Heart of Gold Read Online Free PDF Page A

it.”
    Elizabeth looked with loathing on the huge warrior. Like everyone else, she knew him to be among the English king’s friends, but she also knew him as the man who, four months ago, had escorted her sister Mary to England—and to a lifetime of suffering. She turned away; she had no desire to converse with him.
    “Wait, m’lady,” the knight sneered, calling loudly as she walked off. “Perhaps you or your sister can give my squire the name of a good physician.”
    Elizabeth felt the prickly heat wash over her as she hurried from the ugly scene. The onlookers’ laughs pounded in her head. Something brutal hung in the air around the man like a venomous cloud. She had to take Mary away from these vile people. She had to convince her father of that.
    Though she was half-English by birth, Elizabeth Boleyn had good reason to feel no shred of loyalty to England or to its people. France was the country of her birth, and for Elizabeth, it was home.
    Not that her childhood had been awash with sunlight. After her mother’s death, and before Mary and Anne had joined her, Elizabeth had spent long, regimented years under the loveless supervision of her English nanny, Madame Exton. With the exception of the moments when she’d been able to escape to her painters, Elizabeth would prefer to blot this period from her memory. From early on, this manipulative woman had given her young charge a bad taste of English ways, particularly regarding the use of intimidation in child rearing. Even though Madame Exton had continued to run Sir Thomas’s household in France through the years, life under the woman’s iron rule became much easier to endure once the three girls had faced it together.
    Sir Thomas Boleyn’s tent was clearly marked with the banner depicting the family coat of arms, and Elizabeth paused before approaching the attendant standing outside. Running her hands quickly down her skirts to straighten her appearance, she thought through what she wanted to say to her father and wondered once again why he’d sent for her. She knew him to be a hard man whose ambitions had taken him high in the government of the English king, but he was also her father. And he had always provided for her.
    Taking a deep breath, Elizabeth entered her father’s tent.
     
    “You don’t know her, Thomas,” Sarah Exton countered, never looking up from her needlework. “She won’t do what you want simply because you command her. You must work her to your will.”
    Sir Thomas Boleyn stopped to glare at his cousin and then continued his pacing, pulling irritably at his gray speckled beard as he crossed the room. “This is no girl’s game, Sadie. We are talking about the fortunes of this family. About—”
    The shadows at the tent’s opening stopped him, and he looked quickly at the attendant and the young woman who entered his spacious quarters.
    Elizabeth’s direct gaze captured the older woman’s. The once-over look that her father’s cousin gave her was clearly disapproving.
    “Good afternoon, Sir...Madame.” Elizabeth curtsied and stood quietly.
    “Come here, girl, and sit.” Her father waved at the chair by the woman and gestured for his squire to let them be. The elder man made no show of affection for the daughter whom he’d not seen in more than two years.
    Obediently, Elizabeth seated herself by her overseer, who now bent over her work, seemingly ignoring all around her.
    Sir Thomas paced the room, looking carefully at his daughter’s intelligent, flashing eyes, at the strong set of her mouth and chin. Just like her mother’s. But as Catherine had been gentle and forgiving when it’d come to him, Elizabeth was fierce and avenging. From the time he’d taken in the young girl when her mother died, Sir Thomas had never cared to be alone with her. Even as a child, she’d been able to turn his charity to guilt. Even now, her very presence was enough to prick sharply at his conscience, at the festering wounds that he tried to