Sneak preview - first chapter.

I have been trying to resist putting the first chapter up but I have given in! Thank you to all who have signed up to my newsletter and as you wanted a taster of what the first book will be like - here it is.

 The rider pulled on the reins to halt the sturdy hill horse, a frown of concern forming on his brow. He sniffed the air and urged the pony over the small stream and up the opposite bank. The horse’s nostrils flared as it also caught the smell and pushed forwards, matching its riders increasing worry. Smoke. There was the smell of smoke drifting down the small valley. Invisible, but there was definitely smoke in the air. This was not smoke from a peat fire glowing in a hearth. The air was becoming increasingly acrid and a heavy icy stone of dread settled in the riders’ stomach as he pushed the horse to a gallop. Stones clattered on the rough track behind them as they rounded the side of the hill. Bent low in the saddle, his eyes widened. “Gods,” he muttered, as a plume of smoke became visible. This was bad. The amount of billowing smoke meant only one thing. Green Brae was on fire. “Raided,” he cursed as the flaming ruin came into view. The heather thatched byre and black house were reduced to smoking bare walls. The fortified tower was ablaze with flames and smoke pouring from the small windows and from beneath the heavy stone slates. As he reined in his mount to a halt, the entire roof collapsed, exploding in a ball of sparks and flame. Leaping to the ground, he shielded his face against the heat, looking for signs of life, dreading what he might find. Drawing his sword and a short dagger, he skirted around the high wall to his left. As the pall of smoke lifted, he spied a body stretched out face down on the tussocky grass. “Angus,” he cried and ran forward. The man on the ground was curled up, clutching his stomach. Falling to his knees beside him, the rider cradled the wounded man. “You’re injured Angus, lets get you right.” The man coughed, a stream of bright red blood bubbled from his lips. Shaking his head, “No, Jack.” He coughed again, sending a new trickle of blood running down through his greying beard. With a rattle of breath he gasped, “Dieing, Jack.” “What happened?” murmured Jack. “Who? Where have they taken Anne and the children?” Angus peered up at Jack, his eyes becoming misty with pain and tears. His breath wheezed in his chest as he struggled to speak. An icy hand gripped Jack’s heart as he followed Angus’s tear-filled gaze to the now smouldering tower. “They.” He coughed again. “They barred them in and set it a fire” he gasped and fell into a fit of coughing. Falling back, he stared at Jack with darkening eyes. “Burned alive”. The last words tricked from his slackening mouth as his eyes no longer saw Jack. Jack remained holding the dead man as his mind played out the terrified screams that would have echoed from within the stone building as the flames took hold. He held Angus tight as he tried to shut out the anguish and pain that the man would have heard as his wife and children burned alive. Steadily red raw fury replaced Jack’s grief. Standing, he laid his brother – in – law’s body down on the blood-soaked grass. Drawing the checked plaid over Angus’s head, he bowed his head. “They’ll be time for burials and weeping later. Now vengeance is my succour. I will avenge you, Angus Dunn. I will avenge you, sister,” he said, looking at the smoking ruins which contained the charred corpses of his sister and her children. “I will avenge the murders of your children, my kin.” Jack stooped and tore a tussock of dry grass up and crossed to his horse. Grabbing the lance tethered to the saddle, he impaled the turf. Holding it out, he touched the glowing embers of the barn, and the dry grass blazed. “By Border law and my rights as a March Lord,” he bellowed. “I, Jack Armstrong, declare a Hot Trod for the murder of my kin. No border is a barrier to my task. No haven or protection can be offered for those I pursue. My word is my oath, and by the Gods, I will have vengeance.” With that he leapt into his saddle and spurred his horse towards the far hills. The rider cannoned past Emily as she stood to one side of the narrow track. The horse snorted as it galloped by, eyes wide and nostrils flared. She could feel the fury that seemed to surround Jack like an aura. His face was grim and she could see his jaw clenched so tight that it hollowed out his cheeks. She turned as he swept past. Just then, a fragment of the blazing turf fell from the lance and set the white grass on fire. The tinder dry grass quickly flared, and the smoke began to obscure the rider. Without realising, she half raised her arm and then caught herself. Was she calling him to stop or waving him off? She watched the figure disappear into the distance, the tiny blaze on the lance point glimmering like a star. Emily woke up with such a start that she sat bolt upright in bed. Wide eyed, she struggled to place herself. The room gradually coalesced as she made out the glimmer of dawn around the bedroom curtains. Her suitcase sat on the low stand by the chest of drawers. Her bathrobe hung from the single hook on the back of the door. All her worldly possessions were in this small room. Taking a slow breath to calm her thumping heart, she swung her legs off the bed. Reaching for her mobile phone she swiped the screen to see the time, 06.30. Laying it down again, she stared at the wall to marshal her thoughts into some sort of order, some sort of reality. ‘What dream was that?’ She thought. ‘Certainly a vivid one, so real, so heart breaking – just plain weird.’ She inhaled through her nose and was sure she could smell smoke, not strong, but definitely smoke. ‘How could that be?’ shaking her head. “it will just be from the open fire in the pub last night,’ she murmured out loud, “all this results from stress and an overactive imagination. Not the reaction expected from Miss Elliot,” she chastised herself. “Come on Emily, you are a respected primary school teacher, 26 years old and have just moved to a lovely part of the country to pursue your dream job – what could possibly be better?” She shook her head and looked down at the tight-clasped hands in her lap. ‘What might have been?’ She thought. ‘I had a dream job in a leafy suburban school. One foot on the property ladder with a lovely little flat just around the corner. To complete the rest of the perfect life game plan, a fiance and marriage on the horizon.’ That was six months ago. Now she was hundreds of miles away with no flat and no fiance. All she had was this new job. Graham had been her boyfriend from university. When she qualified as a teacher they got engaged, set dates and planned everything for their future lives together. Then that Saturday changed everything. There would be no wedding, and he was moving out. Out of her flat, out of her life. He had met someone else, who he would not say. No clue where he was going or contact details. Her calls were blocked and as his parents had died, there was no one else to contact. It was when she called his employers that gnawing worry crept into her stomach. They had never heard of him; they had never had a Graham Jenkins work for them. The trail had gone cold. He must have been working somewhere. He had an income, cash that was always there. He had continued to leave as usual each morning and back same time, week in week out. Then the bombshell. The flat was on the market. Her flat, she fumed. She had stormed into the estate agents who had contacted her to arrange access to draw up details. The agents looked embarrassed and after fifteen minutes calmly explained that the joint owner had wanted to sell the property. Joint owner? There must be some mistake, but no, there was not. She had used the money her grandmother had left her to put down a hefty deposit. When they had drawn up the mortgage agreement Graham did not qualify. He said it was something to do with not living in the country for long enough. He had spent a lot of his childhood abroad as his parents worked in various embassies around the world. Never mind, he said. He would just transfer his share of the mortgage payments to her every month. This was fine, her salary was more than sufficient to qualify for the loan. When the deeds were exchanged she had not even thought to notice that they were both joint owners. Anyway, even if she had, she knew she would not have questioned it. They were getting married, after all. Now they were not. Everything came crumbling down, and her entire life unravelled. Everything had been a lie. He had not been turned down for a mortgage because he had lived abroad; he had a criminal record. He had been in prison before turning up at University. His parents were not diplomats, and they had never lived abroad. When she tracked them down to the sink estate where they lived, they neither knew nor cared where Graham was. The only thing that interested the two petty criminals was that fact that he had got his hands on a lump of cash. It was only when the police turned up on the doorstep of her dingy rented flat that she had found out where Graham was and what he had used the money for. He was in custody for drug dealing. Apparently he had been a low level dealer all the way through University, supplying students with whatever substance they wanted. He had been on the police radar since he left when he became associated with known pushers on the streets. It was while under surveillance that he was arrested and found to be in possession of over £100,000 of cocaine. It was not this revelation which crushed Emily. What had completely shattered her was the detective’s calm statement that he had used her as a cover all the time. It was, apparently, a common practice to have a sham front of a happily married couple and family. Whilst behind the scenes and out of sight the dealing would continue and grow. It had all been a lie. Their whole relationship had been for nothing. All those cherished moments, candle-lit meals, gentle wooing, the proposal – everything was an act. “Come on, girl” she said, trying to rouse herself out of the slump of self pity she found herself in more and more these days. Stretching, she gazed out of the small window of the bedroom above the pub where she had taken lodgings, while looking for a cottage to rent. The dawn mist was still clinging to the low-lying pastures along the riverside. A lone Curlew welcomed in the day with its unique, haunting cry as it flew up the valley toward the hills. Then in the distance, still dappled in the pink glow of the rising sun, she gazed at those hills. ‘Coming home I suppose’ she murmured to herself, and for the first time felt a stirring within her. Maybe