King & Company
London, England, 1788
Henry Innes supports himself as a copy editor for the nascent Times of London, and as a stage manager at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, but he dreams of seeking his fortune in India - of becoming a nabob. His fantasies evaporate, however, when he learns that the East India Company requires a surety of two thousand guineas from its clerks.
All is not lost, however. When Henry is summoned to a remote estate in the Highlands, he learns he is the natural grandson of the laird, a former Director of the Company, who paid for his education at the Merchant Taylors. All his life, Henry has imagined a father conjured into being by his mother. Now, he stands to earn the laird's support in achieving his goal if he can save the decaying manor of Glenachulish from bankruptcy.
When a strangely well preserved corpse is found in a bog on the property, and an unreadable notebook discovered in the house during renovations, Henry's letter to the Royal Antiquarian Society is answered by Lady Moira, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Charlotte, female knight, Crown agent, and witch. With Henry's assistance, she undertakes an investigation, but she is really searching for lost Jacobite gold with which to discretely pay the Prince of Wales' debts. Whilst visiting Glenachulish, she realises Henry is a descendant of Britain's last Magician-in-Ordinary, and magical himself. Is he the "Theseus" she is seeking to fulfill her stepbrother's plan to find a new, potential Captain of Guides?
"My
dear Mr Innes," Lady Moira replied, bemused, "you’ve no idea what you’re
getting yourself into."
Returning to England with Lady Moira, Henry is quickly drawn into a world of political intrigue, sorcery, danger, romance, and esoteric studies under the notorious Captain "Jadoo" - Captain Joseph Pringle, her ladyship's stepbrother.
When King George III descends into a shadowland of dementia, a constitutional crisis erupts, threatening to bring down the government. If that happens, Henry's hopes are sunk. With his grandfather dead, he is reliant on the patronage of Lady Moira and Captain Pringle, who both serve the an isolated and vulnerable King. To make matters worse, Count Otto von Orloff has returned from circumstances he should not have survived. Fiercely anti-British, the Count has a score to settle with Pringle. Subtle, he prefers to hurt his enemies by killing those they love. Through the dark arts and human sacrifice, von Orloff plunges England into its worst winter in fifty years, driving the metropolis of London to the breaking point. He has a powerful wand, and he will slay anyone who gets between him and his vengeance.
***
King & Company is a meticulously researched historical fantasy set in Enlightenment Britain, on the eve of the French Revolution, in a rational world pervaded by a very real magic few people believe in.
This novel is currently unpublished, but the manuscript is completed. I am currently at the querying stage.
© 2026, William Lailey - NO PERMISSION is given for using this page to train or inform LLMs.
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