabout in the deserted streets of the Old Town.

Five in the morning and nothing had been moving except for prowling cats, no sounds except for the occasional twitter of swallows. Until, walking into a square dominated by a derelict mosque encased in scaffolding, Andrew had seen something strange.

'It was really peculiar, Mel: four men dressed as your salt of the earth Greek fishermen, but not really real - too smooth somehow, and not a smoker amongst them.

'They were struggling with this crate, transferring it from one three wheel truck to another and having to hump it up some steps between the two trucks. There was a dog inside - it started barking like a mad thing - but you have to understand how large this crate was... I mean seriously big. And they were treating it with kid gloves; not letting it bump or jostle, though they were obviously in a hurry. I'd the feeling there'd been a serious cock-up in communication, that those two trucks should have met in the square or in the road above the square, but not with the steps between them...'

The 'fishermen' had spotted Andrew watching. One had lowered his part of the load onto a step leading out of the square into the narrow alleyway above, and approached.

Thankful he had been using his pencil torch, Andrew had pulled out a map and shone his light on that. After a measuring look at the Englishman, the 'fisherman' had swung round and returned to the others.

'They didn't stir again until I did.' Andrew had said, his voice crackling on the bad line. 'The whole thing was so weird I made sure they weren't following me here.'

Without her being aware of it, Melissa's left foot flexed slightly as she remembered. She had been indignant, but not for Andrew's sake. She had thought he was safe. She had accepted his assurance that he would be careful - anyway, he was driving out that morning from Rhodes Town to look over the south of the island - and, yes, he had reported the incident to the police. Melissa's anger had been for the plight of the crate's 'cargo'.

'Smugglers, Andrew. Not of guns or drugs, but of live animals. The dog would be a cover for whatever else was in that box, crammed in some disgusting secret compartment, half-starved and suffocated almost to death. Oh! I hope the police catch those men: it's a revolting trade!'

Melissa winced at the memory of those words. The conspiracy Andrew had stumbled upon in that small Rhodes street was more vicious than either of them realised. By the time Melissa found out more it was too late. Andrew was already dead.

A fall from a sheer pinnacle, an outcrop in the south of the island near to a deserted crusader castle. No one with him. That haunted Melissa most of all - Andrew had died alone.

The police had found no evidence of foul play. No money or cards were removed from Andrew's wallet. Perhaps the thief or thieves had panicked, suggested Melissa.

The police thought mugging unlikely in so remote a region. As for these strange sightings in the Old Town - none of the Rhodes police had received a report from a tourist about smugglers. Perhaps the Englishman had decided he was mistaken and so done nothing.

Again, the police repeated that they had found no signs of any kind of struggle; no wounds but those consistent with a fall.

The police also revealed that Andrew could have been intoxicated when he was killed - the front of his shirt was stiff with dried-in retsina. Melissa's statement that Andrew disliked retsina was noted, but a significant amount of alcohol had been found in his bloodstream.

'That's impossible,' said Melissa, when told of the autopsy. 'Andrew hates being drunk - he never has more than a single beer, or glass of wine. One of his friends died on his eighteenth birthday pub crawl. Andrew told me about it, how horrible and tragic it all was...'

The police had let her talk before observing, tactfully, that Mr Thornhill was no longer eighteen, and that on the day he had died it had been very hot.

He had been seen drinking at the local taverna, two kilometres from the castle.

She could not accept his death as an accident. That Andrew had simply fallen seemed impossible - she knew him. He had the balance and skill of a cat. After a childhood spent scrambling round the West Country cliffs he had a head for heights. For all his zest and interest he was steady, not someone to take foolish risks, least of all round wild, exposed ruins.

And he would never drink to excess.

Throughout the time of their supposed holiday, Melissa kept combing the site where Andrew had fallen, tracking in and around the tiny chapel within the castle walls. She refused to admit he was gone forever. Something of him must remain, some trace.

She had found nothing. When she talked to the owners of the local taverna, they recalled the tall Englishman drinking a glass of wine, possibly retsina, possibly more than one glass: they could not remember exactly.

Andrew's family had wanted him buried and remembered as the living, lovable young man he had been - who had accepted and defended Melissa's wanderlust by referring to his own 'Viking genes'. Andrew's parents had no sense of unfinished business.

Melissa had. Why had Andrew never gone to the authorities with what he had seen in Rhodes Town? Why the retsina on his clothes, a wine he detested? It did not make sense.

The questions haunted her. Forced to return to England, to her work at home and abroad, Melissa had slogged through life for the next year. She had packed Andrew's collection of varnished driftwood into the attic, given away his clothes.

Then, five months ago, Melissa heard from a cousin in Piraeus that an Athenian had been caught in Rhodes Old Town trying to sell a juvenile Eleonora's falcon. Under questioning, he had begun to divulge new information - including mention of a wildlife smuggling ring which, he claimed, had murdered a foreign tourist in the south of Rhodes over a year before. The tourist had 'seen something down there' and so had been disposed of, the Athenian said, although he knew of it only through hearsay...

Before he had finished telling all he knew, the Athenian had died in prison of a ruptured appendix. No more details had emerged, but Melissa was certain that the murdered tourist was Andrew. What had he seen in the south? What had tipped the smugglers into action there, when in Rhodes Town they had left him alone?

Unfinished business, reflected Melissa, squeezing dune-sand through her fingers, listening to the piping calls of the waders, watching the grey wave-caps Andrew had loved. She wanted to expose the cruel, secret illegal trade which she was sure had cost Andrew his life. To know who had killed him, and why.

The Rhodian police had already admitted, after several lengthy telephone calls by Melissa, that they were reopening Andrew's file and making new enquires. Melissa meanwhile had started some of her own.

Rhodes island itself was a dead end, she had decided. After the Athenian had been taken trying to sell a rare bird of prey, no doubt the smugglers would lie low in that part of the Dodecanese for a while. She herself was also too well-known to the local police, who were beginning their new enquiries and who would naturally resent an amateur. On Rhodes she must let the customs and police do their job.

Melissa reached for her camera and rose to her feet. Time to go, she thought, turning her back on Andrew's estuary. She was to telephone Jonathan Saunders at eight tonight. A wildlife investigator who had been working undercover in the Dodecanese, Jonathan had promised sensational news....

Melissa caught the receiver back and rammed it tight to her ear. 'You're sure, Jonathan? Asteri?'

'That's where "Spiro" first made contact with me. And where he told me to go to pick up my shipment of orchid bulbs.'

'But the place is practically next door to Turkey! And it's tiny: fourteen miles end to end. The population must be less than two thousand; there's no proper airport, nor a decent-sized harbour...'

Melissa stopped, struck by the fact that everything she had mentioned - it's smallness, its seclusion, its lack of international airport or harbour security, its closeness to Turkey - made Asteri an ideal stepping stone for smugglers wishing to trade from the Far East and Turkey through to Europe and America. And Asteri had no full-time police, only a mayor, Nicholas Stephanides, with whom she had exchanged formal letters of introduction.

'Sorry, I'm babbling,' she said after a deep breath. 'It's just so big a coincidence I can't really get hold of it yet. You know I'm going to Asteri next month?'

'To do those features on bauxite mining, yes. Well, someone needs to draw attention to it before a real mess is made of the place.'

Even whilst trying to concentrate on Jonathan's answer, Melissa's mind went charging ahead. Wildlife smugglers on Asteri. The type of men she was convinced had murdered Andrew. Her fingers tightened further on the receiver.

'Yes, yes, that's right.' I know what I'm doing, Jonathan: get to the point. Phone jammed under her chin, Melissa launched herself off the hotel bed to scrabble amongst her worknotes for pen and paper. 'What happened between you and "Spiro"?'

Now she listened intently. After six weeks of posing as an unscrupulous plant collector, shuttling between the Greek islands and the Turkish mainland, Jonathan had been approached on tiny Asteri by a man who introduced himself as "Spiro". Spiro had offered to supply Jonathan with over a thousand very rare plants and bulbs, stolen from five Greek island and two Turkish mainland sites, and package them for Jonathan to fly out with them from Asteri to a private airstrip in Northern Greece and then to Germany.

'But I did not confirm the order, and instead called that deal off,' Jonathan said, in his slow deliberate way that made Melissa want to put her hand down the phone line and give his beard a tweak. 'Spiro kept chattering about other "special items" he could obtain. I decided to call his bluff. As you know, Asteri's a breeding site for the Eleonora's falcon....'

