The Steel Rose
(The Boar King’s Honor Trilogy, Book 2)
by Nancy
Northcott
The Boar King’s Honor Trilogy
A wizard’s misplaced trust
A king wrongly blamed for
murder
A bloodline cursed until
they clear the king’s name.
Book
2: The Steel Rose
Amelia Mainwaring, a magically Gifted seer, is desperate to rescue the
souls of her dead father and brother, who are trapped in a shadowy,
wraith-filled land between life and death as the latest victims of their family
curse. Lifting the curse requires clearing the name of King Richard III, who
was wrongly accused of his nephews’ murder because of a mistake made by Amelia’s ancestor.
In London to seek help from a wizard scholar, Julian Winfield, Amelia
has disturbing visions that warn of Napoleon Bonaparte’s escape from Elba and
renewed war in Europe. A magical artifact fuels growing French support for
Bonaparte. Can Amelia and Julian recover the artifact and deprive him of its
power in time to avert the coming battles?
Their quest takes them from the crowded ballrooms of the London Season
to the bloody field of Waterloo, demanding all of their courage, guile, and
magical skill. Can they recover the
artifact and stop Bonaparte? Or will all their hopes, along with Amanda’s
father and brother, be doomed as a battle-weary Europe is once again engulfed
in the flames of war?
The Steel Rose is the
second book in the time-traveling, history-spanning fantasy series The Boar
King’s Honor, from Nancy Northcott (Outcast Station, The Herald of Day).
This
is the opening of the book. This scene is set in London on February 26, 1815.
“You’re
thinking about murder again, aren’t you?”
The
question jolted Amelia Basingstoke, Viscountess Buckton, out of her reverie and
pulled her attention back to the crowded ballroom.
Her
closest friend in London, Sophie Barton, Viscountess Whitestone, stood beside
her. Concern glimmered in Sophie’s blue eyes.
Amelia
pulled a wry smile. “How could you tell?”
She
had been thinking of murder—two of them, actually—that’d happened more than
three hundred years in the past.
“You
looked distracted, and not in the way you do when you have a vision.”
“You know
me too well.” Indeed, even another magically Gifted person couldn’t tell the
difference between a seer’s vision and mere preoccupation unless that person
knew the seer well.
On the
dance floor, young ladies in pastel gowns and gentlemen in black-and-white
evening dress of cutaway coats and knee breeches glided and wove through a
quadrille. Here and there, dresses in deeper, richer colors marked out women
who were married or, like Amelia, widowed. Amelia’s gown had the high waistline
and round skirt of the current style, but she could never have worn this warm
green, the color of new leaves, and its silver lace trim before her marriage.
Amelia
linked her arm with Sophie’s. “Take a turn about the room with me, if you
please.”
They
fell into step, skirting the dance floor and other guests standing on the
perimeter. When they reached a relatively clear space, Sophie asked, “Have you
spoken to anyone with useful information?”
“No,
alas.” Amelia sighed. She’d agreed to come to London in part so she could meet
other Gifted, who were rare at her home in Yorkshire. Those with deeper
knowledge of magic might have some idea how she could lift her family curse.
Not that she was ever specific about her reasons for asking questions. Those
were not for sharing with casual acquaintances. Sophie knew about it because
her eldest brother, Robert Grayson—Viscount Yeavering to the world, but Robin
to his friends and family—had been one of Amelia’s brother Adam’s closest
friends.
Amelia
added, “Mrs. Evanston professed to have a number of grimoires but hadn’t read
any of them. Mr. Carruthers described himself as ‘the merest dabbler’ and
recommended I apply to the realm’s foremost expert on magical Gifts, the Earl
of Aysgarth.”
“Which
you already did,” Sophie noted, her voice dry.
Amelia
shrugged. Julian Winfield, Earl of Aysgarth, had also been one of Adam’s most
trusted friends. When Adam and Papa died in a magical accident sixteen months
ago, Julian had come to the funeral. She’d asked him then if he would help her
find a way to release their souls from this curse. He’d promised to try, with a
caveat. The war against Napoleon Bonaparte had still been raging, and Julian
had been heavily involved. He not only worked for the Home Office but ran the
Merlin Club, a group of Gifted dedicated to covertly serving Britain’s
interests. Naturally that work had taken priority.
“I did
hope, with the war over…but perhaps he has nothing and simply doesn’t wish to
say so. To disappoint me.”
“Or to
admit defeat. Julian hates to give up.” Sophie paused as they walked past
another knot of people. “Just the other day, I overheard Robin tell Papa he’s
worried about Julian, that the war and other things—he didn’t say what, and it
seemed Papa knew—had taken a toll on him.”
“Adam
said he liked to spend the winters either traveling in search of old books on
magic or working with his horses. I suppose that’s what he’s doing. And
honestly, Sophie, I can’t resent anyone who was involved in that conflict for
needing time to recover.”
“Robin
wrote to him, asking when he planned to come to London for the Season, but he’s
had no reply yet.”
