The Boy King (Violent Delights Book 13)

Chapter 4: "Plainness honor's bound when majesty falls to folly"

Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester

"You needed to see me—hmm," Eleanor quits speaking as I kiss her mouth, strongly, after locking the door behind me.
"Too many people are still here and I am not interested in talking to any of them. Edmund asked to talk to me this evening. Edmund fucking Beaufort. Well fuck that. I don't want to do things. I shouldn't have to do things. I want to kiss my wife for the next seven hours," I say, kissing her lips as we back towards a sofa. Locked in a sitting room. No one knows we're here. Like we're busy having an affair and not truly married.
"You don't want to see what he was talking about—?" She asks.
"No, not at all," I say, kissing my way down her neck, "Now are you good? I make love to you on that sofa until the sun comes up and you're definitely pregnant? Because I think that is great fucking plan."
"Yes," Eleanor laughs, letting me tug on her dress, "I'm just worried about you."
"Why, you think I can't survive on my own?" I scoff.
"Just stop your mouth, Humphrey," she laughs.
"My mouth is a gift from god it's everyone's ears that are the problem," I say, kissing her ear for reference, "Now get on the sofa, unless you want me to fuck you against the wall which I have nothing against."
"What brought this on?"
"Nothing," I lie. I'm sick of feeling broken. She just needs to fall pregnant and everything will be fine. "Nothing that you telling me you're with child in a few weeks won't fix."
"I love the kids," she says, putting her hands through my hair.
"So do I. So let's get another one."
Because I can father a child. Eventually I can father a child.  I should be able to.
I can. Jaquette and I wanted children. Needed children. But nothing, no pregnancy. No even lost pregnancy. She blamed me of course. Blamed the old injury, that everyone in the world knew I took to the groin. I was not about to admit I'd been so disgustingly gelded. She was pregnant when I married her, of course she swore it was mine. But the child was still born, and after that we had no children. So she silently blamed me. And after a heated argument I blamed her.
And I went to a brothel. And told any women that wished to agree I'd lie with them till they were with child, they could not lie with another, and that I'd take the child and pay them what was due for the bearing of it and all else. Two accepted. They were happy to stay in my house, not be required to see other men and while I can't be charming when I want to be I was paying them. A few months went by and nothing. I'd lay with them both, getting drunk every night, more angry as time went on, that it wasn't working. Then they both fell pregnant, one after the other within a matter of weeks. The children were born, and I contracted nurses. My bastards, proof of my virility if nothing else.
Everyone who is aware of the particulars suspects foul play in that scenario. I know that Jaquette and Eleanor both assume that the mothers got tired of my failure or simply weren't committed to the experiment. Because Jacquette remained barren. But now I had my proof, and by then I was well into the affair with Eleanor. Who despite years of this sort of behavior has still suspiciously born me no children. And it shouldn't matter except that it matters.
And it's not merely the war wound. No. John also has no children, though he's been wed for a while now. He too has yet to father a child. He pretends he does not care. But we're woefully short of Lancaster boys suddenly. Our triumvirate and Thomas should have thrown half a dozen little Lancasters by now, if not a dozen. Four brothers? Each could have realistically sired five sons, three to be conservative. That would be ten or fifteen boys by now, the next generation. Ready to protect their brother and cousin the king.
And yet.
The king is alone the sole legitimate Lancaster.
I'm wed for some six years, to two different women, nothing.
John, is married for some six years, happily so. And no children.
Thomas? He was married for nearly seven years before his death, his wife had born children before, and he'd had a bastard son, our John of Clarence he fights in France now. But no legitimate children, despite his obviously fertile wife.
All of us, past thirty. Our father had thrown all of us, four boys and two girls, before he was our age then after for good measure a bastard son.
Us? Nothing.
Hal, of course. He's not had his wife a year and she's pregnant with a son. We still don't know how but Hal somehow took our communal fortune as brothers, and sired a son just a year before his own death. We don't know how he managed that but he did and now his son stands alone.
And it's all political but everything in life is and I don't care but I'd like to not be broken. I'd enjoy it, just personally. Some of the talk could just stop. All my life I've tried to feel like a real person. My wife and I having a child wouldn't fix everything about me, but it would certainly go a long way to help.