The Empty Noose (The Legacy of the Queen of Scots Book 5)

When Will Hepburn and Daisy Kirkcaldy return to Scotland in the winter of 1605 during the aftermath of the Powder Treason, they promise one another to leave English problems to the English. However, when the King’s First Minister Robert Cecil manipulates James into a purge of English Jesuits, Will is drafted into a plot to rescue the notorious escape artist, aristocratic English Jesuit, John Gerard, the only principal member of the Jesuit Mission to England who remains at large. Hepburn’s part in the rescue it should be a cakewalk. With a small crew of Fifeshire lands, he plans to sail his pretty pink La Belle Ecossaise to Hull Harbor where a band of Midland Catholics will smuggle Gerard aboard the Belle, which in turn will rendezvous with an armed Imperial warship in international waters. The priest will be on his way to the Jesuit College in Rheims to write his memoirs, and Hepburn will be heading home to his guidwife Daisy and his bairns. However, Robert Cecil has other plans for the dashing English Jesuit. One of Cecil’s spies has uncovered the plot, and the hunt is on. Cecil is ecstatic. It should be far easier to track a ship than flush a priest out of his hidey-hole. Besides, Cecil has a score to settle with Hepburn and his troublesome wife. They had escaped his wrath the previous year because of their ties to the Royal Family, but in the political climate of 1606, if the Scots were to appear involved in a plot to save England’s most notorious Jesuit, not even King James would dare intervene to save them. However, none of the players in the game had considered the possibility that Gerard himself might resist a rescue. Not that long ago, the world order had been torn asunder by one recalcitrant priest whose bold acts were inspired by his love of a woman. Rome could not afford another Luther, but neither could the Stuart Dynasty. The bastard son of the Queen of Scot’s third husband and the bastard daughter of her last knight ride into the breach one final time in order to rescue a fugitive priest whose escape is in the best interests of Scotland.