Bantam Australia 1998
Trade edition: ISBN 0-7338-0144-7
Paperback (1999): ISBN 0-7338-0199-4

  This was the novel I always wanted to write. When I was fourteen I came across the mention of a woman spy in the Wars of the Roses, and I promised myself that one day I would write a novel with her as the heroine. I only applied for universities that ran special courses on the fifteenth century. Well, eventually I finished the book. I even found the right publisher but the manuscript needed a lot of work and I did not have the experience to know how to repair it.  

Later, I joined a group of writers. They were all writing romance and I learned a lot. My old novel had too many viewpoints and did not focus sufficiently on the main characters. So I threw the whole manuscript out and rewrote it. I also had different names for my hero and heroine. In the frist draft, I had imagined the lady spy as a bastard daughter of Warwick the Kingmaker. In the meantime, I came across mention of a real life illegitimate daughter --Margaret and her husband, Richard Huddleston, at the coronation of Richard III.

There is a supporting cast of some of history's most intriguing characters: the overmighty earl, Warwick the Kingmaker, the gorgeous womaniser, Edward IV, and his treacherous young brother, George. Then there's his tenacious, ruthless enemy, Queen Margaret of Anjou and her wily cousin, the "spiderking", Louis XI.

This book has brought me such good fortune and I am grateful to the publishing team at Transworld Australia who believed in it so wholeheartedly. Here's the blurb:

  In 1470 the Wars of the Roses between the house of York and Lancaster threatens to tear England apart once more. In the middle of the conflict is a most unlikely heroine. For Margery, the beautiful and spirited ward of Warwick the Kingmaker, freedom is the only prize worth having. But it is a prize that could cost her her life. Sent to France on a mission for King Edward IV, she finds herself the target of a man who may be one of the king's most dangerous enemies.

Richard Huddleston is bold, enigmatic and devastatingly handsome. He is used to getting what he wants, and he wants Margery to be his wife. Margery suspects that Richard has abandoned the king and the House of York and is conspiring with the rebel queen and the traitorous House of Lancaster. Caught between her role as a spy and a fierce passion that neither she nor Richard can deny, Margery finds her heart exposed to the ultimate danger: falling in love. Yet she cannot admit her real mission to Richard. For if she stays true to her noble cause, she'll save many men... and lose the one that matters most.

Continue on to read an extract from this book.