Serpent
Authors: Kathryn Le Veque
Tags: #Historical Romance, #Medieval Romance, #Love Story, #Romance, #Medieval England, #Warrior, #Warriors, #Wales
| Serpent | |
| de Wolfe [2] | |
| Kathryn Le Veque | |
| Dragonblade Publishing (2013) | |
| Rating: | ***** |
| Tags: | Historical Romance, Medieval Romance, Love Story, Romance, Medieval England, Warrior, Warriors, Wales |
1283 A.D.
Edward I is in the midst of his campaign to tame the Welsh but rising from the chaos is a Welsh knight known as the Serpent. With a deadly strike, Sir Bhrodi ap Gaerwen de Shera is a warrior of tremendous range and power. Descended from the kings of Anglesey on his mother’s side and the earls of Coventry on his father’s, Bhrodi is in the unique position of having Welsh royalty and English nobility, making him a very big player in Edward’s war in Wales. The English king cannot subdue the Welsh complete as long as Bhrodi resists, and all of Northern Wales with him. Edward is shrewd and knows he must make an alliance of pure power and politics with de Shera.
With that in mind, Edward calls upon the mightiest warrior of the north, the legendary William de Wolfe, to pledge one of his daughter’s to de Shera.
William is honored by the king’s calling but he is also relieved; having lost one of his sons the year before in the wars in Wales, he pledges his youngest daughter, the Lady Penelope Adalira de Wolfe, to be the Serpent’s bride. But the Lady Penelope is no ordinary woman; raise by knights, she has been trained by the best and, in spite of her mother’s protests, she fights like a knight. Exquisitely beautiful with dark hair and green eyes, she is an unearthly beauty and a fine legacy for the mighty de Wolfe. But Penelope has no desire to be a bartered bride and she resists the king’s directive, but her reluctance is futile.
She must marry the Welshman known as the Serpent, bringing together two mighty houses and peace to two nations.
Introduced into an alien Welsh world of brutality and unfamiliar customs, Penelope and Bhrodi are resistant to each other at first. Bhrodi, however, is intrigued with the woman who looks like an angel but fights like the Devil himself. Their first few days together are difficult but as they come to know each other, Bhrodi comes to see a woman who is as compassionate as she is courageous. There is far more to the Lady Penelope than meets the eye. He comes to understand that she is as unique as he is, both of them understanding what it means to be loyal and brave and trusting.
She understands a knight’s heart, and he understands hers, and a legendary love story begins to unfold.
Join Bhrodi and Penelope as they journey together through a world where the English and the Welsh threatened to destroy one another, where the greed of men breeds great hatred yet great valor.
When Bhrodi is injured in a skirmish, Penelope steps in for her husband to lead the Serpent’s men against the hated English and realizes she must face her own father on the battlefield.
Will Penelope survive the Wolfe?
Or will the Serpent strike become her very own, conquering those she loves?
Serpent
A Medieval Romance
Sequel to THE WOLFE
By Kathryn Le Veque
Copyright 2014 by Kathryn Le Veque
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Printed by Kathryn Le Veque Novels in the United States of America
Text copyright 2014 by Kathryn Le Veque
Cover copyright 2014 by Kathryn Le Veque
Illustration copyright 2014 by Ellen Tribble
Other Novels by Kathryn Le Veque
Medieval Romance:
The Wolfe * Serpent
*
The White Lord of Wellesbourne*
The Dark One: Dark Knight
*
While Angels Slept* Rise of the Defender* Spectre of the Sword* Unending Love* Archangel* Lord of the Shadows
*
Great Protector* To the Lady Born
*
The Falls of Erith* Lord of War: Black Angel
*
The Darkland* Black Sword
*
Unrelated characters or family groups:
The Whispering Night *
The Dark Lord* The Gorgon* The Warrior Poet* Guardian of Darkness (related to The Fallen One)* Tender is the Knight* The Legend* Lespada* Lord of Light
The Dragonblade Trilogy
:
Dragonblade*
Island of Glass* The Savage Curtain
-also-
The Fallen One (related)* Fragments of Grace (related prequel)
*
Novella, Time Travel Romance:
Echoes of Ancient Dreams
*
Time Travel Romance:
The Crusader*Kingdom Come
Contemporary Romance:
Kathlyn Trent/Marcus Burton Series:
Valley of the Shadow*
The Eden Factor* Canyon of the Sphinx
The American Heroes Series:
Resurrection*
Fires of Autumn* Evenshade* Sea of Dreams* Purgatory
Other Contemporary Romance:
Lady of Heaven*
Darkling, I Listen
Note:
All Kathryn’s novels are designed to be read as stand-alones, although many have cross-over characters or cross-over family groups. Novels that are grouped together have related characters or family groups. Series are clearly marked. All series contain the same characters or family groups except the American Heroes Series, which is an anthology with unrelated characters. There is NO particular chronological order for any of the novels because they can all be read as stand-alones, even the series.
Contents
Anglesey, 1293 A.D.
Family Trees for the de Wolfe, Hage, and de Norville Families
The next ge
neration Wolfe Pack
W
illiam and Jordan Scott de Wolfe
Scott
b.1241 (married to Lady Athena de Norville, has issue*)
Troy
b.1241 (married to Lady Helene de Norville, has issue)
Patrick
b.1243 (married to Lady Brighton de Favereux, has issue)
James
b.1245 – Killed in Wales June 1282 (married to Lady Rose Hage, has issue)
Katheryn
b.1245 (James’ twin) Married Sir Alec Hage, has issue
Evelyn
b.1248 (married Sir Hector de Norville, has issue)
Baby de Wolfe b. 1250, died same day. Christened Madeleine.
