Before I could respond, she stepped back and wrapped the sheet around me. She led me out from behind the screen, dressed me in silk, and brought color to my face with paint.

“Arthur will not be able to wait,” she said, steering me to the looking glass. The woman I saw was delicate and beautiful but also a confection; Arthur would struggle to recognize me. I had dressed boldly as George’s wife, but always in fabrics suitable to our rank.

We left her apartment and walked to the river gate, her arm linked in mine, the swish of silk around my legs exhilarating. The beauty and wealth that seeps from silk through skin, Frankie was giving me. I was afraid to like it too much, as I could not afford it myself, but for that day I reveled in my borrowed cocoon.

Frankie prattled as we walked. “My sisters will be with us. Elizabeth is too thin, her old ruin of a husband suspects her of taking a lover.” She talked too much and too fast when she was nervous, and it struck me that she had a secret. Her chattering was to keep me from questioning her.

“Does she have a lover?” I asked. Frankie looked at me sharply; I suppose it was a rather direct question.

“She does, but it’s not how it seems. They were betrothed and in love and three weeks away from being married when Baron Knollys was widowed. His wife was about a hundred but if she could have held on for a few weeks, my sister would now be happy. Instead, my parents broke the betrothal and gave Elizabeth to the old Baron. She was eighteen and he was sixty.”

“There are more and more speeches made against such matches,” I said, shaking my head at the horror Elizabeth must have felt, forced to bed an old grandfather instead of the youth she loved. I had met the Baron. His nickname was “parti-beard” because his long, grizzled whiskers were yellow around the mouth, gray in the middle and white at the ends. He looked as old as God.

“Her lover is in prison for refusing to take the oath and she is growing as staunch a Catholic as he to revenge herself on our parents. Our mother is furious. She thinks religion is to ease our existence, not make it harder. She does not want any more of our family executed for it.” For once, I agreed with her mother.