“My dear Elizabeth,” he began and smiled. “May I call you Elizabeth? If you recall, our cousin of Warwick is a Neville, and just as my Neville mother is proud, so is her nephew. He will bend and he will come, I have no doubt.”

“Well said, brother,” Edward’s voice from the other side of the room made them all start. “I shall bide my time, but he will come.”

Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

1468

With a magnanimity born of stubbornness and naïveté, Edward did exactly as he had confided to Richard. He summoned Warwick again to his council at Coventry in early February and insisted on a reconciliation with the Rivers family, father and son. Blessed as he was with an almost exuberant optimism, however, Edward badly misjudged the overly sensitive Warwick. While the earl smiled benignly, he was forming his own plan for England, one that did not involve Burgundy—or Edward. Oddly, for one who was so decisive on the battlefield, the young king disliked conflict and tended to procrastinate on matters of governance. Some might even have seen him as duplicitous, or even lazy, while others praised his ability to charm his way out of confrontations. These traits and his hedonism were to plague his reign, and on his death leave England in a dangerous state of instability.

In the spring of 1468 and for the next few months, however, to all but the keenest observers, it seemed as though the king and his noble cousin Warwick were hand in glove once more.

Meanwhile, Richard was to once again be a guest at Jack and Margaret’s charming manor of Tendring. The Howard party left Coventry following the reconciliation and wended their wintry way to Suffolk.

Once there, Jack Howard was helped from his saddle by his squire and a groom. He still had a great deal of pain in his leg from the goring he had suffered during a boar hunt several months before. Richard slipped gratefully from his horse and gave the reins to his own groom. After a four-day ride from Coventry, made longer by Jack’s handicap, Richard had so enjoyed the councilor’s jovial company that he had hardly noticed his own physical discomfort.

Besides, Richard was delighted to be spending a week with the Howards because it meant he might, if he were fortunate, renew Kate Haute’s acquaintance. The very thought gave him a pleasurable rush. He cleverly raised the subject at the private supper later in the Howard’s solar.