but the throne is far from safe…

London, 1501. Henry VII’s heir is dead… Queen Elizabeth fears foul play, but there are few she can trust with her suspicions that their son has been murdered.

Instead she turns to Varina Westcott, candlemaker and widow. Despite the difference in their stations, Varina shares a bond with her royal mistress. Both women know what it is like to lose a child.

Now Elizabeth asks her confidante to do what she cannot and travel into the Welsh countryside to discover all she can about Prince Arthur’s death. Aided by the handsome and ambitious Nicholas Sutton, Varina’s mission will be a difficult one, as both Henry and Elizabeth have enemies determined to bring down the Tudor dynasty…

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM EBURY PRESS:

The Age of Desire

While novelist Edith Wharton writes of grand love affairs, she has yet to experience her own. Her marriage is more platonic than passionate and her closest relationship is with her literary secretary, Anna Bahlmann.

Then Edith meets dashing Morton Fullerton, and her life is at last opened to the world of the sensual. But in giving in to the temptation of their illicit liaison, Edith could lose everything else she holds dear…

Set in the Gilded Age of Paris society,

Jennie Field’s sumptuous novel retells

the true story of a scandal involving one of

the greatest writers of the 20th Century.

Praise for The Age of Desire

‘A fascinating insight into the life of my favourite novelist. Fields brings a secret side of Wharton to life, and shows us a woman whose elegant façade concealed a turbulent sensuality’ Daisy Goodwin

‘Perceptive… Deeply felt… Sheds welcome light on the little-known life of a famous woman’ Booklist

‘Delicate and imaginative. Fields’s love and respect for all her characters and her care in telling their stories shines through’ Publishers Weekly

Acknowledgements

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to have a circle of friends as loyal and unique as the ones Callie finds in Fairwick. Thank you to Gary Feinberg, Juliet Harrison, Lauren Lipton, Wendy Rossi, Cathy Seilhan, Scott Silverman, and Nora Slonimsky for reading this book in its awkward fingerling stages. Thanks to my husband, Lee, and daughters, Maggie and Nora, for their patience and encouragement as I travelled into the world of Faerie. Thanks to my editors on both sides of the pond for their continued support of the world of Fairwick—Linda Marrow and Dana Isaacson at Random House and Gillian Green at Ebury. And thanks to the many people at Loretta Barrett books, Random House, and Ebury whose hard work made this book possible.