Devil in Our Hearts

“Jenks pulls off nearly perfect pacing in this sizzling historical romance.” The BookLife Prize

He vows to restore order.
She refuses to be ordered.

New England, 1679

Ruth Turner doesn’t want to hang—but as a healer and the daughter of an alleged witch, prosecution haunts her every step. When her closest friend is accused, Ruth rushes to defend her. Of course, the word of an unabashedly independent woman only brings suspicion upon herself.

Witch hunter Daniel Kendrick is duty-bound to root out the evil that almost destroyed the settlement. But when Ruth appears at his door after dark, she stirs an unholy need that makes him question the direction of his investigation. Perhaps the enchanting widow is correct—perhaps he has been pursuing the wrong woman.

Forced to concede her freedom, Ruth picks marriage to Daniel over the noose, even as she fights the desire this driven man sparks in her. Without enough evidence to make a case, Daniel finds himself wed to the very person he sought to convict…and may yet.

But as Ruth initiates Daniel to the pleasures of the marriage bed, they ignite a passion neither expected, and if they can’t learn to trust one another, it could send them both to the gallows.

Devil in Our Hearts is a steamy, open-door historical romance set in colonial America. If you love stories of strong heroines, forced marriage, and life-or-death stakes, grab your copy now!

Click below to purchase this Romance Writers of America Diamond Heart finalist from your choice of retailers.

Available in ebook and paperback.

**Devil in Our Hearts was just awarded the Global Book Awards Gold Medal for Romance!**

Devil in Our Hearts is a finalist for the Chatelaine Award for Romance Fiction and a finalist for the IAN Book of the Year Award for romance!

Devil in Our Hearts was announced as a finalist in the Historical Romance category of the Romance Writers of America Diamond Heart Award for Excellence in Published Romance Writing!

Devil in Our Hearts also won the New Jersey Romance Writers Golden Leaf Award for best first book, and it was chosen as a finalist in the Georgia Romance Writers nationally recognized Maggie Awards in the Historical Romance Category. So very grateful for the recognition!

You can ask your local librarian or bookseller to order it for you!

Devil in Our Hearts: A Steamy Historical Romance
eBook ISBN 978-1-960402-00-4
Print ISBN 978-1-960402-01-1
eBook ASIN B0CMJWLMC8
Print ASIN 1960402013

Read a Sample

“Leave my hand be. It is none of your affair,” Matthias said.

Ruth Turner grabbed her brother’s wrist, digging her fingers into his flesh so he couldn’t pull it away. “It is my affair if you die.” She turned the crusted back of his hand toward his face. “Do you smell the rotting flesh? That could kill you.” He was lucky it hadn’t already.

Matthias shifted his arse on his stone doorstep, glaring down at her in the waning light. “I’m not a fool. I’ve been following the doctor’s word like it was gospel.” He was big as a bear and, with his ruffled dark hair, could easily be mistaken for one at a distance.

“It hasn’t healed in six months. How do you not see that what you have been doing to care for it isn’t working?” The bone had set, but months of planting and tending his crops had made the skin continue to fester. She smeared a thick garlic plaster over the rank, red crust. His hand had caught a glancing ball right out of the muzzle of a musket. It wasn’t even an enemy musket. A neighbor fired too close to him in the panic of the raids after the war, and the shot had broken the bone and ripped open the flesh. On top of that, the muzzle flash had charred the surrounding skin.

They shouldn’t have been fighting at all because the war was more than two years over, but Boston hadn’t exactly treated the Penobscot with charity when King Philip and his allies were defeated in the rest of New England. The Penobscot had been winning in the north, and the settlements in Maine had paid the price for Boston’s arrogance.

The pointless fighting after the war had made her a widow, and she would be voluntarily damned to hell before she let it take her brother.

“That stinks.” Matthias tried to yank his hand away again, but she held tight. She might be a quarter his size, but she had a strong grip.

The heavy summer air hung around them, dampening the humming and buzzing of the evening insects.

She grabbed a leaf from her basket with her free hand, placed it over top of the healing plaster to contain the oozing mess, and then wrapped a strip of linen around it all, holding the plaster and leaf in place. “It smells bad, but it does good. Accept your lot with patience this once.”

