The King’s Mistress
In the prequel to her first novel, The Darling Strumpet, Gillian Bagwell takes the reader on an adventure filled with danger, bravery, and a love that knows no bounds.As a gentleman’s daughter, Jane Lane leads a privileged life inside the walls of her family’s home. At 25 years old, her parents are keen to see her settled, but Jane dreams of a union that goes beyond the advantageous match her father desires.Her quiet world is shattered when Royalists, fighting to restore the crown to King Charles II, arrive at their door, imploring Jane and her family for help. They have been hiding the king, but Cromwell’s forces are close behind them, baying for Charles’ blood – and the blood of anyone who seeks to help him. Putting herself in mortal danger, Jane must help the king escape to safety by disguising him as her manservant.With the shadow of the gallows dogging their every step, Jane finds herself falling in love with the gallant young Charles. But will Jane surrender to a passion that could change her life – and the course of history – forever?The unforgettable true story of Charles II’s escape, retold for a modern, female audience. Perfect for fans of compelling historical fiction such as Philippa Gregory and Elizabeth Chadwick.
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This novel is entirely a work of fiction The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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First published in the U.S.A. by Berkley Publishing Group, an imprint of Penguin Group (U.S.A.) Inc., New York, NY, 2011
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012
Copyright © Gillian Bagwell 2011
Gillian Bagwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9781847562593
Ebook Edition © July 2012 ISBN: 9780007443314
Version 2018-07-23
This book is dedicated to the memory of
Khin-Kyaw Maung
I miss you every day.
and
Ross Ireland
You left us far too soon.
Table of Contents
Read on for an extract from her first novel, The Darling Strumpet.
THE AFTERNOON SUN DAPPLED THROUGH THE LEAVES OF THE oak tree. Jane Lane sat in its shade, her back against its stalwart trunk, the Second Folio of Shakespeare’s works open on her lap. She had sneaked her favourite book from her father’s library and taken it out near the summerhouse, where she could read and dream in peace.
Though what need have I to sneak? she asked herself. I am five and twenty today, and if I am ever to be thought no longer a child, it must be so today. Lammas Eve.
“On Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen,” her Nurse had said of Juliet Capulet. Jane shared Juliet’s birthday, the thirty-first of July, but Juliet, at not quite fourteen, had found her Romeo, to woo her and win her beneath a moon hanging low in a warm Italian night sky. But not I, Jane thought. I have come to the great age of five and twenty, and but one man has stirred my heart, and that came to naught. An old maid, her eldest sister, Withy, would say.
What is wrong with me? Jane wondered. Why can I not like any man well enough to want to wed him? It is not as though I am such a great prize. Pretty enough, I suppose, in face and form, but no great beauty. Witty and learned, but those features are of little use in a woman, of little use to a man who wants a wife to be mistress of his estate and mother to his heirs.
What if there will never be someone for me?
She pushed the thought away. Surely there was more to think about, more to do than be merely a wife, exchanging the protection and stability of her father’s home for that of a husband’s.
She looked down again at the book in her lap, opened to The Life of Henry the Fifth, and read over the opening lines spoken by the Chorus, which never failed to thrill her.
O, for a muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention!
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene.
Yes, that was what she wanted. A swelling scene, full of romance and adventure, not this dull life in the Staffordshire countryside. She read on.
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars, and at his heels,
(Leash’d in like hounds) should famine, sword, and fire
Crouch for employment.
That sort of man would rouse her blood. Sword in hand, armour on his back, astride a great war horse, exhorting his men onward.
Once more, unto the breach, dear friends! …
Cry “God for Harry, England, and Saint George!”
Jane sighed. There was no king in England now. King Charles was, unthinkably, dead, at the hands of Parliament, two years since. The war had raged for years, those who wanted there to be no king had won, and now Oliver Cromwell ruled. The king’s twenty-one-year-old son, Charles, the exiled Prince of Wales, had been crowned as king in Scotland at the beginning of the year, but Jane’s father and brothers and cousins, the neighbours and the newsbooks, whether Royalist or Parliamentary in sentiment, did none of them expect to see a king upon the throne of England again.
