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About KNIGHT OF LOVE
In this saucy romance, an English lady turns the damsel-in-distress tale on its
head as she escapes her malicious fiancé and fights for both her life and that
of the lustful rebel that has become her protector.
Lady Lenora Trevelyan, a naïve yet stubborn young lady born to the highest noble
houses of England and Germany, finds herself betrothed to the brutal Prince Kurt
von Rotenburg-Gruselstadt. But after she is cruelly bruised and flogged by her
fiancé, she decides to take the reins of her fate. In the midst of a German
revolution, Lenora escapes Kurt’s iron fist and embarks home to England. She
quickly finds herself in the hands of a rebel group and their robust, gentle,
and handsome leader, Wolfram von Wolfsbach und Ravensworth, the English Earl of
Ravensworth.
Lenora struggles to deny the passion she feels towards the frustratingly
chivalrous Earl but her desire for him continues to bloom. Wolfram hungers
nothing other than to fight for democracy and civil rights in uniting Germany
and to protect what he assumes is his damsel in distress. Through nights of
immeasurable pleasure, Lenora and Wolfram learn that their passion is no match
for the revolutionary chaos that ensues. And when Lenora discovers that her
protector’s life is threatened, she must risk everything to save her Knight of Love.
Excerpt
The German ConfederationFebruary 1848
The first lash robbed her of breath.
The second granted her freedom.
If he’d go so far as to have her publicly flogged, she owed him no further
loyalty. Any obligation remaining from their betrothal contact ended here, in
this moment, with this lash.
Morally, she was free.
Now all she had to do was escape the bastard and make him pay.
As the second stroke landed, fire replaced the shock, and a hot slick of pain
bloomed across her back. The coarse linen shift that a spying maid had forced
her into provided no protection. It offered little modesty, either, from the
uneasy crowd Kurt had gathered inside the castle gates to witness her
punishment. She gritted her teeth and refused to cry out. A rough rope bound her
wrists above her head to the flogging post. As her knees buckled, the binding
made her perversely glad; she doubted she could stand upright on her own.
Before arriving at this godforsaken pile of German stone, she—Lady Lenora
Trevelyan, eldest child to the Duke and Duchess of Sherbrooke, third cousin to
Queen Victoria’s German consort, His Royal Highness Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg
and Gotha—had never been struck in her life. Now, in her three months at Schloss
Rotenburg, she’d lost count of her bruises.
At first, before her parents had returned home to England, Kurt hadn’t hit
her—or “corrected her,” as it pleased that smug worm to call his slaps and
blows. He claimed it was for her own good, of course, to teach and prepare her
for her life as his Prinzessin and mistress of Rotenburg.
She must carry out her duties perfectly, he’d hiss, tightening a grip on her arm
until she knew she’d wear a band of purple bruises for a week. Or he’d strike
out in sudden fury at some perceived failure of hers—she’d forgotten the name of
one of his sainted ancestors in the castle’s gloomy portrait gallery, or made a
minor grammatical mistake in her German, or not shown proper courtesy to a
visiting Bürgermeister.
Tied now to the flogging post, she lost count after the third blow. She’d seen
the long leather strap when the stable master, shamefaced, had bound her with
muttered apologies and handed the lash to a muscled groom more accustomed to
cracking it around stubborn horses than using it to beat highborn ladies. Now
she could barely feel the individual strokes as they landed, only the waves of
hot agony clenching her back and shoulders in a vise grip of pain.
Through the red haze blurring her vision, she saw Kurt standing nearby. Next to
him, his sanctimonious toady minister prattled the Bible proverb of the virtuous
wife whose price was far above rubies. The gleeful, twisted pleasure Kurt took
in her pain radiated off his stork-like form like a sickening stench. She bit
down on her lip and gathered her hatred of her fiancé like a babe to her breast.
It was all she had left to get her out of this hell.
When Kurt finally held up a hand to signal the groom to cease, her labored
breath echoed in the silent crowd. She knew the townspeople didn’t approve of
the public beating their prince had commanded for his foreign betrothed. No more
than they believed his story that she’d agreed to a religious flagellation in
humble preparation for becoming his pious and obedient wife. But Prince Kurt von
Rotenburg-Gruselstadt ruled the castle and town with an iron fist. None would
risk their lord’s wrath to stand up for her.
Kurt stepped to the front of the dais. “Lady Lenora bears her trial most nobly,”
he announced to the crowd. “Her embrace of her suffering does honor to a
bloodline that unites the highest noble houses of England and Germany.”
That bloodline, she knew well, was why he’d chosen her. The prig made no secret
of his disdain for any born below the upper aristocracy. The Holy Roman emperor
himself, Kurt often delighted to inform her, had conferred the title of Prinz
upon the House of Rotenburg-Gruselstadt in the previous century. Her own
background had led the matchmakers to judge them a perfect pair: her father’s
ancient ducal title intermingled, like that of so many English peers these days,
with noble blood from her Prussian princess mother.
No one had thought to mention that her fiancé had the temperament of a petulant
demon on a bad day in hell.
As Kurt stalked toward her, she forced her knees to straighten. She was done
being afraid of this man. He pulled back the torn linen shift to inspect her
back. Despite her resolve not to cry out, she gasped as the frayed edges stuck
to her skin.
“Beautiful work,” he murmured into her ear. “This is what a woman should look
like. Chastised to a man’s authority, marked to her proper place.”
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