It’s the last Medieval Monday before the group of author’s I’m with begins their next theme. Today I’d like to give you an excerpt from To Follow My Heart: The Knights of Berwyck, A Quest Through Time Novel (Book Three). I just love Fletcher and was glad I could give him his happily ever after ending. In this scene, Jenna is waking up after passing out after her trip through Time. Read on and enjoy this excerpt!
Excerpt:
A strange sound rustled across the floor. Footsteps. Softly tread, as if not to wake her.
“I will see to her.” The man’s voice that penetrated through her dreams was forceful in nature, as though he was used to being obeyed and his orders kept without question.A strange sound rustled across the floor. Footsteps. Softly tread, as if not to wake her.
“But, sir, Mistress Kenna said for me to─”
“Leave us,” he ordered.
Jenna’s thoughts were foggy as she woke, her mind awash with flights of her wildest fantasy that swam in her head. She had been having the most fanciful hallucinations of castles and knights, and heaven and hell. She certainly preferred the former over the premonition of being doomed to the underworld. Feeling relaxed for the first time since her ordeal with Dylan began, a sigh escaped her. She needed to get a grasp on the reality of her life instead of some fiction she created in her imagination from whatever novel she had been reading. Mr. Darcy certainly wasn’t about to come knocking at her door anytime soon, and what a shame was that.
She rolled over onto her back with another heavy sigh. As she stretched in the bed, she realized her head was pounding with one of the fiercest migraines she had ever had in her entire life. Her hand reached up to feel the large knot, and she felt a bandage wrapped around her head. What the heck?
As she attempted to sit up, her head began to spin, and she fell back on the pillow. Something pricked her cheek, and she took hold of whatever was piercing the linen. After pulling it free, she tried to focus on the fact she was holding a quill from a feather in her fingertips. Where in the world did a feather pillow come from? She generally stayed away from buying them, finding they tended to flatten out and not be so poufy.
When she made a grab for her blanket, a gasp escaped her as her hand came in contact with fur. Her gaze riveted around the room, only for her to realize she certainly wasn’t in her own bedroom, or any other room familiar to her. A long thin candle was lit on the bedside table, and shadows cast themselves onto the wall from the fire lit in a fairly large hearth she could have easily stood in. The walls were made of stone, and the floor was bare.
And then, she slowly became aware of his presence when her gaze again swiveled to the fireplace, and she blinked, as though she didn’t want to recognize she wasn’t alone. The man just sat there in silence, staring into the flames with his face hidden in the shadows of the room. Who is he? Has he taken me captive?
“Where am I?” Jenna’s voice was raspy, and she hardly distinguished it was her own.
He flinched, as though she had startled him by disturbing his thoughts. When he came to stand next to the bed, he towered over her, making her quake. “You are awake. ’Tis a good sign.”
Jenna’s mouth dropped open. “Excuse me?” Did he actually use the word ’tis?
“You have slumbered for several days now. Our healer was concerned you may not awake.”
“Healer?”
“Aye. Mistress Kenna has been overseeing your care.”
He seemed to be waiting for her to speak and peered down at her until she let out a burst of laughter. “Oh, this is just too crazy,” Jenna replied, causing the giant beside her to frown.
“I do not understand, mademoiselle.”
“Come on out, Amy…you’ve made your point with your little prank,” she called out, waiting for her roommate to jump out of hiding. “Amy?”
“I assure you, there is no one by that name residing here at Berwyck, my lady.”
Confusion racked her brain as she tried to concentrate on what the heck was going on around her. “Then you never answered me. Where am I?”
“Berwyck Castle.”
“A castle?” she muffled a laugh. “That’s a good one. And just where exactly does this so-called castle reside?”
“In the northern realm of England, of course.”
“Right…” Her eyes flicked around the room again in disbelief of what he was telling her.
“You doubt my words?” the man asked. He, too, looked as puzzled as she was feeling.
“Every single one of them.”
“On my honor, I vow, I speak no falsehood, my lady.”
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
“What?” his brows knitted together again, and Jenna began to have the distinct impression this man wasn’t used to having his words questioned.
“Who are you, and why have you taken me hostage? If it’s a ransom you’re after, you’re barking up the wrong tree, mister. I live paycheck to paycheck and barely have a dime to rub together.”
“My apologies for the lack of introduction. I am Sir Fletcher, captain of the garrison knights here at Berwyck, and at your service.” He bowed before her like someone out of one her romance novels. What a great actor.
“Uh huh, like I’ll believe that tale. You should be in the movies.”
“What in God’s wounds is a moo-vie?” His voice boomed, almost rattling her teeth with the level of sound it carried in the room.
“Dammit, stop playing games with me. What are you trying to pull on me anyway? This isn’t funny anymore, and I want to go home.” She was getting angry and scared, all rolled up into one huge ball of emotion, and she was about to break down. Jenna didn’t want to become unhinged from the little bit of reality she had been holding on to.
Fletcher held out his hands, and in her confused state, she assumed he was about to take advantage of her.
“Don’t touch me,” Jenna yelled. Pulling at the blanket, she looked down for the first time, and her eyes widened with the realization she was completely naked beneath the covers. “Where the hell are my clothes?”
“Please, calm yourself, damsel. Do you not remember falling upon the beach?” Fletcher asked her in a soothing voice.
But there was nothing that was going to soothe her shattered nerves as a flurry of surreal visions flashed before her eyes, as if she were living her last moments on earth. Dylan’s rejection, walking along the beach, the Cliff House, and then being pulled almost as if she was being wrenched…through…through what? My God…it can’t be!
A scream of terror burst forth from the depths of her despair. She couldn’t stop, and she slapped away the hands of the madman who seemed to be at the root of her predicament.
The bedroom door burst open and slammed up against the wall. Everything seemed to proceed in slow motion. A bevy of people suddenly filled the room that appeared as though it was growing smaller and smaller by the second. Heated conversations with raised voices swirled around her, conversations she couldn’t keep in order, as sweat began to bead on her upper lip and forehead. Her eyes became blurred once again until she blissfully passed out, and nothing of her fate troubled her further until the dreams came. They were restless and filled with the picture of a man who called her name through time itself, begging her to join him, even as she resisted the pull of his irresistible charm.
To Follow My Heart: The Knights of Berwyck,
A Quest Through Time Novel (Book Three)
Bestselling author, Sherry Ewing, brings you the next installment of her Knights of Berwyck series, To Follow My Heart.
Love is a leap. Sometimes you need to jump…
After a gut wrenching break up with her fiancé, Jenna Sinclair heads to the coast to do a little soul searching. To say everything is subject to change is putting it mildly. Her world is not only turned upside down, but pretty much torn asunder when she is pulled through a time gate on the beach beneath the Cliff House and transported more than eight hundred years into the past.
Fletcher Monroe, captain of the garrison knights at Berwyck Castle, has wasted too much time pining for a woman who will never be his. When he finally decides to move on with his life and focus on his duties, he is suddenly confronted with a woman who magically appears at his feet. This could either be the best thing that has ever happened to him or another cursed event in a string of many. He soon finds he is wildly attracted to her, but she’s scared to death of him ─ not a very encouraging beginning.
From the shores of California to twelfth century England and back again, Jenna and Fletcher must find a way to reconcile their two different worlds before Time forever tears them apart.
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xoxo
