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Knightshill Saga #1
A Question of Honour
When Vorne Asleigh, the successor to his father's fortune and Knightshill, the ancestral home, meets a hero's death at Khartoum leaving his family without a suitable successor, the Ashleighs begin a passionate fight for survival.
411 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1991
31 people are currently reading
76 people want to read
About the author
Emma Drummond
24 books15 followersA pseudonym used by Edna Dawes.
Drummond was born in a Military Hospital, as her father was a member of the British Army. She spent her early childhood in Hong Kong, where her father was stationed. She eventually married a senior British Civil Servant. She worked for a time as a WRAC (Womens Royal Army Corps). She also writes as Elizabeth Darrell, Eve Dane, Edna Dawes, and Eleanor Drew.
Drummond was born in a Military Hospital, as her father was a member of the British Army. She spent her early childhood in Hong Kong, where her father was stationed. She eventually married a senior British Civil Servant. She worked for a time as a WRAC (Womens Royal Army Corps). She also writes as Elizabeth Darrell, Eve Dane, Edna Dawes, and Eleanor Drew.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
May 4, 2015
This book, and the two others in this trilogy are very different than your usual Drummond, as the focus is on a family and not just a single hero and heroine. This is more in line with a family saga. The Ashleigh family goes back many generations, and all men have served proudly in the West Wilts. As the story begins, the Ashleigh family is ruled by the old grandfather, and the eldest son is honored every year for his heroism in the Sudan (I think that's where it was). Vorn is now the heir, but he was a bit sickly as a child and he's better suited running the family estate and painting pictures (much to the old man's regret). There are two sisters, one unhappily married to a minister and the other slightly crippled and never married. And then there's the youngest son, Val, who wants to defy the family tradition of serving in the West Wilts and going into a cavalry unit.
There you are, there are ups and downs as Vorn gets his heart broken and signs up for the West Wilts in the hopes he'll die, Val still in school and gets himself in quite a pickle when one of the staff's wife seduces him.
I did enjoy this, although it was a bit slow to get going. My favorite parts are with Vorn and his experiences in the Sudan, as he actually learned how to be a soldier, and what he learned about his 'heroic' older brother. That little twist has nasty consequences later in the final two books in the trilogy.
There you are, there are ups and downs as Vorn gets his heart broken and signs up for the West Wilts in the hopes he'll die, Val still in school and gets himself in quite a pickle when one of the staff's wife seduces him.
I did enjoy this, although it was a bit slow to get going. My favorite parts are with Vorn and his experiences in the Sudan, as he actually learned how to be a soldier, and what he learned about his 'heroic' older brother. That little twist has nasty consequences later in the final two books in the trilogy.
April 16, 2015
This is the fish book of the Knightshill saga. As in her other books, Elizabeth Darell (aka Emma Drummond) adds some hints of her personal life in her books.
5* Beyond All Frontiers
4* A Question of Honor
TR Forget The Glory
TR Scarlet Shadows
TR The Burning Land
TR A Distant Hero
5* Beyond All Frontiers
4* A Question of Honor
TR Forget The Glory
TR Scarlet Shadows
TR The Burning Land
TR A Distant Hero
October 22, 2015
This is actually a review for the whole trilogy because I am too lazy to break it up...
Short version is - you should read it because I am obsessed with it and nobody I know has read it. I mean, heroism, angst, love, battles, creepy people you want to off, h/c and my new fictional crush. Loooong version - read below.
The books are set in a twenty-year period (1896-1916) and follow a few Ashleigh siblings and their involvement in colonial wars and then WW1. Since time immemorial, all the male Ashleighs have been soldiers - more specifically, soldiers in a particular infantry regiment that they have founded and pretty much became a mainstay of. But in 1896, as the elderly, inflexible paterfamilias Sir Gilliard still obsesses over tradition, things may be changing due to his grandchildren (his son has long died properly in some forgotten foreign war). Here are the grandchildren:
Vorne - when the story opens, Vorne is long dead, dying heroically supposedly trying to deliver Gordon’s last message out of Khartoum, but his shadow hangs over the trilogy (how much, if any, of Vorne’s legend is true, is one of the main themes of the book and a lot of characters take a lot of life-changing actions based on various truths or lies about Vorne). Vorne was the golden boy Sir Gilliard dreamed of. Alas, he’s dead and Sir Gilliard is left with the rest of the unpromising to him lot.
