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“A Norman heiress was a chattel to be sold in marriage to the highest bidder. If one husband died she was up for sale again. Only the first of Matilda de Risle’s husbands gives her anything back. His is the customary Saxon morning gift — the present to a wife if her lord finds her sexually pleasing on their wedding night. Matilda’s morning gift was Dungesey in the Fens…”a bolt hole my, dear somewhere to hide should trouble come.” And come it does. As the war between King Stephen and Empress Matilda in the 1140s tears England apart, Matilda de Risle has to fight for her land, her son’s safety–and her own life. Matilda, snobbish, bossy, inquisitive, realistic, competitive, and tough, is at once a powerful and endearing central character in Diana Norman’s splendid new novel of medieval English life. It is set in a barbarous civil war and is by turns violent and very funny. Above all it fills the pages with real people, with the scents of the Fens in all seasons, and tells in the end a heartwrenching love story.”
Dear Mrs Norman,
This blurb really tells why I’ve enjoyed all of …
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