‘We will have no self-pity,’ she says, with a soft slap to his shoulder. ‘This was a skirmish. Nothing more. We pull back. We regroup. Remember what my uncle the cardinal used to say. The wheel turns. We’ll catch it again as it rises.’

He nods, but they both know it was more than that. He is Edmund Beaufort’s declared enemy now, and that is a danger to them all.

She takes him to bed, though it’s the middle of the day, and lets him love her, though her body is sore still and she takes no pleasure in it. After, he is shamefaced and sorry, so it seems it did no good at all.

The summer is hot, weighted with loss. For want of something to spend it on, she wastes her time. She watches the river that was a torrent in winter turn sluggish, its listless course shaped only by the banks that hold it. She wishes it would storm and fill again.

Richard will not speak of their future. He spends much time with his growing sons. She believes it is because they are interested only in today; in whether he will ride with them or set them at the quintain, or drill their sword play. There is some pleasure in watching them. Edmund so attentive, emulating his father in all things, glowing quietly when praised, dipping his buff-coloured head when corrected and trying harder still. Edward listens with half an ear, argues back, does everything his own way till he finds a way that works, makes his father laugh, and revels in it.

When the boys go to their lessons, Richard calls his own arms master and trains with him, hours on end, as he never has before.

‘What are you preparing for?’ she asks him.

He only shrugs and squints into the sun.

‘You’re better at thinking than fighting.’

Yet what is there to think of, except how long this summer will last and what will end it?

In August she has an excuse to be on the move. Her nephew, the shining Warwick, has done his duty by his wife. He says the child is expected at summer’s end and asks her to come. She has set her women to packing. Richard is sullen and getting in their way.

‘She miscarried her first last year and fears for this one,’ she tells him. ‘Well, I know what that’s like. She has no mother. I’ll be a help to her, I’m sure.’

‘I’d have thought it’s the last thing you’d want. Cooped up with women talking about … whatever it is you talk about.’

‘Don’t sulk. We talk about you. Idiot. About what our men are doing. And how to get them to do what we want.’ He shudders and she smiles. ‘Have you forgotten that Edmund Beaufort is married to her half-sister? Who knows what I might learn?’