A Deadly Betrothal
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
Queen Elizabeth’s proposed engagement to a Catholic Duke is causing turmoil throughout the kingdom in the gripping new Ursula Blanchard mystery.
July, 1579. Called upon to help a family friend who is horrified at the return of her errant husband after an absence of thirty years, little does Ursula realize that her involvement in the Harrison family’s domestic dramas will lead to a case of cold-blooded murder.
Matters become even more complicated when Ursula is summoned to court to assist in negotiations for Queen Elizabeth’s possible engagement to the Duke of Alençon. The proposed marriage between the queen and a French Catholic twenty years her junior is causing unrest throughout the kingdom. There are many who oppose the match – but would someone kill in order to prevent it?
Tensions increase when a prominent nobleman is accused of murder. Ursula is convinced the man is innocent – but can she prove it?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ursula Blanchard, the secret half-sister of Elizabeth I, struggles to deal with darkening conspiracies both at home and at Hampton Court, in Buckley's dramatic 15th Tudor mystery (after 2016's Heretic's Creed). In her last outing, Ursula faced danger in an eerie, snowbound religious house whose female residents possessed deadly secrets. This story may lack its predecessor's chilling atmosphere, but the narrative's focus on Elizabethan politics delivers a jolt of excitement in its depiction of the key players in the 1570s court. Buckley paints a sympathetic portrait of Elizabeth, a queen in her mid-40s, pressured to marry a much younger man for the sake of the country and consumed by terror at the prospect of sex and pregnancy. As for the mystery, when a teenage son of a friend disappears and is found murdered, Ursula's probing begins, with the death of a nobleman raising the stakes. The action builds to a satisfying conclusion.
