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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 Confederation
February 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.”