Chapter Text
“You noble-borns are fuckin’ crazy.”
“Is that helpful?” Richie Pole looked over at his friend and threw a lime wedge his way, then gestured to the moping man sitting between them at the bar. “Seriously, like he’s not freaking out enough.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Jack de Vere raised his hands apologetically before bringing his beer bottle to his lips and taking a long pull. “It’s just we’re going through life thinking he’s Harry Tudor, mediocre rugby player extraordinaire and best Top Ramen cooker in our entire old dorm hall……..and then something like this happens and it’s like……..” he made the mind blowing gesture with both hands.
Harry lifted his head. “Suddenly you’re reminded that I’m actually Lord Henry Tudor? Heir to the titles and fortunes of two Great Noble Houses?” He took another shot of tequila and sucked on a lime wedge before spitting it out. “I myself, try very hard to forget that my life isn't now and never has been my own to live.”
“Harry…” Richie began sympathetically, brows furrowing. “There’s nothing you could do to get out of it?”
“Our parents have already put it forward to the House of Lords and it’s a binding agreement, so……….no, not really.” Harry shook his head. “Unless I want my family to be disinherited from our fortune and properties, me be disowned from my House and my family, and oh yeah—lose my British citizenship.”
“Then maybe being married won’t be so bad.” Jack piped up over the bar’s jukebox. “Even if it is to a woman your mother picked out for you.”
“I mean, I’d like to think I haven’t made a complete waste of my life!” Harry began to rant, ignoring his friend. “Top of my class at every school she’s ever put me in, doctorate in economics, teaching job at LSE! I mean, is that not enough for her? It’s like she thinks I’ve been working at Smoothie Hut, playing bongos on the street corner, and crashing on someone’s couch my whole life!!!”
“Well, your mother’s strange.” Jack added, covertly moving the tequila bottle far down the bar top, away from his rapidly-growing inebriated friend. “And not just because she herself is noble-born, but because……well, because she’s…….”
Richie took over for his floundering friend. “Okay, so we agree there’s not yet been a word invented to accurately describe Margaret Beaufort.”
“Your mum is ambitious,” Jack continued matter-of-factly. “but do you truly think she would be doing this if she thought you'd be unhappy for the rest of your life?”
Harry shrugged, looking around for the now-vanished tequila bottle. “It’s not like she’s ever been happy or in love with either my father or stepfathers.”
“But those marriages were arranged,” Jack’s brow furrowed. “If she’s been unhappy in them, you’d at least think she might shy away from putting her only son in one.”
“Regardless of happiness, Lady Margaret views those marriages as successful,” Richie sighed knowingly. “since if she hadn’t entered into an arranged marriage with those men and their Great Noble Houses, her Somerset inheritance wouldn’t have gone to her, even though she was the sole heir, because…….” he shrugged his shoulders. “well, because she was a woman.”
“Another reason you noble-borns are fucking crazy.” Jack snorted out a laugh. “It’s not the 15th century anymore! Read about women’s lib, for Christ’s sake.”
“Well, that’s part of the reason my mother’s chomping at the bit to arrange this thing.” Harry put his head in his hands. “Apparently the woman—”
“—You mean your bride.” Jack teased with a wink.
Harry shot him a dirty look and continued. “She’s from a top noble house—higher than any title my mother has ever held, which my mother finds very appealing in a potential wife for me—but apparently, for some reason, their line of succession and inheritance are in peril, and the only way the York family can keep their inheritances is to marry the oldest daughter to another Great Noble House—and that’s my intended bride.” He scrubbed both hands through his mop of curls. “And our mothers know each other through various social circles, so they got to plotting.”
“Wait a minute!” Jack slapped his hand down on the bar top. “Are you talking about Elizabeth York?”
Harry nodded dumbly. “Yeah, both mother and daughter are named Elizabeth.”
“Fuck, man,” Jack shook his head in amused disbelief. “Here I’ve been all sympathetic to your plight of having an arranged marriage, and all this time you’ve been pouty and whiny about having to marry Lizzie FUCKING York?!!!”
“Am I missing something?” Richie asked, looking back and forth between the two men.
“Yeah,” Jack chuckled lowly. “Our friend’s a damn toolbag.”
“Hey!” Harry shouted in offense.
Jack looked at Richie. “You know how my investment firm is always trying to act all hoity-toity to attract new clients?”
