The Dark Angel, page 1
THE DARK ANGEL
A Medieval Romance
By Kathryn Le Veque
© Copyright 2022 by Kathryn Le Veque Novels, Inc.
Kindle Edition
Text by Kathryn Le Veque
Cover by Kim Killion
Edited by Scott Moreland
Reproduction of any kind except where it pertains to short quotes in relation to advertising or promotion is strictly prohibited.
All Rights Reserved.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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It’s not often the House of de Velt sees both tragedy and comedy, but when Medieval hippies come to call on the darkest lord of all, Julian de Velt gets caught up in the Medieval mayhem…
But he pays a price.
Lista de la Mere is a young woman of beauty, sense, and education. Unfortunately, her mother and her aunt don’t have the same sensibilities. Lista is an heiress, and a very wealthy one, and if her conniving, alcoholic mother and her sly, drug-addicted aunt have anything to say about it, she’s going to marry the man that can provide them with unlimited coinage to feed their habits – and put them back on top of the social hierarchy.
Lista’s mother was a friend of Kellington Coleby de Velt, Julian’s mother, long ago. They pitch Lista to Kellington as a wife for Julian and although Julian has no intention of marrying anytime soon, he’s rather intrigued with the lovely, bright young woman who is so capable of drawing him out of his shell.
But Lista’s mother and aunt don’t stop there. It’s their intention to have a bidding war, the prize being Lista, and they pitch Lista to another knight, setting off a chain of events that could ruin everything. Julian, who is usually shy and quiet, must call forth the inner devil that his father managed to tame so ably.
Now, it’s Julian’s time to rise.
Join introverted, powerful Julian and sweet, intelligent Lista as they battle to save a love that too many people are trying to destroy.
It’s peace, love, chaos and madness in Medieval England!
de Velt Motto: Quoniam magnus coram mors
Death before mercy
Author’s Note
And finally, we have Julian’s story…
I’ve actually really come to like Julian. He’d only appeared here and there in Cole and Cassian’s stories, so I wasn’t really sure what kind of a personality he had or how we would see his character growth. The worst thing an author can do is write about a character who is the same in the beginning as he (or she) is in the end. I feel that it’s important to take a reader on the journey of a character, so I wasn’t sure which direction to go with Julian. When that’s the case, I let the character talk to me.
Julian had a lot to say.
Now – trigger warning! I will forewarn you of something, however, before we get started. I’ve always sworn I would never write the death of a major character but, in this case, it was important for Julian’s growth as a man – as a knight – to experience his father’s death. So if you are at all sensitive about the death of Jax de Velt, be very careful reading the prologue. I’ve written it as tastefully as I could, but let’s face it – any death of a major character is heartbreaking and especially Jax’s. We knew in my novel, Godspeed, that he’d fallen fighting King John’s mercenaries. It was spoken about it in The Splendid Hour and in The Dark Conqueror. So, it’s not like it’s out of the blue. But now, we actually see it, so if it’s going to upset you – be careful about reading it. Yes, it’s important for Julian’s growth, but you’ll see his development anyway. But with Jax’s death – it has so much more meaning. And to see him and Kellington together at the end… sigh…
Consider yourself warned.
Now, let’s talk about the de Velt family a little –
Several years back, I published Spectre of the Sword. We met the hero’s half-brother, Rod de Titouan, who was kind of a – how can I say this? – a butthead at times. Now, don’t get me wrong. I really like Rod. I liked him so much that at the end of Devil’s Dominion, he and Effington de Velt got together. It was further mentioned in a brief sentence:
But that didn’t stop Effington. She followed Rod into the hall as well and, on a warm August night of the next year, after a serious adventure of their own, Rod and Effington celebrated their own marriage in Pelinom’s keep the same day as Allaston gave birth to a big, healthy boy at Belford Castle.
To be clear, Rod and Effington were married a long time ago (in 1207 according to Devil’s Dominion) – it was just never mentioned in other de Velt books nor have Effie and Rod had their own story told(yet!), so don’t be confused when you see the marriage mentioned in this book. So far, anything with Rod and Effie has happened “off page”.
Something more to discuss away from the de Velt family – books. Believe it or not, there were books in Medieval times. I’ve used them many times, but just a brief mention. In the High Middle Ages, they were called a codex, not a “book” as we do today. It was vellum pages between two boards and they were almost always, without fail, richly painted and works of art. It wasn’t until the 15th century when books started to evolve into what we know today, but for the purposes of ease, I’ve called the codex a “book”.
