I jumped and spun around.

“What are you doing here?”

My greeting was not fond, but I was astonished to see her. After our mother’s death I had, to my shame, neglected Anna badly. Whilst my brothers had benefited from Robert’s influence, Antony, Anna and their papist household had been left to make shift as best they could. Sometimes I had imagined Anna in her new manor house in the country, the house that Antony had rebuilt in the ruins of Sawston Hall. I tried not to think of it, though, because Robert’s violence on that night when he had been thwarted in his capture of Queen Mary still sickened me. It was far easier to try to forget it and to pretend that Antony and Anna did not exist.

“Amy.” Anna came forward into the light. She looked old, worn, a ghost of our mother, or perhaps a diminished version of me. I had always been the prettier. I felt a sense of irritation. I could not see her now. I had too much to do.

“Anna,” I said. I tried to erase the annoyance from my voice. “You should have written—”

“I wanted to see you.”

She came close to me, reached for my hands. Her faded blue eyes searched my face. I tried not to shrink from her. There was something at the same time vacant and intense in her expression that scared me.

“I need to talk to you,” she said.

“Of course,” I said, all the while thinking how ill-timed this was and how I might be rid of her. “But—”

“It’s about Robert,” she said.

This was sufficiently surprising that it silenced me. I stared at her, baffled, wondering if she was mad. Her jaw was set and there was a determined glint in her eye now, and as I watched her hand slid down protectively over her belly in a gesture that made me feel a lurch of fear and sickness. For one mad moment I thought that surely, surely Robert had not got her with child. The thought that my husband might have given my sister the child that he and I could not have repelled me utterly, more than any thought of him as the Queen’s lover. Yet even as the suspicion started to form in my mind, I knew that it was false. Robert had not been faithful to me over the years but he would never have looked twice at Anna. There was something else here, something more sinister and dangerous than a mere affair.

The church clock, striking the hour, reminded me that I had no time to waste on Anna, no matter her grievance. Richard Varney would be here soon and I must vanish in the same moment. Any delay might spell disaster to my plan. Mrs Owen, deaf as a post and indifferent to everything about her, was no threat, but Mrs Odingsells was also downstairs and her sharp nose would twitch at any sign of trouble. I could only hope that Anna, like Richard, had entered by the back stair without being seen.