Forsaking All Other
In 1585, Bess Stoughton, a young widow and well-loved waiting-woman to Lady Allingbourne, asks her father not to make her marry an old man she dislikes intensely, merely to cement a land-deal. In return she promises to secure a more suitable husband within a year. It is not easy for her as she is no longer young or rich enough. That is until she meets Edmund Wyard, but because he is a dour soldier with lands in Ireland to which he is anxious to return and fight, her friends discourage her. Not only that, but his domineering mother has reasons to dislike Bess intensely. Yet despite all this, they can’t take their eyes off each other.
Forsaking All Other is a classy historical romance in which the Elizabethan period is well-depicted. Although the conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism does play its part in the plot, the fact the characters live far from the royal court with its well-known characters plotting and vying with each other, is refreshing.
