Hi readers, please welcome James Winderfield, hero of Paradise Regained by Jude Knight to the RAVON blog. Paradise Regained is a novella in the Bluestocking Belles’ 2018 Holiday box set, Follow Your Star Home, and a prequel to Jude’s planned series, Children of the Mountain King. Here’s the interview with James.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
My family. It started when I rescued my wife Mahzad from a forced marriage (though, to be fair, it was more a matter of stepping out of the way while she rescued herself). We have made a great team.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
A quiet evening at home with the children and Mahzad, and then what follows when the children have all gone to bed. We’ve lost our peace with one another, Mahzad and I. I don’t know how, but I’d do anything to get it back.
What is your current state of mind?
Frustrated. Annoyed. Anxious. By now, my wife will have delivered the child she was carrying when I left home, and I’m stuck here in this tiny fishing village waiting for messengers from the father who exiled me fifteen years ago. I want to be home, but I will wait a few more days to see what the old tyrant has to say.
What is your favorite occupation?
That’s a hard one. Once, I would have said riding, or fighting. Anything that stirs the blood and makes a man feel alive in every particle of his being. As I grow older, the quieter pursuits appeal more. Some of my fondest memories are of teaching my children. They are smart and beautiful, like their mother.
What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Once, I would have said Lady Eleanor Creydon, now the wife of the Duke of Haverford. She is the reason I was exiled. Haverford, the Earl of Creydon, and my own father conspired to separate us. I wanted to die. I thought I would never love again.
When I rescued Mahzad, I never intended to give her custody of my shattered heart. That would be unfair, I thought. She became my companion, my partner, my friend as we built a new life in the mountains where the Silk Routes left Iran for the Turkmen lands.
Then one day, I looked at her over a campfire and all of a sudden realized that my heart had healed and she owned it. The day she consented to wed me, the night we first made love, the morning she presented me with our first son: these moments are treasures in my memory.
If she never loves me as I love her; if we can never bridge the gap that has grown between us; still I will love her till my dying breath.
What is your favorite journey?
The road home.
What is your greatest fear?
I am terrified that something will happen to Mahzad and the children while I am absent. I need to get home!
Which living person do you most despise?
It is a toss up between my father, the Duke of Haverford, and Mahzad’s grandfather. All wealthy powerful men who treat people, even their own offspring, like pawns in their battle for power and even more wealth.
Where would you like to live?
That’s easy. Paradise Valley. The mountain kingdom Mahzad and I have made our own. She is not going to be pleased to hear that I’m now third in line for the dukedom. I might one day be duke. From what I’ve been told, even if my brother Sutton manages to outlive me, his son is sickly. It seems almost certain that Jamie, my eldest son, will be forced to go to England to take up the strawberry coronet. Poor little man.
What is the quality you most like in a man?
Integrity. It’s fundamental to trust, to honor, to love, to all that makes for friendship and decency. I respect a man who keeps his promises, who says what he means, who lives his values. You know where you are with such a person.
What is the quality you most like in a woman?
I’d have to give the same answer. Perhaps the quality is even more important in a woman, for she will be the first teacher of her children, and her values become the values of the next generation.
How would you like to die?
Of old age in my bed surrounded by my family, but if that is not in God’s plan, then I wish to die on my feet, defending those I protect.
What is your motto?
While there is life, there is hope.
Thank you very much, James, for sharing your thoughts with us. Now for a blurb and small sample from Paradise Regained.
In discovering the mysteries of the East, James has built a new life. Will unveiling the secrets in his wife’s heart destroy it?
James Winderfield yearns to end a long journey in the arms of his loving family. But his father’s agents offer the exiled prodigal forgiveness and a place in Society — if he abandons his foreign-born wife and children to return to England.
With her husband away, Mahzad faces revolt, invasion and betrayal in the mountain kingdom they built together. A queen without her king, she will not allow their dream and their family to be destroyed.
But the greatest threats to their marriage and their lives together is the widening distance between them. To win Paradise, they must face the truths in their hearts.
Paradise Regained is a novella in Follow Your Star Home, currently on prerelease and to be published on 4 November. For information about the other novellas, the special prerelease price, and buy links, see the Bluestocking Belles’ website. https://bluestockingbelles.net/belles-joint-projects/follow-your-star-home/
Excerpt
“I should have been home months ago,” James complained. He had been rereading the letter that kept him tethered in this Caspian Sea port, as if it would miraculously change and disclose the reason he was being asked to wait. Hints about his father and news to his advantage? The Duke of Winshire never did anything to anyone’s advantage but his own.
“We could not travel in this weather, and when the storm is over, your father’s men will be able to cross the sea,” his body guard Yousef pointed out.
James tossed the letter into the top of the open pack that held his clothes. The one next to it, with the odd bumpy protrusions, was packed tightly with presents for Mahzad and the children, some to celebrate his homecoming and some for Christmas which was mere weeks away.
“The begum’s last letter said she was well,” Yousef added, which set James pacing again, for in Mahzad’s last letter, she had reminded him her time was almost on her. As if she thought he didn’t know. As if he wasn’t counting the days.
The date on her letter was weeks ago, and still, he lingered here more than two hundred miles from home. He had never before missed the birth of one of their children.
“The baby will be born by now.”
Someone would write, surely, if things had gone wrong? His tortured visions of his Mahzad dying in childbed and his children killed or sold to slavers were nonsense.
Meet Jude Knight
Jude Knight wants to transport you to another time, another place, to enjoy adventure and romance, thrill to trials and challenges, uncover secrets and solve mysteries, and delight in a happy ending.
She writes everything from Hallmark to Regency Noir, in different eras and diverse places, short, medium and extra-long. Expect decent men with wounded hearts, women who are stronger than they think, and villains you’ll want to smack or worse. and all with a leavening of humour.
Newsletter: http://judeknightauthor.com/newsletter/
Learn more about Jude at:
judeknightauthor.com/
What a wonderful story!