“Sure.”
“Well, one of the ways we do that is by having our networking cocktail parties in hoity-toity places.” Jack slapped Harry on the back. “And we routinely rent out space in The British Museum, where Harry’s intended wife works. I’ve talked to her a few times and she is awesome. She’s smart—she’s working on her doctorate, too—she’s sweet, she’s funny, and oh yeah……so fucking gorgeous it makes your palms sweaty!!!”
Harry let out a deep sigh. “That’s not…..that’s not….Damn it, that’s not the point!!” He opened his arms wide in exasperation. “Fine, she’s gorgeous. I mean, I haven’t seen her since she was seventeen, but I seriously doubt she’s gotten less breathtaking now that’s she’s grown out of those awkward teenage years. And I’m sure she’s cultured and intelligent and accomplished.” Harry stood from the barstool and threw a few bills down on the bar. “It’s not about her, or any other woman I may have ended up with……it’s about the fact I had absolutely NO choice in this!”
“So, I have absolutely NO choice in this?” Lizzie put one foot forward and placed her hand on her hip.
Elizabeth didn’t even look up from the desk as she wrote in the ledger, but her voice took an admonishing tone. “Lizzie.”
“No, I realize all of this…….” Lizzie opened her arms and gestured around to the massive room filled with fine rugs and porcelains, gorgeously upholstered furnishings, and ten generations of York family portraits hanging on the walls. “…..is so very important to you. But you would think your daughter’s future—her happiness—would at least enter into the equation, before you made choices for her life that are quite frankly medieval in nature—”
“Arranged marriages between Great Noble Houses still happen to this very day,” Elizabeth closed the ledger and met her daughter’s glare with a resolute quirked brow. “And are in fact quite vital to the survival of those great houses.”
Lizzie crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, then maybe those houses need to die.”
Elizabeth straightened in the highbacked, leather chair behind the desk and narrowed her eyes. “You always knew this was a possibility.”
“I did not!” Lizzie shook her head determinedly. “I did not. You always told me to go out and make my own life, something I could be proud of. And to marry a man for love, like you married my father.”
“That was before.” The line of Elizabeth’s mouth grew hard, her voice sorrowful. “Before your father died young and your brother Edward arrogantly thought he could ski down a Black Diamond course in icy conditions.” Elizabeth’s fist clenched tightly by her side. “Those two deaths put all of our futures in question—not just yours.”
Lizzie let out a deep sigh. “Yes, but it’s my future you’re offering up as sacrifice.”
Elizabeth stood and walked around the desk, gesturing for Lizzie to sit in the nearby chair and taking the seat opposite her. “Lizzie, I’m going to say something out loud that we’ve never said out loud before: your brother Richard can never be the true heir to the House of York. He will never marry, he’ll never have children—”
Lizzie’s face suddenly crumpled, and she let out a small sob. “No, mother—”
“We’ve hidden it as much as we can, for as long as we can.” Elizabeth continued, looking down to the hands in her lap. “But keeping him on the grounds of this estate so that others won’t take note of him? It’s wrong. He deserves to go out into the world, even if it’s just to small pockets of the world—safe places where he can be with others like him, where he won’t feel so all alone.”
Lizzie kept her eyes closed. “I agree he deserves that—”
“If we reveal your brother’s diagnosis before we’ve secured our inheritance through our eldest daughter’s—that’s you—marriage to another Great Noble House…….your grandmother and uncles will petition the courts to have him removed as heir and transferred back to their line.” Elizabeth rubbed the deep wrinkles that had formed on her forehead the past few years. “You know they will. And they will leave us with nothing. I have to think of the care Richard will need for the rest of his life, I have to think of you and your four sisters.”
“You really think Grandmother will allow six of her grandchildren to go uncared for, simply because the two of you don’t get along?” Lizzie scoffed, but it was without conviction. “You’ve always had such a persecution complex when it came to her.”
“Your grandmother once told me that she considered your Warwick aunts to be her only true daughters-in-law, and you and your siblings to be less-than your cousins because I didn’t hold a noble title before I married her son.”
“I know it’s gotten worse between her and us since father died,” Lizzie didn’t look up at her mother. “I know he was able to keep her somewhat in line.”
