‘If I had seen you, I would never have come home to England,’ he whispers as a turn in the dance puts us together.

I don’t know what to reply to this, and I don’t like how he looks at me.

‘If I had seen you, I would never have left your side,’ he says.

I glance over to my husband, but he is talking to the king and not looking at me.

‘And would you have smiled on me?’ my brother-in-law asks me. ‘Would you smile on me now? Or are you afraid of stealing my heart from me even now?’

I don’t smile, I look very grave and wonder that he should speak like this to me, his sister-in-law, with such assurance, as if he believes that I will not be able to resist him. There is something repellent and fascinating about the way that he takes me by the waist, which is part of the movement of the dance, and presses me close to him, his hand warm on my back, his thigh brushing against me, which is not.

‘And does my brother please you as a husband?’ he whispers, his breath warm on my bare neck. I lean slightly away but he tightens his grip and holds me close. ‘Does he touch you as a young girl loves to be touched – gently, but quickly?’ He laughs. ‘Am I right, Jacquetta? Is that how you love to be touched? Gently, but quickly?’

I pull away from him, and there is a swirl of colour and music and Richard Woodville has my hand and has pulled me into the centre of the dancers and has me turning one way and then another. ‘Forgive me!’ he calls over his shoulder to the duke. ‘I am quite mistaken, I have been too long in France; I thought this was the moment that we changed partners.’

‘No, you are too soon, but no matter,’ the duke says, taking Woodville’s abruptly abandoned partner by her hand and forming the chain of the dance as Woodville and I take the little steps in the centre of the circle and then form an arch so everyone dances through, all the partners change again, and I move away, in the movement of the dance, away from the Duke Humphrey.

* * *

‘What did you think of the king?’ my husband asks me, coming to my bedroom that night. The sheets have been turned down for him, the pillows piled high. He gets in with a sigh of exhaustion, and I notice his lined face is grey with fatigue.

‘Very young.’

He laughs shortly. ‘You are yourself such an old married lady.’

‘Young evee ps age,’ I say. ‘And somehow, a little frail?’ I don’t tell my husband of the sense I had of a boy as fragile as glass, as cold as thin ice.

He frowns. ‘I believe he is strong enough, though I agree, he is slight for his age. His father . . .’ He breaks off. ‘Well, it means nothing now what his father was, or how he was as a boy. But God knows my brother Henry was a strong powerful boy. At any rate, this is no time for regrets, this boy will have to follow him. He will just have to grow into greatness. What did you make of my brother?’