But Anne, do you love him?" I asked curiously. The curve of her hood hid all but the corner of her smile. "I am a fool to own it, but I am in a fever for his touch.

And – I think you know, don’t you? – that I love you, Anne.’ I feel as if I have been living in a loveless world for too long. The last tender face I saw was my father’s when he sailed for England. ‘You do? Truly?’ ‘I do.’ He rises to his feet and pulls me up to stand beside him. My chin comes to his shoulder, we are both dainty, long-limbed, coltish: well-matched. I turn my face into his jacket. ‘Will you marry me?’ he whispers. ‘Yes,’ I say.

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.

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

Sometimes you cannot help what you hear, you cannot help what you see.

Good god what men can do to their brains when their cocks are hard.

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