PHILIPPA GREGORY
The Favoured Child
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Viking 1989
Copyright © Philippa Gregory Ltd 1989
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.
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Source ISBN: 9780007230020
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2012 ISBN: 9780007370139
Version: 2017-08-14
Contents
Before there was anything, there was the dream. Before Richard, before I even knew the hills around Wideacre, the sweet rolling green downs which encircle and guard my home – there was the dream. As far back as I can remember, the dream is there. Was always there.
And it is not the dream of a child. It is not my dream. It belongs to someone else. But I do not know whose dream it is.
In the dream I am hurt – hurt and heartbroken with a pain that I hope has never been felt in real life. My feet are sore from walking far on stony cold ground, and they are wet with mud, Wideacre mud, and with blood from a hundred cuts from the sharp chalk and flint stones. I am stumbling