The year is 1464.
The War of the Roses rages on; a great showdown between Lancaster and York.
Yet, asleep in her bed, fiery-haired Melissa Woodville dreams of splintered shields, broken swords, and the resounding screams of wounded men in the Battle...
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JOAN NEVILLE HAD never got on properly with her cousin, Isabel. They both thought each other too uppity, could not find a single point in common. Were they to be forced into a conversation, scarcely a sentence could pass in the exchange that was not embroiled in an insult. That was just the way they were; the way they had always been. The tenuousness could not be changed — it was simply a norm that those around them had grudgingly gotten used to.
So, when Joan's Aunt Cecily sent her favored handmaiden to deliver news from court, news that pertained to both Isabel and her husband, Joan immediately volunteered to take on the duke. Lady Sutcliffe could handle Isabel — there was no bad blood between them.
Now, however, standing in the doorway that led to the brothel, her nose wrinkled, the Neville girl could not help but wonder whether she had made the wrong choice. A bevy of smells assaulted her nose; sickly sweet, sour, pungent, like an odd mixture of tar and sweat. Men bellowed in laughter from where they were sat, half-naked girls on their laps, groping their ample bosoms and swigging ale from a variety of drink-ware. The sight was foul, the language was foul, everything about it was foul.
"Isabel would be preferable to this squalor," Joan could not help but think, dodging the wandering hand of some lecher or other.
Pressing herself to the wall and forging ahead, she ducked yet another drunken fool, stumbling blindly down a hallway until she found the room she was looking for. Pushing the oaken fixture open, the first sight that greeted her was not one she ever necessarily wanted to see: the Duke of Clarence, half-naked on the bed, a lady ("No, a whore," Joan corrected herself sternly) clad in what could only be described as blush pink scraps on his lap.
"Joanie?" George raised an eyebrow, looking genuinely shocked.
"Cousin," the girl replied drily, giving him a mock curtsey.