Matthias wrinkled his nose like the sulfurous brimstone of hell wafted up from his hand. “This is not how Anne and Goody Francis dressed it, and it isn’t what Dr. Kingsman directed, either.” He shook his head, brows knit together. “Why must you go against your elders?”

She wiped the excess plaster on the grass to get it off her hand before she got it on her skirts and reeked of garlic herself for a week, then she tucked a lock of her dark hair that had escaped its pins behind her ear. “Because they are all wrong.”

He lowered his brows at her like a stern minister. Even sitting, he was a head taller than her. “Do not stir up trouble. This is not the time, and it is not your place to contradict them. I know you.”

Any fool knew it was no time to make trouble. But she knew remedies his wife, the midwife, and even the doctor did not, and she was trying to save his hand, not wreak chaos and upset the social order. Besides, Matthias had been telling her not to stir up trouble more or less every day since she was old enough to remember.

She drew in a breath to answer him, but then a flock of birds flew up out of a tree at the edge of the woods.

Her pulse pounded in her ears, and her muscles went taught.

Before she could process a thought, she was on her feet, grabbing her brother’s powder horn as he grabbed his musket. The musket was always loaded, and she would be ready to help reload.

She snatched the mold where he had a few new balls of shot still sitting, then she whirled back around to see Matthias already a few paces in front of the doorstep, methodically scanning each section of the woods for any movement or flash of anything out of place. The cool lead of the shot was heavy in her hand.

Nothing moved.

They waited. A small rivulet of sweat trickled down the channel of her spine.

Anyone with half a wit would have known the birds gave them away, so they had to out-wait whoever was lurking there. At least the open fields behind the house were too open to be inviting to Penobscot raiders. Or French ones.

Ruth’s heart banged against her ribs as she stood ready. After two years of war, plus the years of raids that followed, she could load a musket with her eyes bandaged shut if necessary.

The humid air muffled everything just slightly.

A faint rustle? The blood rushing past her ears made it hard to tell.

She stared into the inky shadows at the edge of the trees, and Matthias aimed his musket at the spot where she heard the noise.

Nothing.

The air was thick in her lungs.

Then movement under the elderberry.

Ruth flinched with such force she almost dropped the shot, and then she nearly choked on an unexpected laugh as her body shook from the released tension.

Matthias’ tabby-striped mouser strutted out of the woods with a fat, juicy chipmunk in her feline jaws. She yowled to raise to the dead without dropping her dinner.

Matthias grunted and lowered his musket. “That beast is surely in league with the Devil,” he said, shaking his head.

Ruth put the shot back in its place by the door and took two tries to hang the strap of the powder horn over its peg.

Matthias leaned the musket against the door frame and wiped his forehead with his bandaged hand.

Her heart still beat too fast as she grabbed his hand and adjusted the bandage he had just knocked out of place before he could pull away.

“Ouch.”

If he had let her dress his wounds sooner, he would have been healed by now, and he would have been better able to defend himself. She pressed the bandage to make sure the plaster was still against his skin and not sticking just to the bandage.

He winced, and she pressed just a little harder before letting his hand free.

He rolled his eyes at her, and she blew him a kiss in the fading light.

There had to be a way to get through his thick head that if he didn’t follow her instructions, his hand might kill him. For all that the garlic stank, it was better than the stench of the wound itself, and that was not good. He needed to heal. The whole settlement needed to heal.

“You cannot return home now. It’s dark. It is too dangerous,” Matthias said.

“It was your cat.” She sat back down on the doorstep, looking out at the woods she could barely make out in the gloaming. Unfortunately, he was right. It was too dangerous.

She settled her back against the hard oak doorframe and tried to relax her muscles. “I hear a family from Lee wants to buy the Sinclair farm.”

He grunted and lowered himself back down next to her, keeping his injured hand protected against his chest to avoid giving her an excuse to adjust his bandage again. “It’s odd anyone wants to move here with the French stirring trouble with the Penobscot.”

“If we stopped going around treating the Penobscot like we are not on their land, they might not be so eager to give the French a hearing.”

“We are not on Penobscot land. We are on land we purchased.”

“Not according to the Penobscot.”

