Lucas’s situation was inspired by the real life Lieutenant Colonel Colquhoun Grant, Wellington’s most valued intelligence officer. During the Peninsular War, Grant was captured and held prisoner by the French marshal Marmont, then sent to Paris for interrogation. When Grant saw a copy of Marmont’s correspondence that made it clear the marshal would never exchange him, he decided that his parole had been invalidated so he escaped and made his way back to England. If that reasoning was good enough for Colquhoun Grant, it was good enough for Lucas!

I have no evidence that the gin soaked raisins remedy for arthritis existed then, but folk remedies weren’t always well documented, and genever, the ancestor of gin, was indeed a traditional tonic in the Low Countries. So why not? The apothecary appreciated it!

Teaser chapter

Please read on for an excerpt from the next
Rogues Redeemed novel,

Once a Laird!

British Embassy
Constantinople

The letter was dirty and folded, not surprising considering how far it had come. Ramsay was reluctant to break the seal because he had a strong suspicion of what it would say. He was right.

The letter was addressed to Kai Douglas Ramsay and said tersely:

Kai,

Time to stop playing around and come home, laddie boy. Your grandfather is dying. He may be swilling ale in Valhalla by the time you get this. You know the price you promised to pay for your footloose wandering. Now the note has come due.

Signy Matheson

Skellig House

Mainland, Thorsay

Of course it would be Signy who had written him. Only islanders he’d known as a boy would call him Kai. Signy had become his grandfather’s deputy as well as being the head schoolmistress in the islands. Ramsay smiled a little, remembering her as a knobby little girl with a tongue that could flay a whale when she was in a critical mood. She was the younger sister of Gisela, his first and only love.

His smile faded. Laying the letter on his desk, he moved to the window and gazed out at the domes and minarets of Constantinople, visible above the walls that surrounded the British Embassy compound. He’d been here five years, the longest time he’d spent in any one place during his wandering years.

His official position was Under Secretary for Special Projects, a vague enough title to cover his various nefarious activities. With all the layers of history in Constantinople, he could spend a lifetime here and barely scratch the wonders of this city and this land.

It was hard to imagine a place more different from the far northern islands of his homeland. But Ramsay had always known his time here was limited. He might have stayed in Thorsay if Gisela hadn’t died suddenly of a fever when he was finishing his studies at the University of Edinburgh. The pain was so numbing that he’d been unable to bear the thought of returning to the islands.