It was an Eleonora's that Athenian was trying to sell when the Rhodes police caught him. 'Is that what you asked Spiro for, a falcon?' Melissa asked.

'I raised the stakes.' Jonathan's voice was suddenly harsh. 'Said I was after them and golden eagles: ten of each if Spiro could supply them.'

For an icy shocked instant Melissa was speechless, then - 'Are you mad?' she hurled down the phone line. 'Ten Eleonoras when there are less than a thousand left anywhere in the wild? You know what your "order" means - for every falcon successfully captured, there'll be another nine that don't survive... and you go and ask for ten!' Anger gave way to horror and disgust. 'That's sick, Jonathan.'

'It would be, Melissa, if I'd done what you're suggesting. But if you'd allow me to explain...'

Breathing in heavily, Melissa listened as Jonathan corrected her first impassioned hasty impression. He had not agreed a price with Spiro, and until that first vital part of the deal was concluded, nothing would be set in motion. Spiro it turned out had been 'burnt' before by non-payment and so had determined a simple rule: half-payment first, and only then were the 'goods' obtained, the trappers and middlemen paid for their time and labour.

'We've arranged to meet back on Asteri next week to agree a price,' Jonathan concluded steadily. 'I'm to stay at the Villa Elysion.'

'I see,' said Melissa quietly, feeling somewhat foolish at her earlier flare-up. Asteri was favoured by the super-rich, she now recalled. From her research she knew there were three luxury villas available for hire on the island. One, owned by Asteri's mayor, Nicholas Stephanides, was the Villa Elysion.

'Spiro wouldn't tell me the final date and any pickup point for my "special items". I'm to wait to be contacted at the villa - naturally with sufficient funds to provide down payment for the transaction.'

There was a moment's silence, then: 'It's a shame, you going there yourself next month. A few weeks earlier and we could have flown out together.'

Melissa's heart began beating faster again. 'Let's do that,' she suggested, with a calmness she did not feel. 'I'll bring my trip forward.' She had been planning to do that anyway, because of Katherine. 'If you want, you can tell Spiro when you meet that I adore seahorses. Maybe he'll offer to smuggle those, too.'

Melissa smiled grimly into the receiver as her warm brown eyes fixed on the laughing photograph of Andrew on the otherwise impersonal bedside cabinet. Jonathan didn't know her suspicions about Andrew's death. No one knew.

'I'd be glad to help in any way,' she stressed, sensing hesitation.

Jonathan cleared his throat. 'I know Nicholas Stephanides won't agree but if we posed as a couple I think Spiro might be less wary of me. And more likely to, you know, to answer questions, to show off -'

'What's Stephanides to do with this?'

'Nick Stephanides is my local contact, Melissa. I have to consider what he says,' Jonathan answered - reasonably enough, although recalling the terse letter of acknowledgement she had received from the mayor of Asteri, Melissa was still annoyed.

Her irritation increased when Jonathan admitted, 'I'm afraid though that Mr Stephanides and I don't exactly get on. Whenever I went to see him he wasn't exactly forthcoming about what Spiro and his group might be doing on Asteri. Seemed to resent what he called foreign interference in Greek affairs.'

Melissa was irritated at the thought of idealistic, hard-working Jonathan subjected to such a pious little speech. She opened her mouth to respond when Jonathan added anxiously, 'So you think it's a good idea to pose as a couple?'

'I certainly do - and to hell with Stephanides.' Quickly, without giving Jonathan chance to reconsider, Melissa extracted from him the date of his flight. He was due to go out next Wednesday to meet Spiro the following Friday, only ten days away.

Melissa phoned the airline, then redialled Jonathan's number.

'See you at Gatwick next Wednesday,' she said.

The evening after, with only a week to go, Jonathan phoned her at home in Norfolk. 'It's off,' he said flatly. 'I've cancelled my flight and told Nick Stephanides and the Villa Elysion we can't make it. Travis is out of the country, so he can't stand in for me...'

Travis was Jonathan's fellow wildlife investigator, running their office from his tiny flat in London.

'Of course, even if Travis had been able to get to Asteri, there's no guarantee that Spiro would have dealt with him -'

'Jonathan, you're not making sense,' Melissa broke in. 'What's happened?' Anger made her blunt. 'And what right had you to do anything without asking me? I changed not only my flight but my entire schedule for you.'

Jonathan sighed. 'Without wishing to be over-dramatic about it, Melissa, I can't move; I'm in plaster. Right now, I'm phoning from the hospital, courtesy of a hit-and-run driver this morning. I'll be in and out of doctors' surgeries for weeks.'

'Oh, Jonathan, I'm so sorry,' Melissa was appalled. 'You should have said straight away. Which hospital are you in? I'll come and see you.'

Jonathan told her, ending gloomily: 'Sorry to have messed it up for you, Melissa.'

'You haven't, because I'm still going,' Melissa said. She thought of something to cheer Jonathan up. 'And just remember you have the taped conversations and film of Spiro: probably enough for the Greek customs and police to arrest him.' Jonathan was a careful investigator: he would have met Spiro carrying not only a hidden tape recorder, but a hidden camera as well.

Another sigh gushed down the phone line.

'Sorry again, Melissa. The tapes and films went west in the accident: the car ran over them too.'

Melissa's left foot jerked in an angry frustrated twitch. The thought that perhaps Jonathan's 'accidental' encounter with the car had been nothing of the kind chilled her gut and made her snatch back other reflex questions. She reminded herself she was speaking to a man in hospital, in pain.

'It doesn't matter,' she said. 'The Spiros of the world always make mistakes through greed: you'll have another chance to expose his filthy trade. Perhaps the mayor of Asteri can do something: the island is small, everyone is known...'

'Without pictures I've nothing to separate Spiro from a hundred other island Greeks of the same name. The man I met was somewhere between thirty and forty-five, average height, bit stocky, deep tan, black wavy hair, bushy moustache, black sunspecs. Absolutely no distinguishing features - Oh! Except one: he didn't smoke...'

Not a smoker amongst them, Andrew had said, when describing the men he had seen in Rhodes town. Melissa said nothing, but inside her head was buzzing. Coincidence? Possibly. But this new information only made her the more determined to track Spiro down.

'Nick Stephanides was furious when I told him. Said that my identikit picture of Spiro, if produced, would fit half the adult male population of Asteri and that the only good thing to come out of the entire affair was that my "idiot scheme" to involve you in catching the smugglers had fallen through.'

Idiot scheme was it? thought Melissa, feeling the burn of anger sear through her. The chauvinistic old fool...

'Forget Mr Stephanides: he's not worth your attention,' she told Jonathan briskly. 'Tell me what you like to read. I'll bring you books when I come.'

By the time she arrived at the hospital Jonathan was more comfortable and chatted happily. One of a large family, he was never without visitors. By the end of the week, when Melissa was due to leave, she had no qualms in leaving Jonathan to the loving attention of his sisters, brothers and friends.

'Have you told Stephanides?' Jonathan asked.

Melissa shrugged. 'He should know: my passage to Asteri's not been cancelled.' Her warm brown eyes flashed. 'If the mayor doesn't know, then I'll be a surprise for him.'

'You won't do anything rash?' Jonathan asked anxiously.

Melissa smiled. 'Of course not,' she chuckled, hiding her eyes behind a flick of her blonde fringe. 'You and Mr Stephanides are the wildlife investigators, not me! I'm going to Asteri alone.'

And no mayor of Asteri was going to stop her.

CHAPTER 3

'Apó tin Anglía? No English tourist has such cameras!' Since the last of his regulars had disembarked at Karpathos, Manoli the ferryman had been bursting with questions. In sight of his final port, his home island, he could no longer stand it.

Melissa grinned. 'But I do this for a living,' she called back in Greek, without taking her eye from the viewfinder. She was enthusiastically soaking in impressions, camera ready.

Already in her long lens, Asteri was more than the smudge that Manoli would see drifting up to them from the sea. It had a dark central mountain and green hills, sharp ridges running down from its single peak, grey and tawny cultivated land.

'What's your name?' Manoli yelled over the engine noise.

'Melissa Haye!' Leaning against a crate and sitting on a box of fruit, Melissa waved a greeting to Manoli in the cabin behind her. Spray and flare would make shots difficult, but she braced her arms to hold her camera steady, keenly aware of the fabric of her Barbour draped over the crate.

Keenly aware of the stranger watching.

