Excerpt from A Net for Small Fishes by Lucy Jago, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Although her cheeks were mottled with crying, still I received a little shock from her beauty. Her hair and eyes were a lustrous brown and her skin, as if laid on cream not flesh, was that which comes only from dining on the food of princes. Life was coiled tight within her and it sparked in me a moment of envy, for I had borne six children and sometimes endured days in which I yawned more than I spoke.

There seemed no point in asking how she did, so I repeated my name and explained that I had received a note that morning from her mother. She scowled and opened her mouth to comment but at that very moment the lady of whom we spoke, the Countess of Suffolk, sailed into the room like a ship fully rigged in court dress, every inch swinging with pearls and gold chains. Behind her came her other two daughters, one older, one younger than Frances, sumptuously apparelled but plain by comparison to their sister. They came to a halt, skirts swaying on willow hoops as wide as their arm spans, a priceless armada. The little dog shot under Frances's undershirt.

"Do I look like a kennel, Brutus?" Frances said.

"A sty," exclaimed her mother. In the fingers of one hand she was rolling what looked like an owl pellet. "Why are you not ready? What is this, hmm?" She gazed around her daughter's chamber as if a stranger to it. Under Queen Elizabeth, when she was not yet a countess, she had not the nerve to develop strange tics. But the fortunes of her family had soared with the arrival of King James and she adorned her new status with a variety of affectations, the most annoying of which was a rising "hmm" at the end of her pronouncements. Perhaps she thought it fashionably French. Or was it to disguise her guile as intellect? The achievement of her vaulting ambition had been entirely due to a generous dowry, uncommon comeliness and the fortunate quality of having no scruples. I have known her all my life, for my mother was in her acquaintance and remained so even after she sacrificed her position to marry my father; so lean is society in the countryside that the Countess would have had no company at all if she had been too strictly observant of rank.

"I cannot hear you."

"I crave your blessing," muttered her daughter.

"Why is Larkin out there? He is meant to be taking your likeness," said her mother, rather foolishly, I thought; no portrait I had seen took distress as its subject. "Your father is furious. When you feel sorry for yourself, remember that he was already widowed by your age as was I. Think of your family, even if you cannot please yourself with your match. 'We must marry our daughters before they marry themselves,' he always says, and he is right, especially in your case," said the Countess, slapping the back of her hand against the girl's forehead, peering at her as one might at an animal with a leg missing.

"You are not feverish. Stand up. Turn around."

Her daughter rose, flinching as if wasps stung her, and swiveled on unsteady feet. As she turned, her back was revealed through a rip in her undershirt from collar to coccyx. The skin was slit all over with bleeding welts. I could feel the burning pain in those lashes and the hair on my forearms pricked up in shock and pity for this girl. How furious her mother would be at the damage inflicted on her beautiful child.

Yet there was no cry of horror, not even a gasp. To protect one's child is the first compulsion of any parent; to determine cause and fault follows later. Not, it seemed, with Frances's mother. Her sisters also stood mute. "Why are you still not dressed, hmm?" said the Countess, her face glistening, hard as a sugar sculpture. She turned to me. Every time we met she affected barely to know me unless we were alone. "I have heard you are talented with apparel," she said. I curtsied but said nothing, unsure what the statement insinuated. "You have come to help my daughter dress."

It was not a question.

Excerpted from A Net for Small Fishes by Lucy Jago. Copyright © 2021 by Lucy Jago. Excerpted by permission of Flatiron Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.