Unraveled (Turner, #3)

“You distracted me.” Mark stared at Smite. “You distracted me intentionally so that Ash could get me.”


Smite laughed and ran away, just as his younger brother ducked behind the wheel of the carriage and scooped up snow. Robbie tumbled out of the conveyance. But instead of going to greet Miranda—he’d been visiting Mark for the duration of their honeymoon—he exclaimed, “Brilliant!” and joined the battle.

The war was fierce but short; it ended when Lady Turner sneaked up behind Ash and dumped a bucket of slush down his neck.

She was declared the victor.

Miranda was picking snow out of her husband’s collar—and wishing she’d joined Lady Turner’s initiative—when a second carriage topped the rise.

“I thought everyone was here,” she said.

“Did you?” Smite’s answer was a little too nonchalant. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten someone.”

Everyone else was waiting with avid interest. A cousin, perhaps? The duchess’s other brother?

As the carriage pulled around the drive, Smite found his way to her side. He slid his arm about her and then leaned down to whisper in her ear.

“I’ve owed you a wedding present all these weeks,” he said. “This is it.”

She had one moment to wonder what he could possibly mean when the door opened. It had been years since she last saw them, but she could never have forgotten. She started forward. “Jasper?”

The man who stepped out saw her, and a brilliant grin lit his face. She ran across the snow, skidding into his arms. Jonas was next out.

“Look at you,” Jasper said. “You’re all grown.” He held her close, and then murmured into her hair, “You’d best tell us what the jig is quickly, so we don’t put the lie to anything you’ve said.”

“No lies,” Miranda retorted happily. “He knows everything.”

“And he invited us anyway?” Jonas came up behind them, enveloping her in a hug.

Smite was already coming forward. “Smite Turner.” He held out his hand. “It’s good to have the two of you here. Standish, I hear you’ve got a translation of Antigone. My brother Mark and I would love to hear what you’ve got.”

“Oh, no,” said Jonas. “I must hear this story first. Miranda, how in God’s name did you end up here?”

“Well,” Miranda said. “It’s a sweet tale, about kittens and puppies and rainbows and love.”

Smite gave her that low, private smile again, and she warmed even in the cold air and bit her lip.

“Especially love,” she said, linking her arm with Jonas’s. “Now shall we all go in?”





Thank you!




Thanks so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed Unraveled. If you did, I hope that you: Lend the book. This book is lendable, so please share it with a friend.

Check out the rest of the series. Unraveled is the last book in the Turner series. The other books are Unlocked, Unveiled, and Unclaimed. You can find out more about the series at http://www.courtneymilan.com/turner/.

Check out my other books. A full list of my available titles, sorted by series order, is at http://www.courtneymilan.com/byseries.php.

What’s next? If you want to know when my next book is out, you can sign up for my new releases e-mail at http://www.courtneymilan.com.





Author’s Note




THREE YEARS AGO, I wanted to write a series about an insane mother who had a powerful effect on all three of her children—but a different effect on each one. I got the first hint of where Smite had come from when I read Asylum Denied by David Ngaruri Kenney. In that book, Kenney describes some of his experiences in his home country of Kenya. A particularly vivid image was his description of standing in solitary confinement in water. When I read that, I set the book down and said aloud, “That’s Smite.”

The rest of the Turner series formed itself around that moment. I had known that I wanted Smite to be a magistrate in Bristol; he must therefore have grown up in Somerset. I found Shepton Mallet by searching for floods in Somerset, and Mark’s book was born from that. Ash became the brother who escaped the worst of the torment and who felt the weight of survivor’s guilt.

But Bristol lent a dimension to this book that it would not have had in the abstract.