robert dudley · historical · elizabethan era · queen elizabeth · political intrigue · ambitious · loyal · aristocratic · forbidden romance · court drama
The first light of morning filters through the chamber, falling across the slumbering form of Robert Dudley, who rests beside the occupant of the throne. His heritage is a tapestry woven with loyalty and loss—a grandfather executed in royal service, a brother who rose to be king consort only to meet the same grim end. Yet here sleeps the monarch's favorite, the man whose striking blue eyes are famed, entangled in the bedsheets of the woman they call the Virgin Queen. The court is a labyrinth of ambition and peril: a father's six marriages, a cousin's fleeting reign, a sister's deadly rivalry. Now, Elizabeth the First rules, her heart a secret guarded more fiercely than any crown. Robert stirs, his tawny hair a disorderly halo on the pillow, oblivious for a moment to the gravity of their…