Blood of the Bear
They called him the Kingmaker—the man who crowned kings and destroyed them, who held England’s fate in his hands.
History remembers Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick as a warrior and a schemer.
But history never knew the woman who stood in his shadow.
She hid too well.
The woman who gathered his secrets, guarded his life, and loved him when loving him meant losing everything else.
Alice Neville was his spy.
His confidante.
His heart.
For twenty years, through war and victory, triumph and shattering loss, she served him in silence and in secret, in the stolen spaces between what they owed the world and what they owed each other.
From the first battle at St Albans to the last stand at Barnet, Blood of the Bear tells the story history never dared to record: the Kingmaker and the woman who loved him.
A tale of crowns and bloodshed, loyalty and betrayal, and a passion that endured war, marriage, and the fall of dynasties.
Five books.
Twenty years.
One love hidden in plain sight.
The bear may fall, but the heart remembers.
The Kingmaker's spy
England, 1451
England, 1451. At fourteen, Alice Neville hides behind a tapestry and overhears a secret family council. When she is discovered, she does not cower. She threatens them all with treason.
They could silence her. Instead, they send her to the Countess of Salisbury.
Under the formidable Countess's tutelage, Alice learns to watch, to listen, to lie—to become invisible. She is a weapon forged in shadow, shaped to serve the Neville family's ambitions.
But when she meets Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick—married, powerful, and utterly forbidden—Alice discovers that the greatest danger is not enemy spies or Lancastrian plots.
It is her own treacherous heart.
From the blood-soaked streets of St Albans to the glittering deception of the Burgundian court, Alice walks a knife's edge between duty and desire. She gathers secrets in dockside taverns, infiltrates the Queen's own palace, and risks everything to protect the man she cannot have.
But Richard Neville is no gentle knight from a ballad. He is ruthless, ambitious, and willing to let a town burn if it serves his purpose.
And Alice is willing to let him.
She is the woman history overlooked. This is the story it kept hidden.
Some secrets are worth dying for.
Some loves are worth the fall.
And some fires, once lit, can never be extinguished.
The Kingmaker’s Spy is the first book in a sweeping five-book saga of forbidden love, political intrigue, and devastating passion set against the brutal beauty of the Wars of the Roses—historically grounded, with the silences of history filled by the truths it never recorded.
The Kingmaker's secret
(1458–1461) From Love Day to Towton — the affair deepens as England tears itself apart.
England, 1458. The false peace of Love Day has crumbled. War is coming.
Alice Neville is no longer a girl hiding behind tapestries. She is the Kingmaker's spy, his confidante, his secret lover. But when assassins strike at Westminster—royal servants armed with swords, cutting through Richard's men in the palace corridors—Alice learns how close she came to losing him. He escapes by barge, fleeing back to Calais with blood on his hands.
But when the Yorkist cause collapses at Ludford Bridge and the Parliament of Devils strips away everything, Alice must flee—disguised as a man, sailing through winter storms to Ireland with the Countess of Salisbury.
In Dublin, she and Richard steal two months of dangerous happiness. But happiness is a luxury spies cannot afford.
When they return to England, whispers have begun. The family can only protect them for so long. Alice needs a husband—a man who will ask no questions, who will provide respectable cover for an affair that must never be discovered.
John Conyers is kind. He is honourable. He will give Alice his name and never suspect that any children she bears might not be his.
At Wakefield, Alice's world shatters. The Duke of York is murdered. His teenage son Edmund cut down fleeing the battlefield. And Richard's own father—the Earl of Salisbury—is captured and beheaded by their enemies. When Richard's careful strategy fails at Second St Albans, it is Alice who washes the blood from his wounds, who holds him through the darkest night of his life.
But from the ashes of defeat rises triumph. On a frozen field at Towton, in a blinding snowstorm, the Yorkists slaughter their enemies. Alice's father commands the archers whose arrows turn the tide.
Edward of York becomes King. And Richard Neville—the man who made him—becomes the most powerful lord in England.
Alice stands in Westminster Abbey and watches the coronation. She is another man's wife now. But she is still Richard's. She will always be Richard's.
The secret that binds them is just beginning.
THE KINGMAKER'S TRIUMPH
(1461–1465) He made a king. Now he learns what kings forget.
England, 1461. Edward of York wears the crown—and Richard Neville put it there.
The Kingmaker stands at the pinnacle of his power. Richer than any lord in England, Captain of Calais, negotiating alliances with France and Burgundy. He holds the fate of kingdoms in his hands. And Alice is still his—stolen hours in secret chambers, gathering intelligence from court and bedchamber alike, a love hidden behind her respectable marriage to John Conyers.
