Barbara of Austria is plain, quick-witted and sensible. She also desperately needs a husband, for unmarried at twenty-six, she is about to be packed off to a convent, like her sisters before her.
She seizes what seems to be her last chance – a proposal of marriage from
Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, Lucrezia Borgia’s grandson, clever, handsome, powerful – and widely believed to have murdered his first wife, Lucrezia de Medici.
Barbara goes into her marriage clear-eyed, fascinated by her dangerous, enigmatic new husband—and increasingly—recklessly—driven to discover the truth about his murdered first duchess.