A quick reminder about Jax and Kellington’s children:
Coleby “Cole” b. 1181
Julian b. 1183
Allaston b. 1186
Effington b. 1189
Addington b. 1191
Cassian b. 1193
On a personal note, this book was very difficult for me to finish. More than halfway through it, I lost my own father quite suddenly. Usually a healthy man, he was with us in the evening and then gone the next morning. To my recollection, I’ve only really written about the death of one major character – and a father – and it just happened to be in this book, so I struggled through this story greatly because of it. Had it not been on preorder, I would have thrown it out altogether. But in a sense, The Dark Angel will always be a special book to me, if not one of the most special because of the time in my life when I wrote it. My dad was a little leery of his daughter’s writing (read into this: squeamish of sex scenes), but in the end, he was so proud of what I’d accomplished. He became my biggest supporter and I will miss that greatly.
At this point, I think that’s about all of an author’s note I can give. Not even a pronunciation guide because there’s nothing odd in the book (and that’s rare!).
Thank you so much for reading – and enjoy Julian and Lista’s story.
Hugs,
Dedication
I don’t usually do dedications because with as many books as I’ve written, I would run out of people to dedicate to. In this case, I’m making an exception and dedicating the book to my dad, William Ralph Bouse, Jr., who left us on January 5, 2022.
His friends called him Bill and his grandkids called him Bull.
It’s difficult to summarize fifty-seven years of life with a man who, when you were a child, was your teacher. When you were a teenager, he was your worst enemy (at least, for a few years, he was mine in a classic love/hate fest), and when you were an adult, he became the wisest, most important man in your life other than your husband. That’s probably the biggest thing I will remember about my father – his wisdom. I’ve tried to infuse every male hero I’ve written about with that same kind of wisdom. Some have my dad’s sense of adventure, some have his sense of humor. Some are stubborn, just like he was. Matthew Wellesbourne from The White Lord of Wellesbourne had his love of fishing. William de Wolfe from The Wolfe even bears his name. Every hero I write about has a piece of my dad in them, so in that sense, he will continue to live on through my heroes.
That’s a good legacy for any man.
At this point, that’s as good a dedication as I can give, so I’ll simply say this: Godspeed, Dad. It’s been an amazing life with you. Thank you for impressing upon me all of the good qualities a father, and a man, should have.
See you on the other side.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
About the Book
de Velt Motto
Author’s Note
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Cha
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Epilogue
Kathryn Le Veque Novels
About Kathryn Le Veque
PROLOGUE
January 1216
Pelinom Castle, Northumberland
The battle had been raging for nearly two days.
It was one of the most desolate, brutal things Julian de Velt had ever seen. He’d been in battles before, too many times to count, but he’d never had his home attacked as it was now. Pelinom was his family’s home. He’d been born there, as had his siblings and even his mother. Certainly, they had trouble with Scots now and again, but those had always been quick or unspectacular raids because no man in his right mind would go after the seat of the most feared warlord in England.
The man known as The Dark Lord.
Except for, perhaps, the King of England himself.
That’s where this bombardment came from. John Lackland, as he’d once been known, had been waging a horrific scorched earth campaign against his own warlords, those who were opposed to his rule and had been after more than fifteen years of dealing with a king who had little respect for the men who were sworn to him. Years and years of a king who refused to keep his word to his own vassals, who lied and cheated and swindled his way through his reign. When the warlords, like Jax de Velt, could take no more and refused to fight for John any longer, the king raised an army of mercenaries from the darkest corners of the earth.
Men who had only come to kill for the money it would bring them.
It was their only motivation. John paid them well with ill-gotten funds to kill his enemies and that’s exactly what they did. They had no regard for England or her warlords, no respect for the land or the people. They’d moved from Winchester to Nottingham to York, fighting their way northward, before finally descending on Berwick Castle. Berwick was an outpost of the de Velt empire, at least temporarily, and Julian’s older brother, Cole, was the garrison commander. But Cole fought valiantly against John’s hired army of thugs so they moved off to the west, along the River Tweed, tearing into any castle they came across that wasn’t loyal to John.
Northwood.
Wark.
Roxburgh.
And finally, Pelinom.
Northwood, Wark, and Roxburgh held against the onslaught, but not without significant damage. Northwood, in particular, had suffered a great deal, but in the end, John’s army moved away, heading for that jewel called Pelinom. If they could take down Pelinom, the line of castles holding the Scots border would break and they very much wanted it to break. John was prepared to move into Scotland, all the way to Edinburgh and the Highlands, but he had to break the border first.
