By evening, Franklin had been summoned; Carr was listening to his wife’s breathless and confused attempts to explain why Weston had been arrested. Love, fear and pregnancy were working magic; she looked more beautiful than I had ever seen her. A clock on the mantelpiece interrupted, and for all ten chimes she gazed at her husband, who appeared soothed by the beauty of her face. The final note faded as gently as twilight, but I was full of foreboding.

“Why would anyone accuse Weston of hurting Overbury? He could not cause injury as a close prisoner, it was all bluff to get my attention,” said Carr. “Frank, you are making no sense.” He looked at me. “What do you know?”

I shook my head, my thoughts too confused to risk speaking.

“There is a chance,” said Frankie, “that Mistress Turner and I will be questioned because Weston is known to us.”

Carr drank the wine Frankie handed to him and held up the glass, watching firelight jump off its cut surfaces. A man angling to replace Overbury as Carr’s secretary had given it to them. Carr put the glass on the floor and rested his foot on its rim.

“My love,” said Frankie. Carr pressed and pressed his foot, but the glass did not break. “Let me take that,” she said, crouching down. Carr stamped, making no more noise than if he’d been crushing a beetle. Splinters exploded outward, batting against Frankie’s skirt, one lodging in the silk like a large diamond. She rose quickly.

“I’ve concerns enough of my own! Speak plain. Why is it that Weston’s arrest alarms you so?” Since Villiers’s arrival, an anger we had never suspected in Carr surfaced at the slightest provocation.

We had arrived at the moment I had anticipated since being drawn into Frankie’s world; the moment when she would either show that our friendship was unbreakable or prove George’s fears correct, that ultimately I would be sacrificed as payment for riding high on her shoulders. Previously, Frankie had always had something to gain from our friendship; now the opposite was true. Protecting me would not serve her. Overbury’s death could so easily be portrayed as my doing; Weston, Forman and Franklin were all my connections. Frankie could play the innocent, unhappy girl, manipulated by an older, greedy, jealous confidante … she could throw me to the dogs and save herself. I saw blood soaking into the sand of the lion pit and knew that the sacrifice would not be mine alone, but also that of my children.

“The coroner testified that your friend died of a consumption. But now your enemies seek any excuse to unseat you. They are whispering that Overbury did not die naturally but was murdered.”

“What?” Carr interrupted. “Why? By whom?”