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Today we are delighted to feature Sarah Stuart’s book, Dangerous Liaisons
DANGEROUS LIAISONS
by
Sarah Stuart
WHAT’S THE BOOK ABOUT?
Lizzie, daughter of a wealthy Scottish Laird, inherits a Book of Hours passed secretly from mother to daughter for almost five centuries. It belonged to Margaret Tudor, James IV of Scotland’s queen, who used it as a diary. On her deathbed she wrote I direct and beseech my heirs to find love where they may. Love is a gift of God, not of kings.
Lizzie finds love with charismatic Michael, a young man born in poverty but destined, with her unstinting help, for stardom and celebrity status. The couple develop a passionate relationship, fraught with misunderstandings. Marriage drives Lizzie to decipher the queen’s coded secrets, desperate for comfort while Michael tours the world leaving her to bring up the children.
Lizzie, as Queen Margaret decreed, passes the Book of Hours to their daughter, Lisette. Her role model is Jeanne, the queen’s manipulative, vengeful, granddaughter. The result is immorality and a crime the whole family conspire to hide from the paparazzi, but can Lizzie forgive the man she loves a graver sin than Queen Margaret’s traitorous betrayal of a king?
HOW DOES THE BOOK START?
Lizzie Cameron sat cross-legged on the bare boards in the loft, reading her grandmother’s copperplate writing by the light of a torch.
This sixteenth day of October the Year of Our Lord 1541, Methven Castle. I tire yet I must write for my beloved daughter comes hence. I pray I live to give unto her this book and charge her to give it also unto a daughter conceived in love. I direct and beseech my heirs to find love where they may. Love is a gift of God, not of kings.
1541: almost five hundred years ago. She delved into the box found searching for a battered suitcase for university. A thin sheaf of papers hid a book: it was the size of a thick paperback, bound in soft leather decorated with a Tudor rose picked out in coloured stones. Balancing the torch on a chair, she opened the cover. The fly-leaf carried an inscription.
This thirtieth day of November 1489, Richmond Palace. I bestow this gift on my first begotten daughter Margaret on this her Christening Day. Tis my will and pleasure that she doth live humbly and reverently in obedience to God, to Henry VII by the Grace of God king of England, and to her lady mother, Elizabeth the queen.
Were the stones glass, or white diamonds and pigeon-blood rubies?
She turned the illuminated vellum pages, breathing the musty smell of years: a calendar of religious feasts, excerpts from the gospels, the order of daily prayer, and lots more. It was a Book of Hours like those displayed in museums.
An interested spider dropped from her curls and crawled between the printed texts, as if following the illegible words it had written there. She relocated it onto the chair and her torch crashed to the floor. She froze. The last thing her parents needed was waking and she was immediately above their suite. Silence: the house and its many occupants still slept. She fetched the torch. She could make out letters but words still defeated her.
‘Lizzie!’
MEET SOME OF THE CAST
Lizzie: Is 18 and the only child of the wealthy Laird of Kinloch, Lizzie regards herself as ordinary, until she discovers she carries royal blood, and her mother asks for her promise to obey the queen’s command to find love. Actually a willowy beauty with long red curls, she thinks she’s too tall, hates her freckles, and she bites her nails. She sings to entertain guests, but has no ambition to make it a career.
Michael is 21 and the youngest son of a widow. He’s hidden from backstreet poverty by acting with a local amateur dramatic society. Tall, with long black hair, blue eyes, and charisma he can’t see in himself, he often played Shakespearian leads, and he sang while he worked in the family chip shop. In London at last, success as a professional actor seems an impossible dream.
Lisette, Lizzie and Michael’s eldest daughter: Lisette spends much of her childhood and teenage years at the home of a reclusive musical producer; Lizzie is his PA and Michael, by now a superstar, is usually abroad on concert tours. Very like her mother in looks, Lisette has inherited her father’s talent for acting and singing.
Clement Fynn, producer and musical impresario: Clement has his own reasons for being uncommunicative about his past, for writing a musical, Greensleeves based on Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and for casting Lisette as Michael’s leading lady in another musical eighteen years later. He is medium height, 50, and plump with smoky-grey eyes,
Margaret Tudor, James VI of Scotland’s queen: At 13, Margaret travels to Edinburgh to join the man she married by proxy. Determinedly romantic, but nervous, knowing she has a poor dowry, she is shocked to discover the king has mistresses and many illegitimate children. Treated as a breeding machine to provide a male heir, she is left lonely.
WHO SAYS WHAT?
Lizzie to Michael. ‘We only have one life. No second chances. No, I got that wrong. Go back and try again. This is our life, our chance to make it together, and we will, if you stay with me.’
