The Cobra Marked King

Can Marian guide the Cobra Marked King to the destiny he was born to fulfil?

The Cobra Marked King

Author Name:

Release Date : November 16, 2021

ISBN Number : 978-1-61138-974-6

$3.99

Kindle Reader = Mobi
Others = Epub

Description

Marian Halcombe #11
The Thrilling Victorian Adventures of the Most Dangerous Woman in Europe

All these years, Marian Halcombe has hidden her stepson Zed, the secret heir to an Asian island kingdom. She swore to fulfil her dead husband’s dying wish and set the boy on his throne. But now Zed is of age and he steps forward to fulfil a pirate prince’s dream of peace and unity. Marian’s greatest adventure is about to begin. Can she guide the Cobra Marked King to the destiny he was born to fulfil?

Marian’s royal pirate husband was murdered, leaving her a perilous legacy: his son. Marian must fulfil his dying wish, to raise the orphan and restore him to his throne in Asia. As Zed Saylor, the boy heir has been safely hidden in England under her care. Now grown to manhood, Zed steps forward when his nation calls for him to overthrow the usurper and save his people. And Marian is ready with the plans and funding to set him on his throne. But all the weapons she prepared are the tools of the West. Zed’s Asian kingdom is defended by powers that even Marian Halcombe did not foresee. These are the perils Zed must face to truly become the Cobra Marked King.

WHAT READERS ARE SAYING ABOUT MARIAN HALCOMBE

Just last night finished reading Marian Halcombe: The Thrilling Victorian Adventures of the Most Dangerous Woman in Europe, by Brenda W. Clough, and I had such a good time! The steadfast alliance between Marian, the dangerous woman of the title, and her more decorous sister, Laura, is a delight, as is the growing consternation of the men – hero and villain alike – as they come to realize just exactly what – who! – it is they’re dealing with. The book’s voice is pitch perfect, which adds to the fun. I’m in for the next one.
– Sharon Lee, co-author of the Liaden Universe® novels

It’s a sequel to The Woman In White – but it’s so much more than that. This is a bodice-ripping yarn, a Victorian melodrama with a modern sensibility, a delightful romp, a thriller and a romance and a comedy of manners all at once. I adored it.
– Chaz Brenchley, author of Three Twins at the Crater School

Brenda Clough’s invincible and endearing Marian Halcombe Camlet easily enters the company of Jane Marple, Miss Maud Silver, Pamela North, and Prudence Ford as a British female sleuth in the mid-1800s. The Marian novels are an absolute joy to read.
– Paul S. Piper, author of The Wolves of Mirr

A ripping yarn! Thrilling, lushly Victorian, with a dashing heroine who is not even handsome, yet she bags a delightful husband – not without considerable heroic effort and derring-do – and upholds the finest traditions of pure womanhood! (Well… kinda pure.)
– Jennifer Stevenson, author of Local Magics

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Brenda W. Clough writes novels. These include How Like A God from Tor Books, and the Edge to Center time travel trilogy from BVC. Also look for Revise the World, expanded from her Hugo and Nebula finalist novella, and Speak to Our Desires.

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Book 1
The secret diary of Miss Tryphenia M. Tylerton, spinster but not for long!
September 17, 1890

I had not known that one can’t take one’s money into prison. Since Pa’s sentence is for three years, he has given me his fortune. He is very wise! I have considered carefully the most prudent action. I think the best thing to do with my sudden access of fortune is to marry royalty. Then, not only will Pa’s money be safe. I could get my prince or king to pry Pa out of prison. Even the strictest parent could hardly complain about that, and I have Pa’s measure. He will be delighted.

I take ship tomorrow from New York for London. I hear tell there’s plenty of titles there, and I’m going to find me one.

Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
21 September 1890

To picnic on Hampstead Heath, the three young men had dragged out every cushion and rug in Sandett House. The painter John Constable used to sit on this very slope to capture clouds on his canvas: big-bellied puffs of white, mountain-high and foam-light, sailing majestically across a fathomless blue sky. There is no landscape more English. We sat in the centre of all that is our nation. I tipped the broad Leghorn hat to shade my eyes and thought to myself, I must remember this, this moment of perfection.

Zed spoke with dreamy peace from where he lay in the shade of the chestnut tree. “Why is the sky so big in England?”

“Doesn’t it look this large in the South China Sea?” Idly Dickon tossed his empty beer bottle up into the air and caught it again.

Tad replied, “No, Zed’s right. Even in the middle of the ocean, it’s not like this.”

There was a long somnolent pause, broken only by the joyful twitter of swallows as they spun and swooped through the azure late-summer firmament. Even the insects dozed in the last delicious warmth of summer. Soon, too soon, winter shall come. But today is Paradise.

“Might as well let you fellows in on the news,” Dickon said at last. “Last week I proposed to Merry, and she said yes.”

Zed rolled over. “Did she? About time. Tremendous congratters, Dickon! Shall I be your best man?”

“If you marry my sister, then we’ll be truly brothers!” Tad glanced at me. “And of course you approve, Mama.”

“Of course.” From my perch on a lawn chair I smiled down at them, my boys, though I gave birth only to Tad. They were alike and yet quite different. All three dark-haired and dark-eyed, they were entirely handsome, in the first glorious bloom of early manhood.

Dickon is the slightest but visibly a Lowry, an English aristocrat whose ancestors came over with the Conqueror. My stepson Zed’s Asian blood shows in the subtly sculped cheekbones and eyes. The lean height, and his straight black hair and Eurasian light-brown skin, are from his father, my lost third husband Tsan Ziyahn Lord Sze. And over the years Tad has, mercifully, become more and more like my first husband Theo. In sturdy build and most especially in turn of mind, he is his father’s son, intelligent and inventive.

Flushed with health, sunshine, and two baskets of an excellent Sunday picnic luncheon, they were glorious young men. Surely no sight makes a mother’s heart lighter. “Merry loves you, Dickon. So how can I object?”

“She loves me for myself,” he replied. “Not my title, nor my fortune, but me! You’ve no notion, chaps, how wonderful that is.” Dickon is properly known as Lord Richard Henry Halcombe Lowry. He shall be Earl of Brecon and Stowe when his father, my third cousin, passes. He could marry any girl in the world. My youngest daughter Merry is innocent of guile or ambition. She has never needed them, being armed instead with beauty and charm to the strength of triple steel. But now she’ll marry far above her station – dangerously far.

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So begins the story of two people whose lives appear fragmented across alternate realities.