Forsaking All Other
Formats: E-Book, Paperback
Love is no game for women; the price is far too high.
England 1585.
Bess Stoughton, waiting woman to the well-connected Lady Allingbourne, has discovered that her father is arranging for her to marry an elderly neighbour. Normally obedient Bess rebels and wrests from her father a year’s grace to find a husband more to her liking.
Edmund Wyard, a taciturn and scarred veteran of England’s campaign in Ireland, is attempting to ignore the pressure from his family to find a suitable wife as he prepares to join the Earl of Leicester’s army in the Netherlands.
Although Bess and Edmund are drawn to each other, they are aware that they can have nothing more than friendship. Bess knows that Edmund’s wealth and family connections place him beyond her reach. And Edmund, with his well-honed sense of duty, has never considered that he could follow his own wishes.
With England on the brink of war and fear of Catholic plots extending even into Lady Allingbourne’s household, time is running out for both of them.
Reviews
In 1585, Bess Stoughton, a young widow and well-loved waiting-woman to Lady Allingbourne, asks her father not to make her marry an old man she dislikes intensely, merely to cement a land-deal. In return she promises to secure a more suitable husband within a year. It is not easy for her as she is no longer young or rich enough. That is until she meets Edmund Wyard, but because he is a dour soldier with lands in Ireland to which he is anxious to return and fight, her friends discourage her. Not only that, but his domineering mother has reasons to dislike Bess intensely. Yet despite all this, they can’t take their eyes off each other. Forsaking All Other is a classy historical romance in which the Elizabethan period is well-depicted. Although the conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism does play its part in the plot, the fact the characters live far from the royal court with its well-known characters plotting and vying with each other, is refreshing.
