1560: Amy Robsart is trapped in a loveless marriage to
Robert Dudley, a member of the court of Queen Elizabeth I. Surrounded by
enemies and with nowhere left to turn, Amy hatches a desperate scheme to
escape—one with devastating consequences that will echo through the centuries…
Present
Day: When Lizzie Kingdom
is forced to withdraw from the public eye in a blaze of scandal, it seems her
life is over. But she’s about to encounter a young man, Johnny Robsart, whose
fate will interlace with hers in the most unexpected of ways. For Johnny is
certain that Lizzie is linked to a terrible secret dating back to Tudor times.
If Lizzie is brave enough to go in search of the truth, then what she discovers
will change the course of their lives forever.
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PROLOGUE
Amy Robsart, Cumnor Village
They came for me one night in the winter of 1752 when the
ice was on the pond and the trees bowed under the weight of the hoar frost.
There were nine priests out of Oxford, garbed all in white with tapers in hand.
Some looked fearful, others burned with a righteous fervour because they
thought they were doing the Lord’s work. All of them looked cold, huddled
within their cassocks, the one out ahead gripping the golden crucifix as though
it were all that stood between him and the devil himself.
The villagers came out to watch for a while, standing
around in uneasy groups, their breath like smoke on the night air, then the
lure of the warm alehouse called them back and they went eagerly, talking of
uneasy ghosts and the folly of the holy men in thinking they could trap my
spirit.
The hunt was long. I ran through the lost passageways of
Cumnor Hall with the priests snapping at my heels and in the end, exhausted and
vanquished, my ghost sank into the dark pool. They said their prayers over me
and returned to their cloisters and believed the haunting to be at an end.
Yet an unquiet ghost is not so easily laid to rest. They
had trapped my wandering spirit but I was not at peace. When the truth is
concealed the pattern will repeat. The first victim was Amyas Latimer, the poor
boy who fell to his death from the tower of the church where my body was
buried. Then there was the little serving girl, Amethyst Green, who tumbled
from the roof of Oakhangar Hall. Soon there will be another. If no one prevents
it, I know there will be a fourth death and a fifth, and on into an endless
future, the same pattern, yet different each time, a shifting magic lantern
projecting the horror of that day centuries ago.
There is only one hope.
I sense her presence beside me through the dark. Each time
it happens she is there too, in a different guise, like me. She is my nemesis,
the arch-enemy. Yet she is the only one who can free me and break this curse.
In the end it all depends on her and in freeing my spirit I sense she will also
free her own.
Elizabeth.
I met her only a handful of times in my life. She was
little but she was fierce, always, fierce enough to survive against the odds, a
fighter, clever, ruthless, destined always to be alone. We could never have
been friends yet we are locked together in this endless dance through time.
I possessed the
one thing she wanted and could not have and in my dying I denied it to her
forever. For a little while I thought that would be enough to satisfy me. Yet
revenge sours and diminishes through the years. All I wish now is to be
released from my pain and to ensure this can never happen again.
Elizabeth, my enemy, you are the only one who can help me
now but to do that you must change, you must see that the truth needs to be
told. Open your eyes. Find the light.
Excerpted
from The Forgotten Sister by Nicola Cornick Copyright © Nicola Cornick.
Published by Graydon House Books.
About the Author
USA Today bestselling author Nicola Cornick has written over thirty historical romances for Harlequin and HQN Books. She has been nominated twice for an RWA RITA Award and twice for the UK RNA Award. She works as a historian and guide in a seventeenth-century house. In 2006 she was awarded a Masters's degree with distinction from Ruskin College, Oxford, where she wrote her dissertation on heroes.
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