So be it. I trod into his direct line of sight. “My lord.”

“Alice.” His eyes were unfocused; his voice, without its impressive power, grated from disuse.

I walked slowly forward, halting within an arm’s length, interested in Edward’s reaction. He seemed uncertain. And so he would be. I had dressed most conservatively, quiet and discreet as a nun. As a wife! I had laughed as I had donned the somber dark-hued gown and cotehardie more fitting to a housewife than a royal mistress. And so I played out my allotted role: I neither curtsied nor lowered my eyes in dutiful respect. I certainly did not kiss him in greeting, as I might have in the past.

“Yes, Sire,” I stated in a cool manner, hands folded demurely at my waist. “As you see. It is Alice.”

He frowned. “Who let you in?”

“Wykeham.”

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

This was not good!

“As I am aware. You don’t have to. I’ll talk to you.”

There was quick surprise in his eyes. Perhaps irritation. “I didn’t send for you.”

“No. I gave up waiting.”

Edward’s initial response was now overlaid by disquiet. Not quite disapproval, but not far off. Good! That was what I wanted. Would he order me to go?

“I would rather you weren’t here. I would be alone.” Not quite an order to leave, although I doubted he would see the difference.…

My reply was as flat as Wykeham’s new paving in the great Court at Kings Langley. “Time for reflection is good, my lord. And I have reflected much.” I put a hint of bite into the words. “Over the two months I have reflected—since you last spoke with me.”

“Two months?”

“It is more than two months since you buried Philippa and shut yourself up here.”

The vertical line dug between his brows. “I had not realized.…”

“Then you should. It’s far too long for a king to shut himself away from his subjects.”

I waited to see whether the Plantagenet temper would surface, and was disappointed when it didn’t. My success was not a certain thing, even though I had thought long over this, as I unpacked my clothes in the new rooms that had been immediately set aside for me—Latimer was nothing if not an efficient steward. If Edward rejected me now, how should I force him to take note of me? Sexual allure? Not that. He was too solitary, too worn down with grief. Later, perhaps, but seduction was not yet the path forward. Stern admonitions—not that either. Plantagenets did not react well to stern admonitions from their subjects, even their lovers. Compassion? No—he would see that as pity.

I was here to draw Edward back from the brink of whatever hell he had made for himself, with cold logic. Had I a view to my place at Court? My own financial security? Of course I had. But my future and Edward’s healing need not be entirely separate. I had no guilt as I poured the two cups of spiced wine—no longer warm but still palatable—and held one out. He took it automatically.

“I’m leaving Havering tomorrow. Drink with me to my safe journey.” I did not smile. I was brisk.

“Leaving…?”

“There’s nothing to keep me here now.”

“Where…?”

“Ardington. I have a mind to see if it suits me to live there permanently.”

Edward did not reply. So I would stir the pot a little more. I sat, even when he did not—such a breach of royal etiquette!—sipped the wine, inspected one of the cherry tarts on the plate, and bit into it. “This is delicious. Come, Edward.” I made deliberate use of his name. “I can’t eat all these myself.”

He sat, but not close, regarding me as if I had transformed into a hunting cat that had just unsheathed it claws. “Why are you going?”

“I am no longer a royal damsel. I am not needed.”

I let the silence play out, finishing the tart, licking my fingers, but in a businesslike manner. And then: “Have you thought about me at all through the past weeks, Edward?”

He shook his head.

“What have you been doing?”

“I have been thinking.…” His voice trailed off.

“I expect you’ve been thinking of all you’ve achieved,” I observed. “All that you’ve done since the day you cast off your mother’s authority and seized the ruling of England in your own hands. I imagine that took a lot of courage for a young man who’d barely reached maturity.”

“I have thought of that.…”

“Philippa helped you, didn’t she?”

For the first time, Edward smiled, a strained affair. “She was my strength.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I don’t think I could have done it without her. My mother was a ruthless woman, and I was of an age to need a regent.…”

It was as if a wall had been breached, allowing the pent-up waters to escape. First a trickle, but fast becoming a flood. The old tale of the beautiful but vicious Queen Isabella, who would have ruled England with her notorious lover, Roger Mortimer, at her side, keeping the young Edward as close as a prisoner. Until Edward arranged a coup to bring Mortimer down, to strip his mother of her regency. He was all of eighteen years old, but the memories of that night in Nottingham when he took back his power were as vivid as if they had happened yesterday.

I nodded. “And Philippa helped you to stand firm, claim your birthright.”

Edward’s face was alight with it. “She was magnificent.”

“She must have been very proud of you.”

The light vanished. The rush of words dried up in a summer drought. Edward frowned, staring down into the cup, and I saw his jaw clench at some unpalatable truth. I knew what it was. I would say it.

“Philippa would not be proud of you now, Edward.”

“No…”

“She would be horrified. She would berate you! Philippa would order you to look forward, not back.”

At last his eyes lifted from whatever images he saw in his wine and slid to mine, and I saw true recognition there, and a flash of resistance. Good. Excellent.

“Have you come to berate me too?” he asked. “It is not your place.”

“No. How should I? I am the lowest of your subjects and no longer have a claim on you or the Queen. I have come to say good-bye.”

“I suppose you wish to be reunited with your sons.”

“Yes. Our sons. Sons are very important. They are the only family I have. So, will you drink to my safe journey?”

He sipped the wine absentmindedly, his thoughts still far distant.

“Edward…!” How difficult this was. Was the only way to get his attention to empty my cup over the royal head?

