The Lady of the Rivers (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #1)

by Philippa Gregory

She was his lady, he was her knight, and at this, the very first test, he had failed; now she was somewhere lost in the darkness, and he could not find her.

Woodville stands in the archway of the great gate to bid us farewell. He comes beside me and, without thinking, checks the tightness of the girth on my horse, as he always does. “How shall I manage without you?” I ask. His face is grim. “I shall think of you,” he says. His voice is low, and he does not meet my eyes. “God knows, I shall think of you every day.”

“Oh, look at her,” I say gently. “She is a tiny little thing, and a long way from marriageable age. Her mother will keep her home for another ten years, surely. You will have half a dozen babies in the cradle before Edmund Tudor can wed or bed her.” We both look down the room at the girl whose little head is still bobbing up and down as if she wishes someone would speak to her. The queen laughs. “Well, I hope so; surely a little shrimp like that will never make a royal heir.”

This is about Margaret Beaufort and LITTLE DO THEY KNOW

Why would I order the French to attack Sandwich?”

Stop why did I laugh

I see the charm that I threw into the deep water of the Thames tied to the ribbons, a different ribbon for each season, the charm shaped like a crown that washed away and told me that the king would never come back to us. I see it deep in the water, dangling on a thread; then I see it being pulled to the surface, up and up, and then it breaks from the water like a little fish popping on the surface of a summer stream, and it is my daughter Elizabeth who smilingly pulls it from the water, and laughs with joy, and puts it on her finger like a ring.

“Don’t look at me, I must smell,” I say, suddenly remembering my clothes and my hair and the raised welts of flea bites on my skin. “I am ashamed of myself.” “You should never have stayed there,” he says, glancing at the queen. “You should never have been there. You should never have been left there.” Margaret gives me a merry smile. “He has been most angry with me,” she says. “He is not speaking to me for rage. But see, here you are, safe now.” “I am safe now,” I agree.

I love their love it was kinda the reason I kept going with this book, fictionalization and what not they are OTP

“Richard,” I whisper. “Beloved,” he says hoarsely. “You’re safe?” “I always come home to you.”