Seduced by Grace by Jennifer Blake Read Free Book Online Page B

once the lady was rescued. Why go to such lengths? What can you want of me?”
    “Well, you may ask.” Henry tugged at his bottom lip, as if deciding how much to say, or else how to say it.
    The strained feeling in the cottage tightened, gathering close. Marguerite, sensing it, was suddenly afraid. She jerked a little as the king dropped his hand, facing David as if in sudden decision.
    “You have heard of one Perkin Warbeck during your travels over the continent?”
    “The Yorkist pretender? I saw him once or twice in Burgundy.”
    “How did he strike you? What think you of him?”
    Henry’s reign to date had not been particularly peaceful, Marguerite knew. Hardly had he settled into his role as king when the first pretender appeared. Young Lambert Simnel, barely twelve years of age, had been presented as the younger son of Edward IV, miraculously escaped from death in the Tower. His followers had been defeated at Stoke, after which the boy was proved to have been sired by an Irish carpenter. In the years since, there had been trouble with Charles VIII of France and other skirmishes on the continent. Now there was this specter of the man called Perkin Warbeck.
    Warbeck had been agitating for at least six years, going slowly from one court to another to gain support and add to his war chest. He was a more for midable foe than Simnel, being older and more self-assured. More than that, he had the Plantagenet coloring of fair hair and blue eyes, also their supreme confidence that amounted to arrogance. It was said as well that he hadmore knowledge of the family descended from that grand old tyrant, Geoffrey of Anjou, than any should know who was not born to the purple.
    Whether from sincere belief in his lineage or mere political expediency, James IV of Scotland had taken up Warbeck’s cause to the point of giving him a kins-woman in marriage. The duchess of Burgundy, supposedly Warbeck’s aunt as she was a sister to Edward IV, had extended her blessing and promised an army of mercenaries. Charles VIII of France had entertained Warbeck in royal state as well, since anything which might shake the English throne was seen as a benefit for his regime.
    “I liked what I saw of him,” David answered with studied calm.
    Henry grimaced. “That he is likable does not make him a Plantagenet prince. Did you speak to him? Had you a sense that he might actually be who he claims?”
    It was telling that Henry thought it possible. Some liked to claim he had ordered the deaths of the princes in the Tower, Edward IV’s sons, before he invaded England to fight for the crown. That was unreasonable on the face of it. If he’d had certain proof Simnel and Warbeck were false pretenders, surely he would have produced it before now?
    “Anything is possible, sire. He spoke well and had the royal air, yet there are those who could have made certain he knew enough to be convincing.”
    “It can be done, yes,” Henry said, rubbing his chin with his knuckle. “We were not brought up for royal office, but soon gained the knack of it. As for his looks…”
    David gave him a smile with a sardonic edge. “’Tis well-known Edward was blessed with a number of sons born of unions without a priest’s blessing.”
    “Before and after his clandestine marriage to Elizabeth Woodville,” Henry said in agreement. “His dealings with women, particularly the poor lady to whom he was promised before he took the throne, were less than admirable. Some by-blows he acknowledged…”
    “And some he did not,” David finished for him, his eyes cool. “It’s been suggested my own mother may have known him too well for her own good.”
    “So we’ve heard,” Henry replied with no surprise whatever.
    Marguerite listened to that charge with an odd pang under her breastbone. Her older sister, Isabel, had once mentioned that David had a familiar look about him. She had gone on to speculate about his parentage and how he had come to be brought up by nuns.