The Betrayal of the Blood Lily

Informationen zum Autor Lauren Willig is a law student and Ph.D. candidate in history at Harvard University. She is the author of The Secret History of the Pink Carnation . Klappentext A New York Times extended list bestseller in hardcover-the sensational sixth book in the national bestselling Pink Carnation series. Whisked away to nineteenth-century India, Penelope Deveraux plunges into the court intrigues of the Nizam of Hyderabad, where no one is quite what they seem. New to this strange and exotic country- where a dangerous spy called the Marigold leaves venomous cobras as his calling card-she can trust only one man: Captain Alex Reid. With danger looming from local warlords, treacherous court officials, and French spies, Alex and Penelope may be all that stand in the way of a plot designed to rock the very foundations of the British Empire... Watch a Video Leseprobe Chapter One There were times when Lady Frederick Staines, nee Miss Penelope Deveraux, deeply regretted her lack of a portable rack and thumbscrews. Now was one of them. Rain drummed against the roof of the carriage like a set of impatient fingers. Penelope knew just how it felt. “You spoke to Lord Wellesley, didn’t you?” she asked her husband, as though her husband’s interview with the Governor General of India were one of complete indifference to her and nothing at all to do with the way she was expected to spend the next year of her life. Freddy shrugged. Penelope was learning to hate that shrug. It was a shrug amply indicative of her place in the world, somewhere just about on a level with a sofa cushion, convenient to lean against but unworthy of conversational effort. That hadn’t been the case eight months ago. Eight months ago they hadn’t been married. Eight months ago Freddy had still been trying to get her out of the ballroom into an alcove, a balcony, a bedroom, whichever enclosed space could best suit the purpose of seduction. It was a fitting enough commentary on the rake’s progress, from silver-tongued seducer to indifferent spouse in the space of less than a year. Not that Freddy had ever been all that silver-tongued. Nor, to be fair, had he done all the seducing. How was she to have known that a bit of canoodling would land them both in India? Outside, rain pounded against the roof of the carriage, not the gentle tippety tap of an English drizzle, but the full-out deluge of an Oriental monsoon. They had sailed up the Hooghly into Calcutta that morning after five endless months on a creaking, pitching vessel, replacing water beneath them with water all around them, rain crashing against the esplanade, grinding the carefully planted English flowers that lined the sides into the muck, all but obscuring the conveyance that had been sent for them by the Governor General himself, with its attendant clutter of soaked and chattering servants, proffering umbrellas, squabbling over luggage, pulling and propelling them into a very large, very heavy carriage. If she had thought about it at all, Penelope would have expected Calcutta to be sunny. But then, she hadn’t given it much thought, not any of it. It had all happened too quickly for thought, ruined in January, married in February, on a boat to the tropics by March. The future had seemed unimportant compared to the exigencies of the present. Penelope had been too busy brazening it out to wonder about little things like where they were to go and how they were to live. India was away and that was enough. Away from her mother’s shrill reproaches ( If you had to get yourself compromised, couldn’t you at least have picked an older son? ); Charlotte’s wide-eyed concern; Henrietta’s clumsy attempts to get her to talk about it , as though talking would make the least bit of difference to the reality of it all. Ruined was ruined was ruine...

Product details

• Authors: Lauren Willig
• Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 04.01.2011
• EAN: 9780451232052
• ISBN: 978-0-451-23205-2
• No. of pages: 512
• Dimensions: 135 mm x 203 mm x 27 mm
• Series: Pink Carnation Novels; Pink Carnation; Pink Carnation; Pink Carnation Novels
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature