The Lion and the Leopard (The Knights of England Series, Book 1)

A beautiful noblewoman in love with her husband. Who will betray him with a passionate affair that will help bring down a king.

Maria Rendell has tried to be a dutiful daughter and later, a dutiful wife, which should be easy. For hasn’t she married a knight about whom minstrels sing, a knight who saved the life of Edward II’s half-brother, Richard of Sussex, at the Battle of Bannockburn?

But Maria’s husband, Phillip Rendell, cannot happily settle down as husband and lord of Fordwich Castle. Maria fears Phillip has the mark of Cain upon him for he is always seeking something…more, something just beyond his reach. And while Maria desperately loves her husband, she is also drawn to their liege lord, Richard of Sussex. As he is to her.

After Phillip abandons Maria to indulge his wanderlust, she turns to Richard. Their passionate affair unfolds against the background of a crumbling kingdom. Edward II’s barons rebel against him and execute his favorites; across the channel, his wife, Isabella, the She-Wolf of France, and her lover ready an invasion.

While Richard remains faithful to his half-brother, the king, he is one of the few. King Edward is captured and imprisoned. As Richard and Maria make ready to flee to safety, Phillip returns, unaware that his wife and his lord have betrayed him.

The day of reckoning is at hand--not only for Maria, Richard, and Phillip, but for that most unfortunate of Plantagenet kings, Edward II.

Carefully researched, combining a skillful blend of historical and fictional characters, The Lion and the Leopard is the first of the five part series, Knights of England, which follows the lives and loves of Maria Rendell and her heirs through the fourteenth century— a time, not only of pageantry, glory, brutality and tragedy, but which helped shape England’s destiny even to the present day.