You have to choose the best, every day, without compromise...guided by your own virtue and highest ambition

I would play ball with Catherine, and hide and seek: Not a very challenging game in an open meadow, but she was still at the age where she believed that if she shut her eyes and buried her head under a shawl then she could not be seen.

Every woman has to have something which singles her out, which catches the eyes, which makes her the center of attention. I am going to be french.

Although some people think I am a romantic novelist I have always thought of myself as a rather gritty radical historian.

But young hearts mend easily, and hearts that own half of England have something better to do than to beat faster for love.

I turn around from the window and for the first time I see him... It is Richard, smiling at my surprise. I run to him, without thinking what I am doing. I run to the first friendly face that I have seen since Christmas, and in a moment I am in his arms and he is holding me tightly and kissing my face, my closed eyes, my smiling mouth, kissing me till I am breathless and have to pull away from him.

When it's done, it's done. And no one will know until it's done.