The baffling murder of a talented young artist draws Sebastian St. Cyr into a dangerous world of deadly intrigue in this exciting new historical mystery by the USA Today bestselling author of When the Wolves Are Silent.
London, November 1817. Juliet MacKenzie was the anonymous talent behind a popular series of satires famous for poking fun at high-profile figures in both society and government. So when she’s found murdered in a notorious Covent Garden brothel, Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, inevitably suspects the killer is someone angered by her unflattering portraits—with those close to the Prince Regent high on the list of possibilities.
But as one strange murder follows another, Sebastian and his wife, Hero, soon realize that Juliet was a woman of many secrets. And the discovery of a long-lost royal ring inscribed with the intwined rose and thistle of the Stuart kings suggests one of those secrets involved an ominous link between the controversial artist and the mysterious fate of the crown jewels of Scotland. Traditionally known as the Honours of Scotland, the jewels were supposedly bricked up inside the treasure room of Edinburgh Castle back in 1707, when the Acts of Union officially joined the kingdoms of Scotland and England into one political state. But it has long been whispered that the English actually brought the Honours back to London and have hidden them away in the Tower. If the truth of this ancient betrayal were to become known, it could easily shatter the increasingly problematic union of Scotland and England.
Sebastian suspects that Lord Jarvis, who is Hero’s father as well as the real power behind the Prince Regent’s fragile government, knows exactly what happened to both Juliet and the Honours. But when Hero becomes the killer’s next target, Sebastian begins to realize that the murderer may actually be closer to home than he ever imagined…
