The Lady of Loyalty House: A Novel

"Peace! This is not the welcome I expected here. We did not think to find rebels tendered so delicately. Sir Rufus, we give you charge of Harby and of this gentleman. We will co...

He plucked off his hat as he spoke and waved it in the air with a flourish. "God save the King!" he shouted, loyally, and for the moment his heart was as loyal as his voice, unt...

Evander awoke in a strange world steeped in lavender. It was long since he had lain so soft, long since he had drifted out of dreams to breathe lavender. His pleased senses, les...

"And I assert the friendship of a lifetime," Evander persisted. His voice and his eyes were very merry, but there came an unconquerable gnawing at his heart that, in spite of th...

"You are a prisoner under sentence of death. If you die, what gain has the Parliament of you, and I must live a widowed woman." She was close to him now and very suddenly she fl...

"In the which judgment they erred, for he does not merit so creditable a praise. Sure they can never have seen him who couple in any way the name of Sir Blaise Mickleton with th...

"Well," continued Luke, "for that he deserves to be hanged, and yet he has taught me a trick of grafting roses which he says the Dutch use that might serve to save a worser man...

"Send him here top-speed," Brilliana commanded. With a whisk of flying skirts Tiffany scuttered back to the house, and Brilliana turned to Halfman, the laughter in her eyes seek...

"Nay, now--" he began, out of the consciousness of his own truer knowledge, but what he would have said was furiously interrupted by a volume of strange sounds from the adjoinin...

A most unmilitary titter rippled along the rank but broke upon the rock of Mrs. Satchell's anger. It might have seemed to many that it were impossible for the dame's cheeks to b...

"Sir, sir," he protested, "muskets will not mend matters if these gentlemen have been wronged. They came hot-foot to me, and in the interests of peace I have entreated them hith...

Whether Mrs. Satchell considered that Tiffany was like to be embarrassed by the attentions of the gentry, or whether she considered that those attentions diverted too much notic...

Take for our lady's loyal sake This vagrant tale of mine, Where Cavalier and Roundhead break A reed for Right Divine, A tale it pleasured me to make, And most to make it thine.

Unseen he stretched his hands as if in benediction towards Brilliana, and then went noiselessly out of the room. On the stairs he met Evander descending to say farewell to his h...