This is the companion book to Deborah Swift’s, The Lady’s Slipper and can be read after it or as a stand-alone. Set in a wonderfully realised Restoration London in 1661, it tells the story of two sisters, Ella and Sadie Appleby, who flee their small village after the suspicious death of Ella’s employer and go to London to seek work, a new life and as a way of ridding themselves of the property they’ve stolen from Ella’s dead employee. After all, what good would it serve him?
But life in London is cruel and unforgiving. While the girls find employment, their mistress is a tyrant, and Sadie’s facial deformity makes her both stand out a target for pitiless jests and attention. Unhappy with their lot, when Ella is invited by the wealthy business dealer, Jay Whitgift to front a new venture he’s devised, it seems her luck has changed… But Whitgift is not the gentleman Ella thinks he is. Worse, her dead employee’s twin is determined to bring his brother’s killer or killers to justice, even if it means following the two young sisters to London and tracking them down himself. Such a thing shouldn’t be too hard, not when one has a red birthmark across her face…
Bringing history and cluttered, dirty London to life, Swift has written a wonderful story of loyalty, love, sisterhood, family, treachery and hope. The historical details are seamlessly woven into the sisters’ story and the setting is realistically and marvellously drawn. Carefully plotted, filled with rich characters that have their flaws and strengths, this book is hard to put down. It’s a treat for those who love historical fiction or simply a damn fine story.
The Lady’s Slipper by Deborah Swift is one of two books (the other is The Gilded Lily, but read this one first) that basically deal with a similar set of characters during the same period in British history, 1660 and the Restoration. Instead of being set in London or focussing on the royal family, aristocrats, and their various scandals (as so many wonderful novels set in this period are wont to do), this novel tells the story of Alice Ibbetson, a talented painter and the grieving wife of Thomas Ibbetson. Mourning the death of her younger sister a year earlier, Alice is finding it difficult to embrace life and even tolerate the demands of her rather dullard husband. Finding solace in her painting, she has become obsessed with not simply flowers, but capturing the beauty of various plants for posterity. When a neighbour, the rather strange but also fascinating Quaker, Richard Wheeler, shows Alice the location of a rare and very beautiful orchid called The Lady’s Slipper, which also happened to be her sister’s favourite flower, Alice knows she can’t merely paint it, but must preserve it for the future.
