Justin gritted his teeth, refusing to turn. The mother’s meddling had near ruined the realm before Parliament had stepped in to save a senile King from his own foolishness. This new King needed no more misguidance. He was getting that aplenty from his current favourites. ‘What do they call her?’
‘Lady Joan of Weston,’ Gloucester answered. ‘Joan the Elder.’
Calling her a Weston was a pleasant fiction, though the old King’s mistress had passed herself off as Sir William’s wife while she bore the King’s children. ‘The Elder?’
Gloucester smirked. ‘There were two daughters. Like bitch pups. Call “Joan” and one will come running.’
Wincing at the cruelty, Justin reluctantly turned, with the rest of the court, to see whether the daughter carried the stain of her mother’s sin.
He looked, and then could not look away.
Her mother’s carnality stamped a body that swayed as if it had no bones and her raven hair carried no hint of the old King’s sun-tinged glory. ‘She looks nothing like him,’ he murmured.
Gloucester whispered back, ‘Maybe the whore simply whelped the children and called them the King’s.’
Justin shook his head. ‘She moves like royalty.’
Head high, she stared at a point above the King’s crown, walking as if the crowd adored instead of loathed her.
But then, just for a moment, she glanced around the room. Her eyes, violet, brimming with pain, met his.
They stopped his breath.
Wide-eyed, still looking at him, she did not complete her step. Tangled in her gaze, he forgot to breathe.
Then she gathered herself, lifted her skirt and approached the throne.
He shook off her spell and looked around. No one had noticed that her eyes had held his for an eternity.
She dipped before the King, head held high. Justin thought of the lad on the throne as a boy, though, at twenty, he had been King for half his life. Yet he still played at kingly ceremony, instead of grappling with the hard work of governing.
‘Lower your gaze,’ the King said to the woman before him.
A flash of fury stiffened her spine. Then, she bent her neck ever so slightly.
‘Kneel.’
She dropped gracefully to her knees as if she had practised.
Justin took a breath. Then another. Still the King did not say ‘rise’. A smothered cough in the crowd breached the silence.
Her hands hung quietly at her sides, but her fingers twitched against the folds of her deep red skirt.
He squashed a spark of sympathy. The woman’s glance had been enough to warn him. Her mother had bewitched a King. He would be on guard.
He had been deceived by a woman’s eyes once—long ago.
Joan had known the King would test her. Kneel. So she did. Her mother had taught her well. Read his needs and satisfy them. That is our only salvation. This one needed deference, that was obvious. She would give him that and whatever else he asked if he would grant them a living from the royal purse.
At least there was one thing he would not ask. The blood of the old King flowed through both their veins. She would not have to please a King as her mother had.
She heard no whispers now. Silent, the court watched as the King left her on aching knees long enough that she could have said an extra Paternoster for her mother’s sins.
Eyes lowered, she looked toward the edge of the wide-planked floor. The men’s long-toed shoes curled like a finger crooked in invitation. She stifled a smile. Men and their vanities. Apparently, they thought the longer the toes, the longer the tool.
Yet when her eyes had met those of the hard-edged man at the fringes of the crowd, she had nearly stumbled. His severe dress and implacable gaze sliced through the peacocks around the throne sharply as a blade. For that instant, she forgot everything else. Even the King.
A thoughtless mistake. She had no time for emotion. Only for necessity.
Finally, the King’s high-pitched voice called a reprieve. ‘Lady Joan, daughter of Sir William of Weston, rise and bow.’
With no one’s hand to lean on, she wobbled as she stood. Forcing her shaking knees to support her, she curtsied, then dared lift her eyes.
Tall, thin, and delicately blond, King Richard perched on the throne overlooking the hall. A golden crown graced his curls. An ermine-trimmed cloak shielded him from the draughts. She wondered whether his cheeks were clean shaven from choice or because the beard had not yet taken hold.
His slope-shouldered wife sat beside him. Her plaited brown hair hung down her back, a strange affectation for a married queen. Of course, Joan’s mother had whispered, after six years of childless marriage, she wondered how much of a wife the Queen was.
‘We hope you enjoy this festive time with us, Lady Joan,’ she said. Her eyes held a gentleness that was missing from the King’s.
Joan, silent, looked to the King for permission.
He waved his hand. ‘You may speak.’
‘Thank you, your Grace.’
He sat straighter and lifted his head. ‘Address us as Your Majesty.’
‘Forgive me, Your Majesty.’ She bowed again. A new title, then. ‘Your Grace’ had served the old King, but that was no longer adequate. This King needed more than deference. He needed exaltation.
The Queen’s soft voice soothed like that of a calm mother after a child’s tantrum. ‘I hope you will not miss Christmas at Weston Castle too much, Lady Joan.’
She suppressed a laugh. A Weston in name only, she had never even visited the family estate. It was her mother and sister she would be thinking of during the Cristes-maesse, but no word of them would be spoken aloud. ‘Your invitation honours me, Your Majesty.’
Queen Anne said, ‘Perhaps you might pen a short poem for our entertainment.’
‘Poem, Your Majesty?’
‘Not in French, only in English. If you feel capable.’
She swallowed the subtle insult. The Queen’s words denigrated not only her mother, but Joan’s ten years spent away from Windsor’s glories. Still, as a daughter of the King, she had been taught both English and French. ‘Your Majesty, if my humble verse might amuse, I would be honoured.’
The King spoke. ‘Of course you would, Lady…What was your name?’
‘Joan, Your Majesty.’
He frowned. ‘I do not like that name. Have you another?’
‘Another
