This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Beth Ford will be awarding a $20 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour. And click here for our review.
Ashley and Thomas, a medieval knight, are in 1377 England, escaping from present-day immigration authorities intent on capturing Thomas. Having fled to the past to ensure their togetherness, Ashley is faced with adapting to fourteenth-century life, while Thomas, new to his title as Baron after his older brother’s death, is called to Parliament, encountering enemies there and at court as he struggles to build his own alliances.
Ashley’s work at a monastic hospital is deemed “miraculous” but draws unwanted attention as potential witchcraft. Meanwhile, becoming embroiled in a political movement, she realizes too late it’s a plot against the King.
How can Ashley conform to social expectations, counter the plot, and still keep her relationship with Thomas, in all the turmoil?
Enjoy an Excerpt
Ashley struggled to absorb the bucolic version of Salisbury she glimpsed through the trees. The road that had so recently—to her mind—trundled along the base of the low green hill had transformed into a simple dirt track. A mile or so off, the spire of Salisbury cathedral stuck out in the landscape, surrounded by low buildings. Around her, everything else was silent.
Except for the pounding of her heart and Thomas’s steadying breath beside her.
He tugged her gently back into the woods. “We can’t risk anyone glimpsing you from the road.”
Right. She looked down at her clothes. Denim, polyester—fabrics that didn’t exist here, in the time that Thomas hailed from. The time that she had abruptly landed in with no preparation or planning.
She glanced back to the clearing in the woods that held the flat, mossy rock she and Thomas had just knelt at in 2022 and risen from in 1377—the year it had been for Thomas when the rock had abruptly deposited Thomas in her time earlier that summer. She recalled the sixteenth-century manuscript they found in the university database in Southampton when searching for answers to his situation, the manuscript that had given them the key to getting Thomas home.
There is sayde to be much magik and manye secretes on Salisbury plain. A person can fynde their greatest heart’s desire in that playce. This person shoulde return to the same stane with a clere purpose in his heart and mak the prayer again. But ev’ry time the magik is called on, there may be other consekwences, therfor it should be used only when absolutly necesary.
Calling on the magic had been absolutely necessary. They had been pursued up this very hill by the police who were intent on viewing Thomas only as an illegal refugee with no papers and Ashley as his accomplice. And in the moment while they waited to be caught, while Thomas and Ashley held hands and closed their eyes hoping the magic would deliver Thomas home, the mossy rock had known her own heart better than she had—it had sent her to the past with Thomas, and she knew that decision was right. Ashley prayed there would be no negative consequences such as were hinted in the manuscript.
About the Author: 
Beth Ford writes historical and time travel stories that transport you in time. She is the author of the novels In the Times of Spirits, Love Between Times, Love Across, Time, and After the Spirits Come: A Continuation of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. She also writes the Cassie Woods, Reporter historical mystery romance novella series. Her work has also appeared in a variety of literary journals. She lives in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
