You’ve always been one of many, she said brutally. There are dozens of us Howard girls, all with good breeding, all well taught, all pretty, all young, all fertile. They can throw one after another on...
You will not be a beautiful woman at court with nothing to do but make magic. The road you have chosen will mean that you have to spend your life scheming and fighting. Our task, as your family, is to...
Wideacre faces due south and the sun shines all day on the yellow stone until it is warm and powdery to the touch. The sun travels from gable end to gable end so the front of the house is never in sha...
Why not?’ She asks the most challenging questions that a woman can ask. ‘Why should I not read? Why should I not think? Why should I not speak?
When I rose up the queen was looking toward me, not as if I were a rival, but as if I were still her favorite little maid in waiting who might bring her some comfort. She looked at me as if for a mome...
What’s your family? he demanded through clenched teeth. Boleyn. What’s your kin? Howards. What’s your home? Hever and Rochford. What’s your kingdom? England. Who’s your king? Henry. Then serve them. I...
What's your family? he demanded through clenched teeth. Boleyn. What's your kin?Howard's.What's your home?Hever and Rochford.What's your kingdom?England.Who's your king?Henry.Then serve them. In that...
We’re in this together. This is for all of us: Boleyns and Howards. We all rise or fall on this. We’re all waiting and playing the long game. You have to lead the charge, Anne. But we’re all behind yo...
Well hear this,' she hissed in my ear. 'Hear this Mary. I am playing my own game and I don't want you interrupting. Nobody will know anything until I am ready to tell them, and then they will know eve...
We wind our way past Tower Hill and the scaffold that stands there, where my father ended his life, and I bow my head to his memory, and remember his hopeless struggle against Queen Mary. I think how...
We say that we are the rulers of this country, but we do not make a rule of law. We say that we command these people, but we do not lead them to peace or prosperity. We, their own lords, quarrel among...
We are making a new order, he said. A new world. There is talk of the end of the authority of the Pope, the map of France and Spain is being redrawn. Everything is changing, and here we are, at the ve...
We are joint heirs,' I said in a sharp undertone. 'The land will always be partly mine.'Richard smiled, a smile like midsummer skies. 'I shan't regard it.' He said sweetly. 'And you don't know the law...
They are girls to whom things happen, and they take it hard. But I bear myself as more than a silly girl. I am the daughter of a water goddess. I am a woman with water in her veins and power in her br...
She was a woman whose spirit had been hammered and forged until she could only ring true. Compared with the rest of us sho was silver, while we were pewter, a common of lead and tin.
No, I said. I don’t think I’ll ever have a fancy for a man. Hard luck on the man who loves you, Will offered neutrally. Very, I said. I shot a sideways look at him. A disaster for the man who loves me...
Militant might in women is named as unfeminine aggression; scholarship in women is diminished into a domestic art. Religious life is viewed as sexual chastity rather than spiritual awakening to an int...
Learn you to die! means consider how your death is meaningful, as your life is meaningful.
I’m a lady. It’s none of it mine. Look at you. You’re doing well enough—is your wife a rich woman? He chuckled sheepishly at that. She’s my wife. She does as well as I do. But she doesn’t own anything...
It’s not a question of wanting to be queen; it’s not even a question of wanting honorable love anymore. I am mad for him, I am madly in love with him. I would go to him if I had to walk barefoot. Tell...