Vere - the artist invalid who the family doctor expects to pop off at any moment. His one duty to the family is marry and produce more Ashleighs for the military. Vere is a misfit in his military-mad family - he finds all that stuff alien and has little aptitude or interest in it. However, when his very traditional Victorian fiancee dumps him because he can’t compete with the legend of his dead brother, Vere joins the family regiment in a whim, expecting to die in Africa due to frail health. While there, he discovers he’s actually long gotten past his frail health and, while not developing a miraculous aptitude for soldiering, ends up having an appreciation for that sort of life and becomes useful through military sketches etc. Most importantly, he uncovers the truth about Vorne, and what he does or doesn’t do with it is quite important.
Charlotte - she is very very proper and very very Victorian and sees the world in black and white. She also doesn’t have much of a story. (Unlike a lot of Drummond’s books, these are very heavily male-centric. It may or may not be a deal-breaker for you).
Margaret - she married a handsome curate who gave her two children (Tim and Kate who get their own stories in Book 3. I am very fond of Tim and if I weren’t such a Val girl would probably adore him. Kate is an interesting character but her choice of crushes is creepy as fuck so I can’t get over that. Incest is NOT best). Unfortunately for Margaret, the curate has since gone God-mad and all he wants to do is convert people in Africa and be a psycho. Margaret is being stifled in a horrible marriage until she meets a very untraditional man and scandalizes her family by running off with him. Go, Margaret!
Val - OMG VAL VAL VAL VAL He is the reason I am here recommending these books as opposed to just reading them and forgetting them. Do you like heroic messes? Dude’s for you. Val has every chance to be Sir Gilliard’s favorite - the boy (as the book opens he’s still in public school) is charismatic, athletic and army-mad. One problem - what Val wants to do is serve as a cavalry officer and that’s simply not done. Ashleighs have always been infantry forever and ever and ever amen. Unfortunately for Val, he also has the world’s worst luck because that soon becomes the least of his problems. While at school, he attracts the attention of the headmaster’s predatory new wife, who is piqued by the fact he is not drooling over her (all Val drools over is sports and horses, at that point). She seduces/blackmails him into sex (because to call it an affair would imply some sort of power parity when she’s taking awful advantage of him, pretty much telling a high schooler equivalent that if he’s nice to her she’ll get him a spot in a cavalry regiment with her uncle and taking advantage of the fact that he’s out of his mind because his friend just died) and then when it all blows up, she accuses him of rape. Fun times.
Val does what every sensible Victorian tortured hero would do - he runs away to South Africa and joins a cavalry regiment under a fake name. As a trooper and not an officer. Yup. Our aristocratic boy becomes an enlisted man, where he sticks out as a sore thumb and is accepted by neither his fellow soldiers nor officers, at first, and has to deal with all sorts of hell. Here is where the real fun of Val’s story begins - he actually IS an army genius and swiftly gets promoted through the ranks but it earns him a bunch of enemies. It also gets him to meet Vivienne. VIVIENNEEEEEEE! I love her. She is cool and awesome and is (eventually) a WWI ambulance driver and it takes her and Val 17 freaking years (!!!!) to work their crap out but OMG I love Vivienne. So yes, when they first meet, she’s 18 and impetuous and imperious and very upper class and the daughter of the dude who commands the regiment and he’s 20, a trouper, and fucked up and closed off and paranoid about women (which is something he retains throughout the trilogy, understandably - there is a pretty depressing bit after he and Vivienne finally get together in 1915 or so where it basically turns out that prior to her, he’d only get with a woman when absolutely necessary. He also seems to blame himself for the whole headmaster’s wife thing which is realistic but insane. OK digression). Vivienne is fascinated by the clearly upper-class trouper and wants to be his friend. Val does not want to be anybody’s friend. Awesomeness happens. And then (because Val has zero luck) bad, bad things - he’s framed for stuff he did not do and gets publicly drummed out of his regiment in a horrific, brutal ritual straight out of the middle ages and pretty much left to die. Despite Vivienne begging her father on her knees not to do it. SO MUCH VICTORIAN AWESOMENESS.
