Bücher von Fiona Buckley

Loyal Servant. Devoted Friend. Perfect target. Rumor has linked Queen Elizabeth I to her Master of Horse, Robin Dudley. And what rumors, at that: but for his ailing wife, Amy, Dudley would wed her majesty, the gossipmongers are whispering. To quell idle tongues, Elizabeth dispatches Ursula Blanchard to tend to the sick woman''s needs. But not even Ursula can prevent the "accident" that takes Amy''s life. Did she fall or was she pushed? Was Ursula a pawn of Dudley and the Queen? Suddenly Ursula finds herself at the center of the scandal, trying to protect Elizabeth as she loses her heart to a Frenchman who may be flirting with sedition against her Queen. She can trust no one, neither her lover nor her monarch, as she sets out to find the truth in a glittering court that conceasls a wellspring of blood and lies.

By the Queen''s command, she carried a letter that could alter the course of history -- or eclipse her own future.... Eager for a respite from her role as handmaiden to Queen Elizabeth I, Ursula Blanchard 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 deliver a secret letter personally to Catherine de Médicis, offering to mediate the crisis. Not only will the perilous journey separate Ursula from her young daughter, it will bring her 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.

Journeying to the side of her young ward, who has risked the queen's ire with her infatuations with the married gentlemen at court, Ursula Blanchard receives a new mission to spy on Mary, Queen of Scots, at the castle in which she is being imprisoned, an assignment that proves more dangerous than anticipated. Reprint.