there was such a thing as one’s roots, a tie of belonging? Maybe there was something in the spirit of the place that Grandma often spoke about. She smiled to herself as she remembered her grandmother, Masie Elliot. The one mainstay in her life. Emily’s father had died when she was four and she could remember little about him, except as a large, ever cheerful man. Always a smile and a laugh as he would greet her with “How’s my wee bairn?” in that soft Scots accent which was still ingrained in her memory. He was taken from her by a drunk driver who never saw the zebra crossing as her father stepped out. Her mother coped with widowhood remarkably well. Some said too well, as she was married again within eighteen months. Emily did not blame her mother, or even resent her new step-father, but she was never part of their future plans. She had always felt as if she was some sort of passenger in their family, especially when her twin step sisters arrived. Her saving grace had been the arrival of her father’s mother, Grandma Masie. Her own husband had passed away a few years before her father and she now decided that she should spend her remaining time with her only grandchild. Setting up home in a little cottage half a mile away from her step-family home, Masie spent more and more time with the timid and withdrawn Emily. This suited her mother. She was more than happy to foist her off for weekends with her late husband’s mother. Weekends seemed to turn into long weekends, and then into weeks and months. Until she had all but moved in permanently, only occasionally visiting her mother. This was always at the behest of Grandma Masie. “You can’t walk away from them altogether,” she would say as Emily obediently trialled off for another strained afternoon tea at No 26 Greens Gardens. Emily continued to drift with little purpose. Through Primary School she had few friends, never wishing to invest too much of herself in others. Masie noted this and did what she could to build the young girl back up to be her father’s daughter. “Come on Emily, you are an Elliot. Not just any Elliot, but a Border Elliot. Something you should have pride in.” Emily would smile and settle down as Masie would regale her with tales of the Scottish Borders, when the rule of law was the strongest sword or the swiftest horse. The world of Riever clans, warring families, heroes and villains. Masie’s eyes would twinkle and spark as she reeled off the famous names – Armstrong, Dacre, Scott, Heron, Nixon, Telford, Fenwick… Name after name that spanned the centuries of the Borderlands between England and Scotland. Over the years the steel reformed inside Emily, and her strength of character grew. She became a loyal friend and fought for what was just and right. Masie knew her granddaughter would be all right just before Christmas when she had just turned ten years old. She came back from school on the last day of the term with an enormous grin on her face and two long scratch marks on her right cheek. “What has happened to you?” Masie exclaimed, confused by the injury and the brilliant grin. “Oh, nothing. Little Natasha was being bullied by three girls from Year 6, so I told them to stop.” “Told them to stop?” Masie questioned softly. “Well, yes.” Replied Masie. “They were bullies. There were three of them, and older, and little Natasha is only small and has trouble speaking. It was wrong, Grandma.” Emily clenched her fists and slight tears formed in her eyes. “I could not ignore it, it was wrong. So that’s why I pushed them into the duck pond and told them not to do it again.” Raising her chin in defiance, she placed her hands on her hips. Masie chuckled, “In the duck pond? That muddy little puddle thing in the playground?” “Yes,” Emily replied a little more hesitantly, unsure if she was in the wrong. “Well, that deserves extra cake” Masie proclaimed and enveloped her little warrior in a warm hug. A little later, and after two huge pieces of Masie’s famous chocolate cake, the old woman broached the question she was dreading. “What about Christmas?” she asked. Every year Emily had made the annual visit to her mother and family for Christmas Day. “How do you mean” Emily queried. “Well, are you going home for Christmas?” The young girl thoughtfully swallowed the last morsel of cake. “I am home, and I want to spend Christmas at home,” she said simply. Emily smiled at the memory as she drove down the narrow lane to join the main A1. She was looking forward to the new rural school, a new start. Maybe she had a bit of that Elliot strength, and now she was back in the borders that spirit would reignite. Hopefully, it was strong enough to mend her shattered heart and reforge the ties of trust and loyalty. ‘Well, you’re on your own now girl,’ she said to herself as she pulled onto the main road. Accelerating north, she headed into the gathering tendrils of mist that drifted towards her, soon blocking out the sky and the surrounding countryside. If this has wetted your taste buds, please let me know. I am aiming to form a little Reviewers Group for my books - print and audio. I will give out free advance copies of ebooks and audio versions to the group. it is not just reviews I am after but I welsome constructive observations - everyone can get better! Primarily I want to write what you want to read - so sign up and let me know.

Best Wishes

Jess xxx