The rose without a thorn - Jean Plaidy

From the pen of legendary historical novelist Jean Plaidy comes an unforgettable
true story of
royalty, passion, and innocence lost.

Born into an impoverished
branch of the noble Howard family, young Katherine is plucked from her home to live
with her grandmother, the Duchess of Norfolk. The innocent girl quickly learns that
her grandmother's puritanism is not shared by Katherine's free-spirited cousins,
with whom she lives. Beautiful and impressionable, Katherine becomes involved in
two ill-fated love affairs before her sixteenth birthday. Like her cousin Anne Boleyn,
she leaves her grandmother's home to become a lady-in-waiting at the court of Henry
VIII. The royal palaces are exciting to a young girl from the country, and Katherine finds that her duties there allow her to be near her handsome cousin, Thomas Culpepper,
whom she has loved since childhood.

But when Katherine catches the eye of the aging
and unhappily married king, she is forced to abandon her plans for a life with Thomas
and marry King Henry. Overwhelmed by the change in her fortunes, bewildered and flattered
by the adoration of her husband, Katherine is dazzled by the royal life. But her
bliss is short-lived as rumors of her wayward past come back to haunt her, and Katherine's
destiny takes another, deadly, turn.