Set in the turbulent Border country and in glittering, decadent Paris in the years before the Armada, Judith Lennox's epic historical tale is rich in atmosphere and intrigue.
As England prepares for the threat of invasion, Catholic forces in France, Scotland and Spain plan the 'Enterprise of England', weaving a cat's-cradle of intrigue around the imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots, to bring her to the throne. In London, Sir Frances Walsingham, Elizabeth I's Secretary of State and master of espionage, pits his intellect against the forces that threaten England.
The Anglo-Scots border, too, is a battleground, an anarchic land whose people acknowledge no allegiance but to their family name. But Luke Ridley, illegitimate son of a gypsy, has no allegiances: he must earn his living in whatever way he can. He is caught up in treacheries both of his own and of Sir Francis Walsingham's making.
Into the dangerous melting-pot of Northumberland arrive Christie and Arbel Forster. Fragile, amoral Arbel is a catalyst for all the simmering tensions of the borders; Christie has her own obsession: to rediscover the family she lost years before in the terror of the French Wars of Religion. The blood-feud between the Forsters and the Ridleys has been in abeyance; now it begins to smoulder again, its embers rekindled by the passions and betrayals of the past.
