To Kiss a Spy Book

The Setting: England. Edward VI is king, but gravely ill.

Heroine: Lady Penelope (Pen) Bryanston, the daughter of Guinevere in WIDOWS KISS. She married a young earl who died suddenly, leaving her with child. She went into premature labor before her family could attend her and was told that she gave birth to a stillborn son, but she's sure she heard the baby cry. Nobody in her own family will believe her and in fact they do their best to discourage her from thinking of or speaking about her child. Supposedly this is done in her best interests, though I can't for the life of me see how that was supposed to work. Instead what it did was leave her alone and desperate. It made me think a great deal less of the lot of them and I really wanted her to be angry with them. Seriously, as it turned out both she and her son went through three years of hell that they might have avoided if her family had shown her the least little bit of respect and loyalty.

Hero: Owen d'Arcy, a spy who is assigned by his master to seduce Pen, as she is a confidante of Princess Mary. Word of Edward's illness is causing speculation about succession and Mary seems a likely heir. France wants to know her plans. A bonus is Pen's close relationship to her stepbrother Robin, who is a known cohort of John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland, one of the power brokers of the English court.

Pen is frustrated by her family's refusal to believe her doubts about her baby's death, and she's trying to investigate. She manages to get hold of a page from her in-laws' ledger from the day of her child's birth and is hoping that someone who was paid that day might tell her something. Owen discovers her sneaking about and later saves her from brigands. During the course of that evening he learns about her concerns and what she plans. He is going to use her quest to gain her cooperation in his own.

Pen is initially attracted to Owen, but then he offers to help her learn the truth about her son--if she will give him intel about Mary. She's hurt and repulsed by the fact that he would use her desperation and grief, but she IS desperate, so she agrees.

The truth as it turns out is worse than expected, and the story all ties in with the intrigues surrounding Edward's death and the succession, with characters in the story playing key roles in Mary's evasion of the plot to arrest her to secure the succession of Lady Jane Grey.

As always, good history, good adventure, and while this story didn't tear me up the way the first in the series did, Feather does provide us with two villains that you hate from the first pages of the story.