Acts of Faith — Patricia Wynn

In the summer of 1716, as King George celebrates victory over the Jacobite rebels, waiting-woman Hester Kean is sent into Yorkshire to ready her cousin Mary for life at Court. Nursing a broken heart, Hester is grateful for the change of scenery, but her peace is soon disrupted by the religious conflicts still stirring tensions in Great Britain.

   She befriends a fellow passenger on the stage, a neighbour of her cousins', who turns out to be a Roman Catholic, coming home after receiving an illegal education in France. When they arrive to learn that his father has been murdered, Hester efforts to help are stymied by the secrecy under which Catholics are forced to live. To solve the murder, she must delve into the practices Catholics used to shield themselves from the law and the neighbours who would do them harm.

   All is not grim, however. Hester's heart is instantly elated when Gideon, the outlawed Viscount St. Mars, aka the highwayman Blue Satan, appears at her cousins' house in the guise of a gentleman searching for an estate to buy. At last, Hester's doubts are banished. She knows that he loves her. But does he want her for his mistress or his wife? It will take a different sort of act of faith to seize the happiness she was convinced would never be hers.