Shelby Cross

King Thrushbeard Shelby Cross

It is the year of our Lord 885, and Lord Noth of Wessex is accompanying King Alfred's daughter to Mercia, the ravaged land to the north. Noth's skill with the sword is legendary-but he is no match for the Viking ambush that befalls them. It takes a mysterious slip of a boy to save his small party from certain death. What Lord Noth fails to realize is that the brazen boy he's now indebted to isn't, in fact, a boy at all. Known as the "Iron Maiden of Mercia," Lady Merewyn of Evesham is a willful warrior whose spirit cannot be tamed. Yet when she is accused of treason against Mercia's new queen, Merewyn is forced to choose: banish herself to a nunnery...or marry a Saxon minstrel, the only man still willing to have her. Unbeknownst to her, her cocky minstrel is no common servant at all, but Lord Noth in disguise: the very man whose shameless attitude and commanding presence has managed to rile her-and beguile her-at every turn. As Lord Noth drags his defiant wife back home to Wessex, he begins to discover the power of her staunch loyalty and unbridled passion. Realizing he has finally met his match in the stubborn female, smitten by the enchantment of her elusive surrender, he vows to tame her at any cost. But in their war-torn land, love comes at a high price, and Merewyn must soon choose between loyalty to her country...or the king of her heart.