Anyway, we are not even to WW1 yet and all the Val stuff there (or all the stuff he did after the fun in Africa) but I do not want to ruin everything for you all (heroics! Gallipoli horrors! desperate sex with Vivienne! babies! happy ending! The bit where Vere throws a dinner in his honor because he (a) survived (b) got a Victoria Cross, and even though he’s not a black sheep any more, he has zero aristocratic tastes, so he tells Vivienne as they are on the way that he’d love a beer (when you know they will be serving fancy wines or whatever) and she digs a bottle out from the baby stuff and he asks her if she has a bottle opener in the swaddling clothes and she produces one LOLOLOL forever).
P.S. To make it full melo, the evil lady who fucked him up is Vivienne’s first cousin. Heeee. So melo. Perhaps just as well Vivienne broke away from her family entirely, can you imagine THAT family party? Hi, father-in-law, remember how you did your best to ruin me over false allegations? Oh, hello cousin! How’s your predator self doing? Yeah.
Short version is - you should read it because I am obsessed with it and nobody I know has read it. I mean, heroism, angst, love, battles, creepy people you want to off, h/c and my new fictional crush. Loooong version - read below.
The books are set in a twenty-year period (1896-1916) and follow a few Ashleigh siblings and their involvement in colonial wars and then WW1. Since time immemorial, all the male Ashleighs have been soldiers - more specifically, soldiers in a particular infantry regiment that they have founded and pretty much became a mainstay of. But in 1896, as the elderly, inflexible paterfamilias Sir Gilliard still obsesses over tradition, things may be changing due to his grandchildren (his son has long died properly in some forgotten foreign war). Here are the grandchildren:
Vorne - when the story opens, Vorne is long dead, dying heroically supposedly trying to deliver Gordon’s last message out of Khartoum, but his shadow hangs over the trilogy (how much, if any, of Vorne’s legend is true, is one of the main themes of the book and a lot of characters take a lot of life-changing actions based on various truths or lies about Vorne). Vorne was the golden boy Sir Gilliard dreamed of. Alas, he’s dead and Sir Gilliard is left with the rest of the unpromising to him lot.
Vere - the artist invalid who the family doctor expects to pop off at any moment. His one duty to the family is marry and produce more Ashleighs for the military. Vere is a misfit in his military-mad family - he finds all that stuff alien and has little aptitude or interest in it. However, when his very traditional Victorian fiancee dumps him because he can’t compete with the legend of his dead brother, Vere joins the family regiment in a whim, expecting to die in Africa due to frail health. While there, he discovers he’s actually long gotten past his frail health and, while not developing a miraculous aptitude for soldiering, ends up having an appreciation for that sort of life and becomes useful through military sketches etc. Most importantly, he uncovers the truth about Vorne, and what he does or doesn’t do with it is quite important.
Charlotte - she is very very proper and very very Victorian and sees the world in black and white. She also doesn’t have much of a story. (Unlike a lot of Drummond’s books, these are very heavily male-centric. It may or may not be a deal-breaker for you).
Margaret - she married a handsome curate who gave her two children (Tim and Kate who get their own stories in Book 3. I am very fond of Tim and if I weren’t such a Val girl would probably adore him. Kate is an interesting character but her choice of crushes is creepy as fuck so I can’t get over that. Incest is NOT best). Unfortunately for Margaret, the curate has since gone God-mad and all he wants to do is convert people in Africa and be a psycho. Margaret is being stifled in a horrible marriage until she meets a very untraditional man and scandalizes her family by running off with him. Go, Margaret!
