The Midwife's Secret: The Mystery of the Hidden Princess: formerly published as The Midwife's Secret: The Legend of La Belle Ecossaise (The Legacy of the Queen of Scots)

When Marie Stuart, Queen of Scots, surrenders at Carberry Hill to Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange, she is already noticeably pregnant. Under the terms of her surrender Kirkcaldy promises that Bothwell will be permitted to leave the battle field and the queen will be detained at Holyrood Palace until she comes to her senses and repudiates the man who many Scots consider the mastermind behind the assassination of King Henry Stuart, father of the infant Prince James. But the rebel lairds disregard the negotiated terms and send her to the Douglas stronghold at remote Loch Leven. Shortly thereafter she is reported to have miscarried twins. According to rumor, their remains were fed to hungry gulls. The queen is told by Morton's henchmen that unless she abdicates in favor of her son and names her treacherous brother James as Regent, she will meet a similar fate. The following spring she escapes the loch and raises and impressive army, but due to ineffective leadership and the queen's impetuous nature, the Regent's force prevails. The queen flees to England expecting support from Elizabeth Tudor that does not come. Her enemy James Douglas, Earl of Morton, is obsessed with rumors from Loch Leven that one of the twins survives. He orders excavations of the rocky shore and launches a search for bairns of the appropriate age. Like Herod before him, his search yields no fruit. Morton might have forgotten the rumors but for two curious reports which fuel the legend of the Loch. The first concerns a beautiful midwife who had fallen victim of Morton’s racking. After a rescue by Kirkcaldy who has changed sides in the struggle, she dies in Kirkcaldy’s arms. On the following day he leaves Edinburgh Castle and returns with a wee lass. “Her name is Daisy and she is mine," he declares. His long- suffering wife Margaret asks what makes him certain. “She is because I say she is.” Five years later, after Kirkcaldy has defected to become the queen's last champion, he surrenders the final Marian fortress to an English army sent to aid the newly elected Regent Morton, but Daisy is not among the refugees. A few years later Morton learns of a Scottish child at St. Pierre les Dames in Rheims who is hidden in a hole in the chapel floor when dignitaries visit and fiercely guarded by the abbess, Marie Stuart's aunt Renee. The child's name is Marguerite de Kircaldie but the nuns call her La Belle Ecossaise because of her remarkable beauty. Morton swears that an avid Calvinist like Kirkcaldy of Grange would not have sent his lovechild into the clutches of the ultra-Catholics of the House of Guises. Morton asks himself 'What if King James VI has a Catholic half-sister living in a nunnery in France? Would she not be the king's presumptive heir-—the she-devil Marie Stuart’s spawn conceived of the hated Earl of Bothwell?' Should such a child exist the Regent's ambitious plans for Scotland will be ruined. And thus, the hunt resumes. Against the rich tapestry of the Sixteenth Century, the midwife’s secret unravels as opposing forces seek to either protect or exploit the identity of the young woman at Saint Pierre, while Marguerite struggles for the right to choose her destiny, even at the risk of her life. (The book was introduced in November 2012 as The Legend of La Belle Ecossaise, the name by which the reformist 17th Century abbess Marguerite de Kircaldie was known.The actual Marguerite Kircaldie was a Scot of unknown origin who was hidden in cellars and hole at Saint Pierre les Dames during her youth. Her origin remains an unsolved mystery.)