‘I will never let you go!’

‘Your Grace, I am a maid!’

This works wonderfully well, he lets me go a little way and I can step back and though he takes both my hands, at least I don’t have him breathing down the front of my gown.

‘You are a sweet maid, Katherine.’

‘I am an honest maid, sire,’ I say breathlessly.

He has tight hold of my hands and he draws me to him. ‘If I were a free man would you be my wife?’ he asks simply.

I am so surprised by the speed of this, that I cannot say a word. I just look at him as if I were a complete milkmaid, and stupid as a dairy cow. ‘Your wife? Your wife, sire?’

‘My marriage is not a true one,’ he says quickly, all the time he is pulling me closer, his hand sliding round my waist again. I think that the words are just to dazzle me while he backs me into the corner and gets a hand up my skirt, so I keep moving and he keeps talking. ‘My marriage is invalid. For several reasons. My wife was pre-contracted and not free to marry. My conscience warned me of this and for my soul’s sake I cannot lie with her in a holy union. I know in my deepest heart that she is another man’s wife.’

‘Is she?’ Surely, he can’t imagine I am fool enough to believe this for a moment.

‘I know it, my conscience warns me. God speaks to me. I know it.’

‘Does He? Do you?’

‘Yes,’ he says firmly. ‘And so I did not fully consent at my wedding. God knew of my doubts then; and I have not lain with her. So the marriage is no marriage and I will soon be free.’

So he does think me fool enough, because he has fooled himself. Good God, what men can do to their brains when their cocks are hard. It is truly amazing.

‘But what will happen to her?’ I ask.

‘What?’ His hand, which is creeping up my stomacher to my breast, is halted at the thought.

‘What will happen to the queen?’ I ask. ‘If she is no queen any more?’

‘How should I know?’ he says, as if it is nothing to do with him. ‘She should not have come to England if she was not free to marry. She is a promise-breaker. She can go home again.’

I don’t think that she will want to go home again, not to that brother of hers, and she has taken a liking to the royal children, and to England. But his hand is pulling urgently on my waist and he is turning me to face him.

‘Katherine,’ he says longingly. ‘Tell me that I can think of you? Or is there another young man? You’re a young woman, surrounded by temptation in a lascivious court, a dirty-minded, lustful court with many bad, filthy-headed boys, I suppose one of them will have taken your fancy? Promised you some fairing for a kiss?’