Elizabeth chuckled ruefully, putting her elbow on the arm of the chair and her chin in her palm. “She’s always had greater control over George and Richard than she did over your father, using Isabel and Anne like puppets to suit her will.” She shook her head in disgust. “She even wanted Edward removed as heir at one point because of her lack of influence on him. Cecily will get back into the position of power she had when your grandfather was alive, and your uncles might start out intending to provide for our well-being, but she will turn them against us. And then God only knows what will happen……you know in your heart that what I’m saying is true.”
“And I’m just supposed to be the next generation in this lady-war for power?” Lizzie spoke in a weak voice, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “Hop a ride on the Tudor family’s welsh dragon so that we can defeat my father’s family in their treachery to take what’s ours?” She laughed without mirth. “And then what? Fly away to Camelot where I’m locked in a castle until I give him heirs?”
“No, my dear.” Elizabeth smiled lightly. “Once the marriage contract has been approved by the Crown, you’ll be married within sixty days—as is the law—and we’ll purchase a terraced home or flat for the two of you in London. You’ll not be expected to give up your work. And neither will he……” she lifted an encouraging brow. “………he’s a Doctor of Economics at the London School.”
Lizzie’s eyes widened fleetingly before taking on an intrigued twinkle. “It’s not as if I’m suddenly okay with this just because he has a PhD.”
“Of course not.” Elizabeth smiled hopefully. “But…….it might mean you have some things in common?”
“It’s been years since I’ve seen or even thought of Henry Tudor.” Lizzie bit her lip, trying to suppress her curiosity. “I remember him being entitled and sullen.”
“And I remember you being snobbish and vain. But you aren’t anymore.” Elizabeth needled, nudging her daughter’s knee. “Perhaps your years of study and hard work the two of you spent to become experts in your fields have caused you both to become open-minded and even-tempered?”
Lizzie didn’t respond for several long moments until barely whispering, “Mother?”
“Yes, my darling?”
Lizzie looked down to her lap and began apprehensively. “After the wedding…..we could lead somewhat separate lives, couldn’t we?”
Elizabeth instantly sobered, but nodded. “Yes, you could. You wouldn’t be the first within the Great Houses to be married in name only. And it’s not as if we still hang the wedding night bedsheets out the window for proof of consummation.” She then gave a sad sigh and reached for her daughter’s hand, tenderly taking it in hers. “But my sweet Lizzie, that makes for quite a lonely life. Why go into this, looking to be at odds? When there is a chance the two of you might work together to be happy?”
“You will be polite. You will be respectful.” Margaret turned her head to cast a glare at Harry in the seat next to her, as their limo barreled down the road toward York Manor. “And you will not indulge in the ‘woe-is-Henry’ farce you’ve been perfecting since grammar school.”
“Grammar school.” Harry nodded to himself. “You mean when you shipped me off to France and barely let me know it was happening?”
“To the best and most expensive schools in France, you mean?” Margaret answered back through clenched teeth. “You act like I sold you to a shipmaster to work on the docks of Le Havre!”
“Henry, Margaret……for god’s sake.” Thomas Stanley groaned in his seat across from them. “I can barely tolerate the idea of spending a whole afternoon with the York family, I’ll certainly not be able to do it if the two of you are sniping at each other throughout the whole ordeal.”
Margaret sat up straighter and scoffed. “He makes it seem as though I’ve ruined his life.”
“No, you’ve just commandeered my life.” Harry shot back, staring out the window as the car turned to pass through the wrought iron gates of the great estate.
“Marriage to a perfectly lovely girl from a Great Noble House is something all noble-born men aspire to……” Margaret primly folded her hands in her lap. “……and I’ve made it happen for you. You’d think a little gratitude would be in order.”
Thomas groaned again. “Don’t push it, Margaret.”
The servant came into the doorway of the grand reception room and his voice echoed loudly as he made the announcement. “Lord Henry Tudor, Lord Thomas Stanley and Lady Margaret Beaufort have arrived, Lady York.”
Elizabeth rose from the settee with arms wide and a welcoming smile on her face. “Margaret! Thomas! Welcome, I’m so glad you could come and spend the afternoon with us!”
Margaret came into the room with Thomas a step behind her and kissed Elizabeth lightly on the cheek. “Elizabeth, we were so happy to be invited.”
Harry had stood back closer to the doorway with his head low and waited for his mother to signal, but it was his stepfather who spoke after he’d kissed Elizabeth’s cheek. “Henry, come say hello to your future mother-in-law.”
