❝you think Achilles was of impressive descent?
touch me one more time❞
The one where King Edward IV is captivated by Charlotte Neville and their love has far-reaching consequences. For Charlotte had a place in Edward's heart no one could tear her fr...
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October 1462
By the time he's managed to escape Warwick and his hounding to choose one of the available French girls as his bride, Edward is impatient to find Charlotte. She is not in his chamber or hers, and, when he asks their sisters if they have seen her, Margaret mentions seeing her visiting the physician the day before. Concerned, Edward returns to her chamber to find Charlotte shaking some powdered concoction from a vial into warm tea.
"Are you ill?" He asks instantly, crossing the room to cup her face, to brush a soft kiss against her cheekbone and then her forehead. It bothers him to think he has missed some sign of sickness, that he has been too involved in matters of state to recognize Charlotte is unwell.
"Ill?"
"My sister says you went to the physician. Do you have a fever or - "
"No, no fever," Charlotte slips from his arms, crosses to the window and pushes it open.
"Then what is it?"
Her back is to him, and he can read the tension in her shoulders; it is the way she stands when she is anticipating a discussion. "I have not bled for two months. I've been ill this past few mornings. I saw the physician...and then I asked for one of my maids to fetch a tea from the village."
Edward jolts at her answer, looking down at the seemingly harmless cup on the table. He has heard of tansy and pennyroyal tea, of course. He's had to use it before, but somehow this feels more real. God, he did not even think Charlotte knew what it was, let alone how to find it. She always seemed so much younger in spirit, so innocent despite the political acumen she'd inherited from her father.
He'd always thought her a girl, he realized with a jolt. He'd never realized she was a woman in more ways than one.
Now, as he stares down at the concoction in the cup, comprehends the words Charlotte has just said, all Edward can consider is the specifics of this situation.
He stares at her, flabbergasted. He stares at the woman who represented so much to him. She was his end. She was his beginning. She was his everything. He refuses to think of the realm and the scandal and the consequences. He could only think of her and the proof of their love growing inside her womb. He could only think of how cold she was being at the moment, of how she was ready to remove their child from her body.
Anger begins to burn in his chest. "If I had not come in when I did, would you have told me?"
"I didn't have to tell you now," Charlotte retorts, keeping her back to him as she gazes out upon the village. "I could have drunk the tea, and you never would have been the wiser."
"Why are you telling me then?"
She shrugs. "Because I can't be bedded for a fortnight after I take it, and you would've gotten suspicious if I stopped letting you come to my bed."
