The Snow Bride. Lindsay Townsend. New Excerpt

Here's a new excerpt from my steamy historical romance, 'The Snow Bride'. In it, my hero Magnus and heroine Elfrida are outside a strange tower, located deep in a snowy forest.

Excerpt.


Elfrida stopped, struck again by the strangeness of the place. No birds sang here, no animals lingered, and the sun cast misshapen shadows. She flinched, a picture forming in her mind of a small wooden watchtower with a single blue door. The wings and bones of ravens were pinned to the timbers of the tower.

"Things are very wrong here, very amiss." She seized her own strongest amulet for protection and tore it over her head. "Please, wear this for me."

He submitted as she slung it quickly around his neck but then was off again, striding forward. He crested part of the hillside and instantly dropped to his hands and knees, motioning to her to do the same.

"Look." He pointed to the wooden watchtower on the hilltop, surrounded by oak trees and mistletoe. "That was once a hunting tower for our Norman lords, I warrant, and with a blue door besides." He chuckled, his eyes and face alight with victory. "And there she goes, our washerwoman." Speaking, he gathered himself to leap forward and snatch the laundress before or as she reached the tower.

"Magnus! What do we do with her?"

"Why fret?" He waved off her question, seeming amazed by it. "You worry overmuch. We must get on, finish here, and get back. Even those Denzil guard lads will get suspicious in time, so we cannot linger."

"But can you not feel it?" She had felt this expectant, tense, terrible sense once before, in the woods close to her home, on the night Magnus had snatched her. "Something is very close, coming fast." Something terrible.

"All the better!" he bawled. Before she could stop him, he launched himself and rushed over the hilltop in a flurry of limbs, legs, and a lethal, sparkling-edged knife. The gray bundle he had jammed into the crook of his other arm, hefting it as if it was a missile.

Trying to keep pace, Elfrida received a face and mouthful of snow. "Dangerous!" she cried, unable to reach him to slow him down even a little.

"Ha!"

"Please—" Even as her sense of wrongness trickled a chill of ice down the length of her spine, Elfrida found herself speaking to empty air. Magnus was charging ahead, lunging into the unknown, impossible to stop.

Yelling, Elfrida chased after him.


More details here:

http://www.bookstrand.com/the-snow-bride


Best wishes, Lindsay Townsend