Free Thy Name Is Love (The Yorkist Saga) by Diana Rubino Page B

and he
     breathed deeply of it until it faded into the folds of the
     curtains.

Her prized marble chessboard with the delicate glass pieces was
     the nearest object within reach. Grasping it with both hands, he
     flung it across the solar, oblivious to the crashing noise as
     hunks of glass and marble shattered against the wall.

Slowly his vision blurred until the fragments became a converged
     mélange with no pattern or logic.

He knew in his heart what was keeping her from loving him. Not
     until she found out who she was, could she love anyone. He had to
     convince her that he'd never abandon her as her parents had.

"God Jesu!" he wailed, his cries dying beyond the beamed ceiling.
     "Give me the chance to save her life. Give me the chance to find
     her life. Then she'll be able to love me at last!"

 

CHAPTER
     TWELVE

In the seclusion of her bedchamber, Denys tried to subdue her
     roiling emotions. The repeated rejection of her by Valentine was
     almost more than she could bear. She had told herself she would
     never love him, but even as she uttered the words, she knew how
     hollow they sounded.

To take her mind off her tumult of emotions, she unrolled Anne's
     genealogical table and began to examine it more closely for any
     clues.

Anne was descended from John of Gaunt, a son of Edward III. Both
     Anne and Richard were descendants of Edward III, but so was nearly
     every nobleman in the kingdom.

Denys entertained a ripple of excitement in the possibility of
     finding her parentage somewhere in this family tree. Was there a
     place for her here? Did her name truly belong on this parchment?
     She might even be one of Gaunt's numerous descendants; after all,
     he'd had three mistresses. God only knew how many bastards he'd
     sired.

She rolled the parchment back up, repeating the names of the
     long-dead earls and dukes over and over in her mind. Beaufort,
     Beauchamp, Neville, Stafford. She'd heard all those names at one
     time or another during her childhood.

She went back to her diary and combed through it from beginning to
     end, pondering every mention of a visitor or lad being knighted.
     She'd made several entries about the feeble-minded King Henry VI,
     of his ill-fated battles, his triumphs and failures, and his
     overbearing wife, Marguerite of Anjou.

Then she had another idea. If she'd been in King Henry's charge as
     an infant, his living relatives might remember her.

Maybe King Henry had even sired her and, slipping in and out of
     mental incontinence, had neglected to recognize her!

She could be a princess in her own right, an illegitimate princess
     of the dead king, but that still meant her heritage was royal.

She began fantasizing about how she would have lived had King
     Henry recognized her as his heir. How different her upbringing
     would have been. He had been so gentle, saintly. There would have
     been no public belittlings, no angry outbursts—no Elizabeth
     Woodville.

But then she would have been a Lancastrian, the deadly enemy of
     Richard and his family, Yorkists to a man….

At that thought, she almost crumpled the parchment. It was almost
     too terrible to even contemplate being an enemy to Richard, Anne,
     Uncle Ned, Valentine…

Did she still want to go ahead with her search, even knowing that
     this might be the possible outcome?

She chewed her lower lip, tapping the scroll on the coverlet for a
     moment in indecision.

Yes, she did, more than ever now, she concluded with a sigh. Even
     were she a Lancastrian by birth, it posed no danger to anyone to
     find out the truth and put her mind to rest at last. That might be
     her blood line, but it was certainly not what was, or ever could
     be in her heart.

The babe had been given to the King as a ward. How then had she
     come to be in the possession of the Queen? To protect her when
     power had changed hands? In that case, she had to be someone of
     sufficient rank for not one, but two kings to have troubled over….

Too