Michael to Lisette. ‘Lisette, do you realise you’ve put your whole future in jeopardy? Clement could replace you with your understudy for this, and he very well might. How do you think he feels? His leading lady has walked out two days before the premiere… no explanation… nothing… and you expect him to trust you?’
Lisette to Lizzie. ‘I direct and beseech my heirs to find love where they may. I did, and it’s wrong. You’ve forgiven Michael, but he’ll never forgive himself.’
Clement to Lizzie. ‘I’ve loved you since the day you waylaid me in London and told me you’d been waiting to see me four days and a bit.’
Queen Margaret, deciphered from her Book of Hours, Ailsa sits late on the bench without. The hoot of an owl shalt herald the coming of the king’s servants. Will there be time for my Jean-Pierre to hide or will he meet his death this night? Twas he who played my lady’s maid and he who sleeps close to me as I write. For this one night alone I will burn if I must. Love such as we share be for a lifetime. If that life be short what care I, or he?
WHERE DOES THE STORY TAKE PLACE?
Michael hummed while his dresser removed screws from a crate. It was Sunday and thirteen solid days of work lay ahead, but Greensleeves was completed. Lizzie had succeeded in persuading Clement to write music for the final scene, and the props manager gloated over the scaffold, having it rolled out every chance he got, oil can in hand.
Henry’s jousting armour rattled with the authentic clash of metal. Frank selected the helmet. ‘Sit down, Michael. I want you to try this on. You’ll be carried onstage so it mustn’t fall off, or be so tight it skews your wig when Keket removes it.’
‘According to Lizzie, Anne wasn’t there. She miscarried when she was told by a spiteful Lady-in-Waiting that Henry was dying.’
Frank fixed his wig. ‘Mr Fynn wants Keket onstage.’
He chuckled. ‘Clement talks about historical accuracy, but he takes liberties.’
‘Anne is beheaded, and who knows what the real Anne was thinking? Ghosted autobiographies are published when the people are alive.’
A knock on the door interrupted. ‘Michael’s wanted out-front.’
Frank replaced the red wig on its stand. ‘Blast. I thought when you came in early we could get the armour sorted.’
‘Lizzie won’t be in for dinner before nine. I can stay on a couple of hours after rehearsals.’
‘Careful, slips like that are easy to make… Don’t look so worried. Dressers know everything, including how to keep quiet.’ He grinned. ‘Good cook, is she?’
‘Fantastic, but Clement keeps her late and she comes in starving. Dinner’s my job.’ He checked his watch. ‘No wonder I was called. She and Clement will have been here ages.’
The whole cast, and most of the theatre staff, were sitting in the auditorium. Esme, who had evidently called in her dancers early, stood onstage, baton raised and the ballerinas a frozen tableau. In front of them, speaking into a wireless mike, was a small man with spiky iron-grey hair and a voice that reminded him of Father Clough in one of his worst moods. ‘And so, ladies and gentlemen, I shall be directing Greensleeves.’ He gestured to Esme. ‘I’ve arranged a rehearsal room for the ballet. It’s far too important to be squeezed in at odd moments.’
Directing? He looked for Clement and Lizzie: their seats were empty.
The man pinned him with a gimlet eye. ‘You missed my arrival. My name is Keith Johnson. No doubt you are aware I’ve directed many Fynn productions. Remember I prefer to be addressed as Mr Johnson. Onstage, now, and you too, Keket.’
He followed his co-star up the steps. He’d never heard of Keith Johnson, but he didn’t seem the sort of man to appreciate him vaulting over the orchestra pit. With the all-powerful Clement he’d never given it a thought.
TELL US ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sarah has a passion for the theatre, wildlife, history and travel, all of which come together in the Royal Command series. Dangerous Liaisons is the first novel, and it takes the reader for an unrivalled peep behind the scenes of a musical and the threat to celebrities from the scandal-hungry paparazzi: all of it based on real-life interviews and experiences.
WHAT DO READERS THINK?
‘A gripping storyline with so many unexpected twists and turns it kept me enthralled until the very end. A must read, from a very talented author.’ – Angela G
‘Like The Notebook or Bridges over Madison County, I truly enjoyed reading Dangerous Liaisons. – Michael Kroft
‘A beautifully written page turner! Sarah Stuart effortlessly blends history and passion, past and present, in this compelling read.’ – Maggie Adams
‘A well told story that is disturbing emotionally, and builds until it leaves you stretched, alarmed, yet warmed inside, and better to have read it at its end.’ – Philip Dodd
‘I especially enjoyed the mixture of history, love, and theater that ran like a solid red line throughout the book. Very well written.’ – Isabell
DANGEROUS LIAISONS is available from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
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