I read the letter from Amelia first. She starts with a list of the compliments that have been paid to her and how happy she is with her own court at Cleves. She likes to be in sole possession of our rooms. She tells me of her new gowns, and of dresses that were mine but have been adapted for her use. This is to form her trousseau, for she is to be married. I give a little gasp at this and Lady Rochford says kindly: ‘Not bad news I hope, Your Grace?’

‘My sister is to be married.’

‘Oh, how lovely. A good match?’

It is nothing compared to my good fortune, of course. I should be laughing at the small scale of Amelia’s triumph. But I have to blink back tears before I can answer. ‘She is to marry my brother-in-law. My older sister Sybilla is already married to the Duke of Saxony, and she is to go to their court and marry his younger brother.’ And so become a happy little neighbouring family, I think bitterly. So they are all together: mother, brother, two sisters and their two husbands, and only I am sent far away to wait for letters which bring me no joy but just continue the sense of exclusion and unkindness that my brother has dealt me all my life.

‘Not a match like yours then.’

‘There is no other match like mine,’ I say. ‘But she will like to live with my sister, and my brother likes to keep the others close.’

‘No sables for her,’ Kitty Howard points out, and makes me smile at her unending shameless greed.

‘No, that is the main thing of course.’ I smile at her. ‘Nothing matters more than sables.’

I put Amelia’s letter aside, I cannot bring myself to read her confident predictions of family Christmases and joining together for hunting in summer, and celebrating birthdays and bringing up their children, the Saxony cousins all together in the same happy nursery.

I open the letter from my mother instead. If I had hoped for some comfort here I would be disappointed. She has spoken with Count Olisleger and she is filled with anxiety. He tells her that I have been dancing with men not my husband, that I wore a gown without a muslin filet up to my ears. She hears that I have put aside Cleves dress and am wearing an English hood. She reminds me that the king married me because he wanted a Protestant bride of impeccable behaviour and that he is a man of jealous and difficult temperament. She asks me if I want to dance my way to Hell, and reminds me that there is no sin worse than wantonness in a young woman.