“My son. My heir, the Prince. He is so ill.…” His words were spoken with difficulty as if he had to search for each one. “When I was his age I rode at the head of my army. What a sight we were.…But my son cannot ride. He is carried into battle in a litter. All I have achieved, destroyed…”

Panic fluttered, rapid wings beneath my heart. I was losing him again between the victorious past and the unpalatable present. I stood up, placed the cup on the coffer. I had to throw the dice with callous disregard, and risk the outcome.

“It seems I must leave without your good wishes after all.” I walked to the door. My hand reached for the latch, and still there was no response. I would have to admit my failure. To Wykeham and Gaunt and the rest. I would have to leave my king, even though every sense urged me to stay.…

“Don’t go.”

It was quietly spoken, yet firmly. I exhaled slowly, but still I addressed my question to the smooth grain of the wood under my hand. “Give me one good reason why I should not.”

“I want you to stay.”

I held my breath.

“I need you, Alice.”

I held still, eyes closed tight. I heard the brush of his tunic as he stood, the click of metal on wood as he placed the cup beside mine, his soft footsteps. I felt his body fill the space behind me, but he did not touch me.

“I was wrong, Alice. Don’t go.”

Against all my inner compassion, I kept my back to him.

“God’s Blood! Look at me! I would rather not be addressing the back of that excessively unattractive hood you’ve chosen to wear!”

There it was. The command was back. But I would not succumb too quickly. I was not a fortress driven into surrender by a light threat and a call to parley.

“Two months—and you haven’t once asked to see me. You feel lost without Philippa—I understand that”—I resented the quick flame of old jealousies—“but you must know how unloved and unwanted I have felt,” I said. “I see no future for myself here if you don’t need me.” His hands were on my shoulders, turning me around so that I must face him. He was really looking at me, seeing me. At last!

And Edward tilted his chin. “Is that why you’ve clothed yourself as a drab? Like some penurious widow about to enclose herself into a convent and fill her life with prayers and good works? Perhaps I should send you off with some new gowns. How will you catch a man’s eye otherwise?”

And there was the humor I had missed, a glint of it as the sun struck obliquely across his features.

“The only eye I wish to catch is yours!” I remarked with the slightest lift of my chin to match his, some would say with arrogance. I would not smile yet.

Edward bent his head and kissed me, my brow, then my lips, at first as if it were a difficult thing for him to do, to make this contact with a woman, like revisiting an old memory, uncertain of what he would discover on the half-forgotten journey. But then his mouth warmed against mine as his hands slid from my shoulders and closed around mine.

“Why is it that you make me feel renewed?” he asked.

I could feel the growing strength of his intellect as he sought my face for the answer. And as if he had found it, he raised my hands, still cupped in his, and pressed his lips to each palm, to the tip of each of my fingers, reacquainting himself with me after a long absence. Yet still we had a way to travel.

“How I have missed you, Alice. Why did I not realize it?”

“Because you closed yourself off to all but grief.”

“Will you change your mind and stay here?”

“You too might change your mind. Tomorrow you might banish me!”

Temper flashed in Edward’s face. “I order you to stay! Your King orders you! I need you to remain here.”

The temper. The possession. The authority. They were all returned in good measure. I hid my smile but stood on my toes to kiss Edward’s cheek.

He was already stripping the maligned hood from me so that my hair, unbraided beneath it, fell over my shoulders. He clenched his hand in it, into a fist.

“What lovely hair you have. Why do I feel that I have been outmaneuvered? You have never worn anything half so ugly as this.” He dropped the hood to the floor.

“I have not needed to,” I replied. “I had to do something to catch your attention.”

And Edward laughed softly. At last he laughed. I led him over to the settle against the wall and pulled him down beside me. I would not let him go quite yet. I didn’t trust his mood sufficiently. Reaching for the platter on the tray, I offered it.

“Eat one of these. You must be hungry.”

“I suppose I must. If you eat them all, you’ll lose your figure.”

The final attack, the lethal thrust against which I prayed he would be helpless.

“I will anyway, my lord, with or without the sweetmeats.” His stare was instant and knowing, on my face, my waistline. “I am carrying your child. Are you pleased?”

The King abandoned the sweet delicacy and turned his face into my hair. “I didn’t know. You have to stay with me. I’ll not have a child of mine raised without my knowledge. Stay, Alice. In God’s name, stay.”

I kept my incipient victory close as I unraveled another skein of my plotting. Edward must return to his people too. “Only if you’ll take me hunting tomorrow. Please do,” I invited, leaning against his shoulder. “I have no one to ride with who does not damn me as a daughter of Satan. Wykeham has taken to praying over me. And my mare needs exercise. She’s eating her head off in the stables.”

“You have been lonely.” How clever he was at reading between my words. “I’ve neglected you, haven’t I?”

He was mine. Color stained his cheeks; the years dropped away. Inwardly I rejoiced as I saw that the Plantagenet had returned. “Yes, you have,” I said solemnly. “And now you must make recompense.”

He stood and pulled me to my feet. “As I will. What is it my lady wishes?”

“Call a hunt, Edward. Let your Court see you. Let them know that the King is come again. Promise me.” Still the slightest hesitation. “Promise me! Soon it will be too late—I will be too large to climb onto a horse!”

“I promise. Stay, Alice. I have missed you.”

So I did. His kiss was long and deep with relief and an awakening of passion. “Come to bed, Alice. It’s been a long time.”