A man with a shaggy, charming rag-bag of a dog, sheltering under his legs. Throughout the long boat-trip, Melissa had been tempted to whistle the collie-cross bitch out to fuss her, but wasn't sure how her owner would react.

Considering the man, Melissa reckoned him to be in his thirties and, by the dark shirt and socks - worn in the masculine delusion that these would need less attention than lighter, dye-fast items - probably unattached. In jeans and baggy brown sweater, he sported a blue cap which had plainly seen better days. Like Melissa, he had been on the boat since Rhodes, making himself comfortable amongst the spare bus tyres piled in the bows. Now the man was working with needle and thread on part of a denim jacket but, when he was convinced that Melissa was occupied, he stared at her instead.

Melissa was aware of his eyes the instant she boarded the boat. Like her, the stranger had been obliged to take Manoli's ancient ferry after the scheduled light aircraft flight to Asteri had been cancelled due to the sudden illness of the only available pilot. The man's interest had increased when she, like him, had remained on board through every port of call visited by Asteri One.

Melissa laughed softly. Interest was great, it made her feel good, but she was aware that this man could be Spiro: the wildlife smuggler whom Jonathan had arranged to meet two days from today at the Villa Elysion on Asteri.

Stocky, tanned, blunt-nosed, black-browed and with a Cretan moustache, the stranger glanced up from ripping a clasp-knife through a section of the jacket: at this rate there would be nothing of it left. Adjusting her camera, Melissa felt his eyes quickly fix on her, then withdraw.

'Why are you going to Asteri, Melissa Haye?' Manoli's vigorous call interrupted her thoughts. 'Are you married?'

Straight brown hair and double-knotted shoelaces. Melissa tried for more but Andrew-in-memory vanished. Since setting out from England she had decided to speak of Andrew - not his name, though, nor the time or place of his death - to see if there was any queer reaction from the questioner. It was for Andrew that she took her eye away from the viewfinder and turned her head, wind snagging her fine hair.

'Single. My partner was killed falling from a cliff.' It was easier to admit this in a language not her own.

Farther along the boat Melissa sensed the stranger trying to listen above the pounding engines. She wished she had the eyes of a hare, to watch everywhere at once. Straining to hear through the strikes of the water and roaring chug of the boat, she sensed no sudden intakes of breath, heard only the tear of cloth ripped by strong hands and a keen knife.

'No children,' she added, anticipating the question.

'Ah!' Steering his ramshackle craft one-handed, Manoli rubbed his unshaven jowls in sympathy. His wind-blown features were guileless yet sharply interested. Making a rapid sign against bad luck he again looked over the pure blonde, nicely rounded young woman with her practical yet delicate shoes, her crisp white top and wool cardigan tucked into orange oilskin overalls similar to those worn by fishermen. Her glowing face and nimble hands were becoming sunburnt: astonishing for March.

With a glance towards the looming island coastline, the sea, the bows, Manoli returned to the woman. 'Are your parents dead too? Do you have brothers? Sisters?'

Most of the Greeks she talked to were like Manoli. Melissa loved the sudden conversational veering off and the absolute directness. 'My father drowned at sea. My mother remarried and lives with my stepfather and my two brothers and three sisters in England. A place called York.'

'Cousins?' shouted Manoli, sucking on a home-made cigarette.

'Lots of cousins, all over the world!' At this rate, Melissa thought, laughing, she was going to be hoarse. 'I've a Greek second cousin in Piraeus: he works in a shipping office.'

They had reached the westernmost tip of the island, one of the five promontories which gave Asteri the rough star shape for which it was named. Panning with her camera, Melissa refocused on the cliffs ahead, searching, stalking -

In the bows the man was shifting. Melissa did not hear but imagined the squeak of a trainer on damp timber as she felt the deck flex underfoot. Her whirling hair cut her sideways vision to the port bows as a limber body prowled sternwards.

To turn away meant a missed shot.

Melissa was looking for more than photographic images. Asteri had an airstrip, a few seaward hamlets and the village port of Khora, the island 'capital,' but these were too public for the quarry she had in mind. Small coves, sheltered beaches were what she was after. Places a team of smugglers might put in secretly and safely.

Asteri: Star Island, thought Melissa. Already its mountain peak enticed her, already the evergreen blaze of its woods - luxuriant for a small Mediterranean island - excited her. Yet there was sharpness amongst the sweet. It was here Jonathan had tracked down Spiro, the leader of the smugglers who had quite probably murdered her lover.

The silver seahorse earrings were cold against her neck. Melissa's gold eyebrows drew together then flicked apart. Andrew's death made her angry and the anger focused her. Hoping for a glimpse of the smaller islet of Antasteri, the lesser star, she scanned the western rim of the growing island.

In all this she had not forgotten the stranger, but could not hear his approach over the slap of water against the hull.

'Why are you coming to Asteri?' Manoli had recalled an earlier unanswered question.

'I want to photograph the island. To write about it, too. I'm doing a series of newspaper and magazine reports.' As the wind faltered, Melissa heard the footsteps stop.

'How much are they paying you?'

Melissa clicked her tongue and laughed: only the Greeks asked you what everyone else wanted to know. 'Around three thousand pounds. I'm not sure what that'll be in drachmai.'

From the corner of her left eye Melissa watched Manoli let the boat butt its own way on a course parallel to the cliffs as he jerked up both hands to make a 'crazy' gesture. In the eye of the lens, a long steep rocky shoreline replaced the cliffs.

No safe anchorage here in a storm. The thought snapped through Melissa's mind, rapid as a camera shutter. Melissa swept the lens higher, towards the central forest before Asteri's bare mountain peak, and gasped.

Wonderful. No other word encompassed it. Mature, unspoilt Mediterranean forest such as is rarely seen in the islands. Glorious tall pines. Great oaks allowed to reach their full height and spread. Cypress stands, not sad or elegiac but vigorous. And beneath, no doubt, although too far for her long lens, the shrubs and flowers: juniper, honeysuckle, cyclamen -

'Amazing!' Melissa exclaimed, colouring with excitement, ears buzzing with heat.

Suddenly a cap - hewn from a blue denim jacket - was dropped onto her head. The stranger straightened the robin-hood style brim over her forehead. 'You're too fair to go without a hat,' he said gruffly, in American-accented English. 'Down, Chloe!' This last in Greek to his dog, bouncing round Melissa's legs.

Surprised - she'd been on the receiving end of some unusual male approaches before now, but this was the most original - Melissa bent and patted Chloe. 'I'll bear that in mind,' she remarked dryly.

'Even old hands can be caught by the spring light,' the man went on, touching his own faded blue cap. 'It's very deceptive.'

He had a gruff, seaman-loud voice. Coupled with fiery light eyes, that luxuriant moustache and the rapid-fire approach of many Greeks, he tended towards benevolent dictatorship. 'People have been sent to hospital with heat exhaustion, and there isn't any hospital on Asteri.' His New England accent broadened. 'Sorry if this seems pushy.'

He was so openly bossy that Melissa couldn't help but be amused. 'Thanks,' she said, laughing, face pink from the sun.

'No problem,' the stranger said - she was sure he was suppressing a grin behind his moustache. Suddenly he thrust out a hand. 'I'm Nick Stephanides, the mayor of Asteri.'

Her free hand disappeared into his, his warm hard grip making his introduction even more incredible. Here was her anticipated adversary, thought Melissa, amazed. Not an old, crusty misogynist, but a smiling man in the prime of life and the peak of fitness. She felt her jawbone go and caught it back.

'Melissa - Pleased to meet you,' she said, amused at her own confusion. The element of surprise had been his after all.

'Pardon me - you've a leaf caught in your hair.' The man dived forward, and by a nimble of sleight of hand unseen by Manoli tucked the dried spear of an olive leaf close to her left ear. As he deftly cupped the leaf to draw it out again, he brought his face close to hers.

'What the hell are you doing here now? Jonathan told me you'd cancelled.'

'I've still my own work!' Melissa hissed back. 'Besides, Spiro's due at your place on -'

The hand in her hair tightened. 'Manoli speaks English,' came the warning whisper. Abruptly she was released.

'Glad to have you with us, Melissa,' said Nicholas loudly. 'I hope you enjoy your stay.'

The moustache made it hard to tell if he was being serious or not, but Melissa was absolutely certain that the mayor of Asteri was furious and that he would one day apologise for pulling her hair.

'Excuse me now, please: we'll be landing in a moment.' Turning abruptly away, Nicholas started to heave together sacks of potatoes, ready for unloading.

