“If you did not challenge your husband, your life would be easier,” I said.

“It would be over.” She dabbed her mouth as if tasting vomit, looking over at her family. “Beneath those façades are some very hard hearts, the hardest lying within the breast of my great-uncle.” I hoped we would never meet, having read much about him in broadsheets, none of it complimentary. Even to see him so close felt strange, like meeting Judas, someone known to all but seen by few. He was thin, nearing seventy, with gray hair cut close to the scalp; he was entirely dressed in black.

Although Frankie was the most exquisite, the Howards were always an extraordinary sight. It is no exaggeration to say that the value of a large estate was lavished on the clothes and adornment of each. They were ever encased in gold and silver constructions that took up four times the space of their naked bodies, sewn with so many jewels that they lit up the air around them, making them seem larger and, were it not a sin to say it, somewhat divine. At the very core of the family, however, was a man who did not radiate light but stole it.

“Is Lord Northampton married?”

“He prefers the company of educated young men. Follow me,” she said. I grabbed her arm to stop her, preferring to stay near the back. She gave me one of her looks and pulled me toward her family. As we neared, I saw that the King was just behind them. We curtsied low, blood rushing in my ears and muffling the sounds around me, but the King paid us no attention; he was watching a keeper in the pit maddening the lions by passing in front of their cages with lumps of dripping offal. Queen Anna gave us a brief nod but Lord Salisbury was too busy trying to catch the attention of the young man next to him, Sir Robert Carr. Salisbury looked especially crook-backed, ancient and ill-favored beside Carr, who paid him no heed for his eyes were caught by Frankie’s approach. He pressed his velvet cap to his heart and bowed deeply.

Dressed in bright blue, that made jewels of his eyes, I was stirred anew by his looks. His shadow, Sir Thomas Overbury, echoed Carr’s gesture without sincerity, exaggerating his surprise to see us there at all. Having been officially introduced only in a brothel, and being of lower rank, Carr was still barred from addressing Frankie in public. She, a married woman, was prohibited from paying him the slightest notice.

“How well you look, my lady,” he said, her husband not twenty feet away. That Frankie did not rebuff Carr made me sweat. I pulled on her hand but she ignored me.

In a simple action that changed our world, she lowered her fan and lifted her eyes.