Caprice and Rondo

The exquisitely-researched standalone prequel series to Dorothy Dunnett's revered Lymond Chronicles, following the ancestors of Francis Crawford of Lymond in Continental Europe.

Caprice and Rondo is Book Seven in The House of Niccolo series.
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'A companionable fellow who now spends his time raising hell . . .'

Winter, 1473, and Nicholas de Fleury's schemes have at last caught up with him, costing everything - friends, family and firm. Losing himself in the icy port of Danzig, he drinks and fights, but most of all he forgets.
Meanwhile, his wife Gelis, bruised from their years of dueling, sets off to find out the truth of her husband's lost parentage - and discovers a traitor within Nicholas's close circle of friends.
As Nicholas is drawn eastwards in a search for the lost gold to restore his fortunes, so the titanic forces he has long-attempted to marshal for his own ends reach out to exact a terrible price of their own . . .
'The best historical novelist since Sir Walter Scott' Sunday Times