Love & War

My new book from Severn House arrived this week. The cover is taken from a photograph and looks really good. I love it! The soldier looks like pictures of my husband's father! The book is out in June.

Coming Soon

Too Hot To Handle will be out next month. This book was first published by Triskelion. It seemed to do well but the publisher closed and I never did find out how many copies were bought. I am crossing my fingers it will do well this time for the firm who has been good enough to republish for me.

Too Hot To Handle/Linda Sole/Eternal Press
published in June

Books I like to read

A Wealthy widow is published now in America. It has also been done in Italy, Japan and some other countries. this was the second in the Hellfire series.

I've just reviewed a book called Witch's Heart by Tabitha Shay. This is part of a series of books about witches, and all of them are set in the same world, using many of the same charachters but featuring different couples in turn. I found this an enthralling read. It is at number two in the Eternal Press secrion at fictionwise.

I am now reading a western which I am enjoying and I have a regency I am going to read next. Unfortunately I don't get as much time to read as I would like, because I am always writing. However, I make sure I read and review a few inbetween bouts of furious work, because the brain needs to take in as well as put out.

We went to Hunstanton yesterday but the wind was cool - last week it was glorious there but we don't get it that warm often enough.

Chateau Despair

An excerpt from

Chateau Despair/Linda Sole/ Red Rose publishing

Clothilde is growing up in a crumbling chateau with her half mad grandmother.

