Hello everyone,

Am thrilled to announce a new release - my third for this year - phew... am i allowed a rest now.

LOVE IN WAITING

Jane Beckenham

Publisher:  Cerridwen Press

ISBN 978 14199 17653

Release date:  31 July 2008

 

Adventure and love has always come from books for Jayne Seatoun until she wins a competition to visit England. But breaking and entering a crypt wasn't on the agenda, nor was traveling back nearly five hundred years and being caught up in the politics of King Henry the 8th's Court as she searches for a way home and ends up running for her life.

 

Tired of battle and bloodshed Lord Callum Broderick's loyalty is divided.  Does he save his sister, his lover or his neck from the executioner's block?  Love, honor and loyalty are codes Callum lives by...until he has to choose.

 

"Love in Waiting - a tale of eternal love, nearly lost in time. A wonderful new read from historical romance author, Jane Beckenham." (Melody Knight, author of GlassWorks, In Trysts, Of Dragons)

 

 

Excerpt One - LOVE IN WAITING

 

Jayne Seatoun vacillated.   It felt sacrilegious to be treading over this ancient spot, and yet she had to be here, the pull to enter so great she could not have retreated from the threshold.   Hands trembling she reached out and trailed icy fingers across the engraved tombstone.   Though her voice a hushed whisper, she read the inscription.  

The past and the present so long entwined
Where hearts shall meet, time shall wait
And to love, is to mimic life
Take hold.   I wait for thee.

 

Amidst the silvery blue lights of a shadowed moon filtering through the crumbling crypt walls, the words, cast in stone, were almost ethereal.  

Her eyelids lowered and she repeated the words, each one more alive than the next. The tips of her fingers caressed the engraved stone.   Pitted by the passing years, it felt warm to the touch.  

Her eyes flicked open.  

"Don't be fanciful, Jayne," she chided aloud.   How could stone be warm? The recently excavated crypt, hidden for hundreds of years from the warmth of the sun emitted a chill that sank deep into her bones.  

No life stirred here.  

Only the forgotten tombs of death, lives loved and lived, remained.

But it was ancient, and that alone filled Jayne with an excitement nothing could vanquish.   York and its stone walls were filled with so much history compared to her home in the States.   There, old meant barely two hundred and fifty years had past.   But the York Minster with its Gothic window, housed behind the city's stone walls had been built before the United States even existed.  

Here, history surrounded her.   The past hadn't died and that was exactly as she wanted it.   She wanted to see the history, feel it.  

"You waited for me, Jayne."

An instant guilty heat stained her cheeks and she pirouetted.

Caught out again, Seatoun! Sneaking where you shouldn't.

Goosebumps skittered up and down her spine as she peered into the eerily lit crypt.   "Who's there?"

But only silence replied.   The small tomb containing one of England's long-forgotten titled families was, except for her, empty.

Cradling her bag to her chest she hugged it tight as if it would offer a semblance of security and circled the room once more.

Still nothing.

She frowned.   She had heard a voice.   A man's voice.   Strong.   Expectant.   You waited, he had whispered.

A fractured laugh slipped past her lips.   "He?" He...didn't exist.   And she was alone.   Yet Jayne didn't feel alone.   And that scared her.   Fear coiled in her belly, tangling with a heightened anticipation; sensations capturing her the moment she spied the crypt...and entered.  

 

 

LOVE ACROSS THE AGES....

LOVE IN WAITING

Jane Beckenham