The Snow Bride. Medieval Historical Romance set in Northern Britain. New Excerpts

She is Beauty, but is he the Beast?

THE SNOW BRIDE (THE KNIGHT AND THE WITCH 1) https://amzn.to/2MZZan0    

UK  https://amzn.to/2H1tYzY

EXCERPT https://bit.ly/2yV95Cb

REVIEW https://bit.ly/38ynFzh

 

Excerpt England, winter, 1131

 

Magnus forced his aching legs to move and dismounted stiffly from his horse. The still, freezing cold made his teeth ache, and as he tethered his mount, he wondered yet again what he was doing here. It was less than a month to Christmas, and he could have been with Peter and Alice at Castle Pleasant, preparing for feasting and singing and watching his godchildren.

And then a deep, abiding ache, bedding down in the great hall alone. He would never force a woman to lie with him—he had seen too much of that in the crusades.

He limped forward through the pristine snow. Peter had his Alice now, a clever, black-haired wench who feared nothing and no one, including him. Had his friend and fellow crusader not known her first, he might have had a chance with Alice. She saw through the outer armor and shell of a man to what lay beneath.

But she loves her crusader knight, Peter of the Mount, and I have no chance or right there.

As the palfrey snorted and jangled its harness behind him, he knelt in a white heap of pitted frost and reached out with his good arm to brush snow off the small, cracked statue of a saint. This was an old, wayside shrine on a track to nowhere of note, and the wooden figure huddled in its stone niche was old, its paint peeling. This battered saint would understand him, one ugly brute to another.

“Holy one, grant me my prayer.”

He stopped, aware of the chill silence around him—the bare trees, the white landscape, the empty road. He had nothing to offer the saint, no flower or trinket to sweeten his request.

As his knees began to smart, then burn, then freeze on the unyielding, icy ground, Magnus tried to marshal his thoughts. What did he want?

She is Beauty, but is he the Beast?

THE SNOW BRIDE (THE KNIGHT AND THE WITCH 1) https://amzn.to/2MZZan0    

UK  https://amzn.to/2H1tYzY

EXCERPT https://bit.ly/2yV95Cb

REVIEW https://bit.ly/38ynFzh

 

Excerpt 2

 

A woman of my own. Someone to return to.

Alice cared and had urged him most ardently to stay with her and Peter, but pride had made him refuse them both with a smile. He did not begrudge the handsome couple their joy, not after their many trials. But the dark of winter and Christmas especially brought his own desolation home to him most keenly, sharper than an assassin’s blade. He was nine and twenty, a grizzled warrior, battle-scarred and wounded.

Feeling sorry for yourself, Magnus? Brace up, man! Be a Viking, as your granddad was. You have your wits and your balls, all working. The lasses in the stews make no complaint and do not charge so much. You have land, a strong house, good fellowship, and two hearty godchildren.

“Splendor in Christendom, let me have my own family! A lass who loves me!”

His voice rang out, startling a lone magpie into taking flight from a solitary elm in a blur of wings, but the drab and well-worn saint gave no sign of hearing. Peering into the calm, carved face, Magnus wondered if the saint was smiling, and then he spotted his own reflection, clear in a frozen mirror of ice by the shrine.

He scowled, knowing very well what he looked like, and spat to the left for luck. With his knees creaking, he staggered to his feet and remounted his eager horse. When he passed this way again he would leave gold, he vowed, but for now he wished only to slink away. He needed to find the village before nightfall and speak to the council of old men—it was always old men—who had sent word to his manor of Norton Mayfield, begging for help, any help, to track and to defeat a monster.

 

Lindsay Townsend