A Chorus of Innocents

This time out, it's Sir Robert Carey's unhappily married love, Elizabeth, who solves a murder steeped in political intrigue. Lady Elizabeth Widdrington is buying two horses that had most likely been stolen in Scotland when her friend Poppy Burn arrives in a terrible state. Far gone in pregnancy, the hysterical Poppy reveals that her husband, James, a minister over the Scottish border in Wendron, was murdered by two strangers who also raped her. Despite the fact that Elizabeth knows her cruel and indifferent husband, Sir Henry, will be furious, she crosses the border herself, accompanied by young Henry and several Widdrington cousins, to see James properly buried. At Poppy's house she finds the strong-willed dowager Lady Hume of Norland, who's perhaps a little mad, doing all in her power to keep her beloved grandson, Hughie, out of the hands of Lord Spynie, the homosexual favorite of King James VI of Scotland. Although the border country is rife with stealing, murder, and clan...