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.
The last to rule a united France and England.
He opened the book to a marked section.
During the Octave of the Apostles Peter and Paul, in the nineteenth lunation, on the third day of the week, the fourth day of July in the year of our Lord 1189, a scribe strode across the courtyard of Chinon Castle, toward a chapel. He’d traveled through France to this, the heart of the