Excerpt Monday: The Silver Casket

Once a month, a bunch of authors get together and post excerpts from published books, contracted work or works in progress, and link to each other. You don’t have to be published to participate–just a writer with an excerpt you’d like to share. For more info on how to participate, head over to the Excerpt Monday site, or click on the banner above.

This month I’m sharing from my latest release, The Silver Casket.

Cat Logan, a young American with a recent degree in medieval literature, travels to Scotland to discover her Celtic roots. She finds more than she bargained for when a mysterious silver casket (rumored to hold the desiccated heart of a long dead Scottish laird) transports her back in time to the 1400s and the man whose heart she holds in her hands.

Genre: Time Travel/Historical
Rating: Tangy
Book Length: Novella

Available Here!

Excerpt:

Cool stone vibrated beneath her cheek, leaching the warmth from her unprotected face. By the time she identified the faint tremor as footfalls, a buzz of quiet voices had filtered through her dazed mind. People. Help. Whatever had happened, she needed help.

Gathering her strength, she stood and leaned heavily against the wall. Her eyes flew open as sense registered. The wall! It no longer ended at waist height; she leaned against a fully constructed wall in an enclosed corridor!

Her stomach roiled, and she fell to hands and knees, spewing vomit over the stone floor. Disoriented, shaking, and drenched in cold sweat, Cat huddled against the wall.

The owners of the voices arrived. Words swirled around her, bounced off the walls, and pounded her aching head. Men spoke rapidly in an archaic form of Scots-Gaelic that she recognized, but couldn’t follow. Sweat-stench mingled with the acid tang of her sick. She panted through her mouth to lessen the impact of the odor on her queasy stomach. Too tired to do more than lift her head, she glanced around the corridor. Flickering light revealed four broad, shadowy
figures.

God! Where was she? And how had she gotten here? Her shaking arms gave way, and she collapsed in an exhausted heap on the cold stone. Shock pushed her over the edge of the abyss, and she fell back into unconsciousness.

* * * *

Cat woke with a throbbing headache and jangled nerves from a terrifying dream: she’d been compressed, unable to breathe. She pushed the thought away and huddled deeper under the covers, pulling the scratchy sheet over her aching head and adjusting her hips to avoid an offending lump in the mattress. She frowned and opened her eyes a slit. Dim light filtered through a coarsely woven, yellowed sheet. Panic stricken, she threw the sheet aside and, ignoring the sharp pain in her skull, scrambled from the bed. Bare feet connected with cold stone, and memory returned in a rush.

Frigid morning air brushed her skin, and she shivered. She stood in the middle of a stone chamber naked as the day of her birth. Yanking the sheet from the bed, she wrapped herself in its rough, but warm, folds and surveyed the room.

Stone walls and floor, rough-hewn beams supported what could only be a thatch roof. Narrow arrow loops served as windows spilling both sunlight and frosty air into a chamber furnished with a low, wooden bed, a chamber pot, and a rickety table with ewer and basin. A single, crudely fashioned chair stood beside the table.

The door creaked open, and she flattened herself against the wall, hugging the sheet tightly to her breast. The most dangerous man she’d ever seen stood poised on the threshold. Tall, muscular, with long, dark auburn hair, he looked like a warrior prince from a Scottish fairy tale.

Heat suffused her face—and every other part of her body—as his gaze raked her from tousled hair to bare feet. Oh, God! To meet a man like this…wrapped in a sheet!

The Silver Casket by Debbie Mumford
Genre: Time Travel/Historical
Rating: Tangy
Book Length: Novella
Available Here!

Links to other Excerpt Monday writers

Note: I have not personally screened these excerpts.
Please heed the ratings and be aware that the links may contain material that is not typical of my site.