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Contact Me: bctrissel@yahoo.com
Welcome to the World of Author Beth Trissel
Historical, Light Paranormal, and YA Fantasy Romance Author, plus nonfiction. Avid gardener, farm wife, grandma, and animal lover. The Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and surrounding mountains are my inspiration. I'm published by the Wild Rose Press and have my own indie titles.Like Me On Facebook
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Fog hugs the garden this morning but these pictures are from yesterday.I took this short garden video this morning. Lovely bird song. The large pink climbing rose is an old variety called zephirine drouhin. It’s a very fragrant rose I grew especially for mom💔She loved smelling my roses, so I mostly planted fragrant kinds. Still do. Can’t stop the rose madness.I call this my Abraham Darby forest because the roses by that name are huge. It’s my favorite rose. The scent is wonderful.CIVIL WAR TIME TRAVEL ROMANCE SECRET LADY WON BOOK OF THE MONTH!
‘A great read filled with romance and dash of suspense. Fans of time-travel romance won’t want to miss this novel!’
Inspired by Events that Occurred to My Ancestors in the Colonial Frontier
GHOSTLY HISTORICAL ROMANCE NOVEL
HISTORICAL/PARANORMAL ROMANCE NOVEL
KIRA, DAUGHTER OF THE MOON WON BOOK OF THE MONTH!
RED BIRD’S SONG
NA HISTORICAL ROMANCE NOVEL THROUGH THE FIRE
SHORT STORY–.99 IN KINDLE
HISTORICAL/PARANORMAL ROMANCE NOVEL
HISTORICAL ROMANCE NOVEL THROUGH THE FIRE
“A catless writer is almost inconceivable,”~ Barbara Holland
“I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t know what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose.” P.G. Wodehouse
NA HISTORICAL ROMANCE NOVEL THROUGH THE FIRE
GHOSTLY ROMANCE NOVEL SOMEWHERE MY LOVE
The Dove of the Holy Spirit
LOGAN FROM HISTORICAL ROMANCE NOVEL KIRA DAUGHTER OF THE MOON
BROTHER WOLF
Ask David Book Review Site
NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ROMANCE RED BIRD’S SONG
High 5 from the Pen & Muse for Historical Romance Into the Lion’s Heart!
White Elk
"When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice."Autumn trees in the Alleghenies
They don’t make movies like this anymore. Sigh.
“Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.” Wesley, The Princess Bride
FOR SOMEWHERE MY LOVE
‘As I read Somewhere My Love, I recalled the feelings I experienced the first time I read Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca long ago. Using deliciously eerie elements similar to that gothic romance, Beth Tressel has captured the haunting dangers, thrilling suspense and innocent passions that evoke the same tingly anticipation and heartfelt romance I so enjoyed then, and still do now.’ ~by Joysann for Publishers Weekly at Beyond Her Book (blog feature now removed)
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- The History and Romance Behind 'Scarborough Fair'~
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- Poison Hemlock and Some of its Victims, Real and Fictional--Beth Trissel
- My New English Historical Romance and The French Revolution
- Lovely Review for Red Bird's Song
- Old and New Quotes About Herbs & Gardens.
- Excerpts From Native American Romance Novel Red Bird's Song
- Ah, Love potions, Fairy gloves and Mandrake roots...the Lore of Old~
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- Plants the Fairies Like and Dislike
- "You have a great gift for rhyme." ~Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride
- The History and Romance Behind 'Scarborough Fair'~
- "Ladybug! Ladybug! Fly Away Home"
- Poison Hemlock and Some of its Victims, Real and Fictional--Beth Trissel
- My New English Historical Romance and The French Revolution
- Lovely Review for Red Bird's Song
- Old and New Quotes About Herbs & Gardens.
