Frances Gorges Trilogy - La série

As she helps to nurse the dying Queen Elizabeth, Frances Gorges longs for the fields and ancient woods of her parents' Hampshire estate, where she has learned to use the flowers and herbs to become a much-loved healer. Frances is happy to stay in her beloved countryside when the new King arrives from Scotland, bringing change, fear and suspicion. His court may be shockingly decadent, but James's religion is Puritan, intolerant of all the old ways; he has already put to death many men for treason and women for witchcraft. So when her ambitious uncle forcibly brings Frances to court, she is trapped in a claustrophobic world of intrigue and betrayal - and a ready target for the twisted scheming of Lord Cecil, the King's first minister. Surrounded by mortal dangers, Frances finds happiness only with the precocious young Princess Elizabeth, and Tom Wintour, the one courtier she can trust. Or can she?

Frances Gorges was accused of witchcraft - and she survived. But if her torturers at the court of King James discover she is pregnant with the child of Tom Wintour, her lover executed for his part in the Gunpowder Plot, it will mean certain death. Then Frances is offered an escape: marriage. She will not be expected to sleep with her new husband, only to give up the cause for which Tom died. But even when she is surrounded by the venomous dangers of life at court, Frances finds old loyalties hard to deny...

Frances Gorges has happiness within her grasp. King James would rather be hunting stags with her beloved husband Thomas than chasing witches, which means her medical skills and herbal knowledge no longer hang over her like a death sentence. Her family is growing and their estates are secure. But a new arrival at court brings intrigue, jealousy and danger. George Villiers is a young man with the face of an angel and the cunning heart of a devil. Soon James is besotted by this charismatic new lover. Former favourites are crushed with scheming and lies. Thomas's life is made a misery and Frances is back under suspicion as Villiers plots to marry her friend Katherine Manners and seize her fortune. Appalled at the courtier's greed and the King's weakness, Frances finds herself drawn back to her old friend Sir Walter Raleigh and his last, desperate plot to see a Catholic monarch on the throne. And then her troubles really begin…