‘Well, tell her again,’ he cries. Nothing will soothe him, I had better get away. He would be beside himself if he knew that I have seen him like this. I put my hand behind me and feel the comforting warmth of the thick tapestry covering the rear wall. I inch along, my dark dress almost invisible in the shadows of the room.

‘I saw her when that painter was here,’ he says, his voice thick. ‘Preening in her vanity, setting herself out. Laced . . . laced . . . tight. Her breasts . . . on show . . . trying to appear desirable. She is capable of sin, Mother. She is disposed to . . . She is disposed to . . . Her temperament is naturally filled with . . .’ He cannot say it.

‘No, no,’ Mother says gently. ‘She only wants to be a credit to us.’

‘. . . Lust.’

The word has become detached, it drops into the silence of the room as if it might belong to anybody, as if it might belong to my brother and not to me.

I am at the doorway now, my hand gently lifting the latch, my other finger muffling its click. Three of the women of the court casually rise and stand before me to mask my retreat from the two at the fireside. The door swings open on oiled hinges and makes no sound. The cold draught makes the candles at the fireside bob, but my brother and my mother are facing each other, rapt in the horror of that word, and do not turn around.

‘Are you sure?’ I hear her ask him.

I close the door before I hear him reply, and I go quickly and quietly to our chamber where the maids are sitting up by the fireside with my sister and playing cards. They scramble them off the table when I tear open the door and stride in, and then they laugh when they see it is me in their relief that they have not been caught out gambling: a forbidden pleasure for spinsters in my brother’s lands.

‘I’m going to bed, I have a headache, I’m not to be disturbed,’ I announce abruptly.

Amelia nods. ‘You can try,’ she says knowingly. ‘What have you done now?’

‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘As always, nothing.’

I go through quickly to our privy chamber and fling my clothes into the chest at the foot of the bed and jump into bed in my shift, drawing the curtains around the bed, pulling the covers up. I shiver in the coldness of the linen, and wait for the order that I know will come.

In only a few moments, Amelia opens the door. ‘You’re to go to Mother’s rooms,’ she says triumphantly.

‘Tell her I’m ill. You should have said I’ve gone to bed.’

‘I told her. She said you have to get up and put on a cloak and go. What have you done now?’