“My lady,” he said quietly, “Viscount Rochester awaits you. I can take you to him.”

Robert Carr had been in Royston with the King for several weeks, hunting. It was the first time they had met since the Mary Woods scandal broke and I wondered how he would greet her.

“Frankie, I will return home,” I said, keen to finish preparations for the morrow and relieve old Maggie of the care of the children.

“Please stay, I need your company.”

By which she meant I was to act as a chaperone in this palace of gossip. The steward led us to an apartment that was under renovation and empty. By the time I entered the chamber, Robin and Frankie were kissing. The steward withdrew and I sat in the window and pretended not to be there. In between kisses, Frankie said: “I have wondrous news.”

I admired his agility, for it was merely a momentary pause in his smile, but I saw fear cross Carr’s features. Did he think she was carrying his child?

“My Lord Northampton will seek an annulment for me.”

He tucked a curl behind his ear several times as he gazed at her. His face showed not fear anymore, but bewilderment. It was a strange tableau. A perfumed creature of the King adored by a woman whose strength of purpose exceeded his own.

“Can it be done? By a wife?”

“No. My Lord Northampton and my father must pursue it,” she said, an edge to her voice that I knew to be disappointment. She had expected her lover to cheer, not to ask procedural questions.

“Your great-uncle is the last man I would expect to consider an annulment for anyone, especially his own kin,” he said.

“Are you happy at the news?” prompted Frankie.

He could have smiled and kissed her, whatever his doubts, as a real courtier would have done. But Robert Carr was more honest than that.

“Frank, my love, be careful. Essex is the son of a hero, however deep his faults. Your union will be picked over like a barrel of apples. It is you who will be found rotten, not because that is the truth but because it is always so. More will condemn a wife who disobeys her lord than a husband who misuses his wife.”

Frankie began to twist the lace on one cuff. She turned from him and sat in the window. “The King does everything he can to promote marriages between his Scotch and English subjects.”

“I’m the King’s man, Frank. I’m with him under sun and moon now the Prince is gone. Everything I have comes from him and can be taken away by him.”

I felt for Carr as he stood looking sadly at Frankie’s back, wanting so much to please, pulled in all directions. Since finding favor with the King, he turned everything to gold for others, but was unable to gratify himself.