For the King's Favor Read Online Free PDF

and exercise distraint on goods and chattels.” His eyes were storm-grey now. “By his lights he’s being generous. He’s allowing my father to remain Earl for his lifetime.”
    Juliana bit her lip. This was bad news indeed. “For his lifetime?” she repeated.
    He nodded. “And then the King renegotiates with his heirs, and that means he could withhold the right to the title of earl, and the revenues that go with it. My stepmother…” His expression twisted. “My stepmother is angling for what is left of the inheritance to go to my half-brother.”
    Juliana was appalled. “That will never happen!” She stiffened with indignation. “You are Norfolk’s rightful heir!”
    “I have the better claim, but it won’t stop her from bringing her demands to court.” His gaze was bleak. “There will be a fight every whit as bloody as a trial by combat. She will try to claim the invalidity of your marriage to my father, and say that I am bastard-born.”
    Juliana’s eyes flashed. “Then she will find herself pitched against the might of de Vere. How dare she!”
    “Because she wants the best for her sons—or at least the best she can salvage.” He drew himself up. “It’s my battle to fight, and I will deal with it the best I can. I am not a fool. I will come for help if I need it.”
    “And it will be given. I have always regretted—” She compressed her lips. She could tell by the way he was attending studiously to his wine and not meeting her gaze that it was too late for all that, and men as a rule did not deal well with such conversations. “I want the best for you too,” she amended, “more than salvage, more than crumbs.”
    “For the moment my father is still alive,” he said abruptly, “and may yet live for many more years. It’s rumoured he’s withdrawing to the court of Philip of Flanders.”
    “You think it true?”
    He gestured assent. “I do not suppose his pride will let him stay in England.”
    “And your stepmother?”
    “I understand she will dwell at Bungay with the younger son, although the older one may also exile himself in Flanders to prove how dutiful he is.” The flat tone of his voice revealed what he thought of that particular notion.
    “And you, my son?” she asked. “Where will you call home?”
    “If my father does go into exile, I will go to Framlingham.”
    “Even if there is nothing there but grass?”
    Now he did meet her gaze, and his eyes were as hard as sea-tumbled flints. “You can pitch a tent on grass,” he said. “You can use it to feed a horse; you can build again.” After a moment he reached for another tart.
    She studied his hands: the firm fingers; the thumbs that curved away from the upright like her own. They weren’t large, but they had symmetry and strength. A new scar, campion-pink, inscribed the base of three fingers on his left one. His skin was tanned to the start of his tunic cuffs, and dusted with fine gilt hair. She remembered when she had held the hands of a little boy. White, unmarked, soft, their story unmapped beyond fine sketch lines on either palm; sometimes grubby from childhood play in the dust. She would take them between her own and wash them clean in the ewer with fine soap of Castile. Now they were the hands of a man—scarred, experienced, no longer a mother’s to hold, but caught in the waiting moment before they grasped a wife’s, or were themselves grasped by the tiny, dependent clutch of the next generation. “Yes,” she said. “I understand. If you don’t believe you can start again, where do you go indeed?”
    ***
    Roger came to Framlingham Castle ahead of Ailnoth the engineer and his team. The sun was low on the horizon and a hot summer day had drenched the land in heat so that the soon-to-be-demolished palisade timbers gave off a haze of stored warmth. Roger handed his horses to a groom and had an attendant take his baggage roll to the hall, where he had also directed his small entourage. Then, with only