Today I'm featuring fellow Soul Mate author, Julie Doherty, and her recently released novel, Scent of the Soul.
Blurb:
In twelfth
century Scotland, it took a half-Gael with a Viking name to restore the clans
to their rightful lands. Once an exile, Somerled the Mighty now dominates the
west. He’s making alliances, expanding his territory, and proposing marriage to
the Manx princess.
It’s a bad
time to fall for Breagha, a torc-wearing slave with a supernatural sense of
smell.
Somerled
resists the intense attraction to a woman who offers no political gain, and he
won’t have a mistress making demands on him while he’s negotiating a marriage
his people need. Besides, Breagha belongs to a rival king, one whose fresh
alliance Somerled can’t afford to lose.
It’s when
Breagha vanishes that Somerled realizes just how much he needs her. He abandons
his marriage plans to search for her, unprepared for the evil lurking in the
shadowy recesses of Ireland—a lustful demon who will stop at nothing to keep
Breagha for himself.
Purchase Links:
Short
Excerpt:
As Godred’s oarsmen shoved off from the jetty, Somerled wondered if there
was any man less suitable to deliver a marriage proposal. Godred of Dublin was
coarse, marginally Christian—indeed, marginally sane—and easily riled.
Nevertheless, King Olaf liked him, and for that reason alone, Somerled had
selected him as his envoy.
“No side trips,” Somerled shouted before Godred was too far away to hear.
“Ye have three places to go and that’s it: the Isle of Man, your clan, and back
here.” Godred was prone to unscheduled detours.
Unless bad weather or the scent of easy plunder pulled Godred and his thirty
oarsmen off course, Somerled would have Olaf’s answer in a few days. If Olaf
agreed to the marriage, Somerled would add a wife to the items decorating his
new castle at Finlaggan and eventually, the Isle of Man to his expanding area of
influence.
The nobles would respect him then. Half-breed or not.
Behind him, a door squealed on one of the two guardhouses standing sentinel
over the Sound of Islay. The small building spat out Hakon, his chief guard,
another man of Dublin birth and temperament. Hakon strode the length of the
jetty to join him. “I have every confidence the Norns will weave Godred a
successful journey, my lord king,” he said, his words puffing white clouds
above his tawny sheepskin cape.
“If your goddesses have woven anything, it’s an unfortunate headwind,”
Somerled said. “Godred is forced to tack.” He closed his cloak and secured it
at his throat with a brooch he once plucked from a Viking who no longer needed
it. “The wind promises hail. My proposal will be delayed.”
“Aye, likely,” Hakon said, his hair and beard whipping into copper clouds,
“but it will hasten Olaf’s reply. Do not despair, my lord. Ragnhilde will marry
ye soon enough.”
Despair? Somerled stifled a laugh. Did Hakon think he had feelings
for a lassie he had never met? He was about to tease his guard about being a
romantic when Hakon stiffened.
“Another ship,” Hakon said, looking past Somerled’s shoulder.
Somerled spun around to inspect the northwestern waters of the channel
separating Jura and Islay—the jewel of the Hebrides and the island that served
as the seat of his burgeoning kingdom. “Where?” he asked, squinting.
Hakon thrust a finger toward the fog bank blanketing the horizon. “There, at
the promontory, in that pale blue strip of water. See it?”
At first, Somerled saw nothing but swooping terns and ranks of swells. Then,
an unadorned sail appeared. It crested on a wave, dipped low, and vanished.
“Should I sound the horn?” Hakon asked.
Somerled raked his fingers through the coarse, wheaten mess slapping at his
eyes and held it at his nape while he considered his response. Behind them, the
signal tower on Ben Vicar was smoke-free. Across the sound, the towers on the
frosty Paps of Jura were likewise unlit, although clouds partially obscured
their peaks. The Paps had a commanding view. If a signal fire blazed anywhere,
the men stationed there would have seen it and lit their own.
“My lord king, should I sound the horn?” Hakon impatiently palmed the battle
horn dangling at his broad chest.
Men began to gather on the jetty.
“Let us wait. It is only one ship, and it looks to be a trader. The signal
fires would blaze by now if it were someone worthy of our concern.” Somerled
glanced back at the mud and thatch cottages shouldering against one another. At
their doors, the bows of half his impressive fleet rested on the shoreline, a
sandy slip extending well into the distance. The rest of his ships sheltered at
the far side of Islay, in Loch Indaal. A signal fire would deploy them quickly
and, perhaps, needlessly.
