tell you what I'll do with the oysters?"
"What?" she asked.
He smiled. "Just you wait."
He retreated to the bathroom, where he turned on the shower. As usual, an inadequate spray of lukewarm water fizzled out of the pipe. Malcolm shed his dressing gown, shivered, and cursed his circumstances. Twenty-five years in the classroom, teaching history to spotty-faced hooligans who had no interest in anything beyond the immediate gratification of their sweaty-palmed needs, and what did he have to show for it? Two up and two down in an ancient terraced house down the street from Gloucester Grammar. An ageing Vauxhall with no spare tyre. A mistress with an agenda for marriage and a taste for kinky sex.
And a passion for a long-dead King that - he was determined - would be the wellspring from which would flow his future. The means were so close, just tantalising centimetres from his eager grasp. And once his reputation was secured, the book contracts, the speaking engagements, and the offers of gainful employment would follow.
"Shit!" he bellowed as the shower water went from warm to scalding without a warning. "Damn!" He fumbled for the taps.
"Serves you right," Betsy said from the doorway. "You're a naughty boy and naughty boys need punishing."
He blinked water from his eyes and squinted at her. She'd put on his best flannel shirt - the very one he'd intended to wear on the tour of Bosworth Field, blast the woman - and she lounged against the doorjamb in her best attempt at a seductive pose. He ignored her and went about his showering. He could tell she was determined to have her way, and her way was another bonk before he left. Forget it, Bets, he said to her silently. Don't push your luck.
"I don't understand you, Malc Cousins," she said. "You're the only man in civilisation who'd rather tramp round a soggy pasture with a bunch of tourists than cozy up in bed with the woman he says he loves."
"Not says, does," Malcolm said automatically. There was a dreary sameness to their postcoital conversations that was beginning to get him decidedly down.
"That so? I wouldn't've known. I'd've said you fancy whatsis-name the King a far sight more'n you fancy me."
Well, Richard was definitely more interesting a character, Malcolm thought. But he said, "Don't be daft. It's money for our nest egg anyway."
"We don't need a nest egg," she said. "I've told you that about a hundred times. We've got the - "
"Besides," he cut in hastily. There couldn't be too little said between them on the subject of Betsy's expectations. "It's good experience. Once the book is finished, there'll be interviews, personal appearances, lectures. I need the practice. I need" - this with a winning smile in her direction - "more than an audience of one, my darling. Just think what it'll be like, Bets. Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, the Sorbonne. Will you like Massachusetts? What about France?"
"Bernie's heart's giving him trouble again, Malc," Betsy said, running her finger up the doorjamb.
"Is it, now?" Malcolm said happily. "Poor old Bernie. Poor bloke, Bets."
The problem of Bernie had to be handled, of course. But Malcolm was confident that Betsy Perryman was up for the challenge. In the afterglow of sex and inexpensive champagne, she'd told him once that each one of her four marriages had been a step forward and upward from the marriage that had preceded it, and it didn't take a hell of a lot of brains to know that moving out of a marriage to a dedicated inebriate - no matter how affable - into a relationship with a schoolteacher on his way to unveiling a piece of mediaeval history that would set the country on its ear was a step in the right direction. So Betsy would definitely handle Bernie. It was only a matter of time.
Divorce was out of the question, of course. Malcolm had made certain that Betsy understood that, while he was desperate mad hungry and all the etceteras for a life with her, he would no more ask her to come to him in his current impoverished circumstances than would he expect the Princess Royal to take up life in a bed-sit on the south bank of the Thames. Not only would he not ask that of her, he wouldn't allow it. Betsy - his beloved - deserved so much more than he would be able to give her, such as he was. But when his ship came in, darling Bets.... Or if,