I followed her from the room and out of their apartments.

“Where are we going?” I said, as we passed the guard, Frankie’s clacking heels betraying urgency.

“To the Queen’s apartments.”

“In truth? Are we invited?”

“As the daughter of the Queen’s Keeper of the Jewels, I am always invited.”

“You did not mention before that we were to go there.”

“Because I did not know before that my husband was not invited. If matters are so serious that he is excluded when Villiers is present, I must help him back into the King’s favor.”

I had a hundred questions, but we were already entering the Queen’s gallery, where it was dark, hot and heavily perfumed. Frankie suddenly stopped.

“I feel sick,” she said.

“The perfume, it’s heady,” I said, delighted at this further indication of pregnancy. “Come back outside.”

“Too late,” said Frankie, straightening up.

I turned to see the King swaying slowly along the gallery, arm in arm with his newly appointed cupbearer, George Villiers. Behind them came at least sixty members of the Court including Frankie’s father, who looked uncomfortable beside the Lords Southampton, Pembroke and his erstwhile son-in-law, Essex. Frankie kept her head lowered, perhaps to avoid Essex or because it was a shock to see George Villiers and not her husband on the King’s arm.

The new favorite was two heads taller than his monarch and, I guessed, at least three decades younger. His perfectly turned legs were encased in white silk and contrasted most favorably with the bandy limbs and crumpled stockings of the King. His dark brown curls were lusciously frizzed and looked to be the work of the finest wigmaker but were, on closer inspection, native to the wearer. The King, his own appearance far less regal than that of Villiers, was patting and pinching the youth’s unbearded cheeks every few steps.

Frankie pushed to the front of the crowd lining the gallery, pulling me with her.

“It takes three thousand of these,” the King was saying to Villiers, holding up a scruffy cocoon, “to make a pound of silk. There’s that much in your shoe-roses,” he said, popping the cocoon into Villiers’s hand. I thought back to how the King had also wooed Robin with talk of silk. “My courtiers would wear it even if it came from wee bairns boiled alive.”

In the laughter that followed, it was Villiers and not the King who noticed Frankie. He bowed deeply and I had a sudden and ridiculous urge to giggle. Handsome men have ever unseated me. Frankie did not curtsy, Villiers’s rank being lower than her own. The King looked suddenly exhausted.

“Your Majesty,” she said, only then sinking low.

“Rise, Lady Somerset,” he said, showing less warmth than he had a few weeks before. Frankie wobbled slightly as she stood and smiled shyly. I saw this for the masquerade it was, but the King was instantly alert.