Guest author Alix Rickloff – with Giveaway!

UPDATE: Barbara is the winner of the giveaway!  Congratulations and enjoy!

I’m delighted to welcome fellow author Alix Rickloff back to Magical Musings.  January 2012 marks Pocket’s release of HEIR OF DANGER, the final book in her Heirs of Kilronan regency-paranormal trilogy.  Welcome back Alix – love the cover!

During my blog tour for the first book in the Heirs of Kilronan series, I wrote a post about the real places that inspired the fictional settings in the book. I had such fun offering my readers a visual snapshot that I decided to do it again for the last book in the series.

HEIR OF DANGER is the story of Brendan Douglas, the final and most dangerous of the late earl’s children. After his father’s murder, Brendan spent seven years outrunning his enemies, but now he’s come home to Ireland to clear his name and stop a war. Unfortunately the key to both lies around the neck of Elisabeth Fitzgerald, the woman he jilted who is now days away from marrying another.

Dun Eyre, the elegant estate of the Fitzgerald’s is the scene of Brendan and Elisabeth’s disastrous reunion. Situated in County Clare on the western coast of Ireland, the house needed to illustrate the enormous wealth of a powerful family.

The hedge folded back upon itself, the path spilling out in a shallow set of stone stairs. Below Brendan, the house stretched wing to wing from its foursquare central block. The ball had ended, guests leaving in a line of carriages or retiring to their quarters for the night. A few lights glittered from windows, but the blaze of candleshine and torchères lighting the entrances had been doused, night closing thick against the buildings.

He counted third-floor windows. Seven in from the right. Elisabeth’s bedchamber. Light still shone behind the curtains. She would be undressing. Slowly untying her garters. Seductively rolling down the stockings on her long legs. Her luscious curves held tightly captive by stays and petticoats freed to fill the thin muslin chemise she wore to bed.

Castlecoole in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh fit the bill perfectly. Built in the 1790’s in the neo-classical style, it was used as a summer retreat for the first Earl of Belmore whose wealth originated with the merchanting success of his grandfather. After the Act of Union in 1800 when the Irish Parliament was dissolved, the earl and his family removed permanently to Castlecoole where the family remains to this day though the house is run by the National Trust.

As HEIR OF DANGER unfolds, Brendan and Elisabeth, now unlikely allies, travel to Dublin where they’re taken in by Helena Roseingrave; a woman with her own reasons for keeping the fugitives alive and hidden. Reasons that could either result in Brendan’s freedom—or his death.

Helena lives in a townhouse on Duke Street, a short block between Grafton Street to the west and Dawson Street to the east, just a short distance from both Trinity College and St. Stephen’s Green. While this was a fashionable area of the city, it remained more the realm of prosperous merchant class rather than the upper gentry and nobility.

They’d arrived in Dublin during a downpour, the soot-stained buildings and wet streets beneath a smear of charcoal sky a welcome sight. From outside, the tidy Duke Street town house  with its bright green front door, marble steps, and gleaming black railing could have been any well-to-do merchant’s home. Carriages and hackneys clattered up and down the street. Next door a costermonger stood upon the area steps speaking with a housekeeper. Two smartly dressed women hurried down the pavement, a loaded footman bringing up the rear. Life went on around them as usual.

Yet, within, the signs of Other were palpable. Almost as if the Fey-born could not completely hide what they were. Or, in Helena’s case, took pride in that heritage.

It was tough finding images that jived with the picture I’d created in my head, but I  managed to find one snap of the Fitzwilliam Townhouse in Dublin. Now a hotel, the house was built during a period of city expansion during the eighteenth century by the 6^th Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion. As you can see most townhouses of the period were faced in brick or local stone or, as shown here, a combination of both. They were relatively plain with their only exterior embellishments being in the elegant fanlights above their doors.

The final setting is Brendan and Elisabeth’s last stand; an ancient wood in Cornwall where mystery and magic infuse the very air and the opening of King Arthur’s tomb is but a spell away.

They’d been walking for hours, the trees growing closer together the farther they penetrated, the leafy canopy closing over them until the very air shone green and gold. Moss clung thick to the trunks while thickets of brambles clawed his arms and left long cat scratches upon his cheeks. And yet, there seemed to be no end in sight to the great cathedral of overlapping branches, as if they’d stepped back to a previous age before the land had been cleared for field and farm.

Hidden watchers slid between the dappled shadows. A faint and gossamer chime stirred the humid air. The Fey protected this primordial forest and made it their own. He could only hope they would be on his side when the time came.  

 For these final scenes, I found some fabulous woodland images that immediately pulled me into the climax of the story as Brendan fights against great evil for his life and for the ultimate fate of an ancient king. Arthur’s tomb is located at Slaughter Bridge north of Camelford where some say the king met his end at the hands of his son, Mordred. The ancient slab lying amid heavy woods immediately offers a stunning visual of both great age and great danger.

Palace. Townhouse. Faery wood. Three distinct settings with three very different styles, but all of them needed to bring Brendan and Elisabeth’s story to life.

Today Alix is giving away a free signed copy of HEIR OF DANGER to one lucky commenter, so drop me a note and tell me which setting and which image you like best.