But the warlords held strong.
That only seemed to infuriate him.
Now, on the dawn of the third day, Julian stood at the keep entry, though the doors themselves were bolted and the iron grate, like a portcullis, had long been lowered and secured. Even if John’s mercenaries made it into the bailey, there was no way to make it into the keep. The doors behind the grate could be burned, but the grate was too big and too heavy to be moved or destroyed. The nearest windows were slender lancet openings and unless a man was as thin as a reed, there was no way to slip through them.
The keep of Pelinom, containing Julian’s mother and sisters, was tightly secured.
But that meant the army had been out in the open, exposed to the projectiles that John’s army flung over the walls from time to time. At first, they were bundles of wood, tied together and soaked in oil and then flung over the walls in the hope of catching some structure on fire. All they managed to do was create nice, warm piles of kindling that the de Velt army warmed themselves on.
Then came the human cargo.
Literally, the mercenaries started flinging terrified squires or drunken soldiers over the walls in an attempt to get men on the inside. Pelinom’s walls were so incredibly tall, with great crenelations that Jax himself had put all the way around the wall walk, that mounting the walls was a near impossibility. The mercenary army had tried for two days. They were still trying. The men who had come flying over the walls had all been killed either during the endeavor or shortly thereafter. Jax had ordered their bodies slung back over the walls and into Pelinom’s substantial moat.
It had both demoralized and enraged the mercenaries.
And everyone knew it.
The smoke was heavy in the air as the sun began to rise, the smell of cooking fires mingled with the heavy, oily smell of burning bodies. It wasn’t that anyone in Pelinom was burning bodies, for they’d suffered no casualties, but more that the mercenaries were burning their dead, unable to provide for storage or a place to bury them because the ground was frozen.
It was the beginning of the third day of an increasingly unpleasant standoff.
“Were you able to sleep?”
The question came from behind and Julian turned to see Sir Ashton de Royans approaching. Ashton, or Ash as he was known, was the son of Sir Juston de Royans of Bowes Castle, about one hundred miles to the south. Ashton and his older brother, Tristan, were both at Pelinom these days and had been well before any trouble with the king started. Tristan was actually the bastard child of King Henry II and Alys of France. Juston had taken the boy in and adopted him so the boys were raised together. Ash had always considered Tristan his brother.
While Tristan had luscious auburn hair and a bristly beard, with big, white teeth and a temper to match those sharp looks, Ashton had the enormous blond comeliness of the de Royans men. He was bright, powerful, calm in almost any circumstance, and had a bit of a wicked streak him in that Julian loved.
They’d been best friends for years.
“A little,” Julian said, his eyes twinklingly wearily. “One does not sleep much when one’s home is being attacked.”
Ashton snorted softly. “Attacked,” he said with disdain. “The nuns from Kelso could have done a better job of laying siege. Why don’t they simply leave us alone? They’ll never get in.”
Julian flashed a grin, big dimples carving through both cheeks. “There is truth in that,” he said, looking up at the battlements that were heavily lined with men. “My father was just saying how weak this entire attack has been but considering how many castles they have bombarded before us, there is little wonder that they have worn down.”
Ashton shook his head. “They did not take any of the castles from here to Berwick,” he said. “I have a feeling they may have expended all of their energy on Berwick. That fortress is key to holding the north. If John had captured it, he could use the river to bring more troops into the north.”
Julian’s grin faded. “I know,” he said. “We know that Berwick held but not much beyond that.”
“Your father has not received any reports?”
“We’ve been locked tight for the past three days. Nothing has been able to come through.”
Ashton could feel Julian’s concern. The de Velt family was inordinately close for the most part with the exception of Cassian, the youngest son, who spent his time in the south with the House of de Lohr. Cassian had gone there to foster and had simply never returned. It was well known that a certain de Lohr daughter was holding him there, leaving Cole and Julian to support their father’s empire. Truthfully, Cole had his own agenda in life – garrison commander of Berwick, a wife, a family, and also serving William Marshal when the call came, but Julian was solely and exclusively devoted to his father.
He was, in fact, his father’s shadow.
Ashton had known Julian for a few years, ever since he was sent north by his father, Juston, to support Pelinom during a time of constant raids from reivers. Ashton had liked the north so much that he’d remained, enjoying Jax and Julian and Cole when he came around. He’d come with his older brother, Tristan, who was even now on the opposite side of the fortress, in the kitchen yard because there was a low, squat, and heavily defended postern gate there, the only possible way John’s men could infiltrate if they came across the moat and gained a foothold.