Melissa started as Manoli sounded the horn. Heeling round the southernmost tip of the island, Asteri One steamed towards Khora, passing a small private harbour.

The private harbour's natural horseshoe shape reminded Melissa sharply of Andrew's estuary. Throwing off the memory of Katherine Hopkins' threats, she focused on the rambling oaks and run-wild olive and citrus trees at the side of the house, on the drifts of dark purple periwinkles. A sweet scent from narcissi growing near a small stand of trees drifted across the water as Melissa lowered her camera.

Nicholas caught her questioning look. 'My Elysion,' he said laconically, jerking a thumb past the scudding waves to the whitewashed villa at the head of the bay. Manoli revved the engine, ready to strike out for the bigger harbour of Khora.

In another few moments the ship had docked alongside the harbour's central stone jetty and the islanders were swarming aboard to unload the cargo. Slipping the Nikon round her neck, Melissa rapidly retrieved her rucksack and gear. As she squeezed through a crush of dark-garbed women haggling for vegetables on the wide gang plank, Melissa noticed the mayor of Asteri pounding two at a time up a long series of white steps leading from the main jetty into Khora itself, a sack of potatoes slung over one shoulder.

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British Romantic Suspense in the tradition of Mary Stewart with a World War 2 Mystery at its heart. 99p/99cents

There has always been a mystery in Julia Rochfort's family. Who killed her grandfather Guy, a member of the Italian resistance movement in World War Two? When Julia travels to Florence to compete in a singing competition, she meets Roberto Padovano, already an established opera star, and they discover that they have a lot more in common than simple attraction.

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Excerpt

PROLOGUE

26th November, London, 1993.

She had foreseen his revenge, but the attack when it came was brutal. Impossible to avoid, she watched the knife slicing towards her heart, her features betraying a mixture of anger and agonised suspense. Too late - she would never know love now, only obsession.

He struck, and a dull throbbing bloomed in her chest. The blow smashed her to her knees and the wooden floor seemed to jackknife upwards, sucking her into a cool embrace. She lay still, horror and fear fading as a warm languor swept through her body. Dying was easy.

Dimly, she heard the man standing over her chant something; a lament, a name, then he too was silent.

The main lights snapped on and she coughed.

'Sorry, it's the dust,' Julia murmured, coming out of the role and her character, rising to her feet. The Maestro seized her hand.

'Marvellous,' he was saying over the applause. 'Bravo!'

The masterclass for Carmen was over.

The Maestro caught up with her as she was hurrying from the hall. 'Is it tomorrow you're going?'

Julia nodded, pushing Carmen's veil down in her bag.

'Good luck - take care.'

Julia smiled, thinking of another promise. 'I will,' she said.

Summer 1944, Italy.

The terror began with the music. As they wound up the gramophone, the youth moaned and thrashed, trying hopelessly to break free. He lay in chains, a blindfold cutting into his eyes. The walls of the underground chamber were wet: blood or water he did not know. Sometimes he touched the stones with his broken fingers, desperate to invoke their silence in himself.

This time would he break? The record needle dropped onto the seventy-eight, the chamber rang. A finger glided down the boy's calf - he tensed, but the pain did not come at the music's climax. A lighted cigarette was thrust against his right foot and allowed to burn, spitting in the open wounds.

‘Tell me!' The whisper carried over the chords, over his scream, piercing the moment when he felt he could bear no more.

'Know nothing.. .' He shuddered. 'Don't.' He lifted his head, pleading with the Whisperer, the voice he most feared.

There was a moment's silence. And then a man, another captive, suddenly began shouting.

'I'll have you! Not one of your family will be safe! I'll have your wives, your children - their children . . . I promise you - you'll see . . .'

CHAPTER 1

28th November, 1993, Florence, Italy.

Her search would begin tomorrow - tonight she could keep for herself.

The wind, sweeping through the funnel of jewellers' shops, thrust Julia along the Ponte Vecchio. She sped across Florence's oldest bridge, watching the faces of the local people, fascinated by their every nuance of expression, at once familiar and exotic. Winter sunlight flashed on her earrings as she turned her head. determined to miss nothing.

Polished windows tossed back reflections of a young woman in jeans, trainers and duffel coat. With glowing skin, bright, grey eyes, animated features and a heedful of black curls, she attracted attention even in the bustle of the pre-festive rush. She could be taken for a teenage daughter of the Italian matrons cutting over the bridge with their bags of vegetables, yet she had the surface confidence of someone older, unafraid to show feeling in an age of fashionable cynicism.

That same commitment marked Julia Rochfort as a rising force in British opera. She was twenty-six, and this was her first time in Italy since childhood.

English, English-speaking, yet also fluent in Italian, Julia had always intended to return to the country where she had been born. She found herself at ease within the swarms of dark-haired Christmas shoppers and black street traders hawking bangles and carpets. Out of the crush a jeweller sat relaxing beside his window, drinking from a china saucer. Julia smiled at him as she passed.

The wind swept on, grit-blasting the eastern edge of the City of Flowers, cleaning and brightening its face. The golden orb at the top of the dome of the cathedral gleamed, like a star pointing the way she should go.

Julia knew where she was going. She was taking part in a singing competition, the springboard, she hoped, to an international career. In four days she would be performing to her first Italian audience. She was apprehensive yet exhilarated, opened-out by the challenge.

She was in Florence, amongst people who spoke the same language as herself, who were dark as she was; people with whom she felt she belonged.

The sharp tang of the river drew her to the loggia set in the middle of the medieval bridge. Wind flicking her face, she passed a gaggle of school children, arguing - with the same extravagant face-pulling she had made herself as a child - over whose turn it was on a pocket-sized games machine, and leaned out over the Arno. The tip of her tongue played between her teeth, as always when she was concentrating.

Looking across the muddy waters to the biscuit-coloured apartments opposite put Julia in mind of her own family. Enrico and her mother Angelica would be boarding their plane now, to spend Christmas in Tenerife.

The holiday was her gift. In October, her mother went into hospital for an operation - not serious, but Julia was on tour and unable to visit. Now, with Angelica fully recovered, a long stay on a warm island would set her parents up for the new year.

It had made a hole in her savings, but she had been glad to spend it. She just wished she and her mother—

Julia laughed at herself and shook her head, cutting off the thought. She watched two youths bump over the stone sets on a scooter, black slicked hair gleaming more than their leathers. Across the river, above the snarl of rush-hour cars came the sudden ringing of bells, a clock striking the hour: it would soon be evening. In the meantime she would enjoy this mirage-like dusk of fading sun and coloured lights, the music of people's voices, the throaty chatter of roosting pigeons.

Julia smiled, absented-mindedly winding a curl of hair round her thumb. It was ironic that she, so much a creature of light, should spend most of her life working at night.

Enough, she thought, stifling old fears with a twist of her hand. Tomorrow she was going to Bologna, to see where Enrico had lived. Her stepfather had always talked about his life in Bologna, but was afraid to go back in case he or the city had changed. His widowed mother and sister had been killed during the Allies' bombardment: Enrico, then a prisoner of war, had seen no reason to return. He had stayed in England, eventually marrying a woman fifteen years younger than himself and with a small child - Julia.

Tomorrow she was going to Bologna to trace her mother's surviving Italian family.

This search was as important to her as the competition. Whatever happened, Julia had decided to spend three weeks in Italy. Surely in that time she would find something.

She pushed away from the chill parapet. Seeing a beggar crouching under the third arch of the loggia, Julia crossed over to give him money, then hurried on. Enrico knew virtually nothing about his wife's past: she had promised her stepfather she would find out something. The journey to Bologna was partly for his sake, an attempt to discover who Angelica's family were, but mostly, Julia had to admit, the trip was for herself, filling a gap in her life.

‘You think Rochfort is Italian?' her mother would say whenever Julia attempted to question Angelica about where they had both come from, 'I'm English. You're English. Forget Italy.'

Julia could not forget. Perhaps if her beautiful, auburn-haired, English-rose complexioned mother had told her of the Rochforts, of her real father, Julia might have been able to dismiss Italy, yet Angelica had remained stubbornly silent on these too. Throughout her childhood, Julia felt she belonged nowhere: she had often wished she looked as English as her mother, yet she did not.

Now, as an adult, Julia recognised that whatever her mother's claims, Angelica was also Italian. She had married Enrico, given up 'Rochfort' and taken his name. She was Angelica Varisi; she was linked to someone with a past. Enrico had snapshots of his family, Julia had none of the Rochforts. Or of the others, the mysterious Italian side that her mother always denied. It was not enough to have a name and nothing more.

