Caroles on the Green

"Caroles on the Green"

by Joyce DiPastena

A short Medieval Christmas romance included in:

A Timeless Romance Anthology: Winter Collection

by Sarah M. Eden, Heidi Ashworth, Annette Lyon, Joyce DiPastena,
Donna Hatch and Heather B. Moore



I loved this story of Isabel and Lucian…the characters were so well done it left me wanting more.
—Julie Coulter Bellon, Author of Pocket Full of Posies


Caroles on the Green by Joyce DiPastena in A Timeless Romance Anthology
In Joyce DiPastena’s charming medieval story, "Caroles on the Green," we enter England of 1151, in which Lady Isabel has a dilemma. She promises herself that she’ll marry the man who sent a ring hidden in her pastry since the man she truly loves, Sir Lucian de Warrene, has proved to be impossible and exasperating. To forget him, Isabel sets her eyes on other eligible men, only to face another confrontation with Lucian—who isn’t about to back off and leave her to her newest plot.


Excerpt

She dimly saw the exasperated look on Lucian’s face before he whirled her around at arms length in the center of the circle. She flung back her head and laughed, feeling almost wanton with her ribbon-wrapped braids swirling in the air behind her. Joy bubbled in her like a heady wine. She had never imagined that dancing could be so intoxicating. Another spin and she might take flight. Her head continued to reel when Lucian pulled her to a stop, leaving her so dizzy that she had to grip his forearms to prevent herself from falling. Oh! How hard his muscles felt beneath her hands. His strong grip cupped her elbows, holding her upright until her giddiness ebbed. As he steadied her now from the aftereffects of her demand to be whirled, she felt in his clasp the power and promise of a man who would hold a woman forever safe from her own headstrong folly, if that woman could only swallow her pride enough to confess that she desired such a man. When his face ceased to swim, there was no one else in the hall but he, gazing down at her in a way that weakened her knees all afresh, for just so had his blue eyes grown dark before he had kissed her that day beneath the great oak tree.

“Oh, Isabel, that was splendid! Sir Eustace, hold my hands and spin me the same. Oh, fie on you, sir. Then Sir Gavin I know will oblige me.”

The world collapsed back in around Isabel at Agnes’s cry. Lucian drew his hands away, leaving her suddenly deflated and cold in the midst of a hall that blazed bright with the Yule fire.


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