Mary, the beautiful younger sister of Henry VIII, was given in marriage to elderly and ailing King Louis XII of France ‘for reasons of state’. Within a year, she wore the white robes of mourning as a widow, and doubts thronged her mind. Would her royal brother keep his promise not to force her to a second marriage? Hilda Lewis finished Heart of a Rose not long before her death, and in its pages completed with undiminished mastery the story of Mary, whose early life she narrated with such a skill in Rose of England. "Rose of England" is the first in a two-book series about Mary Tudor. The second is "Heart of a Rose".
