The Warrior Series
ISBN 0-380-81546-X Avon Books, May 2001
me, writing as Denise Hampton
Things happen and the move to Avon came with a pseudonym. In this, my eighth book, I returned to my Medieval roots, beginning this new series in the year 1214--the year before the uprising against King John that leads to the signing of the Magna Carta. No brothers this time. Instead, I follow a group of young friends as each finds their loves.
Here's your blurb:
Widowed Lady Katherine de Fraisney knows she's too young to escape a second marriage; it's only a matter of time before her father again forces her into some husband's bed. She hates the very idea, despising everything about marriage--or what she thinks she knows about marriage. Oh, but she could play the platonic game of courtly love forever and never be bored. What she doesn't count on is being swept into that game with the man who is her family's sworn enemy.
Despite the fact that he's a skilled and powerful warrior, Rafe Godsel, youngest son of the Godsel clan, doesn't have wealth he needs to buy himself a bride. When he sees Kate at a friend's wedding, he devises a plot to kidnap her that will both win him a rich wife and avenge an age-old feud. All this is planned before he discovers that beneath Kate's proper demeanor lurks a hidden passion. By the time his plot plays out he'll have defied Kate's father, England's nobles and bishops, even the lady herself, to own her.