Read more
Zusatztext "Fantastic historical fiction filled with royal intrigue.... Buckley makes the Elizabethan era fun." -- The Midwest Book Review Informationen zum Autor Fiona Buckley Klappentext Ursula Blanchard "is the essence of iron cloaked in velvet -- a heroine to reckon with", said Kirkus Reviews of Fiona Buckley's intrepid sleuth. And the sharp-witted Lady of the Presence Chamber will need every ounce of her courage if she is to carry out her latest mission on behalf of Queen Elizabeth I without betraying her own heart.Eager for a respite from intrigue and moral ambiguities, Ursula agrees to travel to France to help her first husband's father bring his young ward home to England. But duty soon calls. Fearing that the pro-Catholic forces threatening to tear France asunder will spread to Protestant England, the Queen instructs Ursula to personally deliver a secret letter to Catherine de Medicis, offering to mediate the crisis.Not only will the perilous journey separate her from her young daughter, it will bring Ursula closer to a man she can neither trust nor forget -- her estranged second husband, Matthew de la Roche, avowed Catholic and enemy of Elizabeth.As it becomes clear that someone seeks to thwart her mission, she realizes she can trust no one but herself, and that only she can uncover the truth hidden in the shadows of treason, greed, and desire that darken her way. Chapter One: Treasured Memories Sir Robin Dudley, Master of the Queen's Horse, had broad shoulders and swarthy good looks, a dashing taste in doublets, and a great deal of personal charm. I was a young woman of only twenty-seven and I ought to have found him attractive. Instead, I detested him. He wasn't a kindly man, for one thing, and I appreciated kindness. The uncle and aunt who saw to most of my upbringing had so conspicuously lacked it. And for another thing, Dudley came of a family so fiercely ambitious that his father and one of his brothers had lost their heads for plotting against their sovereign, and Robin once came near to plotting against her himself. Queen Elizabeth knew this perfectly well, but remarkable individual though she was, in this respect she was the one who was conventional, while I was not. Dudley's masculine beauty entranced her and at twenty-eight, not much older than I was myself, she was not yet hard enough to have that handsome head and that muscular set of shoulders separated by the executioner's ax. She and Robin were not lovers, but he was still her favorite. There were those who looked on her liking for him with a sentimental eye; for instance, Sir Henry Sidney, who had married Dudley's sister. Well, Sidney had the virtue of kindness but in him it sometimes went too far. As Sir William Cecil, the Secretary of State, once said to me in a private fit of exasperation, Sidney was too sweet-natured for his own good and every now and then his intelligence drowned in the sweetness like a wasp in a jam pot. "On this business of the queen and Dudley," Sir William said furiously, "Sidney is a simpleton." The majority of the council members were not simpletons and they were anxious. My immunity to Robin's attractions was useful to them. For although I was outwardly just a Lady of the Presence Chamber, I also took a wage from Cecil for (among other tasks) keeping an eye on Sir Robin Dudley and reading his correspondence whenever I got the chance. As a way of earning a living, it sometimes hurt my finer feelings, but somebody had to do it, for Elizabeth's sake. I should be honest, though. I owe Robin something. In 1560, eighteen months after Elizabeth took the throne, I came to her court as a widow with next to no money. My husband was dead of the smallpox, and I had a small daughter to rear. I entered the risky but remunerative world of spying through an errand that Dudley asked me to do, and because of that, I was thereafter ab...
