Amy has fascinated me for years, perhaps because, like the other historical women who have inspired my books, her story so often gets lost in a bigger one, in this case the relationship between Elizabeth and Dudley. Last year on a particularly wet and windy autumn afternoon, I made the trip to Cumnor to the site of the lost manor house, and from there to Oxford, to the University Church of St Mary the Virgin where Amy had been buried. Her tomb has also been lost.

This book is a very personal one for me, springing as it does from a love of Tudor history engendered in me by my beloved grandmother and I am as always immensely grateful to my family for their enduring love and support for my writing. For this book I am particularly indebted to my wonderful editor Emily Kitchin, whose ideas and suggestions inspired me to bring out the best in this story, and to Jon Appleton for his insightful copy-editing. A huge thank you too, to the teams at HQ in the UK and Graydon House in the US for all that they do to bring my stories to readers.

As always, I am most grateful to my readers. Thank you!

Keep reading for a special preview of

The Last Daughter of York

The dazzling new novel from USA TODAY bestselling author Nicola Cornick!

When Serena Warren’s painful past intertwines with an unsolved fifteenth-century mystery, she must piece together local folklore and her own hazy memories to try and make sense of centuries of family secrets...

Available from Graydon House November 2021!

Prologue

Minster Lovell Hall, Oxfordshire

Winter, sometime in the thirteenth century

Snow spattered the windows of the old hall, carried on the sharp north wind that spun it into fierce spirals before battering it against the diamond mullions. The wind howled down the chimney, and the snow fell on the hot embers of the fire with a hiss and burned away in an instant. No one noticed. There had been a wedding at Minster Lovell that day and the hall was hot, the guests drowsy with wine and good food, the atmosphere merry. Mistletoe boughs hung from the rafters and meat congealed on the plates. The minstrel sang a soft song of love whilst the bridegroom toyed with his empty goblet and contemplated his marriage bed. Then a shout went up for games and charades, for hoodsman’s blind or shove ha’penny or hide-and-seek.

The suggestion prompted a burst of clapping mingled with the groans of the drunkards. The room was split between those who wanted to play and those whose senses were too fuddled. The groom’s uncle and the dogs were all snoring, unashamedly asleep. There were no guests on the bride’s side; she was a beautiful orphaned heiress, and no one knew where John Lovell had found her. Some whispered that she was really a harlot who had ensnared him, others that she was a witch who had used sorcery to capture his heart. John Lovell laughed at the folly of the whisperers and seemed well pleased with his good fortune. He was a baron, noble but poor; the only item of worth in the entire house was said to be the Lovell Lodestar, a sacred stone that the family had held in trust since the earliest of times. All the food, the wine, the jeweled goblets they drank from and the golden platters crammed with meat had been provided by the bride as part of her dowry. Gossip about her was surely mere jealousy.