From the best-selling author of When Winter Comes (a story of the Donner Party) Elizabeth Tudor is dead. And creeping to the English throne comes James of Scotland, son of her mortal enemy, black-hearted Mary, Queen of Scots. Darkness falls across the land. In London, the men of the court engage in a vicious cat-and-mouse struggle for advancement. In their country houses, their wives and mothers play their own dangerous games of domestic and sexual politics. Beauty. Children. Love. Blackmail. Vengeance. Murder. These are their weapons. Caught up in this dark and treacherous world of ambition, power and betrayal, Joan and her two daughters face a terrifying ordeal …. Based upon the murder of the Earl of Rutland's young son, this is an imagining of the events leading to the accusations of witchcraft levelelled at Joan, Margaret and Philippa Flower.