Book Title: Times of Turmoil
Author: Anna Belfrage
Publication Date: September 29th, 2023
Publisher: Timelight Press
Page Length: 382 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction / Time Travel Romance
Times of Turmoil
by Anna Belfrage
It is 1718 and Duncan Melville and his time traveller wife, Erin, are concentrating on building a peaceful existence for themselves and their twin daughters. Difficult to do, when they are beleaguered by enemies.
Erin Melville is not about to stand to the side and watch as a child is abused—which is how she makes deadly enemies of Hyland Nelson and his family.
Then there’s that ghost from their past, Armand Joseph Chardon, a person they were certain was dead. Apparently not. Monsieur Chardon wants revenge and his sons are tasked with making Duncan—and his wife—pay.
Things aren’t helped by the arrival of Duncan’s cousin, fleeing her abusive husband. Or the reappearance of Nicholas Farrell in their lives, as much of a warped bully now as he was when he almost beat Duncan to death years ago. Plus, their safety is constantly threatened as Erin is a woman of colour in a time and place where that could mean ostracism, enslavement or even death.
Will Duncan and Erin ever achieve their simple wish – to live and love free from fear of those who wish to destroy them?
Excerpt 4 – Times of Turmoil
Erin had her arms deep in one of the hives, a cloud of irritated bees around her, when the distinctive high voice of her housekeeper called her name. Erin winced. Even when draped in layers of sheer veils with an old hat pulled down low over her head, Mrs Andersson’s agitated voice tore at her poor ears.
“Mistress Erin!” Klara Andersson came trotting towards her, her face bright red, her hand pressed to her heaving chest.
“Wait!” Erin ordered. The bees around her buzzed, swarming round her head. She pulled out the last of the honeycombs and placed them in the large bucket beside her. She always felt like a thief doing this, but once they’d calmed down, the bees would turn their industrious nature into building new combs on the clean wooden bars she’d inserted into the basket hives to replace the ones she’d lifted out.
She grabbed hold of the buckets and made her way towards where Mrs Andersson was waiting for her.
“Best hurry,” she said.
“Why?” Erin pulled off the heavy leather gloves she’d been wearing, took off her hat and shook out her hair before bundling up the veils. She undid the worn coat she used as yet another protective layer and added it to the pile.
“Mr Lloyd,” Klara Andersson said.
“He’s here?” Erin gestured for Tim to pick up the full buckets. The boy just nodded, a lock of fair hair tumbling over his forehead. “Thank you,” she said, placing her hand gently on his shoulder. He stiffened. He always did when anyone touched him, even if it was getting better.
“Quite the harvest,” Mrs Andersson commented.
“Yes.” Had someone told Erin three years ago that one day she’d be puffed up with pride on account of her beekeeping efforts, she’d have laughed out loud. Not her, no, not Erin Barnes, newly minted journalist with her eyes set on one day winning a Pulitzer. Instead, life had thrown her the mother of all curveballs, which was how she’d ended up here, in Colonial Pennsylvania several decades before the American Revolution. Joseph Pulitzer wouldn’t be born for another hundred years and some.
She tugged at her sleeve. There were days when she wanted nothing more but to wake up back in her own time and find that these last three years were nothing but a complex dream. She’d thought a lot about her lost life over the last few months, the incidents with the Nelsons leaving her with nightmares and a permanent sense of insecurity. Not that she’d be much safer in the twenty-first century: there was a reason she’d ended up here, and that reason was Jacqueline Wilkes and her determined efforts to kill Erin Barnes. She shivered.
“And hopefully we’ll get as much come autumn,” Mrs Andersson said. “Such industrious creatures, our little bees.”
“Yeah,” Erin said, rubbing at a bee sting. The honey and the beeswax candles brought in a nice little extra income. Not that they truly needed it, but she enjoyed contributing so directly to the household. Her other private income—the proceeds of the two ships Duncan had bought on her behalf—never felt as hers: the investment had been financed by the generous gift Duncan’s uncle, David Graham, had given them after they’d saved him from dying in the Scottish Highlands. Duncan had insisted she should consider that money her dowry—his way of trying to redirect society’s focus from the colour of her skin to her purported wealth. Didn’t always work, the Nelsons being case in point.
“Mistress?”
Erin straightened up, jolted out of her thoughts by Mrs Andersson’s voice. “Yes?”
“I was just saying that Mr Lloyd seemed somewhat agitated.”
