Kissed by Shadows Book

Up front, I'll just say that I can't see why the villains of this piece went to such extremes to breed a royal bastard when the story so proliferates with them.


The setting: England. Mary has ascended the throne and married Philip of Spain. The story centers around the queen's futile efforts to bear a child.

Royal bastard #1 is literally royal. King Philip. The story opens with him and some of his toadies standing over a young woman who is unconscious on a daybed. The toadies assure the king that she is drugged senseless and will remember nothing. They then set up a privacy screen so he can rape her while they stay in the room as witnesses to the act.

When it's over, royal bastard #2 is directed to tend to her. He covers her where the king left her naked. She wakes and looks into his eyes, looks at a brooch at his collar. He puts his hand over her eyes and when she drifts off again, he carries her out to royal bastard #3, her waiting husband.

The heroine: Lady Philippa (Pippa) Nielson, the second daughter of Guinevere (heroine of The Widow's Kiss). Pippa's married to Stuart, who is a great friend and shares her love of fashion (cliche alert--this is apparently a subtle hint), though his lovemaking has been more dutiful than passionate. But he's been even more of a disappointment lately. This is not the first morning Pippa has awakened feeling queasy and finding sticky fluid between her thighs. She Stuart out for not having the decency to at least wake her. Did I mention that his lovemaking was boring? Must be, if she believes she keeps sleeping through it. Stuart flushes and then blusters about being drunk and just couldn't resist, and anyway she's his wife to use as he pleases, and she drops the subject, tho she makes it clear she will not be pleased if it happens again.

Pippa and her husband are at court, although Pippa is much in disfavor. She was a lady in waiting and friend to Elizabeth, and voluntarily went to the Tower with her. Mary, who sees plots everywhere, has since imprisoned Elizabeth at Woodstock in Oxfordshire, but refused to let her be attended by any but strangers. Pippa, whose support of Liz is viewed as borderline treason, is required to remain at court, not even permitted to see her family in Derbyshire. The queen treats her with contempt and dislike, which is sure to win the loyalty of any subject. But then Mary wasn't concerned about winning loyalty by being a decent, kind, or merciful queen, either in this story or in history.

One day at court Pippa sees a man and stops dead in her tracks. His eyes are familiar--she's seen them before but can't figure out where, and the more she tries to place him the more she gets this really creepy scary feeling. He sends her a complicit gaze as if they share a connection (?!). She asks her stepbrother Robin who he is and learns his name is Lionel Ashton, an Englishman who has lived in Spain and is one of Philip's men. Later she encounters Lionel and asks if they've met, and when he denies it she asks why he seems so familiar, he says he couldn't say with an amused tone. Because a good guy would be amused by that question under the circumstances.

If you haven't guessed yet, the king (with Bloody Mary's approval, as well as Stuart's cooperation and the facilitation of other toadies including Lionel) has been raping Pippa in order to breed an heir to secure Spain's claim on England. Mary is in her 40's, and while he is also trying to breed a legitimate heir with her, if that can't happen they'll take Pippa's baby and claim it is theirs. And thus far the plan is working well. Pippa is in fact pregnant (which is a relief so we don't have to see more than that one royal rape). And the queen thinks she's knocked up as well, a claim confirmed by her physicians and various symptoms.

Pippa is puzzled when the queen insists that she be tended by the royal physicians, disregarding her protest that she's more comfortable with her family's physician. The waters get even murkier when she is placed under house arrest and ordered to stay out of the royals' sight. Odder still, instead of her husband, Lionel is assigned to supervise her activities; she's not allowed to leave her chamber without his consent. She can't figure out why the king and queen would on one hand show such forceful interest in her pregnancy and yet not want to lay eyes on her and treat her like a prisoner. And she cant get a straight answer from anyone, certainly not Lionel and least of all her husband.

Some of Stuart's behavior has made her think that he has a mistress, but one day she wanders past a half-open door and hears her DH knocking boots (and a few sundry other bits) with another guy (I know you must be faint from the shock). Pippa doesn't know this just yet, but it seems the king and his toadies found out and threatened Stuart's lover with exposure (which would mean a gruesome death), if he doesn't deliver Pippa. Stuart has his priorities, and his wife doesn't rank quite as high as his boy toy. But he feels bad about what he's been doing to her, so he shuns her and treats her like crap to make up for it. Feather goes to some effort to make his quandary sympathetic. We're meant to root for him to find a way out of this trap, which he quite rightly recognizes will end with his death when he's no longer useful, but he doesn't care as long as his lover is safe. And I guess you could argue that by rendering Pippa senseless before he takes her to be raped, he makes sure that she won't have any knowledge that the royals might find inconvenient. So there's that. But still, I couldn't make myself care much what happened to him. No matter the motivation, what he did was brutal and cruel and done to someone he'd already abused by using her as his beard.

As for Lionel, well, let's just say he is toadying to Philip for reasons of his own. Good reasons--when you read them you will fully grasp some of the horrors of those days. But while you can sympathize with his goals, they simply don't justify his actions, not only going along with the king's violation of a subject, but keeping Pippa in ignorance, not warning her or trying to find alternatives (like, oh, I dunno, maybe a noble but slutty woman who would willingly screw the king, hand over her spawn, and keep her mouth shut in exchange for a tidy fortune)? Lionel feels guilty, which is meant to make us like him, but it just made me angry. He is constantly assuring himself that he will make it right. But how "right" could he possibly make this? His plans to "help" this innocent, lively woman who loves her family turn out to be cruel in their own way. It's explained away--supposedly he was so set on his own goal that he thought that any discomfort suffered by the victim was justified--he didn't really feel bad about it until he had to face that he was doing this to a beautiful woman who happens to warm his loins (makes ya wonder whether his conscience would've even flickered if she happened to be fugly).

Ok, sorry. I just hated this guy all through the story and I never got past it. So I gakked up hair balls every time this couple sucked face and flipped past the pages where they did the nasty, since it just felt like more violation to me, particularly when she's banging him while still ignorant of what he's helped the king do to her.

Oh, and towards the end he has the balls to claim that even before he knew her he loved her? But earlier he tells her he went along with all this before he knew her. Yeah. Some love there, buddy.

Even so, once again, the book gets lots of stars because I was heart and soul caught up with the heroine's plight. I cried--and I'm not an easy mark when it comes to that. I actually yelled at the book a time or two. And, if the "romance" required me to stomach a "HEA" with royal bastard #2, I'll say this--Feather does at least leave you wondering how that's going to happen, given Pippa's inconvenient marriage of convenience (and it doesn't work out the way you probably think!). And Pippa's rationale at the end was almost satisfying. I still might've rather seen Lionel eat midden, but eh, OK. Oh, and some decent adventure and well-researched history as well. Even though the rape/baby swap part of the story is fiction, you'll realize that England really dodged a bullet when Mary's baby turned out to be a tumor, and Philip's manner of death was probably karma at work. Nuff said.

I recommend this entire series, and Feather has a permanent place on my favorite authors list.