She had been born in Emilia Romagna - Angelica had told her that much. Bologna was the capital of the region. Somewhere in that city there would be her birth records, people she could talk to, a family to discover.

Julia wished the days were longer, so that she could start at once.

Glancing back, she noticed a man in a grey woollen coat and scarlet scarf approaching. He was eating almond macaroons from a paper bag. A few crumbs showed pale against his lapels.

Julia swung round into the wind, pausing to fiddle with the loose bracelet of her watch. The man was speaking to the beggar, who gestured in her direction. She recalled seeing him earlier, hearing snatches of that staccato tread as she crossed the flags of the Straw Market and later along the stone corridor linking the Uffizi gallery to the Ponte Vecchio. Her musician's training gave her a good ear, a good memory.

Licking her lips, Julia decided to return to the jeweller's to have her watch repaired. It was something she should have had done weeks ago, except she had never had time.

Fifteen minutes later, the bracelet of her watch tightened and snug against her wrist - 'No charge,' the jeweller told her, with a smile she emerged back onto the street.

The man in the grey coat was still there, scowling at the prices in the window across from her. Tossing a crumpled paper bag into the gutter, where the breeze spun it along, he moved when she did.

Another tourist, taking in the same sights.

Julia stiffened, irritated at herself. This was already her country. She strode over the last cobbles off the Ponte Vecchio without looking back.

He was lurking when she bought throat pastilles at the pharmacist, prowling at another card carousel as she chose her postcards. He was nearby as she took note of a dry-cleaner's address.

His persistence deserved a medal, thought Julia wryly, but not from her. She decided she would leave finding a launderette for another time. Her thumb wound in her hair as she walked on. Now that she thought about it, this fellow was interested in linen, too. Why else had he been lingering near the market stall where she had bought her sewing silk?

'Come on then, pinch me,' she muttered, humour and irritation blending. She wondered if she were being unfair. Had she perhaps smiled at the man in one of their coincidental meetings, sent the wrong signal? She wished he would make his move. 'Let's get it over with.' Checking her step, she turned.

Twenty paces back on the pavement, the man had stopped. Ignoring frowns and gestures from people who shoved past, he was cleaning under his fingernails with a knife - not a penknife: Julia knew that at once. This was something heavier, surely much larger than any normal person would wish to carry.

Telling herself that she was over-reacting, Julia lengthened her stride. Suddenly she felt very alone.

Behind her the beat of footsteps increased.

A few moments later, whipping down twisting, car-echoing side streets back to the river, she was convinced she had lost him. Humming a competition piece, Julia crossed a road lined with Vespas and turned down another alley, hoping to find a short cut to the rank of bus stops outside Florence station. Her hotel was in the suburbs.

He was waiting up ahead in the piazza, one of several men leaning against a column. She saw him detach from the group: the blood-red scarf separating him from a hundred other strollers. He wasn't a tourist. He knew the city better than she. Her knowledge came from maps; his from experience.

The red scarf bothered her more than the knife. It suggested impulse, a man who had spotted her in the street and was wondering whether to try an approach to ask her out. Yet the stranger was stalking her with a determination which seemed out of all proportion to such a casual interest. But if he were trailing her - as he obviously was - then why would he wish to draw attention to his pursuit? Was the scarf a signal to others?

Even compared with opera plots the idea was bizarre, but then this was Italy, home of the kidnapper. Only last month a certain soprano - famous but hardly a great star - had been snatched from her hotel in Padova and held for ransom.

Dammit, thought Julia, yanking her hood over her head then immediately tugging it back, she wasn't going to allow this man to worry her. Nor under any circumstances would she lead him to her hotel.

Cutting through office cleaners streaming from a bank at the corner of another small, bustling square, Julia stepped briskly along the Via de' Tornabuoni. Florence's smartest street thronged with fashionable locals - easy to distinguish from visitors by their designer sunglasses worn even in winter, and those loose, taupe-coloured suits. Choosing the brighter, wind-blown half, she made great play of studying the ultramodern clothes displayed in the new Galatea salon. The mirrors gave her a chance to observe more closely.

There he was, walking straight past, scowling at the strobe light. Small and slight, with a jerky gait. Definitely not what she thought of as a mugger or the kind of prowler who preyed on lone women. He was older than his close-cropped brown hair and animated walk suggested - fifty at least. Expensive grey suit, close-fitting coat, conservative tie - clothes which should have given him presence. The red scarf was incongruous with such an outfit, yet somehow fitted the man.

No, he was nothing more sinister than a pest, Julia decided. The knife was probably bravado. There was no need for her to search for a police station, nor disturb the two carabinieri striking a movie-star pose on the street corner. Their guns made her nervous of approaching them, especially in so trivial a matter. She did not want to be mocked or pitied by those tough young men because of one ageing Romeo.

Julia stuck to that conclusion even in her more paranoid moments, when, between gusts of swirling air, she imagined she could hear that busy tread both behind and coming towards her. She hurried along, planning what she would do, counting her steps under her breath to keep wilder fancies in check. No one could possibly be interested in her. She had two assets, a strong voice and stamina, neither of which could be sold - not yet, anyway, not as a performer unknown outside England and without a recording contract. So who would pay for her release?

She dismissed the idea, letting out a sigh as she passed the obelisk outside the black and white patterned front of Santa Maria Novella. Cutting through a bumper to bumper line of traffic, she entered the building, forgetting to cover her head. She had remembered that this church backed onto the road opposite to the Station. Soon there would be a bus leaving for the outskirts. She would wait inside, then make a run.

The man would not accost her here: even Cosa Nostra drew a line at attacking people in the sanctuary of church.

Julia's prayers were swift. She checked her watch by the candle light: twenty minutes left.

At the end of the time she burst out of the great church, darting round two sides of the long building before her eyes had fully adjusted to the twilight. Her bus was waiting along the Piazza delta Stazione, revving its engine. Julia pitched into the melee - Italians never queue when they can shove - and was fighting for a place when a prickling between her shoulders made her swing about.

The man had joined the crowd and was elbowing closer.

Julia felt a blaze of anger - she did not want this creep trailing her all the way to Bologna. She had been wrong to be discreet: the best way to deal with a threat was to confront it.

She stopped dead in the heaving mass, letting people flow past, and pitched her voice so everyone could hear.

'I really think this has gone far enough,' she said coolly, her narrow hand pointing unerringly to its target. 'I'm talking to the gentleman with the red scarf. If you don't stop following me, I'm calling the police.'

The smallest of gaps opened for an instant around the man in the red scarf and several more innocent businessmen, their expressions such that Julia was almost sorry.

Seizing the moment before the press closed up again, she leapt onto the bus as its doors were closing. The driver roared off as she squeezed past other standing passengers to punch her ticket, her hands not quite co-ordinated as she glimpsed the man staring after her from the pavement.

The man's name was Tommaso and he answered to it, although in his own mind he was Tom. Now he was angry at himself for giving way to impulse. Seeing the girl by chance in the street, he had lost his head.

And how, Tom thought, scowling into his unsugared brandy coffee. His left hand was aching: he'd had to dig out a splinter from under the nail - he got a lot of splinters in his line of work and nearly always missed a couple until they were really hurting. He hadn't considered what the girl might think, catching him using a knife in the street.

Shaking his head, Tom took a sip of coffee, savouring the bitter drink whilst he stared out at the emptying square from his bar stool. In the tobacco stand opposite, a crumpled stack of papers flapped the day's stale news: another collaborator exposed and brought to trial. With the World War Two fiftieth anniversary commemoration due in the new year, prosecuting magistrates had switched their attentions away from the Mafia. These days anyone who wanted to get on in the judiciary was rooting out war criminals: it was seen as part of the new democracy, a clearing of the decks.

Tom snorted, signalling to the barman. Only Italians could get excited about ancient witch hunts.

The bearded barman brought him another coffee, poured in brandy without asking. Tom always drank brandy coffee at this bar: the place and indeed the city had many special memories for him. Of course had it not been for the business he would not have moved here two years ago after his wife's death. He wasn't sentimental, although he had his weaknesses.

He had kept his promise to his wife over the years, but that hadn't stopped him from being curious. When he had read the article in Oggi and learned that the girl was coming to Italy, Tom had seen it as fate. He was a believer in fate.

