Lady of the Night
Lady of the Night by Cordia Byers is a time travel novel set in one
of my favourite periods of history - the time of the English Civil War
to the Restoration of the Monarchy.
Katherina Fergersen is on a working holiday with her Aunt Sidney and for the last stop on their travels around England they are staying at a haunted English Castle known as Sedgewick Castle.
Feeling tired and suffering from headaches Katherina decides to forego the Midnight Tour of the castle and returns to her room. But on her way a wrong turn and a twist of fate takes her back in time to the year 1651 and into the bathroom of Lord Sedgewick, the cursed owner of the castle.
A supporter of Charles II Lord Kane Sedgewick is startled to find a stranger in his castle and fearing that she is a spy immediately incarcerates her in the dungeons.
Once released from the dungeons Katherina is free to leave the castle but where can she go?
Her threats to go the authorities were useless, the authorities, her home, her business and her aunt were all several hundred years into the future and even with her freedom from the castle she is a prisoner in the past.
Siezing on the possibility of amnesia (a popular lie for many a time travelling heroine) Katherina is permitted to stay at Sedgewick Castle until her memory returns, or she can convince Kane that she is from the future.
Katherina soon begins to settle into life in the seventeenth century, despite the unfortunate food and lack of modern conveniences and soon she is known as a healer after using her Herbal Health, Inc, products to help save the life of a child of one of the villagers.
What Katherina does not seem to realise is that although her methods can sometimes help people they are strange, and should they ever fail she will be branded a witch. Kane however does understand this and is soon laying down the law (or at least trying to).
In her ignorance of the time Katherina does not heed the warnings of Kane and continues to help the villagers with her medicines, making hidden and dangerous enemies of both the physician and Lord Winston Churchill, an old loyal friend of Kanes who is determined to save the soul of his friend from the witch who has him within her powers.
Add to this mixture the added spice of the curse of the Sedgewicks and the family vampire and the result is a wonderful time travel novel.
The only fault I can pick with this book is that when Katherina went back in time, a traveller from the past went forward. He was John, a cousin of Lord Sedgewick and the man Sidney had waited for all her life. Although his experiences are touched on slightly I would have liked to have read more about his journey into the future and the dilema of Sidney sacrificing her own happiness for the return of her niece.
A little predictable at times, but otherwise a very nicely written book with some interesting sub-plots and twists in the story.
RATING : 
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Also by Cordia Byers: The Black Angel