Lord Peter Wimsey an unofficial attaché to the British Foreign Office. Harriet Vane contacts him about a problem she has been asked to investigate in her college at Oxford ("Gaudy Night"). At the end of their investigation, Vane finally accepts Wimsey's proposal of marriage. The couple marry on 8 October 1935, at St Cross Church, Oxford, as depicted in the opening collection of letters and diary entries in "Busman's Honeymoon". The Wimseys honeymoon at Talboys, a house in east Hertfordshire near Harriet's childhood home, which Peter has bought for her as a wedding present. There they find the body of the previous owner,
The Virgin in the Ice alongside Sherlock Holmes and Lord Peter Wimsey." She commended the author's deep knowledge of the area, where Ellis Peters lived when she wrote this novel, and of the times, saying "Her knowledge of the land and people and history permeates her work and gives her the incredible gift of transporting her reader into the past. You really do feel as though you are in that long-lost world lit only by fire, where it's quiet and green and life moves at a pace most people can be happy in." These two reviews accompany the "Second Cadfael Omnibus" (paperback 10 October 1991),