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Authors: Ella March Chase

Tags: #Adult, #Historical

Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters

BOOK: Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters
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Praise for
Three Maids for a Crown

“With lyrical prose Ella March Chase tells the riveting story of the Grey sisters, from Lady Jane Grey’s nine-day reign to all that came after.
Three Maids for a Crown
is a beautiful tale that gives Jane, Katherine, and Mary Grey what they never had in life: a voice.”

—Christy English, author of
To Be Queen:
A Novel of the Early Life of Eleanor of Aquitaine

“Ella March Chase vividly portrays the paranoia of the Tudor court in
Three Maids for a Crown
. Lady Jane Grey and her sisters navigate their tragedy with compelling grace, ultimately powerless against the two queens who fear them. An absorbing and heartbreaking story.”

—Emma Campion, author of
The King’s Mistress

“In
Three Maids for a Crown
Ella March Chase powerfully evokes the courageous stories of the three truly unforgettable Grey sisters, saintly Jane, beautiful Kat, and misshapen Mary. Each maid triumphs, then falls prey to their cousins, first Queen Mary Tudor and then Elizabeth I, both queens terrified of the three maids’ royal Tudor blood. The sisters find the triumphant love their queenly cousins are denied, but each is forced to pay a heavy price. At last, Chase writes their untold story, woven throughout with fascinating period detail. Not to be missed if you love well-told Tudor stories, or if you have a sister.”

—Jeane Westin, author of
His Last Letter:
Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester

ALSO BY ELLA MARCH CHASE
The Virgin Queen’s Daughter

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Kim Ostrom

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Broadway Paperbacks, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

BROADWAY PAPERBACKS
and its logo, a letter B bisected on the diagonal, are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

eISBN: 978-0-307-58899-9

Cover design by Laura Klynstra
Cover photograph by Richard Jenkins

v3.1

In honor of perilous journeys to new worlds
.
Samuel Benedict Bautch, born November 11, 2009
.
Thank you for helping your gram remember joy when things felt darkest
.
I will never forget the moment you grabbed onto my finger and held on tight
.
I had been holding on to the promise of you from the day I heard you were coming, my very own king of the Wild Things
.
I can’t wait to discover what adventures life holds in store for the two of us!
In memory of my mother, Shirley Ostrom
.
She taught me even more about love, laughter, and courage of the spirit as she battled cancer and Alzheimer’s disease than she had in the precious years before. Here’s to smudged-up nail polish, giggling through pedicures, teaching me to golf, and serving as “fashion police” to the
Today
show anchors in your “Rianna pajamas” every morning. I miss you, Squeaky, every single day
.
Be happy, Mama. Be you again. Remember everything, especially how much I love you
.
Loving farewells to Rose Tidei, Cindee Taylor, Puck Bautch, and little Emmet
.
And hugs to those who said goodbye to loved ones when they didn’t want to:
Maureen and Cal, Carl and Ammon, Trudy, Stephanie, Kate, Kevin, Bob, Barb, Jim, Janie, Cindy, Beckee, Michael, Bethanee, and Garret
.
What have I to wager? Three maids for a crown
.
I send them in turn, each to London Town
.

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Part I

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen

Part II

Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two

Part III

Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

Reader’s Guide for
Three Maids for a Crown

About the Author

Prologue

L
ADY
M
ARY
G
REY
29
YEARS OLD
1574

eople tell me I was not on Tower Green to see my sister die when I was nine years old. They claim my child-imagination twisted the memory as the devil’s hand had my spine, or that I distorted the truth the way he dwarfed my frame. I confess there are times I even doubt myself. I am a most accomplished liar. That skill has kept me alive when far worthier souls died. It is no small feat, surviving the dark legacy of my Tudor blood. Just ask my royal great-uncle Henry’s six wives. Ask my lord father, my lady mother, my two older sisters, Jane and Katherine. To make such inquiries you would need a sorcerer’s art—for they are all dead now, moldering beneath chapel stones.

BOOK: Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters
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