“Alert the village. Have Cormac ready
Dragon’s Claw,” he said, “but
send only the
nyvaigs for now.” The
nyvaigs were smaller, but
no less deadly. They would be out and back quickly.
Hakon sprinted through the gathering crowd and past the guardhouses. He
leapt over a pile of rocks with surprising agility for a man of his years and
size. In no time, specialized warriors and oarsmen were boarding the boats. A
pony thundered inland, its rider instructed to warn, not panic, the people of
Finlaggan.
Though Somerled carried his mighty sword, he had dressed for warmth, not
battle. His mail shirt, aketon, and helmet hung in his bedchamber, two miles
away in Finlaggan. He singled out a boy in the crowd. “Lad, find me a helmet
and a shield, and be quick about it.”
The boy shot like an arrow toward the cottages.
Somerled held his breath as he watched the
nyvaigs head out. At the
first flash of steel, he would blow the battle horn. His men would light the
towers and he would board
Dragon’s Claw. The foreigner would be sorry
he entered the Sound of Islay.
The ship’s features were barely discernible, but he could see that its high
prow lacked a figurehead. He was trying to identify the banner fluttering on
its masthead when the ship’s sail dropped and scattered gulls like chaff in the
wind. His heart hammered against his chest as he waited for the foreign vessel
to sprout oars; it didn’t. It stalled—a sign its crew had dropped anchor.
Dragon’s Claw bobbed next to him at the jetty, her top rail lined
with colorful shields and her benches holding sixty-four of his savage
warriors. Cormac gripped the tiller, but he would move aside when Somerled
barked the order to do so. He would serve as his own shipmaster in the face of
an enemy.
Low and curvy with a dragon’s head exhaling oaken flames from her prow,
Dragon’s
Claw was his favorite vessel, not because she was new or particularly
seaworthy, but because he had wrenched her from the last Viking to leave his
father’s lands.
The memory of that battle warmed him and occupied his thoughts while the
nyvaigs
swarmed around the foreigner. Then, they swung about, furled their sails,
and rowed for home like many-legged insects skittering on the water’s surface.
When the boats reached the beach, Hakon jumped from his
nyvaig and
jogged through ankle-deep water, apparently too impatient to wait for his men
to haul the vessel’s keel onto the sand. “Well, my lord king,” he said, “it
seems to be the day for marriage proposals. It is an envoy from Moray, who
comes at the behest of Malcolm. He asks to speak with ye regarding Bethoc.”
“Malcolm MacHeth . . .
the Malcolm
MacHeth . . . wants
my sister?”
He had met Malcolm MacHeth only once, at King David’s court, on a night
spoiled by ill-bred lassies who had mocked his foreign garb and speech.
Malcolm, a bastard nephew of the Scots king, had observed his humiliation and
pretended not to notice.
Yet here was Malcolm of Moray, a claimant to the Scottish throne and a known
rebel, seeking Bethoc’s hand in marriage. Tainted bloodline or not, Somerled
was apparently worthy of notice now.
Author Bio:
Something
magical happened in the musty basement of Julie Doherty’s local courthouse. She
went there intending to research her ancestry, not lose herself in a wealth of
stories, but the ghosts of yesteryear drew her into the past and would not let
her go. The trail left by her ancestors in those yellowing documents led her
from rural Pennsylvania to the Celtic countries, where her love of all things
Irish/Scottish blossomed into outright passion.
She became
particularly interested in Somerled, self-styled "King of Argyll" and
progenitor of the Lords of the Isles. In 1164, he led a fleet of 164 galleys up
the River Clyde in an all-or-nothing attempt to overthrow the Scottish crown.
What would lead a man of his advanced years to do such a thing?
Of course,
history records he did so because the king demanded forfeiture of his lands.
But the writer in Julie wondered ...what if he did it for the love of a woman?
Those early
thoughts led to SCENT OF THE SOUL, Julie’s first novel, published by Soul Mate
Publishing.
Readers
will notice a common theme throughout Julie’s books: star-crossed lovers. This
is something she knows a bit about, since during one of her trips to Ireland,
she fell in love with an Irishman. The ensuing immigration battle took four
long years to win. With only fleeting visits, Skype chats, and emails to
sustain her love, Julie poured her heartache into her writing, where it
nourished the emotional depth of her characters.
Julie is a
member of Romance Writers of America, Central PA Romance Writers, The Longship
Company, Perry County Council of the Arts, and Clan Donald USA. When not
writing, she enjoys antiquing, shooting longbow, traveling, and cooking over an
open fire at her cabin. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, who sounds
a lot like her characters.
Author web
links:
