Once a Cavalier by Linda O Johnston is a Time Passages release and the first to be penned by this author.

Larryn Maeller has travelled to London for a medical conference and during her visit she is staying at Seldrake House with a friend she has met over the Internet.  Larryn soon realises that the room she has been given to stay in is haunted when she sees the ghostly form of a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and its handsome owner Thomas Northby the Duke of Seldrake.

Following the ghost onto the roof of the house she watches as he re-enacts some dramatic scene from his life and sadly returns to her room knowing that there is nothing she can do to help.

The house’s present owner, Chloe, is not surprised to know that Larryn has seen the ghost of Seldrake House.  She herself has seen the spirit and has tracked down Larryn for the very purpose of helping the unfortunate duke.

The next night the ghosts of Thomas Northby and his dog rise again only this time when Larryn follows him to the roof she finds herself, and her own King Charles Spaniel, in a magical mist that draws her back in time to the year 1666.  1666, the year after the Great Plague when it was still rife in London, and the year of the Great Fire of London when two thirds of the city was burnt to the ground over a period of four days.

Seldrake is startled to find the strange woman on his roof, but more than that he is suspicious of her because he is breaking one of the harshest laws of the land.  He is smuggling children out of plague houses before they contract the dreaded disease and thereby breaking a law that King Charles II (his king and friend) is determined to enforce for the safety of the rest of the people in the country.

As a traveller from the future Larryn already knows all about Seldrake’s heroic actions during the years of the plague from Chloe.  As a modern doctor she can do no more than offer her services to the Duke’s household, even if he won’t believe that she is a fully qualified doctor and looks on in horror at the lengths she will go to to make the place spotlessly clean.

Larryn found herself attracted to Thomas Northby as soon as she saw his portrait; in the flesh she finds herself even more dangerously drawn to him and willing to risk her life alongside him if it keeps her near to him.  Risking her life in more ways than one, for Larryn is terrified of commitment to a man after her sister’s search for love lead her to die of AIDS.  Now she finds herself in the era and court of King Charles II where men and women were openly sleeping with any number of people.  A place where AIDS does not exist but any one of a number of other diseases do and Larryn does not want to find herself following in her sister’s path.

Thomas too is cautious about beginning a relationship with Larryn or anyone else.  A widower, he still mourns the death of his wife and feels guilt at the attraction he feels for the intruder in his home.

But as this is a romance novel they cannot go on like this forever and soon they are sorting out their problems and Larryn sets out matchmaking between Thomas’s sister Adele and a man Thomas deems beneath her.

But hanging over her head all the time is the scene Larryn witnessed on the roof of Seldrake House.  She knows that some time the day will come when this scene will be played out for real and she cannot keep him from the roof all the time.

A gentle romance set in a dangerous time of plague and fire this novel steadily builds to the dramatic rooftop climax that finally lets Larryn and the reader in on exactly what happened on that roof all those years before.

A touching romance that is steady rather than fast paced.  Set in one of my favourite eras it is one that fewer novels are set in than I would like.  I was delighted to find that I was not disappointed in Linda O Johnston’s interpretation of this era and I would hope that some day she will return to it with another novel.
 

RATING : 
(if you need an explanation of the hearts ratings see my homepage)

Links to  Online Stores

Also by Linda O Johnston :  Point in Time and A Glimpse of Forever.
 
Visit Linda O Johnston's website here