Figures in Silk by Vanora Bennett

Author:Vanora Bennett
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Historical Fiction Medieval, v5.0
ISBN: 9781858788623
Published: 2008-11-14T23:00:00+00:00

William Hastings closed his eyes for a moment, shutting out everything but Jane’s mouth gently on his chest and her long hair under his mouth, the astonishing sensation of skin on skin; his arms around her; the quiet that no one now had a right to break.

He’d galloped here all the way from Westminster, his men lost behind him. He was drenched in sweat when he walked through her door, pacing and flashing with the memories of the morning.

He hadn’t said a word as he’d carried her upstairs. But he hadn’t needed to. It was the moment they’d both waited years for.

He opened his eyes. She was still there, soft as swan down.

Not a dream, then, he thought with a brief return of the humor that had deserted him earlier. But that meant the rest of what had happened wasn’t just a nightmare either.

He sat bolt upright, abruptly, bringing her up with him so she was straddling him again, so one of his hands brushed her white-peach thigh, so her hair fell over his shoulders. She made a little sound; somewhere between indrawn breath and giggle. But the eyes she turned on him were serious.

“What is it?” Jane was murmuring now, giving his lips butterfly kisses. She smelled of flowers. “What are you thinking?”

It was all flooding back now: why he was here. He clenched jaw and fists, trying to keep down the tide of fury, or fear, it made no difference which, that was rising in his throat.

The king was dead—the king he’d shared so many battlefields and beds and mistresses and misfortunes with, the red hazes of war and lust, since long before Edward was a king or hoped to be, since Will Hastings, a not very rich distant cousin, had first been made his boyhood gentleman in waiting. His dearest friend.

Worse. Edward’s death threatened the peace that had held for twelve years.

The Prince of Wales—the new King Edward V—was only twelve years old, not a good age for kingship at the best of times.

The boy was at Ludlow, where his separate court on the Welsh border was headquartered. What with all the solemn Masses they’d have to get through in every town they passed, it would take them weeks to get here. And until he reached London, the younger Edward would remain in the clutches of his tutor, Earl Rivers, that sly, prayerful, perfumed man of letters, with his almond eyes and suspiciously elegant turn of phrase: Queen Elizabeth’s brother—and a Woodville.

Woodvilles had already insinuated themselves into every nook and cranny at court. They’d crept in behind their queen, like spiders or scorpions. From now on, they’d be greedier still.

They’d want complete control of the new king, who was young and weak and easily influenced, whose blood ran in their veins.

That could lead only to one thing: a deadly struggle between the relatives of the queen and the relatives of the king—England’s true nobility.

Hastings was the only one of the king’s men in London.

And the entire loathsome swarm of Woodvilles, led by his old enemy Dorset, was here, coming after him.

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