“Well, if he’s hoping for Duncan to help him . . .” Erin began.
“He wanted to see you.”
He did? Erin gnawed her lip. That sounded ominous. Usually, the very busy Lloyd would ride out to their home from Chester, greet her politely and drag Duncan off into his study, there to spend hours discussing legalities.
“Let’s hope his business won’t take too long,” Erin said. “Daniel is coming over later.”
Mrs Andersson’s face clouded. “Hmph!”
“He’s bringing me some new tools,” Erin went on, suppressing a little grin at Mrs Andersson’s responding grimace.
“It’s not seemly,” the housekeeper said, stooping to collect Erin’s makeshift beekeeper outfit. “For a woman to dabble in carpentry . . .”
“I enjoy it,” Erin replied.
“Carpentry is men’s work!” Mrs Andersson said.
“Is it? And where exactly does it say that?”
“Hmph! The Lord himself was a carpenter, and he was a man, not a woman!”
“He was? I thought he was a preacher,” Erin said, mainly to get a rise out of her. Mrs Andersson was a devout member of the Lutheran Church and would make her way to Chester at least every other Sunday to listen to the weekly sermon and join her voice to the mandatory singing of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”
“He started out as a carpenter. His earthly father taught him the trade,” Mrs Andersson said. She narrowed her eyes. “But I have never heard of a female being apprenticed to a carpenter. Never!”
“I wasn’t apprenticed. My grandfather taught me,” Erin said. Dangerous ground, this, because it was so easy to forget she couldn’t share just who her grandfather had been. A black US Army veteran who’d married a British half-Afghani and proceeded to build a good life with her, including a handsome son who’d fathered Erin and died four years later. She shivered: a bad, bad death at the hands of Jacqueline Wilkes.
“. . . sewing,” Mrs Andersson said.
“Eh?” Erin asked.
“I said, it would be better if you set a good example to your two little girls by practising your sewing instead of covering yourself in sawdust and wood-shavings.”
“I don’t like to sew,” Erin said.
Mrs Andersson snorted. “That’s not true. You don’t know how to sew, which in itself is a right mystery: what woman grows up without knowing how to make a shirt?”
“One that spent her time with her carpenter grandfather?” she retorted.
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Author Bio:
Had Anna been allowed to choose, she’d have become a time-traveller. As this was impossible, she became a financial professional with two absorbing interests: history and writing. Anna has authored the acclaimed time travelling series The Graham Saga, set in 17th century Scotland and Maryland, as well as the equally acclaimed medieval series The King’s Greatest Enemy which is set in 14th century England.
Anna has also published The Wanderer, a fast-paced contemporary romantic suspense trilogy with paranormal and time-slip ingredients.
More recently, Anna has been hard at work with her Castilian series. The first book, His Castilian Hawk, published in 2020, is set against the complications of Edward I’s invasion of Wales, His Castilian Hawk is a story of loyalty, integrity—and love. In the second instalment, The Castilian Pomegranate, we travel with the protagonists to the complex political world of medieval Spain, while the third, Her Castilian Heart, finds our protagonists back in England—not necessarily any safer than the wilds of Spain! The fourth book, Their Castilian Orphan, is scheduled for early 2024.
Anna has recently released Times of Turmoil, the sequel to her 2021 release, The Whirlpools of Time. Here she returns to the world of time travel. Where The Whirlpools of Time had Duncan and the somewhat reluctant time-traveller Erin navigating the complexities of the first Jacobean rebellion in Scotland, in Times of Turmoil our protagonists are in Colonial Pennsylvania, hoping for a peaceful existence. Not about to happen—not in one of Anna’s books!
All of Anna’s books have been awarded the IndieBRAG Medallion, she has several Historical Novel Society Editor’s Choices, and one of her books won the HNS Indie Award in 2015. She is also the proud recipient of various Reader’s Favorite medals as well as having won various Gold, Silver and Bronze Coffee Pot Book Club awards.
Find out more about Anna, her books and enjoy her eclectic historical blog on her website, www.annabelfrage.com
Author Links:
Website: www.annabelfrage.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/abelfrageauthor
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/annabelfrageauthor
Instagram: https://instagram.com/annabelfrageauthor
Book Bub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/anna-belfrage
Amazon Author Page: http://Author.to/ABG or http://amazon.com/author/anna_belfrage
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6449528.Anna_Belfrage
Thanks so much for hosting Anna Belfrage today.
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Cathie xo
The Coffee Pot Book Club
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