Although I am blessed with a sanguine temper, able to appear calm when ruffled, this was different. The morning was punctuated by Mary’s worsening cough that strained my heart until I thought it would crumble like moth-eaten fabric. Barbara and old Maggie went about with red eyes. Every night I woke at two or three of the clock, if I slept at all, full of worry.

When I was close to shouting at the people blocking my way, I spied a servant of Frankie’s in a courtyard to my right. A boy with fingers stained red led me to a studio on the top floor.

I tried to calm myself as I looked for Frankie. Large windows in the north wall cast a glow over the real and the artificed. The boy returned to his task of grinding pigment on a stone, another was cleaning brushes, and two apprentices painted curtains and carpets into the backgrounds of portraits. Frankie’s sisters and mother were depicted there in such colorful array that Frankie was for once obscured. I finally spotted her, beyond the artist at his easel, standing motionless beside a huge chair. I nodded briefly at Larkin as I passed.

“Forgive us,” called Frankie to the painter as she abandoned her pose to kiss me. “I have finally been persuaded to sit for a portrait, to mark Tommy’s wedding to Elizabeth Cecil. She is eighteen.” Frankie was fishing. She was older than Elizabeth but still twice as beautiful, as she well knew. “Are you ill?” Frankie asked me, suddenly serious, seeing my eyes half-closed from the pain in my head and heart.

“Robert Carr has asked for Overbury’s release,” I told her.

Frankie’s face, so filled with love and concern a moment before, stiffened like a death mask.

“How do you know?”

“The Lieutenant of the Tower was drunk and talkative last night. Weston came to see me this morning as soon as his watch was over.”

“Robin will not sacrifice me for Overbury,” she said.

“An intimate friendship of many years cannot be easily surrendered and Carr is suffering remorse at his friend’s long imprisonment,” I said. Tiny pearls of sweat broke through the ceruse on Frankie’s skin. Her self-assurance was worn paper-thin, the slightest stress tore it.

“They will abandon the annulment,” she whispered, to herself.

I glanced at Larkin, to be sure he could not overhear. “Visit Robin.”