A cricket player from a neighboring town, Lawrence Lake stays the night at The Dragon’s Tale instead of returning home. What does he hope to accomplish? Is he courting a lady, stirring up trouble, or engaging in something far more dastardly…

Lawrence Lake’s brown eyes narrowed dangerously upon Julius Janson’s self-satisfied face. Lake, the leaner of the two, wiped the back of his sleeve across his torn lip. Blood was running freely from the wound.

The innkeeper’s daughter Mary, the epitome of the healthy country lass, was in front, her brows drawn together. Christian glanced back to see Lake’s pained expression. Ah, so that was the way the wind blew.

Janson sauntered out onto the balcony, leaving a raging Lake to punch the hardwood wall where his head had resided moments before.

Stuck together due to an overcrowding situation at the Inn, Christian makes Kate bristle and Kate makes Christian want to strip her of all her…secrets.

She scowled, but instead of responding in kind, his full lips curved into a long, sensual smile. Here was a man who obviously knew his appeal and how to manipulate others using it.

Kate took a step back, her heart beating even faster, and his hand dropped from her chin, his thumb from her lips. “What do you want?” Her words came out on a breath. She studied the worn red and blue rug on the floor before remembering the danger of not keeping her eyes on the man before her.

Christian’s gaze traveled down to observe a smooth neck mostly hidden by the oversized clothing, and back up to flashing light blue eyes, resentful and enigmatic.

For an excerpt involving Christian and Kate, the hero and heroine of The Earl of Her Dreams, click here.

Described as “terribly cheerless,” Frederick Freewater is most definitely up to something in his room at The Dragon’s Tale. But what? And why do other inhabitants of The Dragon’s Tale care so much about what is inside Freewater’s room?

A harried looking man opened the door a crack and peered through the narrow slit. Kate got an impression of grey streaks running through dull brown hair, watery pale blue eyes and unshaven jaw.

“No, no. Mr. Freewater explicitly expressed that he was not to be disturbed. The Dragon has an impeccable reputation to maintain, and I doubt Mr. Freewater would forgive the disturbance. Terribly cheerless man, don’t you think?”

One wouldn’t be far off to assume that a man such as Mr. Tiegs could rule the underworld. Dark, yet perpetually amused, Tiegs seems to have the number of everyone in the inn. What is a man like that doing in a cozy little inn like The Dragon’s Tale? Perhaps he is there to tie up some loose ends…and with two bodyguards he need not even dirty his hands…

A well-built, expensively dressed man casually sipped his drink in the corner, seemingly unbothered by anything or anyone else in the room. The man turned and tipped his head to Christian, an amused smirk on his face, no fear or wariness in his gaze. The bruisers must have belonged to him.

Eccentric inventor Nicodemus Nickford has bunked in at The Dragon’s Tale for unspecified reasons. He runs experiments in his room day and night, and sometimes he nabs unwitting participants. Perhaps one of his experiments wasn’t quite as harmless as he’d have Christian and Kate believe…

Jiggling from his bright red head were three pairs of dangling eyeglasses attached in various ways to a contraption.

They crossed the hall and exchanged greetings with a joyful Nickford, who looked more animated than usual as he took measurements in the hall.

“Devilish things, spirits. They have been plaguing the inn for the last few days. Mr. Wicket said so. He said, ‘Nickford, didn’t you know, the spirits have been acting up?’ I, of course, determined to discover what was happening.”

The following pictures show the schematics of the Dragon’s Tale Inn, where the murder in The Earl of Her Dreams takes place. Most of the book takes place in this snowed in country inn. Examine the rooms carefully. One of the people listed below will be forever silenced. And the murderer walks amongst the others left behind…