Gay Lord Robert // A Favorite of the Queen — Jean Plaidy

Robert Dudley was determined not to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, both of whom had died on the scaffold. But already at 20 Robert was a prisoner in the grim Tower of London, his life hanging by a tenuous thread.

The young Lord's chief weapon was exciting masculinity which had already won him the love of a fellow prisoner--the young Princess Elizabeth, soon to be Queen. The love between Robert and Elizabeth was passionate and enduring, and might have culminated in marriage had not Robert's tragic young wife stood between them.

In this moving novel of historical romance, Elizabeth lives as the Princess whose life is in continual jeopardy, and as the all-powerful Queen--courageous and coquettish, indiscreet in love, cautious in politics. The vainest, yet shrewdest woman in the world, she was forced to weigh her love of power against her love for the man she could not have.