“Ah, Messieurs!” cried the hunchback. “You speak truly. I thank God these days that I am a poor hunchback, for I remember there are others in worse case.”
“God’s will be done,” said the soldier.
“God be with you,” said the hunchback.
“And with you, woman. And with you all. Farewell, Princess Peter.”
The child began to wail as they continued along the road. “Me Princess. Want my gown. Don’t like dirty Nan.”
Again that silence; again that tension.
Nell said: “Can it go on? Shall we be so lucky every time?”
“We must be,” replied the hunchback grimly.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1964, copyright renewed 1992 by Jean Plaidy
Excerpt from The Wandering Prince copyright © 1956, 1971 by Jean Plaidy, included in The Loves of Charles II published by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2005.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Robert Hale & Company, London, in 1964, and subsequently published in hardcover in the United States by Putnam, New York, in 1974.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Plaidy, Jean, 1906–1993.
The murder in the tower : the story of Frances, Countess of Essex /
by Jean Plaidy. — 1st Three Rivers Press ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-71764-1
1. James I, King of England, 1566–1625—Fiction. 2. Somerset, Frances
Howard Carr, Countess of, 1593–1632—Fiction. 3. Great Britain—Kings and rulers—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6015.I3M83 2010
823′.914—dc22
2009044482
v3.0