Val - OMG VAL VAL VAL VAL He is the reason I am here recommending these books as opposed to just reading them and forgetting them. Do you like heroic messes? Dude’s for you. Val has every chance to be Sir Gilliard’s favorite - the boy (as the book opens he’s still in public school) is charismatic, athletic and army-mad. One problem - what Val wants to do is serve as a cavalry officer and that’s simply not done. Ashleighs have always been infantry forever and ever and ever amen. Unfortunately for Val, he also has the world’s worst luck because that soon becomes the least of his problems. While at school, he attracts the attention of the headmaster’s predatory new wife, who is piqued by the fact he is not drooling over her (all Val drools over is sports and horses, at that point). She seduces/blackmails him into sex (because to call it an affair would imply some sort of power parity when she’s taking awful advantage of him, pretty much telling a high schooler equivalent that if he’s nice to her she’ll get him a spot in a cavalry regiment with her uncle and taking advantage of the fact that he’s out of his mind because his friend just died) and then when it all blows up, she accuses him of rape. Fun times.
Val does what every sensible Victorian tortured hero would do - he runs away to South Africa and joins a cavalry regiment under a fake name. As a trooper and not an officer. Yup. Our aristocratic boy becomes an enlisted man, where he sticks out as a sore thumb and is accepted by neither his fellow soldiers nor officers, at first, and has to deal with all sorts of hell. Here is where the real fun of Val’s story begins - he actually IS an army genius and swiftly gets promoted through the ranks but it earns him a bunch of enemies. It also gets him to meet Vivienne. VIVIENNEEEEEEE! I love her. She is cool and awesome and is (eventually) a WWI ambulance driver and it takes her and Val 17 freaking years (!!!!) to work their crap out but OMG I love Vivienne. So yes, when they first meet, she’s 18 and impetuous and imperious and very upper class and the daughter of the dude who commands the regiment and he’s 20, a trouper, and fucked up and closed off and paranoid about women (which is something he retains throughout the trilogy, understandably - there is a pretty depressing bit after he and Vivienne finally get together in 1915 or so where it basically turns out that prior to her, he’d only get with a woman when absolutely necessary. He also seems to blame himself for the whole headmaster’s wife thing which is realistic but insane. OK digression). Vivienne is fascinated by the clearly upper-class trouper and wants to be his friend. Val does not want to be anybody’s friend. Awesomeness happens. And then (because Val has zero luck) bad, bad things - he’s framed for stuff he did not do and gets publicly drummed out of his regiment in a horrific, brutal ritual straight out of the middle ages and pretty much left to die. Despite Vivienne begging her father on her knees not to do it. SO MUCH VICTORIAN AWESOMENESS.
Anyway, we are not even to WW1 yet and all the Val stuff there (or all the stuff he did after the fun in Africa) but I do not want to ruin everything for you all (heroics! Gallipoli horrors! desperate sex with Vivienne! babies! happy ending! The bit where Vere throws a dinner in his honor because he (a) survived (b) got a Victoria Cross, and even though he’s not a black sheep any more, he has zero aristocratic tastes, so he tells Vivienne as they are on the way that he’d love a beer (when you know they will be serving fancy wines or whatever) and she digs a bottle out from the baby stuff and he asks her if she has a bottle opener in the swaddling clothes and she produces one LOLOLOL forever).
P.S. To make it full melo, the evil lady who fucked him up is Vivienne’s first cousin. Heeee. So melo. Perhaps just as well Vivienne broke away from her family entirely, can you imagine THAT family party? Hi, father-in-law, remember how you did your best to ruin me over false allegations? Oh, hello cousin! How’s your predator self doing? Yeah.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 18, 2019
Engrossing family saga!!
