Then she was gone, and I was left in a quagmire of unbelief, my mind racing. The door to the corridor opened as the one to Philippa’s rooms closed. I raised my chin and prepared to become the King’s mistress with the blessing of his wife. All I had to do was follow the royal page.…Before God! This was a night for courage, and I suspected I had used all that was allotted to me.

There was Wykeham, regarding me as if I were a louse to be burned in the candle flame.

He stepped aside with the most dismissive of gestures. Not once did his eyes meet mine, not even fleetingly, but stared somewhere over my left shoulder. It was as if he could not look at me, for fear of acknowledging the terrible transgression that was about to be branded on my soul.

“You are to come with me, Mistress Perrers.”

So Wykeham was to be Edward’s minion on this sensitive mission. Yesterday he would have called me Alice. Yesterday he would have greeted me with a smile and asked after my health. Today he scorned me as the most despicable of creatures.

“This is a sin!” he growled in confirmation, if I had needed it, as I walked past him from the room.

“It is the King’s will.” The less I said, the better.

“You should not be part of it.”

I was brief but defiant. “I am summoned.”

“By your own contriving, no doubt. What you do must disgust any man possessing even an ounce of decency. The Queen has given you everything and this is how you repay her.” Wykeham’s mouth shut like a trap.

“I think we should go,” I replied, and turned away so that I need not see his vile disgust of me glitter in his eye. What had passed between me and the Queen must remain locked away, and so I must be content to let this man I had called a friend think what he wished of me, even though he condemned me for a sin not of my committing.

He led me through the deserted corridors. Had everyone been sent away deliberately? Not one page, no clerks or body servants, not one of the royal household was about on that night that set my feet on a new and dangerous path. My escort was unnervingly silent, so that I could taste his disapproval in my mouth, feel the burn of it on my skin. For the length of a single breath I stumbled almost to a halt. What if I didn’t comply? Was this how I wished to lose my virginity, as a creature in the clever royal scheming to benefit King and Queen? My mind was clouded with uncertainty, my heart encased in ice. So, what if I refused? What if I…? But events had moved on too far and too fast, as I knew, and I was being carried along, a mindless leaf in a stream. Quickly I pattered after Wykeham, until he came to a halt so abruptly that I all but trod on his heel. Wheeling ’round, he forced me to retreat a step, but he seized my wrist in an unpriestly grip.

“You should not be here!” His eyes were furious, his lips stretched in anger.

“Will you deny me to your King?” I would say anything to stop the accusations. “Not even you could do that, Wykeham.” I put a sneer into my voice. “You can build walls and arches, but you can’t dictate to your King!” Anything to shut him up.

Instantly he released me, thrusting me away so that I staggered against the wall.

“Wykeham…!” I gasped.

His mind was closed against me. And what could I have said without betraying the Queen’s carefully crafted deceit? With a brush of his knuckles against a door, Wykeham opened it, stood back, and gestured me to go through. I stepped into the room. The door closed at my back.



Chapter Six



It was Edward’s private chamber, redolent of masculine luxury. Wood paneling hung with tapestries, a fireplace with burning logs and a favorite hound curled there. A prie-dieu and a crucifix. A coffer, a standing table, a high-polished chair with carved arms and back—opulent, I decided as I took it all in at a glance, used as I now was to such magnificence. Here was everything a nobleman with a taste for prayer and erudition and comfort could wish for. Edward might have spent most of his life engaged in the hardship of campaigning in France, but at Havering, despite its insignificance compared to the royal dwellings at Westminster and Windsor, he enjoyed all that his consequence could bring him. And there were signs of recent habitation. A pole with a falcon that appeared to be asleep. A sumptuous damask and fur chamber robe in deep glowing red cast over the coffer. A flagon for wine and cups, and a platter of what remained of a meal. Books, one open, and a rosary cast on the bed; a bowl and ewer flanked by a candle stand, the fine quality of the candles casting a soft glow.

And a quite superlative bed.

My eye slid quickly away from its silk covers, its red and gold curtains. After the emotion of the past half hour, my control was compromised. I stood hesitantly with my back to the door, an animal at bay, so it seemed, as I waited for the predator to pounce. For surely the King of England was as much a predator as his hawk.

