2020-02-10
For Queen Elizabeth’s half sister and sometime spy, even a trip to visit relatives is fraught with danger in 1586.
Ursula Stannard’s last adventure (A Web of Silk, 2019, etc.) left her with twin girls to care for. One is now married; the other, 20-year-old Joyce, still lives with her and still blames her for her father’s incarceration in the Tower of London. While going over the ledgers for one of her properties, Ursula realizes that her trusted steward has been cheating her. When she and Roger Brockley, her longtime servant and partner in adventure, ask for an explanation, the steward tells them he’s being blackmailed by his Uncle Crispin about a youthful indiscretion. Deciding to kill three birds with one stone, Ursula, Joyce, the Brockleys, and a groom travel to Devon to threaten Crispin, visit her relatives, the Hillman family, and check up on two agents she recruited for Walsingham, the queen’s spymaster. Upon their arrival, Ursula learns Peter Gray, one of the agents, has been killed in a very odd accident and that Gregory Reeves, the other agent, was found frozen to death on the moor. Certain that neither death was accidental, Ursula begins to ask questions. Because a fire at her relatives’ house has made space tight, she and her party rent rooms from Henry and Catherine Gresham, a puritanical couple who are forcing their daughter, Mildred, into marriage with a much older man. Ursula seeks help from the vicar, Dr. Lucious Parker, and his homely but clever sister, Sabina. All too soon, word spreads about Ursula’s quest, and she nearly dies when she’s poisoned in a tavern. She recovers but becomes increasingly entangled in local affairs like Mildred’s doomed romance. Sick and tired of endless involvement in the queen’s business, she nevertheless feels it her duty to persevere even though she fears for her life.
An action-packed mystery bathed in impeccable historic atmosphere.
