I, Richard

marching band, and the always-dubious pleasure he'd just taken from Betsy's corpulent, perfume-drenched charms was quickly transformed to a faint memory. Jesus God, he thought with a gasp. Forget justification altogether. Was the end even worth the bloody means?

Luckily, Betsy took the groan and the gasp the way Betsy took most everything. She heaved herself onto her side, propped her head upon her palm, and observed him with an expression that was meant to be coy. The last thing Betsy wanted him to know was how desperate she was for him to be her lifeboat out of her current marriage-number four this one was-and Malcolm was only too happy to accommodate her in the fantasy. Sometimes it got a bit complicated, remembering what he was supposed to know and what he was supposed to be ignorant of, but he always found that if Betsy's suspicions about his sincerity became aroused, there was a simple and expedient, albeit back-troubling, way to assuage her doubts about him.

She reached for the tangled sheet, pulled it up, and extended a plump hand. She caressed his hairless pate and smiled at him lazily. “Never did it with a baldy before. Have I told you that, Malc?”

Every single time the two of them-as she so poetically stated-did it, he recalled. He thought of Cora, the springer spaniel bitch he'd adored in childhood, and the memory of the dog brought suitable fondness to his face. He eased Betsy's fingers down his cheek and kissed each one of them.

“Can't get enough, naughty boy,” she said. “I've never had a man like you, Malc Cousins.”

She scooted over to his side of the bed, closer and closer until her huge bosoms were less than an inch from his face. At this proximity, her cleavage resembled Cheddar Gorge and was just about as appealing a sexual object. God, another go-round? he thought. He'd be dead before he was fifty if they went on like this. And not a step nearer to his objective.

He nuzzled within the suffocating depths of her mammaries, making the kinds of yearning noises that she wanted to hear. He did a bit of sucking and then made much of catching sight of his wristwatch on the bedside table.

“Christ!” He grabbed the watch for a feigned better look. “Jesus, Betsy, it's eleven o'clock. I told those Aussie Ricardians I'd meet them at Bosworth Field at noon. I've got to get rolling.”

Which was what he did, right out of bed before she could protest. As he shrugged into his dressing gown, she struggled to transform his announcement into something comprehensible. Her face screwed up and she said, “Those Ozzirecordians? What the hell's that?” She sat up, her blonde hair matted and snarled and most of her makeup smeared from her face.

“Not Ozzirecordians,” Malcolm said. “Aussie. Australian. Australian Ricardians. I told you about them last week, Betsy.”

“Oh, that.” She pouted. “I thought we could have a picnic lunch today.”

“In this weather?” He headed for the bathroom. It wouldn't do to arrive for the tour reeking of sex and Shalimar. “Where did you fancy having a picnic in January? Can't you hear that wind? It must be ten below outside.”

“A bed picnic,” she said. “With honey and cream. You said that was your fantasy. Or don't you remember?”

He paused in the bedroom doorway. He didn't much like the tone of her question. It made a demand that reminded him of everything he hated about women. Of course he didn't remember what he'd claimed to be his fantasy about honey and cream. He'd said lots of things over the past two years of their liaison. But he'd forgotten most of them once it had become apparent that she was seeing him as he wished to be seen. Still, the only course was to play along. “Honey and cream,” he sighed. “You brought honey and cream? Oh Christ, Bets…”A quick dash back to the bed. A tonguely examination of her dental work. A frantic clutching between her legs. “God, you're going to drive me mad, woman. I'll be walking round Bosworth with my prong like a poker all day.”

“Serves you right,” she said pertly and reached for his groin. He caught her hand in his.

“You love it,” he said.

“No more'n you.”

He sucked her fingers again. “Later,” he said. “I'll trot those wretched Aussies round the battlefield and if you're still here then… You know what happens next.”

“It'll be too late then. Bernie thinks I've only gone to the butcher.”

Malcolm favoured her with a pained look, the better to show that the thought of her hapless and ignorant husband-his old best friend Bernie-scored his soul. “Then there'll be another time. There'll be hundreds of times. With honey and cream. With caviar. With oysters. Did I ever tell you what I'll do with the oysters?”

“What?” she asked.

He smiled. “Just you wait.”

He retreated to the bathroom, where he turned on the shower. As usual, an inadequate spray of lukewarm water fizzled out of the pipe. Malcolm shed his dressing gown, shivered, and cursed his circumstances. Twenty-five years in the classroom, teaching history to spotty-faced hooligans who had no interest in anything beyond the immediate gratification of their sweaty-palmed needs, and what did he have to show for it? Two up and two down in an ancient terraced house down the street from Gloucester Grammar. An ageing Vauxhall with no spare tyre. A mistress with an agenda for marriage and a taste for kinky sex.

And a passion for a long-dead King that-he was determined- would be the wellspring from which would flow his future. The means were so close, just tantalising centimetres from his eager grasp. And once his reputation was secured, the book contracts, the speaking engagements, and the offers of gainful employment would follow.

“Shit!” he bellowed as the shower water went from warm to scalding without a warning. “Damn!” He fumbled for the taps.

“Serves you right,” Betsy said from the doorway. “You're a naughty boy and naughty boys need punishing.”

He blinked water from his eyes and squinted at her. She'd put on his best flannel shirt-the very one he'd intended to wear on the tour of Bosworth Field, blast the woman-and she lounged against the doorjamb in her best attempt at a seductive pose. He ignored her and went about his showering. He could tell she was determined to have her way, and her way was another bonk before he left. Forget it, Bets, he said to her silently. Don't push your luck.

“I don't understand you, Malc Cousins,” she said. “You're the only man in civilisation who'd rather tramp round a soggy pasture with a bunch of tourists than cozy up in bed with the woman he says he loves.”

“Not says, does,” Malcolm said automatically. There was a dreary sameness to their postcoital conversations that was beginning to get him decidedly down.

“That so? I wouldn't've known. I'd've said you fancy whatsis-name the King a far sight more'n you fancy me.”

Well, Richard was definitely more interesting a character, Malcolm thought. But he said, “Don't be daft. It's money for our nest egg anyway.”

“We don't need a nest egg,” she said. “I've told you that about a hundred times. We've got the-”

“Besides,” he cut in hastily. There couldn't be too little said between them on the subject of Betsy's expectations. “It's good experience. Once the book is finished, there'll be interviews, personal appearances, lectures. I need the practice. I need”-this with a winning smile in her direction-“more than an audience of one, my darling. Just think what it'll be like, Bets. Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, the Sorbonne. Will you like Massachusetts? What about France?”

“Bernie's heart's giving him trouble again, Malc,” Betsy said, running her finger up the doorjamb.

“Is it, now?” Malcolm said happily. “Poor old Bernie. Poor bloke, Bets.”

The problem of Bernie had to be handled, of course. But Malcolm was confident that Betsy Perryman was up for the challenge. In the afterglow of sex and inexpensive champagne, she'd told him once that each one of her four marriages had been a step forward and upward from the marriage that had preceded it, and it didn't take a hell of a lot of brains to know that moving out of a marriage to a dedicated inebriate-no matter how affable-into a relationship with a schoolteacher on his way to unveiling a piece of mediaeval history that would set the country on its ear was a step in the right direction. So Betsy would definitely handle Bernie. It was only a matter of time.

Divorce was out of the question, of course. Malcolm had made certain that Betsy understood that, while he was desperate mad hungry and all the etceteras for a life with her, he would no more ask her to come to him in his current impoverished circumstances than would he expect the Princess Royal to take up life in a bed-sit on the