1579, and Ursula is asked to help a family friend, Marjorie Harrison, who's husband has unfortunately returned after many years living with a widow. Events soon change when Marjorie's nephew goes missing. What other intrigues surround her.
A decent enough Elizabethan mystery but even with some interesting characters the story didn't really catch my imagination and pull me into the tale.
A NetGalley Book ( )

This is the fifteenth book in the Ursula Stannard series of Elizabethan mysteries that I have been reading over the last thirteen years, coming to know the main characters almost as though they are family members. As often, there are two plots: the national one where the 46 year old Queen is agonising whether she should overcome her overwhelming reluctance to marry, contemplating a union with Francis, duke of Alencon, brother to the French king, an alliance that will form a mutual assistance pact enabling each country to support the other against the Spanish threat; and the local one, with murder and land disputes affecting some of Ursula's distant relatives, entailing the usual travels across the country to investigate the evidence, including to a tin mine in Cornwall. I thought this book could have done with a family tree to keep track of the relevant relationships. Good, page-turning stuff, though I thought it wasn't as absorbing as the most recent two novels in the series. ( )

Elizabeth is about to accept the proposal of Francis de Anjou, the French Duke of Alencon. Although the Duke is 20 years younger than the Queen she is intrigued by his intelligence & interest in things similar to her.

Elizabeth calls upon her 1/2 sister, Ursula Stannard, to come to court & help her make the decision on whether or not to marry & advise Elizabeth on the more intimate intricacies of marriage.

After Francis is called back to France in order to deal with a problem in the Netherlands, Ursula meets & keeps company w/ the French envoys discussing the marriage proposal, while receiving & forwarding messages from Walsingham and Cecil to England's man in the French Court.

During the same period, Ursula & her household is investigating the disappearance of a youngster whose body is later found in a tree and then the murder of her former ward's husband... all related.

When Ursula discovers who the murderer(s) are, Cecil & Walsingham order her to stop investigating & keep her mouth shut.... (This is what gave me the identity of their messenger)

During this time unknown to Elizabeth, Robert Dudley, has secretly married the Queen's cousin Lettice Knollys, and when she finds out both Lettice (whom Elizabeth hates) and Dudley are banished from court.

After having dinner with the French envoys, one falls ill and the rumor is that Dudley poisoned the man... Which leads to a 2nd dinner, where everyone, including Dudley & Ursula falls ill and one of the Queen's Ladies dies....

I liked this, it seemed more realistic and stayed closer to the events of Elizabeth's betrothal to Francis of Anjou, Duke of Alencon ( )

Another satisfyingly complex Blanchard mystery.

Ursula Blanchard's life continues to be a maelstrom of activity. Garnering the occasional involvement in state secrets, heinous crimes of murder, advice to her sister Queen Elizabeth, all offset around the normal pace of life and country living. Ursula is always moving between the Queen's court, her Surrey home at Hawkswood, her second Withysham, which was in Sussex and visiting other places when called to by Lord Cecil, the Queen's treasurer or Francis Walsingham, the Queen's Secretary of State. Accompanied always by her devoted serving woman Dale and Brockley her loyal manservant and Dale's husband.
A letter from Cecil takes Ursula back to court and to her sister's side. Elizabeth is contemplating marriage with French royalty, Francis, the Duke of Alençon, a man twenty years her junior. A stormy contemplation. Elizabeth is fearful and worried, beset by fears of what marriage means for her, the physical intimacy, the fear of childbirth and how such a marriage might effect her kingdom.
Opening with the search for a missing boy in July 1579, the thread of that missing child becomes woven into seemingly unconnected happenings and meetings that have no discernible connection to the Elizabethan court intrigues. Ursula is called to a distraught friend's home. Her husband, missing thirty years has reappeared. The reunion is not pleasant!
At court Ursula becomes involved in a poisoning and the ructions around Elizabeth's view to marrying. Many are against it. Alençon is Catholic and this is making many at court nervous. Deaths draw the threads together in the most unlooked for places.
Ursula suspects, as she reflects at the beginning, that as she's been told by others, she's "a natural adventuress, that responds to the call of mysterious and secretive tasks as wild geese take wing in response to each other’s haunting calls." Sometimes Ursula should ignore the call!

A NetGalley ARC ( )