Harry’s chest rumbled with the suppressed groan caused by that statement, but he came forward anyway. “Lady York, thank you for having us in your home today.”
“Of course, Henry. So happy you’re here.” Elizabeth beamed at him and gestured to a young woman who then rose from the settee. “This is my second-oldest daughter, Cecily.”
“Yes.” Margaret’s face split in a grin. “My, you are a pretty young lady. I understand you’re seeing my half-brother, John.”
Cecily ducked her head with a shy smile. “Yes, ma’am. But it’s very new. Only a few dates so far.”
“Well,” Margaret continued teasingly. “the way he speaks of you, you should expect many more dates in the near future.”
Elizabeth cut in when she saw Harry looking around apprehensively. “You’ll have to forgive Lizzie for not being here to greet you. My youngest daughters Cate and Bridget were acting quite rambunctious while getting ready for your arrival, and Lizzie has the steadiest hand in getting them to behave.”
“She should be down with them any moment.” Cecily took note of the pained expression on Harry’s face, before adding with biting sarcasm, “She seemed just as eager to see you as you do her, Henry.”
Elizabeth cleared her throat and glared at her daughter to be quiet. “Margaret, I commissioned a new portrait of my Edward just last month,” she interjected in hopes of moving on from the touchy subject. “would you and Thomas like to come to the gallery and view it with me?’
“Of course, that sounds lovely.” Margaret said brightly, beginning to walk toward the doorway with Elizabeth and Thomas. “Henry, are you joining us?”
Harry nodded toward the double, glass-paneled doors that led out to the terrace. “I think I’ll get some air, actually.”
A cell-phone ring began to blare out into the room and Cecily looked down to it in her hand, stopping Elizabeth before she made her exit. “Oh, that’s John. Mother, I’ll just go into the drawing room?”
“Yes, that’s fine, my dear.” Elizabeth nodded before turning back to Margaret and Thomas with a grin as Cecily walked out of the room. “Lizzie will just have to do some exploring to find us!”
Harry went outside and closed the doors behind him with a long sigh, rubbing his hands over his face in frustration. He then ambled to the edge of the terrace, looking out to the lush greenery of the vast grounds. He closed his eyes and hung his head, leaning both hands against the railing while taking a deep and fortifying breath.
He opened his eyes again, and looking down, was shocked to see a previously-unnoticed head of golden hair. Sitting on the last step of the nearby stone stairs that led out onto the grass, was a boy of about ten or eleven. Harry walked over and went down the steps, stopping when his feet hit the earth. He turned and smiled down at the boy.
“Hello. I’m Harry Tudor.”
The golden head did not lift, and the voice that responded was without emotion. “Henry Tudor, son of Lady Margaret Beaufort and the deceased Edmund Tudor, heir to the Somerset and Richmond titles—also faintly tied by marriage to the House of Lancaster through your paternal grandmother.”
Harry’s brows lifted nearly to his hairline in surprise. “Well, yes. That’s correct.” He let out a short laugh. “I don’t typically go around with all those titles after my name, though. Normally, I’m just Harry Tudor.” He sat down on the step near the child and attempted to catch his gaze. “And you are?”
The boy looked everywhere but directly at Harry, unable to meet his eyes. “Richard York.”
“Ah,” Harry laughed teasingly. “Lord Richard York, heir to the York title going all the way back to the early Plantagenet days. And heir to the House of York fortunes and properties, including this fine estate we’re currently sitting on.”
Richard wrapped his arms around his middle and began to rock his upper body back and forth, turning his head fully away from Harry. “I’m just Richard York.”
Harry’s heart fell into his stomach as he recognized the traits of the boy’s actions and his voice devoid of inflection.
“Richard,” Harry took a deep breath and began carefully, but meaningfully. “The only title that truly matters is the title we give to ourselves.”
“What are you doing?!!”
Harry looked back at the sound of the sharp voice, and seeing the young woman to whom it belonged, stood from the steps and straightened. “Elizabeth.”
Dressed in a sleeveless fitted dark green sheath dress with her gleaming blonde hair pulled into a messy side braid and her blue eyes shining with emotion, Lizzie York could have been described as ethereal and stunning—except that the emotion shining in her eyes and twisting her mouth downward was clearly indignation. “I don’t need you to speak to my brother.”