"You should send the child to the Nuns," Father Caillebotte said. "It is not fitting for her to be here in this place – and you are not well enough to care for her." His eyes swept round the room. It was cold despite the small fire flickering in the grate. Finding no answer to his problem, his gaze returned to the old woman, who sat hugging her shawl about her shoulders, her expression defensive and wary.
"The child is mine," she told him. "I brought her here to save her from the kind of life you would condemn her to with those sour-faced hags, who have never known what it is to live. Go away and leave us alone. We do not need you."
Caillebotte’s expression was one of patient resignation. He had made the same plea each time he came to the house for the past seven years, and it was always refused. He was wasting his time. It was only duty that made him continue to call at the house, which was crumbling into a ruin from neglect and had an air of despair about it.
"Perhaps not, but I shall continue to call even though you say you do not need me, Madame. If you have no thought for your own soul, the child must still be brought up in the way of the Lord – and she must be educated. It is time for her to begin her lessons. If you will not send her to school, I shall come myself to teach her to read and write."
Caillebotte was a good man. He would do his duty as he saw it. His conscience would not allow him to abandon either the child or the woman, even though he sometimes wondered if his visits meant anything at all to either of them.
The old woman gave him a sour look. "Please yourself. I should have taught her when she was ready. She likes to look at my treasures, and already she knows some of her letters. I do not neglect her as much as you imagine, Caillebotte. I tell her my stories. She likes stories…"
The priest was silent. He knew that the old woman had her good days and her bad days; he also knew that if he had done what was right, he would have taken the child into care long ago. This decaying chateau with its damp rooms and its dark secrets was not a suitable place for a child to grow – and yet the girl seemed to thrive on it.
She was a pretty child with large grey, wondering eyes. Her hair was long and dark; it flew wildly about her face as she ran bare foot about the house and the estate. He knew that she hid from him as much as she could, and suspected that she was somewhere around even now, listening to their conversation.
Clothilde listened from behind the painted screen, where she had hidden herself so that she could hear what they were saying. She was fiercely glad that Grandmere had refused yet again to send her to the Nuns. She did not want to go away from her grandmother, though she would not have minded escaping from certain other people in this house. But that would have meant leaving Grandmere, and she would never, never do that! If the priest took her to the Sisters of Mercy she would run away and come home to Grandmere.
Father Caillebotte was mistaken if he thought that she went nowhere and saw no one but her grandmere and the servants. Clothilde visited the village often. She knew the cottage where the priest lived behind the church, with its back garden where he grew herbs and vegetables, also fruit and a few flowers. Once she had stolen an apple from his tree, and his housekeeper came out shaking her fist. Clothilde ran away laughing; she was certain that the woman would never catch her.
The village itself was old; the houses built of some kind of stone that looked golden in the sunshine. Outside the small, dark inn, with its shuttered windows, old men sat drinking wine and dreaming in the sun while stray cats roamed where they would. Once Clothilde took one of the cats home with her, but it scratched her hand and ran away
The street was cobbled and there were potholes where the rain lay in the winter, the houses close to the road without gardens at the front. Some of them had bright window boxes, from which pink and red flowers trailed. In the back gardens the women, who always seemed to wear black, kept hens and some of them owned a pig, others grew herbs but not many of them grew flowers. Clothilde loved flowers, but there were none at the chateau, and no one to tend them. The servants were interested only in growing the vegetables they needed for the kitchen.
Clothilde waited until the priest left, then crept out from her hiding place and went to Grandmere. Climbing on to her lap, she sat before the fire, staring into the flames as they flickered and burned lower in the grate for want of kindling.
Grandmere stroked her head in an absent-minded manner. Clothilde knew that her grandmother’s thoughts were far away. She was always like this after the priest came, as if his visit made her want to shut out her surroundings.
"Are you dreaming about when you were young, Grandmere?" she asked, but received no reply. "Will you tell me a story?"
Sometimes her grandmother did not speak to her for hours, at others she would bring out her treasures and tell her stories. Clothilde liked those times best, but Grandmere was the centre of her world. Even when she was far away, lost in her world of dreams, she loved her.
From the moment she could walk and do things, Clothilde cared for Grandmere, understanding that the old woman needed her. She got down from her lap now and went to put more wood on the fire. Grandmere needed warmth because she was so often in pain from her poor crippled hands that ached with the rheumatics.
She went back and kissed the soft cheek, then slipped from the room. She would come back later when it was time for their supper. Grandmere would be ready to talk to her then, but for the moment Clothilde was free to escape into the woods. There she could run and hide, escape for a while from the harsh reality of her life at the house.
She was not sure that she liked the idea of lessons with the priest, but perhaps he would teach her to understand what was in the books in the library. There were a great many of them, some with pictures, which Clothilde liked to look at, others with strange letters that meant nothing to her.
"Where are you, little pig?"
Hearing the voice she hated most in the world, Clothilde made a dash for the door and freedom. She had stolen two buns fresh from the cooling tray earlier that morning and Blanche would beat her if she found her. However, the servant was fat and lazy, and she would not search far. Once Clothilde was in the woods she would be safe.
As she reached the door a bulky figure came darting out of the kitchen and grabbed her, shaking her until her teeth rattled.
"I have the little pig for you," Betrand called to his wife. "Here is the thief who stole your cakes."
"I didn’t steal them," Clothilde protested. "They are Grandmere’s cakes. You work for her. It’s your job to cook the food…"
She gave a scream as Betrand shook her, her head snapping back and forth. Blanche was coming towards her, stick in hand. She was going to be beaten again. Blanche was a vicious bully and beat her whenever she had an excuse. The last time she’d been black and blue all over for more than a week; she cried herself to sleep every night. She did not dare to complain to Grandmere, for it might upset her and make her ill. The servants treated her shamefully, but Clothilde was learning to fight back.
She turned her head and bit Betrand's hand. He gave a cry of pain and let her go, dropping her with such force that she felt the pain shoot through her wrist. Yet in a second she was on her feet, scuttling away and out of the door before he could recapture her.
She could hear them arguing about whose fault it was that she’d escaped, as she ran for her life, through the gardens towards the woods and safety.

*

What a lovely day!

Yesterday we went out for a lovely lunch at a restaurant my brother in law told us about. It was in a nice country setting and the sun was shining all day, and now the sun is shining again today. I do love it when we get periods of warm settled weather in England. We have such a beautiful country but so often the summers are cold or wet and so we go off abroad to get some sun!

I am putting up a new picture of me in Spain this time. I have just agreed a contract for five new books with Severn House. A new Linda Sole trilogy - sagas this time. Also the third in the Anne Herries Upstairs Downstairs trilogy and one other. I have finished revising the second in the A Season In Town trilogy for Mills & Boon and have one more book to write.

More importantly, we have a squirrel visiting the garden again! We did miss them so when they all disappeared last year!