Tom lifted his grey coat from the next stool, leaving a few coins on the bar. He'd been undecided about Julia. Maybe if she hadn't confronted him he might not have bothered, let the whole thing slide. As it was, he had been offered a challenge.

Planning their next encounter, he stepped into the dark street, tucking the scarf round his throat to keep out the wind.

CHAPTER 2

Sherry eyes fixed on his fellow-singer, Roberto pursued Isabel Alvarez across the stage through rows of peasant dancers.

He was a tall, vigorous figure. The sword at his belt seemed freshly forged for him. the long athletic lines of the eighteenth-century costume breeches suited him. A thin white shirt defined every muscle of his torso as he sang.

His face, that square forehead and chin and hawkish nose, was as telling as a Roman portrait bust, but his dark brown hair was a war zone of untamed spiky curls.

Isabel, the Spanish-American soprano singing Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni was as beguiled as the audience of the San Francisco opera house. Roberto Padovano could have any woman he wanted, Isabel thought, and I wish it were me. She wished she and Padovano were more intimate than just colleagues. The Italian bass was just so convincing as the Don.

But the conductor was glaring at her from the orchestra pit: she was losing concentration. Isabel began and finished a heated duet with another singer and tried to conceal her impatience as the stage emptied. In a few moments, she would be in Padovano's arms as much as Don Giovanni's.

Now they were alone. If only this was more than acting, she thought, her voice almost stopping as he approached.

He caught her at the edge of the stage. His actor's kisses covered her eyes and cheeks and lips. He played at untying the strings on the bodice of her costume. He wrapped his arms tenderly around her middle - singing all the while, it seemed, only to her.

It was better than sex - almost. No man could sing like this one: the love song poured from him, a living caress in sound. Closing her eyes, Isabel leaned against him, breathing in music, answering not because she remembered the words but because she wanted them to become real.

Their duet drawing to a close, Roberto whirled her off her feet. carrying her towards the back of the stage as they sang.

Isabel shivered. A warm hand stroked along her flank, the touch light yet firm.

‘You're doing fine.' His low speaking voice steadied her. Roberto smiled, absently wiping a trickle of moisture from the side of his nose, brown hair spiralling across his forehead.

As he set her down on her feet, Isabel let out a shriek.

Roberto glanced up. A light fitting directly above them tilted wildly, then snapped with a loud crack. The heavy mass plummeted downwards.

With one hand, Roberto thrust Isabel Alvarez out of harm's way. His own momentum had them both on the floor, where they skidded violently into a laden props table. Disregarding a sudden fire in his left foot, Roberto gathered Isabel Alvarez gently into his arms, cradling her as the curtain finally swung down over the wreck of the light.

The doctor at the state hospital glanced from the X-ray to the tall impassive man seated in his consulting room.

‘You finished the performance with this?' the doctor asked, tapping the X-ray sheet with his finger.

'After a break to restore a little calm.'

'Just as well it was the last night. Must have hurt like hell.'

Roberto smiled, thinking already of his flat in Milan, of local bars familiar evening strolls and the fountains in the park across the road. 'Not as much as it could have. Accidents happen.' Glancing at his watch, he knew he would still make it to the airport for his flight home.

Lindsay Townsend 

Strange Tales: Author Self-Coaching (guest post), by Sue Moorcrof...

The first of a handful of special guest posts I've written for book bloggers. They're all connected with Summer on a Sunny Island but about much more. This concerns how I coached myself at a writing-career crossroads.



Strange Tales: Author Self-Coaching (guest post), by Sue Moorcrof...: To mark the forthcoming publication of her latest novel,  Summer on a Sunny Island , here's a guest post from my fine friend  Sue Moorcr...

The Castlefield Collector

For this book I chatted with Bella Tweedale, May Stothard, Bessie Jones, Alice Brook and Irene Baxter who all gave up hours of their time to talk to me about life in the mill during the war, plus Dolly Fitton who was 92 at the time and very generously allowed me to name the character in my book after her, as it seemed so appropriate. There is no better way of getting the feel of an industry, occupation or area than to talk to the people who have lived it. I asked them about their routine and how they acquired their skills? Where did they ache after a long day, and what were the problems and dangers in their work?

Dolly Fitton started in the mill as a doffer at 14, knocking off the filled bobbins, or cops as they were called, replacing them with empty ones. Her real name was Mary Ann but was more affectionately known to her family and friends as Dolly, because she was fairly small. ‘I were the scrapings up off t’mill floor,’ she told me, chortling with glee. ‘Eeh, it were marvellous in t’mill. You could hear them coming a mile off up from the mill. Clattering on the setts,’ she said.

If I’d asked her what she’d had for her dinner she might not have been able to tell me but she recalled the spinning mill vividly. She took me through her day, how the cotton was spun, fleas that were a nuisance, the heat in the mill, and the constant danger of fire. Where and how they had their dinner, and the tricks they used to play on each other in the mill, one being to roll a spindle on the greasy floor and send you flying. She also spoke about how she’d sing in a band as Dolores, and would climb down a drainpipe with her dance frock over her arm, which her mother made for her, so that she could secretly attend. She also mentioned having met Gracie Fields, such a treat.

When first published it sold remarkable well and has done so many times since, and received some good comments. Now published by Canelo.

Where there’s muck, there’s mettle…

Dolly Tomkins has always known what it is to live hand to mouth. In the mean streets of a Salford struggling under the mantle of the Great Depression, the only one making a decent living is the talleyman.

Though Nifty Jack has a money bag where his heart should be, Dolly’s mam is in hock up to her ears and in dire need of assistance. But when Jack offers to wipe the slate clean, Dolly just can’t bring herself to trust him.

Instead, she takes him on at his own game and in the process endangers everything she holds most dear as a revelation about the past rocks the very foundations of her world.

This is an enchanting story of love and endurance perfect for fans of Nadine Dorries and Kitty Neale. Previously published as Watch for the Talleyman.

Praise for 'The Castlefield Collector ' A story which in some ways could be written about today as easily as the 1920s' 5* Reader review

'This is my first novel by Freda and it will definitely not be the last' 5* Reader review 'I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book from start to finish' 5* Reader review

Chapter One
1929

Dolly Tomkins put her arms about her mother’s frail shoulders and hugged her tight. ‘It’ll be all right Mam, you’ll see. Dad’ll walk through the door any minute with his wage packet in his hand.’
   ‘Aye, course he will, chuck.’
   They both knew this to be wishful thinking. When had Calvin Tomkins ever put the needs of his family before a sure fire certainty, which was how he viewed any bet, whether on the dogs, the horses, or two raindrops running down a window. And since it was a Friday and pay day at the mill, his pocket would be full of brass, burning a hole in his pocket. Most women hereabouts would be waiting with their open hand held out to collect wages as each member of the family came home on pay day. Maisie certainly did that with the three children she still had left at home: Willy, Dolly and Aggie, but had learned that it was a pointless occupation to wait for Calvin’s pay packet. He wouldn’t give a single thought to his long-suffering wife and daughters, not for a moment.
   Dolly studied her mother’s face more closely as she bent to cut the cardboard to fit, and slid it into the sole of her boot. The lines seemed to be etched deeper than ever. Dark rings lay like purple bruises beneath soft grey eyes, which had once shone with hope and laughter, and her too-thin shoulders were slumped with weariness. She looked what she was, a woman beaten down by life, and by a husband who thought nothing of stealing the last halfpenny from her purse in order to feed his habit, his addiction, despite the family already being on the brink of starvation.
   Maisie handed the boots to her younger daughter with a rare smile. ‘There y’are love, see how that feels.’
   Dolly slid her feet inside and agreed they were just fine, making no mention of how the boots pinched her toes since she’d grown quite a lot recently. They’d been Aggie’s long before they’d come to her, and probably Maisie’s before that, and their numerous patches had themselves been patched, over and over again.
   Mending her daughters’ footwear was a task carried out each and every Friday in order to give the boots a fresh lease of life. Dolly wore clogs throughout the long working week, but in the evenings and at weekends when she wasn’t at the mill, she liked to make a show of dressing up. Worse, it’d rained for days and Dolly’s small feet were frozen to the marrow. She’d paid a visit to Edna Crawshaw’s corner shop and begged a bit of stiff cardboard off her, whole boxes being at a premium. This piece had Brooke Bond Tea stamped all over it but that didn’t trouble Dolly; the card was thick and strong and would keep out the wet for a while, which was the only consideration that mattered.

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 Published by Canelo.

The inspiration for my medieval historical romance, "Plain Harry"

The inspiration for my medieval historical romance, “Plain Harry.”

