Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot/Storyline: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Humor: A bit, yes

(These are all personal preference on a scale of 1-5 (yours ratings may vary depending what gives you feels and how you prefer you sex scenes written, etc) except the Steam Scale which follows our chart from The Ton and the Tartans facebook group )

Basic plot
This book is based on the real person Bess Hardwick. It follows her throughout her 4 marriages and life that lead her to Queen Elizabeth I’s court. Not a traditional romance, though it does read like one and has a HEA (As long as you don’t know the real history :P )

Give this a try if you want:
- Plenty of open door sex scenes – I’d count about 8 as flames and there’s some additional scenes I didn’t count (fade to black, shorter, not resulting in satisfaction, etc)
- You want a rags to riches story – our heroine Bess starts as basically a farmers daughter and ends up in the Elizabethan court, a countess, and wealthy
- You are okay with a few content warnings including some dubcon kisses (all sex is consensual), underage marriage (she marries her first husband very young), death of multiple husbands on page, imprisonment, levels of infidelity, and jealous husbands
- Story begins in 1533 and goes through 1570

Tropes:
- Masquerade, house party, older hero, children in the story, class differences, rags to riches

My thoughts:
I don’t know if I would have gotten this book from the library if I would have known what it was about. It’s one of the reasons I have put of Bertrice Small is knowing that some of the books follow the heroines arc with multiple men and HEAs instead of being a traditional romance of one main couple. But I got it blindly and just dove in. And there was something about this book that I enjoyed and I found myself eager to read it and didn’t want to put it down. This was a long book at around 500 pages of large hardback writing and I think it only took me 2 days to read it.

This led me down a research rabbit hole as I didn’t know anything about Bess Hardwick. Of course the real history ending to her romances is sad, but the book leaves off on a HEA.

So overall I found this book fun, the time change to Elizabethan times was needed because I’ve been living in Regency London for quite awhile. I really enjoyed Bess’s character and she had fabulous depth as the story is told from her perspective (there might be a few scenes from other people but it’s minimal). It had the heat in the bedroom Henley knows how to bring. Overall I’m really happy to have read it! It was my favorite by Henley so far.

Content Warnings

Brief mention of gypsy
Thoughts of adultery
Virgin on a pedestal thoughts from men
Dubcon kisses
Gifts of animal fur
Imprisonment
Death of husbands on page
Underage marriages

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

Pg 90 – first sexual experience with Barlow – he has one, she doesn’t, there’s no penetration (more like dry humping)
Pg 121 – kisses with Cavendish
Pg 151 – kisses and breast touches with Cavendish
Pg 155 – 🔥 fingering o with Cavendish
Pg 160 - 🔥  oral for her with Cavendish
Pg 183 – kisses and touches with Cavendish
Pg 203 – 🔥 missionary sex with Cavendish
Pg 231 - 🔥  her on top Cavendish
Pg 305 – kisses with Talbot
Pg 316 – missionary with William St. Loe (she doesn’t orgasm and it’s a bit disappointing)
Pg 322 – 🔥 hand job for St. Loe followed by missionary sex and instruction for him that she has a clitoris
Pg 332 – attempted sex but St. Loe is having erection issues
Pg 350 – 🔥 Shewsbury comes to the tower and fucks her against a wall
Pg 377 – kisses with Shrewsbury
Pg 407 - 🔥 fingering for her, missionary sex with Shrewsbury, oral for her 
Pg 419 – fade to black with Shrewsbury
Pg 435 – fade to black sex after a bath with Shrewsbury
Pg 438 - 🔥  from behind sex with Shrewsbury
I don’t have total pages but it was around 500