The Tudor Plot (Cotton Malone 7.5)

She moved closer to the hearth. The fire he’d started earlier had burned down. The charmeuse of her gown shimmered with every step. He wondered what possessed his son to leave a woman of such beauty alone.

She noticed his gaze on her.

“Can the father succeed where the son is lacking?”

Wisps of light hair draped her forehead like fringes from a shawl. This woman knew how to arouse him. It had been that way since the beginning of their association. His son was sterile, a fact only he knew since he’d paid the doctor who’d administered the test to lie about the results. Then he’d had the doctor killed. The same fate had found the publisher of the Globe, who’d somehow pieced together what was happening and made contact with the palace. Thankfully, another spy had alerted him and that problem had been quickly solved. For his plan to work, not only must Eleanor assume the throne as queen, but there had to be an heir to follow.

Normandy. Blois. Plantagenet. Lancaster. York. Tudor. Stuart. Hanover. Saxe-Coburg.

Each family had ruled.

The next royal house would be named Yourstone.

“I assure you, I can accomplish the required task.” He did not use her title with any measure of respect, but that did not seem to faze her.

“I wonder how the son wholly failed to acquire what the father clearly possesses. Nature can be so cruel.”

He tabled his empty glass.

“I assume the country will soon be reading more about Richard and the perky Lady Bryce,” she said.

“For the next several days.”

“I watched Lord Bryce and you earlier on the television and I have to ask. Your comments to the press. Were they needed? Surely Mum and Father are now questioning your loyalty.”

Which might explain the presence of a certain American agent named Cotton Malone. “Let them.”

“Maybe the stress will finally claim Mum’s heart.”

“Not yet, my dear. We need another day.”

“That’s the problem, Nigel. We have no idea how much time she has left.”

“This can only move so fast. Timing is everything.”

She returned her empty glass to the cabinet and headed for the door. “Thankfully, this is your problem. I have enough to handle with Mum and Dickie. Are you coming up?”

Her lack of clothing had, of course, been an invitation. Eleanor and his son usually resided at the royal Clarence House while in London. But they also, on occasion, made use of Yourstone’s London flat. Yourstone’s wife had been dead five years, so the opportunities this woman presented were irresistible. But he wasn’t going to let her know it was that easy.

“Leave the latch open. If I decide to come up.”

She stopped at the door and turned, a cunning grin on her lips.

“Don’t take too long.”

Yourstone rose from the bed, stepped into his trousers, then donned his shirt. He slipped his arms through the braces and adjusted their silken lengths. Eleanor lay naked atop pearl-colored sheets. It pleased him that he was able to satisfy such a beautiful woman.

“It’s my time,” she said. “I’ve become quite apt at predicting ovulation.”

“Hopefully, what just happened will be sufficient to produce a Yourstone heir.”

He zipped his pants and cuffed his shirtsleeves.

Supposedly, she’d been a virgin when married, but he wondered. A woman of such passion could hardly have learned all she knew from someone so inept as his son. Yourstone had taken many mistresses. They’d come from all stations of life and varied in race and color. Eleanor was every bit their equal, more so in some respects.

She rolled over on her side.

Except for her short blond mane and eyebrows, there was not a hair on her body. Her skin had the look and feel of polished alabaster. No blemish disturbed its sheen. It was said that her mother, Victoria, had once been blessed with the same creamy patina. A Saxe-Coburg trait he actually admired.

“Doesn’t bother you at all, does it?” she said. “Sleeping with your son’s wife.”

He shrugged.

“You want this that bad?”

“As badly as you.” His eyes were drawn to her body, and he fought another rising urge within him with thoughts of business. “Tell me, do you know the Arthurian story?”

“I never cared for fiction.”

He grinned at her ignorance. “It’s actually quite colorful, and who knows if it’s true.” He sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Then by all means, tell me a bedtime story.”

He let her teasing pass. “It seems that during an Easter feast King Uther became enamored with the wife of the Duke of Cornwall. Uther simply could not control himself and made known his feelings, which sent the duke into a jealous rage.”

“How I envy his wife.”

“Like any good husband, the duke took his wife and left the feast. Like any enraged lover, Uther gathered an army and followed. The duke hid her in Tintagel Castle, then barricaded himself in a nearby fortress to divert Uther away.”

“Such passion for the love of a woman.”

He agreed. “Uther learned where the wife was hidden and consulted Merlin, who used magic to make the king appear like the duke, which allowed Uther to easily enter the castle and climb into the wife’s bed. She, of course, thought she was sleeping with her own husband. When the duke was killed the wife agreed to marry Uther, especially after learning she was pregnant, thus assuring that her child, Arthur, would later become king. So you see, my dear, illicit unions are nothing new in the name of the Crown.”

She chuckled. “That’s what I like about you, Nigel. No conscience at all.”

“Lucky for us, and lucky for England, we are so similar.”

“My mother would go to her grave if she could see me now.”

He pocketed his wallet from the nightstand. “I think the entire nation would fall over dead if they saw you right now.”

“Especially dear Papa.”

Her father, Prince James, the Duke of Edinburgh, was a Scotsman, part of a family that traced its roots back to the time of Henry VIII, when jocks fought England for independence. He was a rough, harsh man the public seemed to worship. Eleanor was in many ways like her father, though she clearly had inherited her mother’s commanding physical presence. He wondered, though, where she acquired such ambition. None of the Saxe-Coburgs had ever shown that trait. But this vixen seemed a new breed. One more to his liking.

“As much as you seem to be enjoying all this, I do have to go,” he said.

“Business to do before evening?”

He rose from the bed. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

He stepped to the door and left, gently closing it behind him.

Yourstone made his way back toward the front of the house. Along the way oil portraits of his ancestors kept him company. Most had been financiers to kings and queens, trusted members of Parliament the Crown had counted on to ensure the status quo was religiously maintained.

Either a Hanover or a Saxe-Coburg, all far more German than English, had sat on the throne since 1714. But the house of Yourstone would soon become the ruling family of England. Where once adversaries on battlefields with pickaxes and short swords fought for the right to rule, the 21st century provided weapons no previous usurper had ever possessed. The printing press, cameras, public opinion polls, and the Internet were proving far more effective than armies.

And the goal was now in sight.

He descended the staircase and reentered his study.

The book that had started it all sat on the table beside his favorite club chair, a 19th-century analysis of a 16th-century manuscript. The editor, a sociologist at the British Museum, had been entranced by the legend of Arthur. The researcher had spent a lifetime searching for proof that Arthur was not a poet’s romantic notion. He’d been fortunate enough to uncover an obscure journal scavenged from a French monastery, which told of something that happened during the summer of 1189 and into 1191.

With Henry II.

A Plantagenet from the 12th century.