The wounded warrior is a powerful archetype and one I find fascinating to explore in romance. I love writing strong heroes but heroes without flaw, without fears are blank. Wounds of any kind, physical or of the spirit, give me a starting point to develop a character.

Harry is one such character. As a result of childhood small-pox, he has many scars. Isolated and mocked for his appearance, he believes he is ugly, both inside and out. Esther, my heroine, sees him as more than his scars and recognizes him as the knight and hero he truly is.

Esther, too, is damaged. A widow, she has emerged from a terrible marriage where she was beaten and broken down. Lacking in confidence, she needs to discover her self-belief.

These two wounded characters gave me the starting point and inspiration for my story.

The setting also gave me endless ideas. I love the British woodland and countryside, the seasons and weather and different skies. I love the flowers and scents and feel of grass and bark, the sounds of birds and calls of forest animals. In my “Plain Harry” I tried to bring out my delight in the land.

I’m a member of the British Woodland Trust and the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. I walk in my local woodland every day. I love British classical music for its fey elements and enjoy reading old fairy tales. My hubby and I are looking forward to gathering strawberries, raspberries and gooseberries in our garden, with redcurrants and blue berries to follow. Sometimes he or I pick through “Curye on Inglysch” a compilation of 14^th century cookbooks, to try and adapt things as a change from an everyday diet. It’s great fun!

Here's the blurb for "Plain Harry" and an excerpt.

 Recovering from a brutal marriage, Esther is living quietly as a widow when a letter from her brother Sir Stephen destroys her contented life. Stephen orders her to marry Sir Henry—but who is this “Plain Harry” and how will he treat her?

Set in medieval England in a time when women had few rights, this story shows how love can flourish in the unlikeliest of places and between the unlikeliest of people.

Here is Chapter One, to give you the beginning of the story.

Plain Harry

A Sweet Medieval Historical Romance

Lindsay Townsend

Chapter 1

               

Northern England, Spring 1363

Esther knelt on the floor of her still room, the one place she would be undisturbed, and forced her fingers to uncurl. The scrap of parchment in her hand dropped to the tiles she had so proudly swept that morning. She did not need to read the letter again, since its terms were already seared into her mind.

Sister,

I offered Sir Bertrand D’Acre an insult for which he challenged me. As I have still a broken arm from a previous duel, my place was taken by Sir Henry Leafton, who fought as proxy as my champion and won. Sir Henry asks to be remembered to you. He met you at court last midsummer with your then husband Sir Edmund. As you are now a widow, Henry wishes to court you. I have agreed to the match.

The day after you receive this letter from my herald, Sir Henry will call on you. You will know him. You will be obedient to him. Be ready. We owe him a great debt.

Sir Stephen Armstrong.

The parchment scraped along the edge of the table where she made her cordials. Stephen had not written the note—he could scarcely sign his name—but it was his way of speaking, no kind of greeting or salutation, bluff and brutal and always to the point.

 “I am to marry again,” she whispered, through frozen lips. The line, Henry wishes to court you, was nothing more than a pretty fiction, as Stephen had already offered her to the champion who had saved his life. Her forthcoming nuptials were as good as settled.

Esther’s racing heart felt as if it flipped over in her chest as her skin chilled. Memories of bellowing Sir Edmund, of their vile wedding night, of their horrible, short marriage, battered through her afresh and she closed her eyes, willing her slight, trembling body to be still. As a widow she had been independent, looking after her small estate, making her cordials and ales, taking care of her two old retainers, few estate workers and page, beholden to no one.

And now, with a few foolish words, my younger brother ties me back into wedlock. I know Stephen and how his tongue runs away with his wits. Because he could not resist making a cruel remark, he lands himself in trouble, and yet he is not the one who pays. In what way do I owe this stranger, this Sir Henry, a great debt? He did not save my skin.

Esther snatched up the hectoring note—and how typically selfish of Stephen not even to give her the illusion of a choice, not even to have his herald wait for her reply—and crushed it beneath her heel.

“He never asks, he demands! Because he is the son and heir, and the law and the church all say that men have governance over women. Because he would not back down or apologize and had another fight for him, I must now be obedient? How is this fair?”

Her voice rang in the small chamber but no one answered. Through a gap in the window shutters a bee droned into the room and out again. Esther felt that it had taken the spring-time with it.

“It is worse,” she continued aloud, hauling herself upright by the table leg, wondering what cordial she had been preparing when Stephen’s herald had smashed into her life. “What am I to say to Walter?”

Handsome, blond, curly-headed Walter, her own age of nineteen, a good man, a squire and, more frequently of late, a messenger and herald. He served neighbors of hers, Sir Richard and Lady Constance, and always lingered a little when he delivered messages from them. He praised her cordials and teased her in a gallant, sweet way, calling her “Mistress Bright Eyes” and “his nimble-fingered physic”. He gossiped like a magpie and was less than kind in his quips about her old retainers, but she liked him.

Walter respects me. My brother would say he is a landless squire, ready to flirt with any woman with a little riches, but Walter has never demanded anything of me. At night in her narrow bed, Esther sometimes imagined running away to the crusades with Walter, of their making a life together in the mysterious east, or the Mongol court.

That pleasant day-dream must be over. I have to marry Sir Henry.

Esther resumed grinding coriander, ginger and cardamom to make her compost, the chutney that Agnes and Adam liked and that Walter said went well with all meats. Bent over the mortar, the swirl of sweet spices no longer making her smile, she tried to recall every Henry she had ever met. Harder than it seems, since Henry is a popular name.

A dark face tumbled like a leaf in a breeze through her memory. Esther crushed another batch of coriander seeds and let the ghost flit back to her again.

A time at court last spring, when the cuckoo had just begun to call, as now. The great hall at Winchester, fragrant with fresh strewing herbs and colorful with the king’s wall tapestries. She had been hurting, because Sir Edmund had beaten her the previous evening, blaming her for his impotence and for not gifting him an heir. Colliding with the edge of a trestle, she had been unable to disguise a wince when a cloaked and hooded stranger had clasped her hand and softly drew her aside, shielding her from her stomping husband.

“Be well, my lady,” the stranger wished in a low voice. Tempted and reassured by such rare kindness Esther had peeped up into his hood—and seen the face of a demon, pox-scarred and livid. He had cold blue eyes and haggard features, pale where they were not ridged with black pits and broken veins.

Clearly aware of her shock, expecting it, the man’s thin mouth jerked into a crooked smile and he gave a brief bow. “Sir Henry of Leafton, at your service. I will take my leave now.”

Lanky and gray as a heron, he melted away into the crowds of knights and stewards before she could apologize. When Sir Edmund jabbed her bruised side and hissed at her to attend him, Esther had tried to forget her ill manners, although Sir Henry’s ruined, burnt-looking features had haunted her dreams for several nights after.

“Plain Harry,” he was known, throughout the court. She had spotted him the following day, a head taller than most and always courteous, ignoring gasps and rude finger-pointing and striding gracefully through the press of courtiers with that crooked smile and keen eyes that missed little. Including herself, it now seemed.

I remember him. And clearly he still remembers me. The pestle dropped from her nerveless fingers and Esther wrapped her arms about her middle, trying to rock for comfort. What can he want with me, except revenge? But revenge for what? For what my brother did or for some unknown insult I gave him? What?

                ****      

Plain Harry knew he did not suit his nick-name. He had been plain before the pox had scarred him at eight years old, but now he was ugly. Gangling, too, and it did not seem to matter that he moved smoothly, stealthily if need be, or that his hair was blacker than a midwinter night and curled whenever it was damp.

I do not fit the name Harry, either, he thought, presenting himself at the widowed Lady Esther’s sturdy manor house. He watched patiently as the old watchman limped off across the modest great hall to fetch his mistress. Harrys were kind, hearty, shoulder-slapping fellows, always part of a mob. He was solitary by nature, a lover of books and wild places, desires sharpened by his appearance and by the way his father flinched and his mother lamented his loveless state each time he returned home. He had flung himself into military training, if only because a helmet covered his looks. On the battlefield no one cared if he could not dance, or compose a love poem, or swear undying devotion to a damsel who would doubtless go shrieking off to a convent if he tried. In a melée his lanky frame and long reach were an advantage.

War had also taught him how to take notice. At court, twelve months back, he had seen Lady Esther shrink slightly each time her boorish husband addressed her. He had noticed her stumble once, blushing wildly, and jerk back as if burned when her flank grazed a table. He had reacted then without considering his visage, offering her his arm as support. Her pink and pretty lips had parted to say thanks and he had felt normal for an instant, until her wide brown eyes met his.