“Stop speaking out of turn. We don’t need new folks stirring up trouble, nor you.” He grabbed a stick with his good hand, and it sounded like he was tracing figures in the dirt at his feet, but it was too dark to make them out. “I don’t know what we’ve done for evil to be allowed to run amongst us and take so many, but we need to be very careful.”

“You sound as if you think Sinclair might sell his farm to Satan himself. Or worse, to a French family.” She rolled her shoulders to loosen them. “Whoever they are, we need them. The militia ranks are quite thin at this point.”

“Don’t make light.” He poked her with his stick, no doubt penance for her extra squeeze of his injured hand. “We let questionable folks in before the war and look what heaven loosed upon us.”

She plucked a tall stalk of grass that brushed against her arm. One formerly Catholic family didn’t seem likely to have caused the war. They had seen their error and converted long before they arrived, so they hadn’t brought evil with them. Besides, when the selectmen sent them packing, the evil kept coming, and the raids lasted for years after the war. The accusations weren’t fair.

Many in town claimed the wife was too forward with her opinions, and that was the true root of their objections. She twirled the grass stem in her fingers. They said it was evidence of witchcraft.

Ruth shivered in the warm evening air. The woman was no more a witch than she was, not that it mattered to her accusers.

Matthias went back to drawing in the dirt. “Now Cook has returned.” He sighed. “At least that is one more man in our ranks.”

Ruth’s jaw locked down tight, and the muscles in her temples ached from the effort of not opening her mouth to say what she was thinking. Cook was a careless, hypocritical menace, and not someone to whom she trusted her safety. She didn’t understand how his wife had born him getting her with child without emulating Jael and driving a tent peg through his head.

“I hear you grinding your teeth,” Matthias said. “Stop. He is a godly man, helping us rebuild order.”

Letting his hogs run wild and eat their way through an old widow’s garden and livelihood was not order. She glanced sideways at her brother and could barely make out his features now that the sun had sunk below the horizon. It was too dark to see more than a faint silhouette. She started tearing the grass into pieces.

“He is back not a month, and already he has suffered from the evil in our town,” he said. “But at least he is doing something about it.”

She almost snorted. Any evil the man suffered, he brought on himself. “And what, pray tell me, is Goodman Cook doing to root out evil and restore order?”

She heard him inhale sharply. He hated when she spoke ill of those who deserved it.

He turned toward her, and she could feel him scowling in the dark. “He is helping Daniel Kendrick root out witches.”

She had to work to draw her next breath. “And how is he doing this?”

“His hogs are ill, and he has brought charges against the witch responsible for it. And for cursing him and causing his scythe to break.”

The world slowed, and cold shivers crept down her spine. The grass dropped from her hand. “And who does he say has done this?”

“I assume I need not point out that our family will stay out of this?”

Her pulse took off like a bolting horse. “Who, Matthias?”

He let out a grumbly breath, probably wishing he hadn’t brought up the subject. “Goody Carter witched his hogs and cursed him, and you,” he poked her again with the stick he still held in his good hand, “will stay out of this.”

She shot to her feet so fast she knocked the stick right out of his hand. Goody Carter had been their mother’s best friend and a dear friend to them after their mother’s death.

“Sit down.”

“How can you let that go unchallenged?” She glared at him in the dark. Goodman Cook blaming Goody Carter for his own troubles was unconscionable. If they hanged Goody Carter for Cook’s carelessness, they would all deserve whatever evil providence saw fit to loose on them.

Matthias stood and leaned into her space, the nighttime dark gathering close around them both.

“The town elected Daniel Kendrick warden, and it is for him, and not you, to sort out the moral conduct of this settlement and its inhabitants.” He took a firm hold of her arm. “You will not drag our family into this.”

She wrenched her arm free.

Her heart ached in her chest. Blast Daniel Kendrick and his blasted witch hunting, even if it was part of his new job as warden.

She stood still for a moment, feet grounded on the warm earth, and tried to slow her breathing and calm her thoughts. At least Daniel was rational and took fairness seriously enough to listen to reason. Unlike certain people she was related to.

In fact, as warden, Daniel Kendrick was obliged to listen to reason.

