“Is it not plain? If Overbury is released, he will stop at nothing to prove my adultery and halt the annulment. You and I will be forced apart and cast out. I will be sent to Chartley, the whipping boy of my husband, dead while living. And you? How will your children eat? If Overbury is freed he will kill us as surely as if he ran us through.”

Larkin lowered his brush in frustration.

Frankie was right. A pawn, once swept from the board, is not mourned.

Talking to herself, she continued, “If I were a man, I could end this with a duel. There would be only honor in it. But it will have to be done with a woman’s weapons.”

She kept her pose, and I mine, and her mother nodded and sat back in her chair, but I did not draw breath for a long time.

“No,” I said finally. “Even if he dies and we are not caught, we will face God’s judgment.” I had seen plays in which women go mad when their desires are thwarted; they reach for the dagger or the vial of poison, and everyone dies. I wanted no such conclusion. “You would draw us onto the rocks, doing wrong in the name of good. You would lead us to a dog’s death.” But the news of Overbury’s imminent release had made her heart burn; had she been a man, what a soldier she would have made.

“You would put Overbury’s hook in your own cheek?” she asked.

“You are brave beyond caution,” I warned. Was it my own ignoble passions that drew me to her—pride in my talents, greed for higher place, and safety from want? There were times I feared I used her as ill as everyone else. I did not want to risk my life for Frankie, but she was right that to do nothing was to be ruined by Overbury and give up on living.

“Think of Icarus. Better to fall from the sky than die in prison.”

As I looked at Frankie by the steady north light of Larkin’s studio, I saw Judith surrounded by her enemies. She was fighting to escape the man who hated her, the laws and customs that imprisoned us, to marry the man she loved. Despite all that she demanded of me, I admired that.

“I will speak to Weston,” I said finally, amazed at the boldness of my voice, “but if we are discovered…”

We did not kiss or embrace. I curtsied to Frankie’s mother as I left, but she gave barely a nod in acknowledgment. She had no idea what risks I took to save her child and her family from disgrace.