New Release — A Summer Bewitchment (The Knight and the Witch Book 2) by Lindsay Townsend

When a shadowy piper kidnaps seven beautiful girls, can a wounded knight and his witch-wife save them? Will Sir Magnus and Elfrida find them in time—and at what cost?

Magnus, the fearless, battered crusader knight, and his fey wife, Elfrida, are happily married, but each of them carries a secret. Elfrida believes that being peasant-born will one day undermine her husband’s love for her. Wounded and scarred, Magnus fears nothing—except, perhaps, that he will not be able to give Elfrida her greatest wish—children.

Their fears are sharpened when high-born Lady Astrid appears at their manor and demands their help to find the seven missing girls. Though the lady clearly regards low-born Elfrida beneath her, why has she truly sought out Magnus, a ruthless knight? Which one of the kidnapped girls does she really want to recover so badly—and to what hidden purpose?

In the scorching summer heat, Magnus and Elfrida search together for the missing girls. Will they be able to rescue them in time? And can their own marriage survive?

EXCERPT

     Before Magnus could move away from the shadows, Elfrida seized his arm. “I must come with you, sir. You and I alone, I think, until we are sure we have found Silvester’s lair.”     “Indeed?”
     She did not quail under his frown though it was a near thing. “Please,” she almost said, but she was done with beg­ging.
     “I have a plan,” she began as he shifted. When he strode into the sunlight, the rest of her words withered inside her mouth.     He hooked his hand into his belt. “I will not have you as bait.”
     He understood part of her idea, then. This would be only gos­sip-bait, she wanted to say, but Magnus’s growl stopped her.
     “So small you are,” he said. “So slender, still. If I were only more a man, this caper of yours would be impossible.” His fingers whitened on his belt and he fell silent.
     “What?” Magnus’s frustration raked through Elfrida’s mind like claws. As she stared at him, horrified, he jerked his head aside, checking no one was close. Her own feelings now raging, and even with all her magic she could not sense the rest of his thought. That was always the difficulty with magic and  thought sensing. She needed a cool, calm head to do such things and at present her thoughts and feelings were in tumult, with fear uppermost.
      “My lord?” What does he mean? “Please, Magnus.”
     They marched across the yard in the same arrow-straight diagonal that Tancred had taken toward the steps of the great hall. Magnus snatched her hand and veered left to the stables, acknowledging the smith coming the other way.
     “Are we leaving?” she ventured.
     “Let me think.”