- Excerpts From Native American Romance Novel Red Bird's Song
- Ah, Love potions, Fairy gloves and Mandrake roots...the Lore of Old~
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Excerpt from American Historical Romance Novel ENEMY OF THE KING
August 1780, Low Country, South Carolina
Dreadful screeching, like the cries of an enraged cat, tore through the muggy night and into Meriwether’s chamber. She sat bolt upright in bed. “Demented owl,” she muttered and pushed back the short lengths of hair clinging to her forehead. Her shift was also damp from tossing. An indefinable restlessness drove her as a ship before the wind.
The clock downstairs struck two.
Meriwether stiffened at the echo of hooves on the cobblestones in the yard beneath her window. What business could anyone possibly have to conduct at this unearthly hour? Perhaps it was a courier, and perhaps he’d come before. Images of phantom horses from past nights cantered through her mind. She had thought them dreams sprung from fever, but she was much better now and wide awake.
She parted the muslin curtain around her canopied bed and slid her feet to the carpet. A great golden moon bathed the room in a pearly sheen. She crept to the partly open glass—gasping as the screech owl flew at her from the live oak outside the window. Round yellow eyes stared into hers for a split second before the bird veered off into the darkness.
Meriwether breathed in sharply. The sweetness of jasmine wafted from the trellised vine as she peered down through moss-draped branches. The milky light streamed over two men standing in the yard, their heads bent in conversation.
One man in a dark coat and black tricorn held the reins of a bay horse. Neither he nor his mount was familiar, but she knew the other gentleman well. Several inches taller than the stranger, he was simply dressed in a white shirt tucked into breeches that molded to his long legs and met his riding boots. Shadows hid his face and the chestnut hair pulled back at his neck, but there was no mistaking Jeremiah Jordan, master of Pleasant Grove and Meriwether’s guardian these past few months. Elegance cloaked him like a mantle.
Her heart quickened at the sight of Jeremiah, rarer and rarer these days. What wouldn’t she give to have him all to herself for even one single hour? That seemed as impossible as an end to this confounded war. Chest fluttering, she knelt at the window to better overhear their low voices.
“Men are gathering,” floated up to her from the stranger.
Her stomach knotted in tight twists. Was this nocturnal visit prearranged? Worse—had Jeremiah joined the Patriots? Her Loyalist sympathies recoiled at the awful possibility.
He’d never voiced any open fervor for the rebel cause. The neighbors thought him still too distraught over his wife Rachel’s death to take an active role in the war, but doubts gnawed at Meriwether. She had seen the flash of anger in Jeremiah’s blue eyes whenever British Lieutenant Major Tarleton’s name was mentioned. Perhaps it was just the effect Bloody Ban had on any decent person, but Meriwether suspected far more lay beneath Jeremiah’s outward reserve than he’d ever revealed.
Lacy white clouds feathered the moon as she leaned out the window for a better look at the two men. Jeremiah glanced around the yard then passed what looked like a leather pouch into the stranger’s hand. She glimpsed a flap in the center and a shoulder strap like the pouch that couriers used. “The usual place,” reached her straining ears.
Jeremiah lifted his head and stared up at Meriwether’s chamber. She sprang to her feet stumbling back. What would he say if he knew she spied on him? Her thoughts flew like quail flushed from cover. Were his frequent absences from home truly plantation business or far more dangerous errands?
With Charles Towne fallen to the British and the entire Southern Garrison captured, South Carolina was rapidly becoming a crown stronghold. If Jeremiah were mixed up in this rebellion, he courted disaster. Remaining in her chamber wouldn’t answer any questions. If she slipped down the back stairs and edged closer to the yard, she might learn more.
Eavesdropping on the man who’d graciously taken her in after her father’s death smacked of disloyalty, but how else was she to discover the truth? She hesitated only for an instant. She wasn’t Captain Steele’s daughter for nothing. Mettle accompanied the name.
Arms outstretched, she felt her way in the darkness around the clothes press and washstand and then opened the door and tiptoed from her room out into the hall. The eerie sensation of unseen eyes sent prickles down her spine as she stole along the dim corridor. Perhaps it was the portraits of Jeremiah’s ancestors watching from the walls or perhaps even someone else, someone gone, yet not gone. She’d had this uncanny feeling before. It made her want to run outside, away from this disturbing presence.
