“My Lady Somerset, are you ailing?”

“Sire, I am with child,” she said.

“Christ alive and all hail Him!” swore the King, who sought the happiness of those close to him as long as it did not impinge on his own. “That’s a good business. Rabbie must be cock-a-hoop?”

“My lord is very pleased.” Frankie smiled. The King looked her up and down, as if to assess whether she was likely to behave as embarrassingly as her husband, then said, “Lady Somerset, this is George Villiers.”

Frankie dipped her head in a friendly manner. She, at least, behaved with grace toward the King’s new dog.

“I am your servant, madam,” said Villiers. The King clapped his hands in appreciation of his new favorite showing such courtesy to the pregnant wife of the rival incumbent.

Although he was but twenty at most, Villiers’s manners were more refined than those of Carr. His voice, as I had noticed at Larkin’s studio, was high and, for the English at least, easy to understand. He moved with grace and his beauty was unadorned but for the sumptuous yet sober materials of his clothes and six strings of fat pearls bubbling across his chest like spume crusting a black sea. Nothing about him was gaudy yet there was boldness. In his hat was a profusion of red ostrich plumes at which I stared a fraction longer than was entirely polite.

The King moved away on Villiers’s arm, leaving Frankie to face the earls of his entourage, even the one by whom she had been violated. She looked at the floor until those of her rank had passed and then whispered to me.

“They have mortgaged their estates to dress him. The outlay has borne fruit.” Her voice was as sharp as her mother’s.

We moved toward the open doors of the Queen’s bedchamber but made no attempt to enter. The King and Villiers were standing near the foot of the great bed, in which Queen Anna had spent most of her time since her eldest son’s death. The two monarchs spoke formally to each other, as if from a script.

“The King has not looked this happy for months,” said Frankie.

“You will hurt the child if you worry too much before it is moving,” I said. There was laughter from within and we craned forward.

“My lord,” said the Queen, whom we could not see, “as George Villiers is so great in your esteem, should he not be ever close by you as a gentleman of the bedchamber?” There was clapping and cheering, and it was clear that this delightful surprise had been anticipated by a good number of those present.