Some women attract desire. Others do not.
Tell my daughter Elizabeth – no! Tell all my daughters, everywhere, in all the ages yet to come. Tell them how I died, and why. And tell them to remember this: the future is unwritten. Know your rights.
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.
Before anything else I was a woman who was capable of passion and who had a great need and a great desire for love.
But young hearts mend easily, and hearts that own half of England have something better to do than to beat faster for love.
She looked at me as if for a moment she would seek someone who would understand the dreadful predicament of a woman, in this world ruled by men.
I wanted the heat and the sweat and the passion of a man that I could love and trust. And I wanted to give myself to him: not for advantage, but for desire.
When it’s done, it’s done. And no one will know until it’s done.
Oh yes. Draw your hem back from my mud, little sister.
It’s a fool who is afraid of nothing,” I say. “And a brave man is one who knows fear and rides out and faces it.
If you are a reader, you are already halfway to being a writer,” she says. “For you have a love of words and pleasure from seeing them on a page. And if you are a writer, then you will find that you are driven to write. It is a gift that demands to be shared. You cannot be a silent singer.
Have learned that the most precious thing is a place where you can be as you are, where someone can see you as your true self.
Either you have me or not at all. Either you love me or not at all. Either I am all yours or I am nobody’s. I will have no half-measures with you.
I am a woman who makes things happen, and I am not defeated yet. I am not defeated by a boy with a newly won crown, and no man will ever walk away from me certain that he won’t walk back.
We are both people of faith,” he said quietly. “Our enemies should be the people who have no faith, neither in their God, nor in others, nor in themselves. The people who should face our crusade should be those who bring cruelty into the world for no reason but their own power. There is enough sin and wickedness to fight, without taking up arms against people who believe in a forgiving God and who try to lead a good life.
I will make my own future, not predict it. I don’t need a charm to tell me what I hope will happen. I throw the gold charm which is like a wedding ring up in the air and catch it before it falls. This is my choice. I don’t need magic to reveal my desire. The enchantment is already done: I am in love; I am sworn to a man of earth; I am not going to give this man up. All I have to do is consider how we can stay together.
I wanted to get away from him before he led me into talking, before he made me feel angry, or grieved, or jealous all over again. I did not want to feel anything for him, not desire, not resentment. I wanted to be cold to him, so I turned on my heel and started to walk away.
I won’t forgive this wrong done to me and my house, whoever it was that killed my boys, I shall put a curse on their house that they will have no first born son to inherit. Whoever took my son will lose his son. He will spend his life longing for an heir. He will bury his first born and long for him, for I cannot even bury mine.
I feel as if I can think only when I see the words flowing from the nib of my quill, that my thoughts make sense only when they are black ink on cream paper. I love the sensation of a thought in my head and the vision of the word on the page.
We the daughters of Melusina,′ she corrects me. ‘Your grandmother was a daughter of the water goddess of the royal house of Burgundy and she never forgot that she was both royal and magical. When I was your age I didn’t know whether she could summon up a storm or whatever it was all just luck and pretence to get her own way. But she taught me that there is nothing in the world more powerful than a woman who knows what she wants and walks a straight road towards it.