He has picked three of his most valiant, handsome young knights to vie for her hand. The Noblest Knight has discovered a loophole in Rosemarie’s parents’ Vow: If she finds true love and marries before her eighteenth birthday, she needn’t go to the convent after all. He's Noblest Knight, right hand of the High King, who rides through the land righting wrongs with his band of chivalrous young men. Until a month before her eighteenth birthday, when Rosemarie’s godfather shows up unexpectedly. Every time, she makes a grand proclamation that such a horrible thing will never happen on her watch again-but she never actually disciplines the perpetrators, and the cycle continues. Our heroine can’t go a day without happening on him boiling an elderly man alive, or caging a young father with rabid rats, for the pettiest infractions. Rosemarie has outlawed cruel and unusual punishment in her lands, but the sheriff casually breaks these laws all the time. And the sheriff doesn’t take her seriously. Abbot Francis Michael is on her side, but treats her like a child. Meanwhile, she struggles for control of her holdings.

She doesn’t really want to be a nun, but has resigned herself to it, seeing no other options. Rosemarie is now approaching her eighteenth birthday. She only found out by accident after both parents succumbed to the Plague. Her parents neglected to tell her about this Vow. They had to make the Vow of Hannah (I’ll get to it): if they could conceive, their eldest child would be given to the Church as a religious when said child turned eighteen. (There are already a number of things wrong with the story, but I’m just trying to get through the summary right now). Eventually, they obtained a relic, a Tear of the Virgin Mary, which would give them what they wished for. Somewhere that’s kind of like England, supposedly in the year 1390 –įor years, the Lord and Lady of Ashby struggled to conceive a child.

An uncertain choice by jody hedlund