I'm pleased to say that The Traitor's Wife is the gold medalist in the historical/military fiction category in the 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards.

The Traitor's Wife is a novel, but it is based on the life of a real person--Eleanor de Clare, wife of Hugh le Despenser the younger, whom historian Nigel Saul recently named as the worst Briton of the fourteenth century.

Granddaughter to King Edward I and daughter to the Earl of Gloucester, Eleanor was married to Despenser at age thirteen. She was a sister-in-law of Piers Gaveston, Edward II's first ill-fated favorite. Eleanor herself was close to Edward II, her uncle, and was even said by one chronicler to have been his mistress. It was her husband's relationship with the king, however, that would ultimately destroy both men and leave Eleanor a widow. When she remarried, it was to the man who had been one of her husband's captors and who had besieged the castle held by Eleanor's eldest son.

At various times, Eleanor was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Isabella, a prisoner in the Tower of London, an accused thief, a patroness of Tewkesbury Abbey, and the subject of a heated dispute between two men who each claimed to be her husband. Loyal to her husband and to Edward II, she paid the price for that loyalty during the early years of the reign of Edward III, when power lay not with the adolescent king but with Queen Isabella and her lover, Roger Mortimer. The Traitor's Wife, however, is not a story of victimization, but of strength and fortitude--the story of an extraordinary woman living in extraordinary times.

Her father-in-law, meanwhile, had returned to court and was paying his respects to the king. Edward had spent a very pleasant Christmas at Langley with
Gaveston and the queen, and was in good spirits. "And how is your family, Hugh? How is Philip?"

In the case of those he liked, Edward could remember all manner of minutiae. Philip had never been to court; Hugh had probably never mentioned his name
more than once or twice to the king. Yet Edward had never forgotten him. "He is a cause of concern to me, sir, as you may recall. He is not at all strong, and the winters are always bad for him. Would that he had a tenth of Hugh's good health." Hugh stopped awkwardly, for he had not intended to mention his eldest son.

"Aye, Hugh. And how are he and my little niece Eleanor?"

"Quite well."

"They are still at Loughborough?"

Hugh had a policy of never lying to his king. "No, your grace. They are-"

Edward saw his advisor's discomfiture. "Abroad."

"Yes, I am afraid so. Abroad."

Edward shook his head. "Without license and against my orders. Hugh, you know I cannot let this pass unnoticed. If your wild son flouts my authority in this manner, what will the barons who hate me do? I must seize his lands."

"You must do what you must do." Hugh grimaced. "He is my beloved son, but he has always been lacking in a sense of propriety. It is that Warwick streak, I
think."

"What does he do on these jaunts of his?"

Hugh could answer truthfully. "I don't know, your grace. He is a grown man, and minds my own affairs splendidly when I am unable to attend to them
because of my duties here. I ask no questions, and he tells me nothing."

"Piracy."

Hugh and Edward turned to look at Gaveston, who had been bent over a table spread with maps during the whole of their conversation. Hugh was well used to
Gaveston's constant presence, but there were times when he had to acknowledge that it might irritate others. Though in all fairness, he reminded himself, Gaveston had always willingly left the room on the one or two occasions that Hugh had requested privacy. Did he do so for others? Perhaps not. Gaveston looked up and smiled dazzlingly. "He disappears for long stretches; he never seems to be in want of money when he returns, does he? So his wife says to my wife anyway-women do talk. I don't think with luscious little Eleanor there would be a wench he stays with, and such cost money anyway. He'd be coming home poorer if that were the case."

"That is utter nonsense. My son is not a pirate," said Hugh loftily. "And my young daughter-in-law is not luscious." He stopped, aghast at the trap he had
wandered into.

As the eldest daughter of the new Earl of Salisbury, young Bess de Montacute is anticipating a suitable match. When King Edward III and her father choose Hugh le Despenser, the son and grandson of disgraced traitors, as her husband, she is aghast. Meanwhile, Hugh must give up the woman he loves in order to marry the reluctant Bess.

Far apart in age and haunted by the past, Hugh and Bess must somehow make their marriage work. But just as they grow closer together, they are threatened by a merciless enemy that endangers all whom they hold dear.

Set against the chivalry and pageantry of the fourteenth-century court of Edward III, Hugh and Bess is a story of love and loss, of letting go of the past-and of embracing the future.

Despite her best efforts, Bess could not find fault with her suitor's appearance. Hugh's face, though not strikingly handsome, was agreeable to the eye; his clothes were rich but not gaudily so; and his lean body, neither too short nor too tall, was that of a soldier, not that of a lingerer at dinner tables. His smile when Bess entered the room revealed good teeth and lit up his dark eyes. He bowed. "My lady."

"Sir."

"Your parents and I have been discussing the fact that we fear there may be a delay in us getting married. It seems that your first husband's mother was a Clare, and of course my mother was a Clare too, though I don't think the branches ever got on particularly well." He smiled at her again. "But nonetheless, for reasons I've never quite understood, that will require us to get a papal dispensation. You know what that is?"

"I am not a fool, Sir Hugh. Of course I know what one is."

"Yes, of course. I beg your pardon." Hugh had the look of a man getting up after a bad fall from a horse. "I don't think it will pose much of a difficulty, though, as the relationship is not a close one by any means, and for grounds I can tell the Pope that it is necessary to promote harmony between my family and yours. As my family was out of harmony with virtually everyone in England until recently, I'm probably not stretching the truth."

The Earl of Salisbury chuckled, and Hugh, back in the saddle, so to speak, continued, "Your parents have told me that you will be coming to live with me when we are married. I am very pleased to hear it. I must warn you that my furnishings are rather plain, as I have been single for so long, but I am sure that between you and your mother and my aunts and sisters we could get them looking nice very soon."

"I am entirely capable of choosing my own furnishings, Sir Hugh."

"Of course."

The earl shot his prospective son-in-law a look of commiseration.