The hawk rustled its feathers and sank further into somnolence. The hound twitched and whined in the throes of some hunting dream.

And Edward walked toward me from where he had been sitting perusing the pages of a book, hand outstretched in greeting. How beautiful he was. How carelessly he wore that beauty, how unself-consciously, how unaware of the impression his fine-carved features and magnificent stature would make on the beholder. Would make on me.

“Alice.” The stern lines of his face softened into the vestige of a smile. “You look as if you’re considering that I might pounce and dismember you.”

“I think I am,” I replied.

Edward’s laugh rumbled. “I’ll not do that.” His hand closed over mine. “You’re freezing—or frozen with fear. Come to the fire.…” Pulling me gently forward, he placed me in his own chair, speaking all the time as if I were some flighty, unbroken filly in need of reassurance. Leaving me to look around, he poured two cups of ruby liquid. “Here. It’s from Gascony. The best wine we have.” He pushed the cup into my hand, hooked his toe around the leg of a stool, and sat at my feet, lifting his own cup to his lips.

“Drink, Alice.” He nudged my forearm. I realized I had been staring at him, my thoughts paralyzed with uncertainty. I still could not look at the bed. For sure the King had not invited me here to have me copy the nation’s accounts into a ledger.

Edward drank, his eyes never leaving my face. Under that intense gaze my nerves faltered, and I looked down at the chasing on the fine silver cup, inconsequentially following the outline of a superbly tined stag with my finger.

“Would it please you to be my mistress?” he asked, as if inquiring about my health.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s honest, by God!”

“It has to be, Sire. I don’t know how to answer you otherwise.”

I took a careless gulp of wine and coughed. One of the logs collapsed with a sigh. The hawk shuffled on dry feet.

“You are a widow.”

“Yes.”

“Then you should not fear this.” His hand gestured toward the bed.

I swallowed. “I am a virgin. My marriage was never consummated. He couldn’t.…” I really had begun to tremble, now that the moment had come upon me. I glanced up to see that Edward was frowning at me. So that was not the answer he had wanted. He had wanted a mistress with some knowledge of what occurred between the sheets. All Philippa’s planning would go for naught. “I can leave, Sire. If you don’t want me here…”

“I’ll tell you when I don’t!” A flash of eye, a brush of temper that surprised me, and then it ebbed as fast as it had flared between us. His voice was very gentle. “Forgive me. This has to be a very private transaction between us.”

“And you don’t trust me to keep my own counsel?”

“That’s not what I meant.” His eyes were on mine, fierce and searching again, and I could not look away.

“I know what you meant. I know you don’t want to hurt Her Majesty.”

“You think it won’t hurt her to know?” Surging to his feet, he was suddenly as far from me as he could get, at the other side of the room. Who was the animal at bay here? I watched him cautiously. “Sins of the flesh,” he murmured. “They will return to haunt us.”

“I am no gossip, Sire,” I replied.

“How old are you?” he asked harshly.

“Seventeen years, my lord, perhaps eighteen.”

“So many years between us, so much experience that I have and you do not. Do you know, Alice? I’ve never been unfaithful to her. Not in all the thirty years of marriage. No matter the rumors that I have taken lovers—from the day I wed her I have not broken my oath. But now…”

But now she has told you to take a lover!

How to keep all the secrets? Was I to be a deft juggler, keeping the separate items aloft in an orderly pattern, dropping none? Or a skilled weaver, melding all the colors into one seemly whole? Was I capable of such discretion? Such skill? Countess Joan’s words slammed into my mind. It is important for a woman to have the duplicity to make good use of whatever gifts she might have. And there she was with her cruel smile. Until I banished her. There was no place for Fair Joan’s cynicism in this maneuvering between Edward and myself. I waited, the nerves in my belly fluttering like finches in a cage.

“When I touch her she has to sink her teeth into her lips not to groan with the agony.” Edward turned away from me to brace his hands against the edge of the coffer, head bent, shoulders rigid as he made his confession. “I love my wife. But I desire you, Alice. Is that very bad?”

“Wykeham would say so, my lord.” I was still chafing at his reproof.

“What would you say?”

The only thing I could. “That you are my King and can demand my obedience, my lord.”