The Witch of Eye Read Online Free PDF Page B

her husband because he was unquestionably a duke of royal blood. It was all Eleanor cared about. She smiled in the darkness, marvelling at the remarkable change in her circumstances since she had first come to court thirteen years ago, a confidently pretty twenty-one-year-old, eager to seize her opportunities.
    Her father, Sir Reginald Cobham, a minor knight entirely without influence, owned only a very modest estate in Kent, so no daughter of his could have expected to marry well. Without the advantages of high birth, the young Eleanor had spent several vigilant weeks assessing potential husbands and planning her strategy with care. Hers was a two-pronged attack: she wanted to re-establish her family’s failing status and, more than anything, she wanted a titled husband for herself. Her dark hair, sinuous grace and startling grey eyes often turned heads, though the only heads that interested her were those that wore coronets. Aiming high, she had begun with the King’s uncle and set out to entrap John, Duke of Bedford, brother of the late King Henry V.
    John of Bedford was a tall man with a round face and a ready smile. In Eleanor’s critical analysis of what he had to offer, he seemed pleasant enough, but by no stretch of the imagination could he be called handsome: his hairline was receding and, in her opinion, his nose was rather too hooked. His major advantage was that he was next in line to the throne and unmarried. Though she tried to catch his eye at every opportunity, not even at her most coquettish could she manage to attract his attention, much less strike up any kind of conversation with him. He seemed entirely unmoved by her, even slightly irritated, but, as a knight of the realm, his innate chivalry would not permit him to be rude to a lady. Instead, he was icily polite.
    His younger brother Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, was an entirely different kettle of fish. Tall, lithe and aware of his own smooth good looks, he flirted outrageously with Eleanor from the moment they met. He would look at her with his intense brown eyes before bending his head to kiss her hand, then he would press his lips to her fingers for a moment too long, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. On one occasion he slipped the tip of his tongue between her fingers, making his meaning perfectly plain.
    Thrilled by his attentions, Eleanor would laugh her tinkling laugh, smiling and fluttering her long, dark eyelashes at him. She would have been ready to fall into Humphrey’s bed at the first suggestion, except that it was already occupied by his wife.
    But a woman of Eleanor Cobham’s calibre would not allow herself to be deflected from the chase by a small detail like that. She meant to have her Duke and would stop at nothing to achieve her ambition. As it happened, the Duchess Jacqueline was brought to bed of a stillborn child a few weeks later and was in no position to pleasure her husband. With his wife thus inconveniently indisposed, Humphrey, being the man he was, felt entitled to seek gratification elsewhere. He fell, like a ripe plum off a tree, into Eleanor’s inviting arms.
    There were plenty of opportunities for the pair to be together since Eleanor had become one of the Duchess Jacqueline’s ladies, though she spent a great deal more time with her love  than she did with his wife. It wasn’t long before tongues began to wag. Unable to claim rights of ownership over his Dutch-born wife’s extensive lands in the Low Countries, the mercurial, selfish Humphrey quickly tired of the unfortunate Jacqueline and, within a few months, he had readily agreed to the annulment of their marriage on the grounds of its illegality.
    No sooner was Duke Humphrey free than he married his Kentish concubine. The subject of bitter criticism and the victim of cruel jokes, she managed to survive the finger-pointing and malicious gossip, and her persistence brought her triumph in the end. On her marriage she became the wife of one of the most