In a court filled with repressed sexual longing, scandal, and intrigue, Lady Katherine Grey is Elizabeth's most faithful servant. When the young queen is smitten by the dashing Robert Dudley, Katherine must choose between duty and desire-as her secret passion for a handsome earl threatens to turn Elizabeth against her. Once the queen becomes a bitter and capricious monarch, another lady-in-waiting, Mistress Mary Rogers, offers the queen comfort. But even Mary cannot remain impervious to the court's sexual tension-and as Elizabeth gives her doomed heart to the mercurial Earl of Essex, Mary is drawn to the queen's rakish godson...
They were playmates as children, impetuous lovers as adults-and for thirty years were the center of each others' lives. Astute to the dangers of choosing any one man, the Virgin Queen could never give her "Sweet Robin" what he wanted most-marriage- yet she insisted he stay close by her side. Possessive and jealous, their love survived quarrels, his two disastrous marriages to other women, her constant flirtations, and political machinations with foreign princes.
His Last Letter tells the story of this great love... and especially of the last three years Elizabeth and Dudley spent together, the most dangerous of her rule, when their passion was tempered by a bittersweet recognition of all that they shared-and all that would remain unfulfilled.
In Tudor England, traitors are everywhere and the queen’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, is assembling the greatest intelligence-gathering network in the world. Walsingham’s only daughter, Lady Frances Sidney, is smart, courageous, and unhappy in love. She longs for the excitement of decoding encrypted messages and setting traps for those working for rival Mary, Queen of Scots. But Frances's father refuses her any opportunity to contribute to the desperate effort of keeping England safe.
Then Elizabeth, impressed with Frances’s fiery spirit, calls her to court as a lady-in-waiting, and Frances seizes the chance to prove herself. Soon, she wins the trust of her father’s de-coders and begins her secret work, thrilled with the freedom to test her talents. But her peril is compounded as her beauty and wit also attract the romantic attention of two men, one the reckless Earl of Essex and the other her own brilliant but low-born servant, Robert Pauley. And when Frances uncovers the most dire plot of all, she will risk her father’s condemnation, her heart’s longing, and her very life to safeguard her queen.
Then Elizabeth, impressed with Frances’s fiery spirit, calls her to court as a lady-in-waiting, and Frances seizes the chance to prove herself. Soon, she wins the trust of her father’s de-coders and begins her secret work, thrilled with the freedom to test her talents. But her peril is compounded as her beauty and wit also attract the romantic attention of two men, one the reckless Earl of Essex and the other her own brilliant but low-born servant, Robert Pauley. And when Frances uncovers the most dire plot of all, she will risk her father’s condemnation, her heart’s longing, and her very life to safeguard her queen.
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