The second novel in Eva Starling’s Determined Damsels medieval romance series, Forging a Fiancé, will be released by Dragonblade Publishing on July 21, 2026.
When 19-year-old Giselle Marsters hears that her childhood pal Solomon Smith has returned to Thetford after several years away apprenticing to a blacksmith in Bury St. Edmunds, she immediately abandons her household chores to go see him. Not that her family notices. With her father scheming to wrangle a contract to supply King Richard’s army in France, her mother’s interest in the wine jug and her elder sister’s preoccupation with finding a husband, no one has any time for Giselle. Or expectations.
Vivacious and voluble, Giselle is always looking for an excuse to flee the gloom of her homelife and find refuge with her ‘sorority’, a notorious band of maidens that she leads by force of her unbridled enthusiasm. Solomon Smith, the lanky, easily embarrassed son of a poor iron bloomer, was once an honorary member, and when his father sent him away, Giselle lost not only a friend, but also a protector and a confidant.
Solomon Smith never intended to return to Thetford, where the bad memories overshadowed the good. But when blacksmith Harry Ward offered to make him a journeyman and more, he couldn’t in good conscience refuse. It was his chance to start again – again. No one dared ask what happened in Bury. Poke your nose
into a forge and it might get burned, they say. And as everyone knows, blacksmiths have the ear of the Devil.
The reunion of Giselle and Solomon produces sparks they must smother for reasons they’d rather keep to themselves, yet the heat of their rekindled friendship is not so easily doused. Both yearn to forge a path that would redeem one and free the other. But time is not on their side. Families are not on their side.
Not only great sacrifice, but also superb skills are required if they’re to be together, skills that Giselle must master before her father forces her to take the veil.
Dragonblade Publishing is woman-owned, woman-run boutique publisher specializing in Historical Romance.
