Cumbria, England, also known as the Lake District, is such a beautiful and remote place, even today. People come from all over the world to hike the fells and enjoy the rugged landscape. In the 12th Century, the land was ruled by the English King Henry II, but it is not recorded whether he ever set foot in this very remote and wild part of his kingdom when he visited the nearby city of Carlisle as a teenager. It had only been 100 years since the fall of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, and Cumbria's nearness to Scotland meant that the lands were an ethnic mixture of Saxons, Normans and Scots, speaking languages as diverse as Anglo-Saxon, French, Gaelic and Lowland Scots. In such a land a young woman of mixed heritage would have difficulty reconciling the cultural differences of her inheritances.
Lady Caille of Tarsuin Leith was living across the border in a little village in Scotland. A few months before the story in Without a Lord begins, she was married and widowed on the same day after a raid of her Scottish village by plundering Normans. When she receives notice that her brother has died and left her an inheritance in England which can be claimed by wedding a Norman lord, she leaves her grief behind and travels to a small abbey in Cumbria where the abbot will assist her in choosing a husband. She is quickly drawn into the bloody squabbles over the rich pasture lands in Cumbria when she marries one of the two wealthiest land barons, Lord Fellswick. Both her husband's secrets, and her attraction for Sir Roger du Bois Guillaume, one of her husband's knights, test her loyalty. When her husband is captured and held for ransom will she succeed in defending Fellswick Castle and beyond that risk all she has gained to buy back a husband she no longer wants?
The story of Fellswick Castle continues in the sequel, A Lady of Worth. The castle has been left in the hands of a castellan, Sir Ian, who is also charged with preparing his squire, Gilbart, a natural son of Henry II, for knighthood. Sir Ian, due to Lady Caille's influence, has recently given up plundering the fells and has a desire to cleanse his soul by vowing to assist women no matter their station. Gilbart rescues a noblewoman about to give birth and brings her to Fellswick where she is safely delivered of a boy child. Ian's attempts to assist Lady Marseline de Lille open a Pandora's box of smuggling, bigamy and abuse that test even Ian's tenets of knightly duty. The lady's husband, Maurice of Flanders, is desperately trying to clear his debt through unlawful trade. He wants his son, but will do anything to rid himself of his spare wife. Ian must break nearly every knightly rule he's trying to teach Gilbart in order to rescue his lady love from slavery and death.
The Cumbria Trilogy will be complete with the upcoming release of Sir Gilbart's story, Into the Pale, which takes place in Ireland during the Norman invasion by Richard Strongbow.
Both novels are available right here on medieval-novels.com .