The band of tension around her chest loosened just a little. She grabbed for her basket, missed it in the dark, and then found the handle. She felt around for the pot of garlic plaster and then thrust it at Matthias. “I will be back to put this on you again tomorrow, and then Anne needs to apply it every day for a week when she returns. Do you understand? It will burn the skin, but it will stop the infection.”

“You are not leaving.” Matthias loomed in the dark.

She didn’t take the time to argue. The moon wasn’t up yet, but she couldn’t wait for it. She turned and marched down the path that her feet knew so well.

“Only those in league with the Devil roam the woods alone at night,” he called to her. “You are too forward.”

Her heart tripped, but her steps didn’t.

***

Sweat stung Daniel Kendrick’s eyes as he climbed the ladder to the second level of his house one-handed, steadying the keg of black powder balanced on his shoulder with the other hand. The lock of his hair that swung in front of his eyes was so wet with sweat it was almost as black as the powder.

He tried to keep his breathing even so he didn’t inhale the powder’s scent too deeply. Its charcoal and piss smell stirred images from the past few years that he would prefer to forget. But he couldn’t afford to forget because it would only take one fool to rekindle the whole deadly mess.

He reached the upper level, and the heat stifled his breathing for a moment. Even without a candle up here to illuminate the dark, it was like breathing in a smith’s furnace.

The air would be even worse with half the town up here. Anyone attacking could just set up a perimeter and wait them out while the heat did their violence for them. Winters here were long and brutal, but summers had deadly hot stretches.

He bent over and set down the powder next to an outer wall, and sweat dripped off the tip of his nose and splashed onto the keg. He straightened as far as he could before his head came in contact with the roof.

Cursing his height, he rubbed his shoulder where the edge of the keg’s bottom had dug into his flesh, then he peeled his shirt away from his chest to allow a little air against his skin. The stars shone in the night sky out the small window, but he didn’t have time to appreciate them this evening.

They needed shot now since powder without shot was about as helpful as a handle with no axe head. They would have to get the townsfolk to pool some resources until Boston sent money to buy shot or lead to make their own. Neither his garrison house nor Aldrich’s had been fully restocked since the second treaty, and with the French stirring trouble, they didn’t dare wait on shot.

Voices from downstairs rumbled up through the floor. If people would just let him focus, he could bring some order, but they couldn’t seem to help themselves. Even the other two selectmen of the town. No doubt Jacob Turner had tweaked Mr. Aldrich’s nose over something.

It wasn’t wise to tweak the nose of the only man in upper Maine with enough money to warrant the title “Mister,” but Jacob was the sort who sometimes couldn’t resist. Daniel and Jacob had each been elected in their fathers’ respective places as selectmen in the last year, and Aldrich, the remaining selectman from their fathers’ generation, was still adjusting to the change.

Daniel rubbed his stinging eyes and tried not to think about the dark smudges he knew were just below them. He needed sleep as desperately as they needed shot. And he wouldn’t get that until he found and convicted the witch.

He tugged at his sweat-soaked shirt for one last bit of air against his body and then swung onto the ladder and descended into the argument that had broken out in his front room.

“How did Cook get away with leaving in the first place?” Jacob pounded his meaty fist on Daniel’s table, making the candlestick jump and the flame gutter.

Daniel’s heart lurched. Leave it to the Devil to cause a fire to start in the warden’s own home. But Jacob steadied the candle before it could topple, and Daniel’s heart resumed its normal rhythm. Jacob was shorter and stockier than Daniel and could move quickly when he wanted to. Thank heavens he had just now.

Mr. Aldrich stared at Jacob from under his stern, gray brows. “He was fined for leaving. And now he has prayed on his error and is returned a newly devout man.”

The militia needed warm bodies, and even if Cook had broken the law to scamper off to safety in Boston during the raids last winter, his body still counted. It was a shame his wife had perished during the war. She had been a moderating influence on him.

Aldrich turned toward Daniel. “And now Goodman Cook has been visited by a witch.” Aldrich’s brows hovered low over his bulbous nose, and he appeared to think Daniel should already have sorted that out.

Jacob turned toward Daniel, too, then grinned and slapped a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “You look like shite.”

