The pearl of France - Caroline Newark

In the autumn of 1299, as part of a treaty of peace between England and France, Marguerite, the nineteen-year-old sister of the French king, marries her brother's enemy, the elderly Edward I, king of England. She expects nothing from this marriage other than a lifetime of duty and obedience, but Edward is a man experienced in the art of pleasing a woman and he awakens unexpected passions in his young bride. Heedless of her mother's warnings about the dangers facing a second wife, Marguerite is consumed with jealousy when she discovers a rival for her husband's affections, a woman whose power and influence she can have no hope of defeating.

Marguerite believes she is content until she comes to desire a man who is not her husband and whose interests run counter to those of the king. When the quicksands of a Scottish war open beneath her feet and her beloved stepson finally rebels against his father, she is engulfed in a world of treachery, murder and hideous bloody revenge.

Written from an unashamedly female perspective, The Pearl of France burrows deep into the experiences of a woman living in the early years of the fourteenth century who witnesses not just the fatal attraction of her stepson, the young Prince of Wales, for another man, but also the horrors of the bloody conflict between her husband, Edward I, and Robert Bruce, would-be king of Scotland.

The Pearl of France is the second in a series of books about the women in Caroline's family tree. Marguerite, the titular Pearl of France, is the author's twenty-first great-grandmother and an almost unknown queen of England. The book will appeal to fans of historical fiction as well as those who have enjoyed Caroline's previous book, The Fair Maid of Kent.