The Queen of Candelore Series, Book
4
Historical Fantasy, 383 Pages
Cover art by Richard Stroud
Blurb:
Nine year-old runaway bride, Princess
Salina Maria, counts on her giant bodyguard, Yeoman Sherman of the Iberian
Queen’s Guard, her appointed Royal Companion to help her escape the eminent
nuptials in a stampeding wedding carriage. However, the wicked bridegroom, Prince
Ivor Irinushka of The Far Northland, a malicious warlock, uses his Black Magic
to locate her.
Excerpt:
Lena
planned to make preview of the nearby woods. She had asked the queen’s
permission to take the air today on horseback, which had been approved. Her
squire rode a half pace behind her, carrying on a conversation that wouldn’t
have been possible should he have ridden at his respectful full-pace
behind.
“Boyd,” she asked, “be there any ruins nearby we could go
explore?”
“Just
as a lark, ye mean?”
“Aye.” She tossed her hair. “Ye know, some place where I could
just go and have fun looking about and making guesses at whatever happened there
so long time ago.”
“I
think I know what ye mean, Princess. I hear ye still be liking to play
make-believe.” He laughed.
Yet
she noticed it tweren’t a hurtful laugh. She half turned in her saddle to take a
better look at his expression. He smiled at her, and she couldn’t help but be
caught up in his good humor.
“Ye
could be the queen, and me the king,” Boyd said. “Wait, I know of a great
place!”
“Be
it far from here?”
“Nay,
not really, but well off the beaten track…but it be way in the bottom of a
canyon and badly overgrown; hard to get to. It used to was a flour mill…but the
stone done got cracked, and it fell in half. So, the miller
left.”
“Really? It sounds delightful. Not the stone breaking so that its
owner had to desert their home. Can ye take me there?—Will ye take me there, without
tattling?”
“Yer
just a girl. Ye be sure ye want to do this? There be brush and thistles, and low
tree branches. Yer dress will surely be torn.”
“I’ll
take me dress off…if’un ye promise to button me up again.”
Boyd
gave thought about this adventure, and that he wouldn’t even be able to share
this story with his buddies at the barns. He laughed. “And there be poisonous
spiders,” he said, turning his fingers into claws. Pretending to be a wicked
wizard, he growled.
Lena
enjoyed his wicked laughter. She couldn’t help but smile. “But there be running
water there? Aye?” She thought surely the dragon twins would love playing in the
brook. They had never seen running water in brooks or rills. This could well be
the adventure they sought.
Boyd
led the way. As soon as they reached the middle of the canyon, they tied their
horses concealed under a grove of trees. Boyd blushed unbuttoning the back of
Lena’s bodice, and turned away as she slipped out of her riding skirt. She put
her belt back on and looped the back hem of her petticoat between her legs and
fastened it with her belt buckle. She stepped out from behind her pony, wearing
only her white, sleeveless petticoat and her borrowed squire’s knee-high
boots.
“I’m
ready,” she called.
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