Of course he looked like shite. He barely slept. Daniel ignored him, turned to Aldrich, and pasted on a smile. “When does Goody Francis think your wife will be delivered of her child?”

A genuine smile spread across Aldrich’s fleshy cheeks. “Any moment now.” His young, second wife was due to produce the man’s seventeenth child.

Jacob rolled his eyes heavenward, no doubt as horrified at the thought as Daniel was. Being fruitful and multiplying was one thing, but he had ten living sons, and how on earth could he give each son enough land to marry and support a family of his own? Daniel had just inherited his own father’s land at thirty-one, and he at least had no brothers.

And Jacob had only half his father’s land because his older brother had gotten the other half. The larger half. And that was now owned by Jacob’s widowed sister-in-law. This had become the lot of almost every man in their generation. Available land was scarce, and removing to Maine had only marginally improved the problem.

Aldrich raised an eyebrow at him, no doubt remembering Daniel’s unmarried status as if it was Daniel’s fault he couldn’t afford to find a wife until now. Aldrich opened his mouth to speak.

Jacob headed Aldrich off. “He knows a warden can’t very well enforce the moral behavior of the community when he himself is not fulfilling his godly duties by marrying.” He was grinning like an idiot. “I’ve written to my wife’s unmarried cousins in Wells to solve that.”

Daniel tried not to groan. Heaven preserve him from Jacob’s cousins-in-law. He had had no time to think of prospective brides, but he had met Jacob’s cousins, and he would rather jam a stick in his eye. And he had other problems he had to resolve first.

Then a yawn crept up on him, and he couldn’t smother it. He needed sleep more urgently than anything else, but he wouldn’t get that tonight, either. The witch wouldn’t let him.

Jacob laughed. “Very well, we will continue our business after you have questioned Goody Carter.”

Aldrich shook his head, grabbed his musket from the small collection of them by the door, and waited for Jacob to check his own musket and be sure his flint hadn’t slipped.

They stepped outside into the sticky night and listened for sounds in the woods as their eyes adjusted to the dark. Crickets chirped, accompanied by the occasional hooting owl. Only once they had gained their night vision and satisfied themselves that no one was lying in wait did they pass through the gate in the palisade and set out together.

Daniel latched the heavy oak door behind them. He leaned against the thick, squared-off logs that made up the fortified outer wall of his home. With this garrison house, he had inherited the responsibility of keeping his neighbors safe. Half of them, anyway. Aldrich’s house would protect the other half.

Another yawn almost detached his jaw from his head. But he had more work to do before he bedded down for the night. Not that the witch would permit him to sleep even then. She, or perhaps they, usually chose the moment he drifted off to torment him with visions.

He rubbed his face hard with both hands to wake himself up, then pulled Goodman Cook’s scythe from the corner of the room and sat down at his table to examine it in the candlelight for signs of the Devil’s work.

He squinted at the handle of the scythe. It was cracked and worn, though Cook said it was only a few years old. The blade had broken off clean at its base.

Candle smoke hung in the humid air, and he rubbed his burning eyes.

A crow squawked its displeasure outside, and Daniel was on his feet before the sound died. Crows were only awake at night if something woke them.

Or if the crow was a witch’s familiar.

His blood slammed through his veins, and he ran to the door and grabbed one of the two loaded muskets still leaning against the wall. He checked the flint and readied the pan.

Then he pressed his ear next to the small gun port in the wall and listened, careful not to let his head block the candlelight and cast a shadow.

The gate creaked, and then the grass rustled in the quick, steady rhythm of human legs brushing through it, walking with purpose. His heart pounded to the same rhythm, though perhaps not as steadily.

Only someone up to the Devil’s work would be out alone at this hour. If he was lucky, it was Goody Carter, and he might catch her in the act and finally have enough evidence to convict her at trial and put an end to their troubles. An end to years of the Devil’s work in their settlement.

Once they stopped allowing a witch to do the Devil’s bidding in their town, providence would end their punishment and stop sending the French and their native allies after them. The fighting would well and truly be over.

If he wasn’t lucky, at least he was in a garrison house, and hopefully Jacob and Aldrich would hear an alarm shot. His muscles tensed.

He rested his fingers on the door latch, waiting, and sweat slid down the ladder of his ribs.