They
paused by one of the long windows, open to allow the winter air to cool the
crowded room. Lowering her voice, Amelia added, “I now need his help on a
different matter, one that might concern the Merlin Club. Several nights this
past week, I’ve had a recurring dream of an eagle attacking a lion. The two of
them fighting.”
Sophie
frowned. “Bonaparte used the eagle as his emblem.”
“While
Britain uses the lion. I know. I’ve consulted the ghosts of my
many-times-great-grandparents. Grandmother Miranda agrees it’s a portent, but
she and Grandfather Richard are no more certain than I am about its meaning. We
do all agree it could presage renewed conflict between England and France.”
“That’s
disturbing. Though I envy you being able to talk to them. One of my great aunts
was shockingly scandalous in the reign of George I. I would love to talk to
her.”
Since
Sophie knew Amelia could converse with the ghosts only because she was their
descendant and they were in a shadowy afterworld between the realms of the
living and the dead, she must have meant to lighten the mood. Unfortunately,
the effort failed.
Amelia said, “I could write to Julian.” They’d
been friends, addressing each other by their given names for that reason as
well as the custom of the Gifted, and she was no longer an unwed girl. A letter
was entirely within social bounds. Even if it were not, he knew her well enough
not to read anything untoward into it. “I’ve delayed, partly because I don’t
want to seem impatient about Adam and partly because I hoped Julian would soon
come to Town for the Season.”
She’d
also delayed because he’d looked so weary when he came to the funeral, like a
man carrying burdens that weighed on his soul. Sharing that with Sophie,
though, felt wrong.
“This
probably isn’t the sort of thing you want to put in a letter anyway,” Sophie
pointed out. “Have you Seen him?”
In a
seer’s vision, she meant.
“A few
times, and I’ve scried him once or twice. He’s always riding through a town or
the countryside or surrounded by books, never in the same place.”
Sophie
wrinkled her nose. “Robin says Julian thinks the Gifted in the days of Merlin
and Morgan had abilities we’ve lost. That’s partly why he seeks out antique
books, especially old codices, grimoires, and monastic chronicles, anything
that might contain lost magical lore. The older a book is, the fewer copies
existed at all, let alone survived centuries passing. Such books must be
extremely difficult to find.”
Based
on Amelia’s conversations since coming to London, information on blood curses
was also extremely difficult to find. More than three hundred years before, her
ancestor Edmund Mainwaring, then Earl of Hawkstowe, had unwittingly helped
murder Edward IV’s young sons, who had come to be known as the Princes in the
Tower. He’d magically helped agents of his liege lord, the Duke of Buckingham,
sneak into and out of the Tower of London’s royal apartments undetected. He’d
had no idea that those agents would kill the two boys or that Buckingham
intended to seize the throne and saw them as rival claimants.
When
Edmund realized what he had done, he threw himself on the mercy of the boys’
uncle, King Richard III, who had installed them in the Tower apartments for
their safety. The king ordered him to stay silent until the political situation
improved. Unfortunately, King Richard died at Bosworth Field before giving
Edmund leave to speak.
The
accession of the Tudors, who blamed Richard III for the boys’ deaths and any
other crime they could, had made revealing the truth dangerous. Any challenge
to their version of events would’ve been punished as treason.
Unable
to speak safely during his lifetime but tormented by guilt, Edmund had rashly
cursed all his heirs to not rest in life or death until they proved the truth
about the murders and cleared King Richard’s name. Now he and all the
Mainwaring heirs, most recently Papa and Adam, were trapped in a shadowy,
wraith-infested realm. Adam was having particular problems dealing with that
ghastly place. She simply had to free him.
“You’re
wool gathering,” Sophie murmured. “Smile.”
How
incredibly tedious, but Sophie was right. It was never wise to give the ton, England’s social elite, anything to
speculate about.
Nancy Northcott
Nancy Northcott’s childhood ambition was to grow up and become Wonder Woman. Around
fourth grade, she realized it was too late to acquire Amazon genes, but she
still loved comic books, science fiction, fantasy, history, and romance. She
combines the emotion and high stakes, and sometimes the magic, she loves in the
books she writes.
She has written
freelance articles and taught at the college level. Her most popular course was on science
fiction, fantasy, and society. She has
also given presentations on the Wars of the Roses and Richard III to university
classes studying Shakespeare’s play about Richard III. Reviewers
have described her books as melding fantasy, romance, and suspense. Library
Journal gave her debut novel, Renegade, a starred review, calling it “genre fiction at its best.”
In addition to
the historical fantasy Boar King’s Honor trilogy, Nancy writes the
Light Mage Wars paranormal romances, the Arachnid Files romantic suspense
novellas, and the Lethal Webs romantic spy adventures. With Jeanne Adams, she
cowrites the Outcast Station science fiction mysteries.
Married since
1987, Nancy and her husband have one son, a bossy dog, and a house full of
books.
Social Media Links: Website, Facebook, Twitter, BookBub, Amazon Author Page, Goodreads.
If you would like to follow the tour you can do so by clicking HERE!
