True obedience can only happen when you secretly think you know better, and you choose to bow your head. Anything short of that is just agreement, and any ninny-in-waiting can agree.
This is God’s victory: not mine.
She smiles. You know you can do nothing. What will be, will be. If there is a battle—I gasp but her smile is steady—if there is a battle, then either your husband will win, and your son will take the...
She had no idea, no better than my kitten, as to how she would survive in this kingdom of her enemies. She must have thought that George was her savior. But not for long. Nobody knows quite what happe...
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...
Makes no difference, he said, with his intuitive knowledge of my thoughts. No difference at all how your first marriage was. This is my marriage, and I want my wife in my bed. I laughed aloud and snug...
Life is a risk, who knows this better than me? Who knows more surely that babies die easily, that children fall ill from the least cause, that royal blood is fatally weak, that death walks behind my f...
Last time I danced in these rooms it was the Christmas feast and I was wearing a dress of silk as rich as Queen Anne’s own, made to the same pattern as the queen’s, as if to force a comparison between...
It’s still woman’s work whether it’s done in a great hall or in the kitchen, I said bitterly. I know it well enough. It’s earning no money for yourself and everything for your husband and master. It’s...
It is as I said. Your house’s emblem should not be the white rose but the old sign of eternity. Eternity? I repeat, hopeful that he is going to say something reassuring at this most dark time in our d...
If I refuse? I asked, my voice very thin. He gave me his most cynical smile that left his eyes as cold as wet coals. You don’t, he said simply. The world’s not changed that much yet. Men still rule.
I will learn to smile at my enemies.
I tried! God knows, Henry! I tried! I bore you a son, that he did not live was no fault of mine. God wanted our little prince in heaven; that was no fault of mine. The
I thought then that we would all die in the darkness and solitude. I thought that an executioner would come for us silently one night. I thought I might wake briefly with the weight of a pillow on my...
I shall be dark and French and fashionable and difficult and you shall be sweet and open and English and fair. What a pair we shall be.
I have overturned the order. Nothing will ever be the same for any woman in this country again.
I felt his hardness and I suddenly understood-an older girl would have understood long before-that this was the currency of desire. He was my betrothed. he desired me. I desired him. All I had to do w...
I am happy; I am in his arms, my face crushed against his padded jacket, his arms around me as tight as a bear, so that I cannot breathe. When I look up into his beloved weary face, he kisses me so ha...
Every day I dance attendance on one sister or the other and play pander to the king. Every day I deny my own desire, my own passion, I deny my own soul! I make my life a secret to myself. Now you come...
Edward lives as if there is no tomorrow, Richard as if he wants no tomorrow, and George as though someone should give it to him for free.