Something scuffed against his doorstep. His heart lurched.

He wrenched open the door and jammed his musket right into the breast of…Ruth Turner, Jacob’s widowed sister-in-law.

She froze, her lips parted in a startled little “o”. They were full, like a bee had stung them.

He stared.

Those lips stirred sensations in parts of his body he should not be conscious of in the presence of a woman he was not married to. Which meant any woman. But his errant cock was bedeviled and wouldn’t listen to propriety. Witches would be the death of him.

He forced a deep breath and yanked his gaze from her lips, where his gaze didn’t belong. Her small, delicate hands caught his searching eye, and they held an empty basket. What had she been doing alone in the dark? His sleep-deprived brain was having trouble focusing, but he needed to figure this out.

He drew a fortifying breath. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit, Goody Turner?”

She glanced down at his musket, still jammed into her soft flesh. Her hand grasped the muzzle and shoved it aside. She brushed a smear of black powder off the rough, brown wool over her breast. Her breast that he shouldn’t be looking at. Then her eyes rose to his and waited, one brow raised in question as though she thought he was the one in the wrong.

He let her stand for another moment, not letting his eyes drift to the smudge on her chest, and then he stepped back and gestured her into the house. It was too dark to tell if anything was amiss behind her in the dooryard. He closed and latched the door.

Then he studied her small form for a moment in the quiet of the room, breathing slowly and trying to gather the reins on his bolting thoughts. She appeared to be studying him in return.

He stood up straighter. He had such a height advantage she had to tip her head back to look him in the face, even though she stood a few paces away. She was so tiny she was positively elfin.

Her dark eyes reflected the candlelight, and a parade of calculations shone behind the reflected flame. He ran his finger along the stock of the musket he still held. She was capable of the mental machinations to do the Devil’s work if she so chose.

“I am here to discuss the absurd charge Goodman Cook has leveled against Goody Carter.” The way she said “Goodman” made it clear she did not think Cook a good man. Good judgment? Or motive? He wasn’t fool enough to think Goody Carter was the only possible witch.

She pointed at Cook’s scythe on his table. “He is too lazy to clear his fields and likely broke that on a rock.” Her eyes narrowed on him. “And he let his hogs run into her garden, and they destroyed several rows before she could chase them off. She was angry, which she now repents, but she didn’t curse him.”

She held her hands together in front of herself like she needed to restrain them from acting against her will. She was agitated. He needed to press her to figure out why.

“And how do you account for the two sick hogs?”

She heaved a big breath, which pushed her chest out toward him. He dragged his eyes back to the scowl on her face. This was too important for him to lose the thread of his inquiry.

“They were foraging in her garden and who knows how many other people’s. They no doubt ate what they ought not.” Her hands flew up in disgust. “Again, his negligence caused himself harm.” She paused a moment, regarding him. “It caused her harm, too.”

These were the usual defenses. He would sort through them with great care, of course. He would root evil out of the community, and convicting innocent people did nothing to achieve that end. “Goody Carter stands accused, not convicted. Indeed, she is not yet even deposed.”

Then she smiled, and his chest relaxed. He gave himself a mental shake. His duties as warden were to uphold the moral behavior of the settlement, and that also made him a target of those who did the Devil’s work. The Devil’s minions would distract him from his work.

“I know you are fair-minded, and that is why I have come to talk with you before this goes further.” Her voice dropped in pitch and seemed to vibrate in his chest. “Goody Carter cannot afford to be tried and jailed, especially now Cook’s hogs have eaten so much of her produce.”

He forced himself to process her words, which underscored a serious issue. Goody Carter’s husband had died, and she had no sons. No one was legally responsible for her or for her debts to the constable for her upkeep if he arrested her. She was a problem. As was Ruth.

“Please, let me help you see her innocence.” Ruth’s wide eyes pleaded with unnatural power.

Her face drew him to her. Her body drew him to her. Her entire presence drew him to her, and he couldn’t force his eyes away from her.

She was bewitching.

His lungs sucked in the hot air. He and others in the community had been targets of the Devil’s work for years, and what little evidence he had all indicated that Goody Carter was the witch.

But perhaps Ruth was right.

Perhaps he’d been investigating the wrong woman.

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