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It is 1568, three years since Ursula Blanchard exchanged her work as a spy in the service of her half sister, Queen Elizabeth, for the relative calm of married life. But when Elizabeth summons her, loyal Ursula senses there is more to her seemingly benign request than meets the eye. She is to pluck Penelope Mason, her inappropriately flirtatious protégé, from court and find the disgraced girl a husband, and she is also to deliver a secret warning to Elizabeth's arch rival, Mary, Queen of Scots. Gradually, Ursula comes to understand the true delicacy and danger of this mission. Exiled after the suspicious death of her husband, Mary is now a fugitive queen and a "guest" in northern England's daunting Bolton Castle. Ursula, with her blade-sharp acuity, can outsmart Mary's notorious charm and sidestep treasonous traps while extracting the truth. But can she protect those who look to her -- including young Penelope -- from a deadly game where, to those who hunger for power at all costs, murder is a small price to pay?
The year is 1569. Ursula Blanchard, illegitimate half sister to Queen Elizabeth I and sometime spy on the Queen's behalf, is happily married to wealthy Hugh Stannard and living quietly in the country. Ursula's thoughts are on domestic matters as she watches her daughter, Meg, grow up. Meg will soon be fourteen, so perhaps it is time to think of a betrothal. When an invitation to visit arrives from the powerful Duke of Norfolk, Ursula and Hugh welcome the chance for Meg to meet an apparently worthy young man of the Duke's household, Edmund Dean. Is he a possible husband for Meg? It's love at first sight, at least on Meg's part. Young Dean seems to admire Meg as well, and he's even more impres...
“Ursula Blanchard, lady-in-waiting and spy extraordinaire, returns in a new Elizabethan mystery steeped in suspense and historical detail.” —Booklist November, 1569: Happily married to her third husband, Hugh Stannard, Ursula Blanchard is hoping to give up her undercover work for Queen Elizabeth l in order to enjoy domestic bliss. But when Hugh unwittingly endangers possession of his ancestral home, Ursula is forced to take on a seemingly hopeless, but handsomely paid, private assignment—which the queen considers the perfect cover for a covert investigation into a group of rebel barons plotting to put Mary, Queen of Scots back on the English throne . . . “Ursula is the essence of iron cloaked in velvet—a heroine to reckon with.” —Kirkus Reviews “The worthy Ursula is an estimable heroine, and Buckley’s confident mastery of sixteenth-century British history lends an air of authenticity to her cleverly spun adventures.” —Booklist
An aide to the Tudor queen faces treachery—and accusations of witchcraft—in this series of “intelligent, historically accurate Elizabethan-era whodunits” (Booklist). Ursula Blanchard is rudely shaken on receipt of a threatening letter from the exiled Anne Percy, Countess of Northumberland, whose treasonous plot against Elizabeth I Ursula helped foil a few months previously. Ursula dismisses the countess’s letter as idle threats, but then a series of strange events rocks Ursula’s household—and Ursula herself is accused of witchcraft. Could Anne Percy really be orchestrating a plot against Ursula from her exile in the Netherlands? And, if so, how can Ursula prove it before she is hanged as a witch? “Ursula is the essence of iron cloaked in velvet—a heroine to reckon with.” —Kirkus Reviews “[A] sixteenth-century mystery series as complicated and charming as an Elizabethan knot garden.” —The Tampa Tribune
Ursala is sent to get a job in a Cambridge pie shop that may be the center of a plot against Queen Elizabeth.
Hoping for a quiet life with her young daughter after losing another husband, Ursula Blanchard finds herself once again in the service of Queen Elizabeth I when her believed-traitor cousin, Edward, is murdered in a clash of Anglo-Scottish politics.