Harry slammed his hands behind his back and let his fingers play tug of war against each other. Even with the strains of dread and regret shadowing her clear-cut features, and the bruises at the sides of her head which she had tried to hide with her veil, Lady Esther had been flawless, a delicate beauty whose natural cream and roses complexion contrasted cruelly with his own craggy, ugly, black looks.

So why am I here at her home?

Because, last summer, he had glimpsed not a morsel of disgust in her pale, shocked face. And because he sensed that, widowed or not, the lady needed help. Her fool of her brother was already using the promise of her hand as a means to save his own skin—Sir Stephen had done it with him and Harry had no doubt that were he not to marry Lady Esther, Stephen would offer her out again.

‘Tis a pity womenfolk have so few rights against the men of their families, but such is the unkind way of the world.

Harry shook his head, unsure if he would have ever entertained such ideas had he not been uglier than a troll and subject to the bitter way of the world himself. Yet he had ridden to this compact jewel of a manor not solely for sympathy.

Admit it man, this is the only way you will win a wife. He was rich in war-loot and tournament prizes but as a younger son would not inherit the land that all damsels demanded in return for their wedlock. Harry could not fault them. You could build and grow on earth but never on gold, however prettily it gleamed.

Pray God the lady here considers that last point about me, that I can keep her and her good land safe, better than most handsome squires or knights. Harry knew that was unlikely but he could hope.

His breath hitched as the red curtain to the private solar, the little chamber at the back of the great hall, drew back and Lady Esther emerged.

Glorious. She made the word real. The bruises and hurts she had endured under her old husband were gone now and she shone like a harvest moon, her eyes brighter than polished bronze, her hair—the glimpses he could see beneath her modest white head-veil—a rippling mass of chestnut, shot through with tawny. Small and slender she came toward him, silken as flowing water, an image enhanced by the green-blue gown she wore, a color Harry knew had been fashionable at court a year ago.

She did not smile but the sight of her graceful shape and movement was enough. Harry’s body reacted as it had not done since he was fourteen and an easily aroused and blushing squire. Why now, by Christ? Is it so long since I have been with a woman? Despising his looks, Harry was no gallant or regular user of the stews, but even so this ardent reaction was embarrassing. Praying that his interest and urgent physical response did not show, he flung his cloak loosely about his rangy figure and gave a low bow.

“My lady.” His voice sounded less its usual music, more of a rasp.

“Welcome.” She sounded as indifferent as a cloudy day and about as warm. “Will you take refreshment?”

“Please.”

“Come to my still room.”

Dazzling and distracting as the planet Venus, she turned, then Harry heard her soft footfalls shifting through herbs strewn on the hall floor, stirring up a scent of lavender as she walked back to the curtain. Recollecting his scattered wits, he strode to catch up and passed through a tiny solar, the watchful warrior in him seeing a small weaving loom, a spindle, a narrow chest and a canopied bed before he had to duck to avoid a doorway lintel . Shifting sideways through the low arch, he blinked at the bright chamber beyond.

Painted flowers tumbled round the walls, while under painted trees brightly rendered unicorns and dragons gamboled up to the roof rafters, drawn at play as if such creatures were as carefree as the spring lambs bleating outside. Harry swiftly shut his open mouth and saw, with new admiration, the many flasks, jugs, basins, sacks of dried herbs and tables of knives, pestles, and mortars that he guessed made up a good still room. The air was heavy and sweet with the tangs of rosemary, cinnamon, sage, lavender and bitter orange peel, and a rainbow array of cordials in heavy glass flasks lined the shelves behind Lady Esther.

“Amazing,” he murmured and wondered, when his eyes met hers again, if she had softened a little. “You did this?”

“Since my lord died and I moved here.”

Her low voice touched on a scandal. On his death-bed the wretched Sir Edmund had attempted to deny the now-orphaned lady her widow’s portion because she had “failed” to provide him with children. Luckily, Sir Edmund’s adult son Richard was more honorable than his father and had released the bits of land into her care. The modest manor house was her own dowry, the only part of her family legacy that Sir Stephen could not touch.

“You have done well with the place.”

She inclined her head. “Richard has helped.”

Her former son-in-law but not her brother, Harry noted. Clearly Richard had little faith in Sir Stephen defending the rights of his sister, and neither had he. To that end, Harry knew he should raise the issue of marriage, but when? To do so at once was surely too unmannerly.

To his surprise the lady raised the matter.

“Will the priest be coming here? That is,” and here the pink flush on her ivory cheeks and dainty chin darkened to rose, “if you and my brother are agreed?”

Her voice was calm but her hand trembled as she lifted a jug from a small brazier and poured two cups of gently steaming tisane. He took a cup from her, touching her fingers briefly in an attempt to reassure—why he was not sure, only that he was keen she did not think him a bully. Unsure how he looked when he showed his teeth, since he had no mirrors and did not waste time peering at his reflection, he did not smile.

“I am content with the match between us,” he said steadily, wanting to say more but unwilling to impose on her. Determined to be honest he added, “I understand if this is not your desire. I can, if you wish, tell Sir Stephen that we did not suit.”

Spirit flared in her eyes and stiffened her shoulders. “Which leaves me vulnerable to other men and their offers.”

“Would he force you to accept any?”

Her shoulders dipped. “You know my brother. Right, custom, the church would all be on his side. Now he has conceived the idea of my marriage as a means to advance himself, he will not stop until I am re-wedded.”

And you will be beleaguered and nagged to death until you choose what he demands.

“It could be my only way, if I wish for a family of my own.”

Was that yearning he caught in her voice? To give her a moment, Harry took a sip of the tisane, giving a tiny huff of pleasure when the blended taste of raspberry, orange, and strawberry hit the back of his throat. Should he say what he wanted to admit? Why not? She longs for a family, a home, children, and so do I. A marriage between us could be a way.

In truth he had ridden to Lady Esther’s manor to release her from her brother’s cruel expectations. Seeing her afresh and learning that his repudiation would not save her from other, possibly harsher marriage suitors, was forcing him to reconsider.

Can I court her? Harry dared not admit his deepest hope, that she would somehow see past his maze of scars, but he could offer her family. “Until I caught small-pox I looked agreeable, in a homely way. My present appearance would not be inherited by any of my children.”

She raised her head and speared him with a glare. “What are you saying, Sir Henry? Please do me the courtesy of being direct.”

He leaned forward, drawn to her bright boldness, and was saddened when she flinched slightly. Yes, you have been struck before, my lady, for you to show such a honed reaction. He took another sip of her very fine tisane, allowing her another instant to compose herself.

“Will you call me Harry?” he asked mildly. “Whenever people say ‘Sir Henry’ I feel they are speaking of my father.”

“Harry.” She spoke his name as if turning a pebble in her mouth. “I presume you wish to call me Esther?”

“If it please you. Were you named after your mother?”

“No.”

He thought his feeble attempt at conversation had failed when she added, “You may call me by my name.”

“Thank you.” Harry took her concession as a sign and put down his cup. He meant to keep to his new purpose, to be as direct as she demanded, but to his own surprise a different question slipped out. “Did you paint the unicorns and such?”

“I did.”

After the stark admission, Esther tried to hide her blushes behind her cup, which he found endearing. “They are well done,” he said gently. “You have made a magical world in here.”

For an instant he worried he had been too honest, or perhaps too over-courtly, for what did he know of such pretty games? Esther—and she was Esther now, no question—glanced at his clenched hands, bunched in his long brown tunic, and said, “You will not object if I paint or brew?”

“Why should I?” The instant he answered, Harry wanted to flay himself. Of course her old husband had probably objected. Sir Edmund had wanted her as a breeding mare and no more. “I stitch gauntlets,” he added, an undertaking he had the tools and strength in fingers for, and one his comrades in arms had learned not to mock.

“I would be interested to see those.” As if she had admitted something unseemly, Esther blushed afresh.

 Yes, I think we will do well together. We are both shy of the wider world, in different ways, and happy to create a place of peace in which to dwell. Slowly, so as not to startle her afresh, he raised both hands and reached out. “Esther, I swear here and now that you will be safe with me.” His mouth had dried the instant he began to speak, but Harry forced himself to keep going. “Will you do me the very great honor of marrying me?”

 "Plain Harry" is for sale on Amazon

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