The Pride of Lions Series

Soldier and secret agent during the latter part of the Napoleonic wars when Wellington and the British army were endeavouring to help force the French out of Spain. He was handsome, charming and a lover of many women, but saddled with a wife he neither loved nor wanted. Nicholas de Bresancourt, Duc de Valenciennes, was a complex man of many talents, but also a tormented one. Memories of his horrific experiences as a small boy in France before he escaped from the Revolution continued to haunt him.   London. June 1812. He was carrying important dispatches from the British Army HQ in the Peninsula to the War Ministry in London and hadn't been home for a year. While waiting for confidential and urgent documents to take back to the Army high command, Nicholas de Bresancourt is ordered to meet an inscrutable gentleman in the innocuous-sounding Department of Information in Whitehall. Lord Ashcroft wants to utilise his talents to track down a dangerous French agent who has been causing trouble for those still battling Bonaparte across Europe, and has now turned up in Spain. Meanwhile, Nicky also takes the opportunity to catch up with his adoptive relations, including the dying family matriarch, the nearest thing he's ever had to a grandmother, as well as the wife he was inveigled into marrying and now wants rid of. Unsurprisingly, being Nicky, he decides to take a few hours off for a bit of personal R&R from the stresses of family matters and work. Handsome, charming and a consummate lothario, he heads out on the Town with a few regimental friends and they take him to a new gambling salon in Mayfair which is all the rage: Le Lion D'Or, owned by a mysterious masked woman who calls herself La Lionesse. Inexplicably fascinated by the lady, who in turn seems very taken with the rakish soldier, she asks him up to her private quarters to continue their game of cards and he accepts, and that's when she raises the stakes…  

Soldier and secret agent during the latter part of the Napoleonic wars and present at the epic Battle of Waterloo in 1815; good looking, charismatic and lover of many women, but saddled with a wife he neither loved nor wanted. Nicholas de Bresancourt, Duc de Valenciennes, was a complex man of many talents, but also a tormented one. Memories of his horrific experiences as a small boy in France before he escaped from the Revolution continued to haunt him.   Spain 1813 Obsessed with the mysterious woman he's had to leave behind in London, Nicky must nevertheless turn his mind to his mission. He has to run to earth and stop Frederick Bernheim, the agent now plotting to de-stabilise Wellington's increasingly successful military efforts in Spain. Frederick Bernheim, son of the man responsible for the demise of Nicky's parents, his own nightmare incarceration in a grim fortress prison at the age of only four, and guilty shortly after of the nearly causing the death of several of his adoptive relations who had saved his life and helped him escape from France. The coincidence is both surreal and frightening, and memories of what happened to him have plagued Nicky ever since and coloured his whole life. Despairing of finding any clue to trace his target and now operating deep under cover, disguised as an itinerant singer working in common bars and hostelries, Nicky finally gets a lead through a chance meeting with a young prostitute. However, he's in Madrid and cut off from Wellington's forces. With no other help to hand, he runs to earth an old gypsy associate of Francis Granville from his Shadow days, and it's down to just the two of them to thwart Bernheim's nefarious plans and dispense with the man himself. However, as Nicky discovers, he's even cleverer and more dangerous than his late father…

Soldier and secret agent during the latter part of the Napoleonic wars when Wellington and the British army were endeavouring to help force the French out of Spain. He was handsome, charming, and a lover of many women, but saddled with a wife he neither loved nor wanted. Nicholas de Bresancourt, Duc de Valenciennes, was a complex man of many talents, but also a tormented one. Memories of his horrific experiences as a small boy in France before he escaped from the Revolution continued to haunt him. BOOK FOUR: Northern France 1815 He's given his word to Wellington that he would join his staff, and he cannot break it. Once again, Nicky finds himself working undercover. This time he is amongst the re-grouping French forces in northern France, risking his life to gain intelligence on their strength, capability and movements, while Bonaparte prepares himself to confront Wellington, personally and finally. However, as before, Bella isn't going to sit and wait for her husband in London so she decides to go to Valenciennes, the nearest she can get to wait in safety, just wanting to be as near as possible to him. Unsurprisingly, also worried about Nicky and Bella, the eccentric but close Granville family decide to follow suit. Eventually, they all end up in Brussels, waiting and worrying as the epic battle finally takes place at Waterloo. As the fighting progresses and Wellington finally wins the day, they expect news of Nicky or his return to them. But no one has seen him and the battlefield is utter carnage; thousand upon thousand of dead and injured men and horses. Still they wait, and wait, and fret, until a desperate Francis and Jack finally go in search of him, or any information as to his whereabouts, or fate. And then, 25 years after he mysteriously disappeared, The Shadow makes a surprise re-appearance….

Soldier and secret agent during the latter part of the Napoleonic wars and present at the epic Battle of Waterloo in 1815; good looking, charismatic and lover of many women, but saddled with a wife he neither loved nor wanted. Nicholas de Bresancourt, Duc de Valenciennes, was a complex man of many talents, but also a tormented one. Memories of his horrific experiences as a small boy in France before he escaped from the Revolution continued to haunt him.   Part 5 and Conclusion: England1816. He was still not totally healed from his injuries received at Waterloo, but he'd looked death in the face and miraculously survived. Bonaparte is no longer a threat so Nicky and the wider Granville family were looking forward to a happy and peaceful future. Except… Miles Ashcroft was worried. The spymaster knew Frederick Bernheim had also survived and was out there, somewhere, possibly now in England. Deranged and obsessed with revenge against Nicky, The Shadow, and the people who were responsible for his father's death twenty-five years before. A death, he claimed, that had changed the course of his life. As Ashcroft had feared, a fiendish plot and trap was sprung and everyone was caught up in it. A terrifying, nightmarish scenario that could only have been conceived by someone as crazed as Bernheim. Even Ashcroft, Ricky Ambrose and Jack had been sucked in, and some of the family's retainers and servants, but they hadn't hesitated to help, even at risk of their own lives. Can the family survive? Will they all meet a grisly fate or can the rescue party save everyone in time? And if they do come out of it alive, at what cost will it be to all involved? Facing a pack of starving lions would traumatise most people, and when someone literally looks death in the face, it tends to make them reassess their life… their past and their future... but sometimes the trauma can have a much deeper impact…