Love to you all, Linda

Too Hot To Handle

Too Hot To Handle will be republished in June. This is the new cover. I love it!

My latest from Severn House - the first of the Upstairs Downstairs Trilogy. Second book coming in June!
Chateau Despair/Linda Sole/Red Rose Publishing
My new ebook coming soon.
Coming soon to Red Rose Publishing!
Enjoy.
FRANCE JANUARY 1921Madame Fanchot watched in triumph as the child entered the world in a mess of slime and blood. However, her feeling was short-lived as she turned to its mother. She was dying. Her labour had been long and hard, and the months of carrying had taken their toll. No one would care what became of her or her child. She’d been foolish and careless and her behaviour had brought shame to her family. For herself, she could have little reason left to live, but Madame Fanchot knew that she feared for her child."Where is she?" The woman’s voice was barely more than a whisper. The blood drained out from between her thighs, sluggish and thick. Madame Fanchot gave up any attempt to staunch it. She believed nothing more could be done to help the woman, or perhaps she was either too indifferent or too ignorant to try to save her. "Let me see her…just once.""She is beautiful, Madame," Madame Fanchot said. She laid the small bundle in the mother’s arms. The child was wrapped in nothing but the shawl the woman had been wearing when they’d found her wandering in the woods some hours earlier. "You have a lovely daughter.""I want to call her Elena," the mother said. "Her name is Elen…"The rattle of death caught in her throat, causing her head to fall back against the pillows."She has gone," a man said from the doorway. He spat on the floor of the filthy cottage. "So perish all such whores as they deserve.""You are too harsh, Jean," his wife said. She took the squalling child from its mother and held it to her breast to quiet it. "How can you know who or what the poor woman was? She has scarcely spoken a word since we found her wandering.""No decent woman would be alone in a wood in her condition," he muttered sourly. "If she came of good family they threw her out – and she isn’t wearing a wedding ring.""That doesn’t mean she was a bad woman," Madame Fanchot gave the dead woman a pitying look. "What are we to do with her now?""I’ll bury her in the wood. I’ve no money to pay the priest for a proper burial for a stranger?""But shouldn’t we tell someone? Supposing someone comes looking for her or the child one day?""We never saw her.""What of the child?" she cried in horror at his callous words."Get rid of it…" He growled deep in his throat . "I don’t mean kill it – take it to the church. Leave it near the altar. The priest will know what to do. It won’t be the first time he’s had to deal with an abandoned bastard I’ll swear. I don’t care what you do with it, just get it out of the house.""The shawl is hers. Was there nothing else – no ring or trinket of any kind that might help them to trace who the child’s mother was?""Nothing," he muttered in a way that immediately told her he was lying. "Nothing at all."She scowled at him. If he’d stolen something from the woman, he would likely keep it until he thought it was safe to sell. She would not receive the smallest part of his ill-gotten gains, even though she was the one who’d gone through the trouble of attending the woman."I’m going to take the child," she told him. She hated his brutality; she hated the poverty of her life. She wished she dared to leave him and take the child with her. It was impossible. Poor as her life is, it was still better than starving on the streets. "If you mean to bury the woman, Jean, be careful. If anyone sees you there could be trouble.""No one will see," he shrugged. "No one ever comes to the woods these days. Not after what happened up at the chateau."Madame Fanchot crossed herself as she hurried out into the bleakness of a cold winter evening. The chateau remained empty for the past five years, save from the crazy old woman that owned it. The last of her family, she had lived there alone, hardly seeing anyone since the tragedy. Madame Fanchot’s mind shied away from what had happened all those years ago.Indeed, she did not truly know for sure what had happened at the chateau. She’d only heard the rumours, but it was certain three people were brutally murdered there.Shivering, she ran all the way to the church. She looked about her, but could see no one. Hurriedly, she deposited her bundle behind the priest’s pulpit. He would surely see it there when he came to take evening confession.Afraid and guilty for leaving the child, Madame Fanchot made the sign of the cross over her heart and then ran from the church hastily. In her anxiety to get away, Madame Fanchot failed to notice the figure sitting quietly in the shadows. Nor did she ever know what happened after she’d left, though there would be times over the years when she wondered what had become of the child. Times when she believed she knew…