"Betrayed Countess is Lisbette de Janquiere, and hustled through Boulogne, France at the start of the French Revolution by a retainer she'd learn to trust. She is young and innocent, a cosseted aristocrat. The retainer sends her as a stowaway to England with a roll of papers she is to deliver to someone. When she arrives at her destination, she finds the papers are blank and she'd been betrayed. Thus begins the saga of Lisbette, who changes her name to Bettina Laurant, and learns to stand on her own in a foreign country.Lewis is a very good writer. Her words sweep the reader through a time and place not written about too often. It is from the aspect of everyday people in Cornwall during the French Revolution, as they learn of events from gossip and newspapers. Some are false, while others rile the soul, but life goes on. What can one do about it? We work to feed our family. Bettina Laurant does that while listening to the wind blow information from across the Channel. She falls in love, worries about her mother who remains behind in France, a land in battled upheaval. She makes friends and learns what it is like to be a commoner.
Lewis shows this through meticulous research. We learn how it was to exist during this time in a Cornish Inn with its smells, hard work, smoky fires made of furze, or if one had an extra penny, sea coal. If one could time travel, I would have thought Lewis had done it, gone to Cornwall during the late 18th century and returned to write about it." ~ 4 Stars, Katherine Pym, Amazon Reader
Betrayed Countess
Forced from France by her devious guardian on the eve of the French Revolution, Countess Bettina Jonquiere must deliver an important package to further the royalist cause. In England, she discovers the package is full of blank papers, the address false and she’s penniless. Stranded in a Cornish village, Bettina toils in a bawdy tavern and falls in love with a man who may have murdered his unfaithful wife. Tracked by ruthless revolutionaries, she must uncover the truth about her father’s murder—and her lover’s guilt—while her life is threatened.
Forced from France by her devious guardian on the eve of the French Revolution, Countess Bettina Jonquiere must deliver an important package to further the royalist cause. In England, she discovers the package is full of blank papers, the address false and she’s penniless. Stranded in a Cornish village, Bettina toils in a bawdy tavern and falls in love with a man who may have murdered his unfaithful wife. Tracked by ruthless revolutionaries, she must uncover the truth about her father’s murder—and her lover’s guilt—while her life is threatened.
"Diane Scott Lewis’s debut novel is wonderfully researched and the reader is taken right into the drawing rooms, kitchens and taverns of the dark days of late eighteenth century England." ~ Historical Novels Reviews
“Diane Scott Lewis writes with a fresh, clear voice, keeping all the threads of betrayal, intrigue and lies from becoming tangled as she weaves them into her story.” ~ The Muse
"A love story steeped in secrets and set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, woven with the right amount of fact as well as fiction, each balancing the other in a perfect harmony. Diane Scott Lewis has the power of descriptive writing that makes readers feel as though they are traveling alongside Bettina as she faces the unknown. Simply brilliant." ~ Historical Novel Society
No comments:
Post a Comment