The enchanting Alix of Wanthwaite returns in a suspenseful and richly textured adventure in which nothing less than the future of England is at stake. Alix is home at her beloved estate on the Scottish border when King Richard’s soldiers march into her castle and demand to take her to the Continent with them. King Richard has been captured while on Crusade, and Alix is among the nobles whose lives will be collateral for the king’s ransom. But when she’s delivered to Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard’s mother, she is dumbfounded to learn that the queen has other plans for her. King Richard needs an heir, Eleanor tells Alix. Repulsed by his queen, a homely religious fanatic, he has told his mother that the only woman he wants is the one he met on Crusade, when she was disguised as a boy. Richard wants Alix to be his mistress and the mother of the next Plantagenet king. Now a beguiling and irrepressible young woman, Alix faces more tribulations—and romance—on this trip to Europe, where affairs of the state and affairs of the heart are intricately intertwined. From the Trade Paperback edition. ng Alix of Wanthwaite returns in a suspenseful and richly textured adventure in which nothing less than the future of England is at stake. Alix is home at her beloved estate on the Scottish border when King Richard s soldiers march into her castle and demand to take her to the Continent with them. King Richard has been captured while on Crusade, and Alix is among the nobles whose lives will be collateral for the king s ransom. But when she s delivered to Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard s mother, she is dumbfounded to learn that the queen has other plans for her. King Richard needs an heir, Eleanor tells Alix. Repulsed by his queen, a homely religious fanatic, he has told his mother that the only woman he wants is the one he met on Crusade, when she was disguised as a boy. Richard wants Alix to be his mistress and the mother of the next Plantagenet king. Now a beguiling and irrepressible young woman, Alix faces more tribulations and romance on Pamela Kaufman, Ph.D., is the author of the bestseller Shield of Three Lions , the first Alix of Wanthwaite novel, and The Book of Eleanor , a novel of Eleanor of Aquitaine—both available from Crown Publishers and Three Rivers Press. She lives in Los Angeles. From the Trade Paperback edition. 1 A bitter shaft blew from the firth. Cold as a bone, it whipped the last of the leaves off the wands, turned turnips in the field a bright blue, keened around our castle towers while inside we labored frantically to hang hides across arrow-slits. I was dragging a ladder to my second window when I heard a familiar scratching. "Dingwall?" I called suspiciously. "Where are you, Dingwall?" My hound pup's rump wiggled from under my bedmat. "If you take . . ." He faced me with a vellum in his jaws, tail thumping the rushes in anticipation. "Give that to me, you wallydrag!" He darted out the door as Gruoth lumbered in. "Catch him, Gruoth! He's got Enoch's letter!" She stood back as I flew past her. Through the courtyard and gate, across the moatbridge, down the steep spinney where I fell on rime-coated grass. I would kill that no-good brute, slice him small and put him in a saucepan. Wind howled, branches splintered and shot past like arrows, but I picked myself up and plunged after Dingwall where his tail disappeared in the brush. I found him crouched by the Wanthwaite River, the vellum spread under his splayed paws as he licked it with slow savor. He was too cowardly to swim, but he would dash up and down the banks for a week if I chased him. Feigning indifference, I swung on a low branch, then hoisted my heavy cowhide boots over my head and let go with my hands, dangling upside down so my hair brushed the ground; Dingwall couldn't resist my hair. From this view, the sky was an alarming chaos of flying gray cushions; the earth thumped and shook, as if its heart beat in panic. "Come, Dingwall," I called sweetly. He growled, let flee a series of excited yips. Puzzled, I turned my head and gazed into the pup's spiked tail, and beyond the tail to a horse's leg, and up the leg to a black boot in a gilded stirrup. I put my hands flat and wheeled to an upright position. A stranger looked down on me from an enormous chestnut destrier. Behind him stretched a line of soldiers and packed mules. Benedicite, how had they stolen so stilly through the wood? Then I recalled the beat I'd heard--horses' hooves. The stranger pricked the vellum with his broadsword and held it forth. "Is this what you want?" As if he were offering the letter to a monkey. "Aye. Thank you." "Perhaps you can help me, lass. I seek Lady Alix of Wanthwaite, and the villagers in Dunsmere told me that this was the path. Are you one of her villeins?" I hesitated. He was elegant as a black swan, swathed in dark furs over fine black wool and scarlet sendal, wore a crushed red hat on black crulled hair, but I did