Edward b.1252 (married to Lady Cassiopeia de Norville, has issue)
Thomas
b.1255
Penelope
b. 1263 (married Bhrodi de Shera, hereditary King of Anglesey and Earl of Coventry, has issue)
Kieran and Jemma Scott Hage
Mary Alys b. circa 1238 (adopted) married, with issue
Baby Hage, b. 1241, died same day. Christened Bridget.
Alec b.1243
(married to Lady Katheryn de Wolfe, has issue)
Christian b. 1248
(died Holy Land 1269 A.D.) no issue
Moira b. 1251
(married to Sir Apollo de Norville, has issue)
Kevin
b.1255
Rose b.1258
(widow of Sir James de Wolfe, has issue)
Nathaniel b.1260
Paris and Caladora Scott de Norville
Hector b.1245 (married to Lady Evelyn de Wolfe, has issue)
Apollo b. 1248
(married to Lady Moira Hage, has issue)
Helene b.1250
(married to Sir Troy de Wolfe, has issue)
Athena b.1253
(married to Sir Scott de Wolfe, has issue)
Adonis b.1255
Cassiopeia b.1257 (married to Sir Edward de Wolfe, has issue)
Collective grandchildren for the de Wolfe/Hage/de Norville Clan: 19 and counting
* Issue means children
Present day, May
Pendraeth Forest,
Anglesey, Wales
Archaeological Dig for the University of California at
San Marcos in conjunction with the University of Aberystwyth
The forest was thick with foliage, moist in the mid-summer heat
. Even this far north, the weather could grow very warm and the humidity could get nasty.
The Pendraeth Forest was one of the dwindling sections of heavily forested land in the United Kingdom. Most of the great forests were gone due to a myriad of reasons; pollution, human encroachment, and other factors had shrunk eve
n the greatest of forests. The most legendary forest of all, Sherwood, was nothing more than a grove of trees these days. Certainly it was no place for great outlaws to hide out in. Times had changed, indeed.
On this bright day in mid-August, a group of students from the University of California at
San Marcos was working on a dig deep in the forest near Llyn Llwydiarth, or Lake Llwydiarth. There used to be a great marsh surrounding it but it had been drained around the turn of the last century to produce rich farmlands. However, a section of it closer to the lake had remained undisturbed until last spring when the farmer who owned the land drained it off to expand his grass crop for hay. However, when the water was drained off and the man began to prepare the section, he’d come across something that had put an immediate stop to his agricultural plans. He’d discovered human bones.
The farmer had
called the police who had shown up and determined that the bones were very old; in fact, they suspected they were Dark Age burials and called upon the University of Aberystwyth because they had an ancient studies department. The university had sent people to check it out and after some carbon dating samples, determined that it was, in fact, a Medieval burial site. Archaeologists were called in and the farmer lost a good portion of his agricultural site to the scholars.
Dr. Bud Becker, the senior field archaeologist in Medieval Studies at the University of California
at San Marcos had been on-site since June, when he had been called in by a colleague at Aberystwyth. Everyone in the field of archaeology knew Dr. Becker’s reputation, as the foremost expert in Medieval field archaeology, so the University of Aberystwyth was very glad to have him.
Dr. Becker had brought in twenty-one archaeology students for a summer session along with him so they had plenty of help as they excavated the farmer’s field. But more and more as of late, Dr. Becker was convinced
this wasn’t a burial. Bodies were in pieces, missing heads, missing limbs, and generally scattered all over about a quarter of a mile radius. It didn’t look like any battle he’d ever seen; it looked like a massacre. He had been genuinely baffled until they had come across bones that didn’t match anything he’d ever seen before. Buried deep in the muck of the field, in the low-acidic soil, had been pieces of a skeleton that wasn’t man or animal. He didn’t know what it was, which is why Aberystwyth had brought in a paleontologist, also from the University of California at San Marcos. They had no idea what they had, and the mystery deepened.
The
paleontologist had created her own sub-dig within Dr. Becker’s dig. Dr. Cynthia Paz was a pretty woman with deep blue eyes, small and quick, and very diligent about her work. There were times during the dig when they had to literally pull her out of her hole so they could shut down for the night. The woman put in eighteen hour days and had for about three weeks, ever since they had called her in. The very first thing she had done upon her first inspection of the bones was send samples to a lab in London for analysis. Whatever she was dealing with, it wasn’t petrified as a dinosaur skeleton would have been, and it didn’t look like anything from the early age of man. The low acidic soil had preserved the bones so much that they were nearly pliable. Brand-new as far as old skeletons went. She was as confused as anyone else.
So, she continued her dig while Becker worked around her. There was quite a killing field surrounding whatever the massive skeleton was, and the age of the human bones had already come back from the lab circa 1200
A.D. to 1338 A.D. was the closest the carbon dating could come up with, which clearly made them Medieval. Therefore, Becker and his crew continued to excavate the human remains and, as of this morning, had uncovered five hundred and eleven pieces of bodies. There wasn’t one complete corpse in the entire group. Becker, having just finished exposing a skull that had been smashed to bits, took a brief break and headed over to the tent where they had water and other consumables. He was in the process of downing a bottle of Gatorade when Dr. Paz came up behind him.