“Elizabeth,” Harry’s mouth fluttered open and shut uncertainly. “I just came out to get some air and Richard was sitting on the steps, so I introduced myself.”
Lizzie’s eyes rapidly moved between Harry and her brother. “Richard, are you alright?”
“Alright. Yes, alright.” Richard continued to rock back and forth.
“Okay, then.” Lizzie took a visible, relieved breath. “Why don’t you stay there, and Henry and I will go to the terrace on the other side of the house.”
Richard didn’t look up at her. “Okay, okay, okay.”
Lizzie turned her back on Harry and began to walk with purpose to the terrace around the corner from the doors Harry had come out. When she reached a set of garden chairs between a trellis covered in ivy, she stopped and immediately turned to face him. “I don’t need you to speak to my brother.”
“Elizabeth.” Harry exhaled loudly.
“My name is Lizzie.” She corrected sharply, cutting off anything he might have said. “My mother is Elizabeth.” She folded her hands in front of her. “The way you can tell between us is she’s the one making all the decisions.”
Harry let out a reluctant, rueful laugh at her unfortunately true statement. “Fine, then--Lizzie. But only if you’ll call me Harry. My mother refuses to call me that as she thinks Henry sounds more dignified. And my mother’s preference of Henry is most likely why I prefer Harry.”
Lizzie’s lips quirked up of their own accord in amusement. “Very well.”
“I wasn’t doing anything nefarious,” Harry began, pointing his thumb back around the manor. He then gave her a solemn look. “But if you prefer I not speak to him, I’ll respect that.”
Lizzie tucked a tendril of hair back behind her ear, and she at least had the decency to look contrite. “I just don’t think it’ll be necessary for you to speak to him again.”
Harry nodded, Lizzie nervously twisted her hands, and a telling, heavy silence hung around them.
Finally, Harry looked to his shuffling feet. “When was he diagnosed?”
Lizzie’s mouth fell open and she brought a stunned hand to her chest. She waited a few moments to respond before beginning tremulously. “We began to notice when he was a toddler. Then took him to various specialists. And it took a few years to get a definitive diagnosis.”
Harry sighed. “You’d be surprised how many of the students—and teachers—at London School of Economics fall somewhere within the Autism Spectrum.”
“Richard’s very bright.”
Harry grinned widely. “Yeah, I noticed.”
“But…….he doesn’t do well with people.” Lizzie sadly looked out onto the lawn. “We’re hoping to get him some exposure to others like him, along with those who have a deep understanding of Richard’s special needs.”
He came a little closer to her. “You know, I think there’s a school, an institute, not far from here.”
“We know where it is.” Lizzie bit out defensively. “We know where every school, institute, and home specializing in Autism care and education is in all of Britain and western Europe.” Her hand reached up to finger a mother-of-pearl plated white rose pendant hanging off her neck. “But we can’t begin to see about enrolling in any of these places until we secure our inheritance through—”
She cut herself off when she saw the realization begin to dawn on his face. He looked at her with understanding and sympathy.
“You couldn’t have the inheritance administered by proxy—but in his name?”
Lizzie shook her head. “We fear when my father’s family hear of Richard’s entrance into one of these schools, they would petition the court to have the line of succession transferred back to my uncles. And there has been some bad blood between my grandmother, my uncles, and my mother. It’s not assured that my father’s family would concern themselves with providing for us.”
Harry nodded again. “I see.”
Lizzie chewed on her lower lip. “So, it seems the way my brother can be cared for and my family guaranteed protection, is for me to marry the boy who poured black tea leaves into the Wisley Golf Club Member’s Pool in the dead of summer.”
Harry laughed loudly, lowering his face but timidly looking up at her through his lashes. “I’m ashamed to admit I was twenty years old when I masterminded that, so ‘boy’ is being too kind in forgiving me for childish acts.”
“My father always said that admitting behavior is childish is the first sign you’re ready to be a grown-up.” Lizzie gave him a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “And even if we haven’t yet fully achieved the status, I hope we’ve both made great strides toward being adults.”
“Well, it seems our mothers are hell-bent on thrusting us into adulthood.” Harry agreed with a touch of sadness. “So, we’d better get ready.”
Lizzie smirked. “Here’s a step in the right direction…..” she stepped up closer to him and held out her hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Lizzie York…….. your fiancée.”
Harry laughed lightly and brought her hand to his lips. “Harry Tudor. It’s my pleasure.”