The letter came in secret, with a pearl eardrop from an aunt long
thought dead, resurrecting the forbidden past. Banished by her spiteful
half sister, Queen Mary, to Hatfield House in the English countryside,
25-year-old Princess Elizabeth cannot refuse the summons. The Boleyns
are in grave danger. And Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, is marked
for death by a master poisoner whose reign of terror may have royal
sanction.
With her few loyal retainers, Elizabeth escapes to Kent. Here, in her
ancestral Hever Castle, now held by the Queen's loyalists, Elizabeth
seeks to unravel the plot against her. And here, in the embrace of
intrigue and betrayal, the princess must find a brilliant, powerfully
connected killer--before the killer finds her....