This is a fascinating story of a military family steeped in tradition of generations past and especially of one deceased war hero in the late 1800's Britain.
The subject family having been raised by their grandfather details each of his grandchildren's lives. The struggle to overcome childhood health dehabititations, Vere, is an artistic soul, not having the same militaristic family pride. His younger brother, Val, still in school, yearns to join a different regiment than his forebearers causing a rift with his grandfather. An elder sister, Margaret, is in loveless marriage to a preacher and sister Charlotte suffers from a physical deformity and is a spinster. The family dynamic is overshadowed by their deceased eldest brother, Vorne, the 'Hero of Khartoum,' who apparently died attempting to reach his regiment with a vital dispatch over a decade previous.
All in all, the vivid, detailed descriptions of lands, peoples and battles is worth the read, not to mention the romantic aspects of the first book here in the trilogy. I am very much looking forward to the next book in the series.
Absolutely recommend to readers of historical fiction and romance.
This is a fascinating story of a military family steeped in tradition of generations past and especially of one deceased war hero in the late 1800's Britain.
The subject family having been raised by their grandfather details each of his grandchildren's lives. The struggle to overcome childhood health dehabititations, Vere, is an artistic soul, not having the same militaristic family pride. His younger brother, Val, still in school, yearns to join a different regiment than his forebearers causing a rift with his grandfather. An elder sister, Margaret, is in loveless marriage to a preacher and sister Charlotte suffers from a physical deformity and is a spinster. The family dynamic is overshadowed by their deceased eldest brother, Vorne, the 'Hero of Khartoum,' who apparently died attempting to reach his regiment with a vital dispatch over a decade previous.
All in all, the vivid, detailed descriptions of lands, peoples and battles is worth the read, not to mention the romantic aspects of the first book here in the trilogy. I am very much looking forward to the next book in the series.
Absolutely recommend to readers of historical fiction and romance.
August 6, 2020
Took a long time to read this book - even in Lockdown as I’ve been working throughout. Plus the chapters are really long - up to half an hour each, which makes it harder to have quick reading sessions here & there in between everything else.
Classic family saga set in the late 1800’s, focuses on the men of the Ashleigh family (Val, Vere, Vorne) who are all living in the shadow of an older brother who died with honours at war.
Each brother - and sister - must find their own way, whether their old fashioned grandfather (who has no time for anyone that doesn’t join a specific regiment and go to war) likes it or not.
First in a trilogy so I’m now moving onto book two - A Distant Hero. Hopefully I’ll get more time to read this one !
Classic family saga set in the late 1800’s, focuses on the men of the Ashleigh family (Val, Vere, Vorne) who are all living in the shadow of an older brother who died with honours at war.
Each brother - and sister - must find their own way, whether their old fashioned grandfather (who has no time for anyone that doesn’t join a specific regiment and go to war) likes it or not.
First in a trilogy so I’m now moving onto book two - A Distant Hero. Hopefully I’ll get more time to read this one !
June 18, 2019
Excellent read
You get involved with the characters and their problems. It was impossible to live up to the dead hero although all his family are trying too, with disastrous consequences.
You get involved with the characters and their problems. It was impossible to live up to the dead hero although all his family are trying too, with disastrous consequences.
January 29, 2021
A question of honor
A very well written book. I enjoyed the story of a family in Victorian England whose lives were centered around the families Military heroes, and how it influenced each of their lives.
A very well written book. I enjoyed the story of a family in Victorian England whose lives were centered around the families Military heroes, and how it influenced each of their lives.
August 6, 2018
Another Exceptional Read!
It is amazing how the author ‘s words can place the reader into the actual scene to include the sounds, smells, and actions!
It is amazing how the author ‘s words can place the reader into the actual scene to include the sounds, smells, and actions!
January 30, 2021
I am really enjoying this author's books. It makes you feel like you get to know the family personally. Reading the second book now.
December 29, 2015
One of the Knightshill series, it is of equal merit to its companions.
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July 29, 2016didn't like
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews