A Sprig of Broom by Margaret Blake

Summary:

Lady Cecily Hadfield has no alternative but to marry Thomas Cadwallader. However, Cecily is proud and haughty and promises that she will never be a meek and compliant wife to him, for he was part of the carnage that resulted in the death of King Richard.

Strong and beautiful, Cecily cannot envisage what fate holds in store, or realize how near to scaffold she so carelessly wanders...

Reviewer: BlackTulip
One more time Margaret Blake delivers a powerful tale full of danger at every corner. The action takes place at the end of the civil war between two rival branches of the royal House of Plantagenet: the houses of Lancaster and York; one of them won. Now is a time of reckoning, there will be no mercy for traitors. In these very uncertain times the life of a man means nothing, and the life of a woman even less.

This is the story of a noble young woman, Lady Cecily Hadfield, courageous, strong but also willful; who like many other women at that time is only a little pawn on a big chessboard, where no matter what happens, men always win. Power and greed is their creed. Caught in the world of political ambition and intrigue she tries desperately to navigate troubled water.

The new king "gives" her to a Welsh barbarian, Thomas Cadwallader, and she can do nothing about it. She is utterly powerless and quite alone, no one will come to her rescue. The only thing she can do is to stay true to herself, no matter what. She will have to be the wife of that man, there is no way out of it. He will own her body but he will never own her mind and her soul, never! She sees this new king and her new husband as murderers and usurpers, nothing more, nothing less.

Cecily and Thomas clash at first and this is an understatement. She taunted him each and every day tirelessly. I was not sure at the beginning if I was going to like her or not, but on the other hand I could understand why she acted this way. All I can say is that Thomas's tolerance to his wife was pretty high but only up to a point! Behind his cold demeanor Thomas is a good person but his pride is often a hindrance.

Page after page something happens, there is no rest. Each time Cecily says something outrageous to her husband, he reacts of course and it is an unending spiral opened to anything. Tension is very high!

Cecily will learn the hard way that willfulness is never a solution, on the contrary it can be extremely dangerous.

Margaret Blake created captivating characters. She has become an expert at mixing fiction with history, each time craftily balanced. This book is an action-packed story full of twists and turns. Wonderful book, I give 5 stars.

Publisher: Whiskey Creek Press LLC