The fallout from a earlier exploit comes again to hang-out Queen
Elizabeth’s half sister.
Mistress Ursula Stannard, who’d like to steer a quiet life caring
for her estates and elevating her son, Harry, is disturbed by a go to from Sir
Robert Dudley, who tells her that he’s simply offered neighboring Knoll Home to
widower Giles Frost, a Catholic service provider. When Ursula receives a message from
Walsingham, the queen’s spymaster, she is aware of one thing disagreeable is coming her
approach. Earlier than she will be able to reply his summons, her servant Roger Brockley, her associate
in lots of a harmful journey, finds his son, Philip Sandley, shot useless by a
crossbow. Though Philip had been concerned within the kidnapping of Harry (The
Reluctant Murderer, 2018), Brockley grieves his solely little one and vows to seek out
his killers. When Ursula travels to Greenwich Palace, Walsingham asks what
looks as if a small favor: for her to go to Knoll Home along with her companion,
knowledgeable needlewoman Sybil Jester, and train her new neighbor Frost’s twin
daughters, Joyce and Jayne, to embroider whereas dropping false details about
the British fleet that Frost will go on to the Spanish. However first she should
take up the issue of a stained glass window within the native church that’s so
ugly that it disturbs youngsters and parishioners alike. She hires Grasp
Julius Stagg, a designer and creator of stained glass, to interchange the window,
which somebody’s simply damaged. On a go to to the studio he exhibits her a
magnificent chest that holds a shocking silver salt cellar he’s giving his
niece Eleanor as part of her marriage ceremony dowry. Quickly thereafter, Stagg and a
tearful Eleanor beg her to seek for the chest, which they declare has been
stolen and hidden at Knoll Home. Regardless of her misgivings and the recommendation of her
pals, Ursula agrees—a mistake that can put her and Brockley in far worse
peril than a few of her most harrowing duties for the queen.
Extra cerebral than lots of Ursula’s prior escapades however nonetheless an
genuine Elizabethan cliffhanger.