Meriwether sped past the room where Jeremiah’s elderly aunt, Miss Anna, slept—stubbing her bare foot on the low table crouched in the blackness like a jungle cat. “Ouch!” she cried softly and rubbed her throbbing toe, expecting footfalls on the steps.
No one came. Miss Anna could slumber through howling wolves. One clumsy young woman would not disturb her. Wishing she’d worn her shoes, Meriwether limped to the landing. Moonlight pouring through the recessed window at the top of the stairs lit the glassy gaze of the eight point buck mounted above her. She froze, her eyes riveted on the deer’s head. A snake—perhaps venomous—wound around the antlers. Meriwether was no coward, but she’d rather face a Legion dragoon with a bayonet than this serpent. It must have slithered in through the open window.
Strangling a cry, she bolted past the writhing mass and down the steps. Never mind that the boards creaked beneath her feet. She hit the ground floor at a run and flung open the door. She flew outside, nearly forgetting why she’d come in her haste. Breathing hard, she halted in the archway.
Calm yourself, she admonished, and quietly closed the door behind her.
Flattened against it, she ran her eyes over the yard. Both men were conspicuous only by their absence. Not surprising. She’d unwittingly given them warning. They might have ducked into the stable or carriage house, or melted away into the night, spiriting the horse with them.
Locusts droned and crickets chirped as she poised in the entryway. Horses nickered from the pasture. Nothing more.
What now? She couldn’t go back inside with that snake dangling there and had nowhere else to go except the kitchen, a short distance from the manor house.
Keith Daws, Jeremiah’s right hand man, and his family slept inside its stone walls.
Jeremiah and Keith Daws had been friends ever since she remembered, rare between an Englishman and a Negro. Meriwether didn’t want to risk waking any of the Daws. Keith’s oldest son, York, was a light sleeper and would be more than a little curious to discover her wandering shoeless in her nightdress. Better to remain as she was than to try and find her way to the front of the house in the dark.
She sank down in the doorway, knees drawn up, feet tucked under the linen hem. No serpent was sliding across her bare toes. It was childish, perhaps, but couldn’t be helped. She buried her head in her arms. What a farce she’d made of spying. “Ah, Papa,” she whispered, imagining his hearty chuckle and badly wishing he were still alive. He’d been her compass. She couldn’t find her way without him and her twin brother, Bobby, off fighting for the crown.
“Are you staying the night out here, Miss Steele?”
Meriwether jerked up her head, her heart in her throat. Jeremiah stood at the base of the brick steps that led up to her perch. “Mister Jordan! You move like a ghost.”
“You rather resemble one in that shift, dear heart.”
Moonbeams silvered his well-muscled figure in the full-sleeved shirt and thigh hugging breeches. She drank in every glorious inch. The magical light hinted at his penetrating eyes and aristocratic, almost haughty nose softened by his sensuous mouth. It could be a hard mouth when he was angry, which wasn’t often and never with her; at least, not yet.~
Enemy of the King made the Best Romance Novel list at Buzzle and the BHB Readers Choice Best Books of 2009 at Publisher’s Weekly. The novel is available in print and or eBook at: The Wild Rose Press, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged American historical romance novel, Award winning American Historical romance novel Enemy of the King, Best romance novels 2009, best romance novels 2010, Charleston South Carolina, Colonial American Historical Romance Novel, Excerpt from Colonial American historical Romance Novel Enemy of the King, history, Jeremiah Jordan, South Carolina, The American Revolution, United States. Bookmark the permalink.
Such beautiful photos! You’re a gifted writer and you have the loveliest blog of anyone I know. Such a treat to visit!
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Thanks so much Caroline. Makes all this effort worthwhile. 🙂
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Awesome book! need to reread it soon…:)
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Thanks LeeAnn. I need to write the sequel.
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Wow that really pulled me in. Love the book cover too. I agree with Caroline.
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Thanks so much Sue.
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Yes you do..I have nothing to read…lol
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