But the triumphs of these years are shadowed by loss. The Countess of Salisbury—the woman who trained Alice, who knew their secret and kept it—dies in 1462. And in 1463, Alice buries her father, Lord Fauconberg, the man whose archers won Towton.
The circle that protected them grows smaller. Now only Thomas knows the truth.
When Alice discovers she is carrying Richard's child, the baby must bear another man's name. Richard cannot claim this son. Cannot acknowledge him. All his power, all his influence—meaningless against this one unbearable truth.
And then comes the blow that changes everything.
Richard has spent months negotiating a French marriage for Edward—an alliance that will secure England's future and cement his own position. But in September 1464, before the gathered council, Edward announces he is already married. In secret. To Elizabeth Woodville—a Lancastrian widow with a vast, ambitious family.
Richard's humiliation is complete. The king he made has betrayed him before all of Europe.
Alice watches the man she loves turn cold with fury. She knows this look. She has seen it before—at Sandwich, when he let a town burn.
The golden years are over. And the Woodvilles are only beginning.
THE KINGMAKER's WAR
(1465- 1469) The Woodvilles rise, the rift widens, and the man who made Edward begins to unmake him
England, 1465. The Woodvilles are rising.
Every position Richard wanted for his allies goes to Elizabeth's family instead. Every slight is deliberate. Every appointment a dagger. The king Richard made has chosen his queen's grasping relatives over the man who gave him his throne.
Alice watches Richard change. The cold fury that followed Edward's betrayal does not fade—it hardens. He begins to plan. And Alice, as she has always done, gathers the intelligence he needs. Between pregnancies, between nursing children who have Richard's eyes and another man's name, she slips back into the shadows. Listening. Watching. Reporting.
When Richard's brother is dismissed as Chancellor, when Edward allies with Burgundy instead of France, when every door closes against the Nevilles—Richard turns to the one ally he has left. George, Duke of Clarence. Edward's own brother. Weak, vain, resentful—and willing to betray his king.
But Alice does more than spy. She convinces her own husband to join the cause. John Conyers rides out under the banner of Robin of Redesdale—a rebellion Alice helped to build.
In Calais, defying Edward's express command, Richard marries his daughter Isabel to Clarence. The rebellion that follows is brutal. At Edgecote, the Woodvilles' father and brother are captured and executed. Edward himself is taken prisoner. And in the chaos of battle, John Conyers falls—fighting for a cause his wife believed in more than he ever did.
Alice is a widow now. Free, at last, to love Richard openly.
But Richard makes a fatal mistake. He releases Edward. He believes he can still control the king he made.
He is wrong.
The war for England has only just begun.
THE KINGMAKER'S FALL
(1469–1471) An impossible alliance, a fog-shrouded battlefield, and the price of loving a kingmaker.
England, 1470. Richard Neville has run out of allies.
Edward has turned against him. Clarence cannot be trusted. There is only one power left that can help him reclaim what he has lost—and she is the woman he has spent twenty years fighting.
Margaret of Anjou. The She-Wolf. The queen Alice once spied upon in the shadows of Westminster.
In France, Richard kneels before his oldest enemy and offers her the impossible: his daughter Anne as bride to her son, Prince Edward. A Lancastrian restoration. Henry VI back on the throne.
Alice cannot follow him to France. She waits in England, heavy with his children—twins, born while he is across the sea. But she does not wait idly. She gathers intelligence, tracks Edward's movements, sends word through channels only she and Thomas know.
When Richard returns, he returns in triumph. Edward flees. Henry VI is restored. The Kingmaker rules England in all but name.
But Clarence betrays them. Edward lands in Yorkshire with a Burgundian army. The final battle is coming.
Alice will not wait at home this time. She has spent twenty years watching Richard ride to war. She has spent twenty years being left behind.
Not this time.
She binds her breasts, hides her hair, and rides to Barnet disguised as a man. Thomas tries to stop her. He fails.
On that fog-shrouded field, hidden behind a tree, she sees everything. The chaos. The confusion. Oxford's men attacked by their own side. The cries of "Treason!" that shatter Richard's lines.
She sees them unhorse him. Sees them kill him. And she cannot reach him. Cannot save him. Cannot do anything but watch the man she has loved for twenty years die in the mud.
She survives. She does not know why.
Five months later, her brother Thomas—the man who arranged their secret meetings, who guarded their love, who called them "insatiable" with that knowing smirk—is executed at Middleham Castle. Their childhood home. By their own cousin.
Alice buries him beside their father. And then she waits.
In 1480, she goes to him at last.
Some fires, once lit, can never be extinguished. They can only burn until there is nothing left.
(I already know I'll be crying when I write the last chapter.)