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    Paradise Regained
    Paradise Regained
    Paradise Regained
    Ebook104 pages1 hour

    Paradise Regained

    By Jude Knight

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    About this ebook

    James yearns to end a long journey in the arms of his loving family. But his father’s agents offer the exiled prodigal forgiveness and a place in Society — if he abandons his foreign-born wife and children to return to England.
    With her husband away, Mahzad faces revolt, invasion and betrayal in the mountain kingdom they built together. A queen without her king, she will not allow their dream and their family to be destroyed.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJude Knight
    Release dateDec 15, 2019
    ISBN9780995110175
    Paradise Regained
    Author

    Jude Knight

    Have you ever wanted something so much you were afraid to even try? That was Jude ten years ago.For as long as she can remember, she's wanted to be a novelist. She even started dozens of stories, over the years.But life kept getting in the way. A seriously ill child who required years of therapy; a rising mortgage that led to a full-time job; six children, her own chronic illness... the writing took a back seat.As the years passed, the fear grew. If she didn't put her stories out there in the market, she wouldn't risk making a fool of herself. She could keep the dream alive if she never put it to the test.Then her mother died. That great lady had waited her whole life to read a novel of Jude's, and now it would never happen.So Jude faced her fear and changed it--told everyone she knew she was writing a novel. Now she'd make a fool of herself for certain if she didn't finish.Her first book came out to excellent reviews in December 2014, and the rest is history. Many books, lots of positive reviews, and a few awards later, she feels foolish for not starting earlier.Jude write historical fiction with a large helping of romance, a splash of Regency, and a twist of suspense. She then tries to figure out how to slot the story into a genre category. She’s mad keen on history, enjoys what happens to people in the crucible of a passionate relationship, and loves to use a good mystery and some real danger as mechanisms to torture her characters.Dip your toe into her world with one of her lunch-time reads collections or a novella, or dive into a novel. And let her know what you think.

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      Book preview

      Paradise Regained - Jude Knight

      Paradise Regained

      Paradise Regained

      The King and his Queen

      Jude Knight

      Titchfield Press

      Contents

      Paradise Regained

      Author’s note

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Glossary of non-English terms

      More in the Mountain King series

      About the Author

      Also by Jude Knight

      Copyright 2019 Judith Anne Knighton writing as Jude Knight

      Publisher: Titchfield Press

      Thank you for your purchase. If you enjoyed this book, please check with your favourite book retailer to discover other works by Jude Knight.

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite retailer and purchase your own copy.

      Thank you for your support.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author.

      Vellum flower icon Created with Vellum

      To marriage, and to the one who has been my partner over many years in rekindling the fire from embers.

      Paradise Regained

      James yearns to end a long journey in the arms of his loving family. But his father’s agents offer the exiled prodigal forgiveness and a place in Society — if he abandons his foreign-born wife and children to return to England.

      With her husband away, Mahzad faces revolt, invasion and betrayal in the mountain kingdom they built together. A queen without her king, she will not allow their dream and their family to be destroyed.

      Author’s note

      This story is set in an entirely imaginary kingdom hidden high in the mountains on the northeast border between Iran and Turkmenistan. Such kingdoms, called khanates or kaganates, proliferated in the troubled times as one dynasty of Iranian rulers faded and another had not yet come to power.

      My story is set in the year that the last Zand ruler died, and the Qajar who would be the first of his dynasty set out to reunify Iran.

      At the time, westerners called Iran ‘Persia’ after the great empire Alexander the Great conquered more than 2000 years ago, and my hero (who is English) occasionally drops into that term. To those living in Iran, Persia was just one ancient kingdom in what was then called Eran-shahr or Airan-shahr, which means ‘the place of the Aryans’. This evolved to become Iran-shahr and, more recently, just Iran.

      James’s horse is a Turkmen. His descendants today are Akhal Teke, one of the most beautiful horse breeds in the world, famed for their metallic shine, their endurance and their fierce loyalty.

      James’s people speak a polyglot language created from various Turkic languages and Persian (or Farsi). I’ve used their words here and there throughout the story. If you can’t tell what I meant, look at the glossary at the back.

      The page divider used in this book is a few words in Persian: Gamble everything for love. These are the first few words of a poem from the Persian Sufi philosopher poet Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi:

      Gamble everything for love.

      If you are a true human being.

      If not, leave this gathering.

      Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty.

      You set out to find God, but then you keep stopping for long periods at mean-spirited roadhouses.

      Don’t wait any longer.

      Dive in the ocean, leave and let the sea be you.

      Silent, absent, walking an empty road, all praise.

      1

      1794: Pari-Daiza Vadi in the Kopet Dag Mountains northeast of Iran

      The courtyard had been designed to catch and hold the fickle warmth of the mountain sun. Even in early winter, Mahzad and her ladies chose to settle in the pavilion, out of the direct heat, though the children and their nursemaids played on the paving by the cross-shaped pool at the centre of the garden.

      James had ordered it built: a paradise garden on the Persian chahar bāgh model, centred on water and divided into four quadrants, each richly planted in vivid colours. It had been her wedding present, and somehow, their tribe had managed to keep it a secret from their queen, though the qaḷʿa, the citadel, buzzed with intrigue until James had brought her here, blindfolded.

      It had been full summer, and the garden had been glorious but not as beautiful to her eyes as the face of her husband, eyes alight with mischief, with love, and with a promise for later that night when the court was asleep. They had crept down when the qaḷʿa fell silent, giggling when the patrolling guards politely averted their eyes. Mahzad was confident their eldest son, Jamie, had been conceived that night.

      She had been so in love, had been convinced that James had forgotten the English woman for whom he was exiled from his home and had fallen in love with her.

      Eleven years and eight children later, her love was deeper and stronger than ever, but she no longer believed that James returned the feeling. He was fond of her, yes. He respected her as his wife and queen, katan to his kagan, but the passion of the soul? No. She reached for it with her own and met only the barrier of blank civility with which he armored himself from the world.

      When he was home, he was distant if polite, and he had not been home in more than seven months. His trips away had become longer and longer, his letters home more and more formal. He was about the business of their kaganate, which prospered under their rule, but he had never before failed to be home for a birth of one of their children.

      Mahzad dropped a kiss on baby Rosemary’s dark hair, handed the sleeping baby to the hovering nursemaid, and sent one of her ladies to summon her secretary. She had work to do. She was co-ruler of their people and did not have time to waste mourning the fickleness of men.

      The messenger was only halfway down the long side of the garden when Patma came hurrying down the steps from the zenana, the women’s section of the palace. Even from the other end of the garden, Mahzad could see that her secretary was agitated about something. She had lost the calm she had adopted as chief of Mahzad’s scribes, her usual elegant glide abandoned for

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