Read Redemption of a Fallen Woman Online
Authors: Joanna Fulford
AUTHOR NOTE
This series is set between the spring of 1816 and the late summer of 1817. Although the Napoleonic Wars have finished, the memory of Waterloo is still sharp. People are relieved that the lengthy conflict is over, but at the same time have to come to terms with the massive loss of life involved. There is scarcely a family that has not been affected in some way. The over-arching plot reflects this. Edward Montague dies in battle —a tragedy that has far-reaching consequences for his entire family.
Waterloo was the decisive blow for the coalition forces, and the end of a campaign fought on many fronts. One of these was the Peninsular War in Spain, which had ended two years earlier. I was once fortunate enough to live in Madrid for some years, and used it as a base to explore as much of Iberia as I could. The history of Spain also interests me very much, so this aspect of the Napoleonic Era is of especial interest. In the course of my reading on the subject I was riveted by accounts of events in the aftermath of the Siege of Badajoz in 1812, when British troops ran amok in a three-day orgy of pillage, rape and arson.
It was a shameful episode which, even at a distance of two hundred years, makes for very uncomfortable reading. Those accounts made me wonder what it must have been like for the individuals caught up in it—whether they were hapless officers trying to regain control of their men or innocent civilians who suffered the atrocities that occurred. How would an English soldier and a Spanish heroine come to terms with what had happened? How would they reconcile individual and cultural differences? This provided the basis for the deep emotional conflicts that my protagonists must resolve by the end of the story.
Don’t miss the next instalment of Castonbury
Park—
A STRANGER AT CASTONBURY
by Amanda McCabe
‘It’s hard to admit, but you’re not
the son I once knew…’
The obliterated battlefields of Spain are a world away from the
privileged life of James Montague, Earl of Castonbury. Only nurse Catalina
Moreno eases the deafening roar of mortar fire—and in a crumbling chapel by
candlelight they make their vows. But before the sheets cool from their
scorching wedding night Jamie leaves for a brutally dangerous mission…
Two years later, believing her husband dead, Catalina is
shocked to see a man who looks and sounds like her Jamie at Castonbury—but where
once there was warmth and charm now unflinching torment lies in the gaze of a
man she barely recognises…
Stranger at Castonbury
It looked like the landscape of another world
entirely—not a place where he had once lived and worked, fought and loved. It
was a place he had never seen before except in nightmares.
Jamie felt strangely numb, remote from his surroundings, as he
climbed stiffly down from his horse and studied the scorched patch of earth
where the camp had once stood. The hot sun beat down from a clear, mercilessly
blue sky onto the baked, cracked dust, but Jamie didn’t even feel it. He was
vaguely aware of Xavier Sanchez, sitting on his own horse several feet away and
watching the scene warily, but Jamie felt as if he were the only living being
left for miles around.
Maybe the only living being left on the planet.
There were no sounds—no birds singing or wind sweeping through
the trees. Once this place had been filled with voices, laughter, the cries of
the injured, the barked orders of a military operation. The ghosts of such
sounds in his mind made the silence even heavier.
Jamie tilted back his head to stare up into the sky. He could
smell the dusty scent of the air, the faint acrid remains of fire. The echoes of
the violence that had happened here.
And Catalina had been caught in it.
His numbness was shattered by a spasm of pure, raw pain at the
thought of what must have happened here. The fear and panic, the sense of being
trapped amid fire and ruin with nowhere to run. No one to help her because he
had gone.
‘Catalina,’ he whispered, his heart shattered at the thought of
her being afraid.
Had she thought of him in that moment, just as he had pictured
only her face when he’d been sure he was drowning? Had she called out his
name?
Jamie walked slowly across the blasted, blackened patch of
earth, not seeing it as it was now, abandoned and ruined, but as it had been
that day he’d first seen Catalina. Her smile, her face like a beautiful, exotic
flower, a haven of peace and loveliness in a mad world. She had given him
something he had never known before—stillness, a place to belong. She had made
him think of things he had never dared to before—like a future, a home. With her
he had imagined even the grand halls of Castonbury could be that home, if she
was there.
And then in only a moment that had all gone.
He remembered her hurt, pale face when she’d found out about
the nature of his secret work. The doubts that had lingered in her eyes when
they’d parted. He had foolishly imagined he would have time to make it all right
later, to make everything up to her.
Jamie reached up and pressed his hand over the ring he wore on
a chain around his neck under his shirt, against his heart. Cawley had said this
ring—Catalina’s ring—had been found here among the dead. Yet some stubborn hope
clung to Jamie—what if she had somehow miraculously got away?
ISBN: 9781426876776
Copyright © Joanna Fulford 2012
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