The Kingmaker's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

bad woman and because the king had fallen
asleep.
    ‘But now that King Edward is advised by no-one but his wife and her family then we will have to join that family circle to rule him,’ she says. ‘You and I will marry his
brothers the royal dukes, if Mother can possibly get them for us.’
    I feel myself flush. ‘You mean that I would marry Richard?’
    ‘You can’t like him!’ She bursts into laughter. ‘He’s so dark-haired and olive-skinned and awkward . . .’
    ‘He’s strong,’ I say at random. ‘He can ride anything. And he’s brave, and . . .’
    ‘If you want a horseman for a husband why not marry John the groom?’
    ‘But are you sure they are going to arrange it? When will we marry?’
    ‘Father is determined on it,’ she says, dropping her voice to a whisper. ‘But She is certain to try to stop it. She won’t want the king’s brothers married to anyone
but her family and friends. She won’t want us all at court, showing her up, showing everyone how a truly great English family behaves. She spends all her time trying to take the king away
from Father because she knows Father tells him the truth and gives him good advice, because she knows Father advises the king against her.’
    ‘Has Father asked the king for permission? For us to marry?’
    ‘He’s going to do it while he is at court,’ she says. ‘He could be asking him now: today, right this moment. And then we two will be betrothed – both of us –
and to the brothers of the King of England. We will be royal duchesses. We will outrank the queen’s mother, Jacquetta, we will outrank the king’s mother, Duchess Cecily. We will be the
first ladies of England after the queen herself.’
    I gape at her.
    ‘Who else should we be?’ she demands. ‘When you think who our father is? Of course we should be the first ladies of England.’
    ‘And if King Edward has no son,’ I say slowly, thinking aloud, ‘then his brother George will be king when he dies.’
    Isabel hugs me in her delight. ‘Yes! Exactly! George Duke of Clarence.’ She is laughing with joy. ‘He will be King of England and I will be queen.’
    I pause, quite awestruck at the thought of my sister becoming queen. ‘Queen Isabel,’ I say.
    She nods. ‘I’ve always thought it sounded well.’
    ‘Izzy, you will be so grand!’
    ‘I know,’ she says. ‘And you will be a duchess beside me always. You will be the first lady of my household. We shall have such clothes!’
    ‘But if you live a long time, and have no sons either, and then George dies, then Richard will be the next heir and the next queen will be me: Queen Anne.’
    At once her smile fades. ‘No, that’s not very likely at all.’

    My father comes back from the court in stony silence. Dinner is served in the great hall of Warwick Castle, where hundreds of our men sit down to eat. The hall buzzes with the
clatter of plates and the clash of mugs and the scrape of knife on trencher, but at the top table where my father sits and glowers, we eat in total silence. My mother sits on his right-hand side,
her eyes on the table of the ladies in waiting, alert to any misbehaviour. Richard sits on his left, watchful and quiet. Isabel sits next to my mother, frightened into silence, and I come last as
usual. I don’t know what has happened. I have to find someone to tell me.
    I get hold of our half-sister Margaret. She may be Father’s bastard but he has recognised her from her birth and Mother paid for her upbringing and keeps her among her ladies in waiting, a
trusted confidante. She is now married to one of Father’s tenants, Sir Richard Huddlestone, and though she is a grown woman of twenty-three and always knows everything, she – unlike
everyone else – will tell me.
    ‘Margaret, what’s happening?’
    ‘The king refused our father,’ she says grimly, as I catch her in our bedroom, watching the maid sliding a warming pan in the cold bed, and the groom of the bedchamber thrusting a