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  Louise stopped typing and gazed out of the window. Her new study in the farmhouse spare bedroom looked south over her fields and towards the common. It was early autumn. Andrew was ploughing a field for winter wheat and seagulls flew up like a plume of silver white smoke from behind the plough. The common beyond the little red tractor was in shades of ochre, bronze, russet and sepia. The dryer higher patches of grass were a pale bleached yellow and where the autumn bracken lay thick, a foxy auburn colour predominated.

  Louise sat back, resting her feet on Rose’s mongrel dog Lloyd George, at his customary place under her desk. She re-read what she had written, unaware as usual that she had completely failed to comment on Lawrence but had successfully described her own emotional state.

  She rested a hand on the swell of her belly and felt for the first time the extraordinary sensation of the baby moving inside her. At once the little shape she had seen on the hospital scanner, the little patter of heartbeats, meant something more: the start of a new life, an individual taking shape, an heir for the farm, a child for Andrew and Louise.

  Lawrence, the patriarchy, the evolution of new sexual relationships all receded into the background. Louise sat very still, her eyes on the sweet slopes of the Sussex hills, a little smile on her face, waiting for their baby to move again.

  THE END

  About the Author

  Philippa Gregory is an internationally renowned author of historical novels. She holds a PhD in eighteenth-century literature from the University of Edinburgh. Works that have been adapted for television include A Respectable Trade, The Other Boleyn Girl and The Queen’s Fool. The Other Boleyn Girl is now a major film, starring Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman and Eric Bana. Philippa Gregory lives in the North of England with her family.

  Also by the Author

  The Tudor Court Series

  THE CONSTANT PRINCESS

  THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL

  THE BOLEYN INHERITANCE

  THE QUEEN’S FOOL

  THE VIRGIN’S LOVER

  THE OTHER QUEEN

  The Wideacre Trilogy

  WIDEACRE

  THE FAVOURED CHILD

  MERIDON

  Earthly Joys

  EARTHLY JOYS

  VIRGIN EARTH

  The Cousins’ War

  THE LADY OF THE RIVERS

  THE WHITE QUEEN

  THE RED QUEEN

  THE KINGMAKER’S DAUGHTER

  THE WHITE PRINCESS

  Standalones

  PERFECTLY CORRECT

  ALICE HARTLEY’S HAPPINESS

  A RESPECTABLE TRADE

  THE WISE WOMAN

  FALLEN SKIES

  THE LITTLE HOUSE

  ZELDA’S CUT

  Short Stories

  BREAD AND CHOCOLATE

  Copyright

  Harper

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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  Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

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  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1996

  Copyright © Philippa Gregory Ltd 1996

  Philippa Gregory asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

  Source ISBN: 9780002253154

  Ebook Edition © JULY 2010 ISBN: 9780007400003

  Version: 2013–09–04

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