‘He won’t come,’ Woodville predicts to me. We are riding in the green lanes around the fields of Penshurst, in Kent. We have been waiting for my lord to leave London and come to his new home for days. ‘He won’t come now, and he won’t stay in England, even though they say he has earned his rest.’

‘Is he so very tired? I have not seen him for weeks.’

He shakes his head in despair. ‘I would say he was working himself to death. But he won’t stop.’

‘Why not? If they say that he can?’

‘Because he would not leave men like your uncle Louis without his leadership in Paris. He would not leave France without its regent. He would not allow the Armagnacs to come to the peace meetings and make their demands without him there to answer them. A peace has to come; Burgundy is ready for it and probably talking with the Armagnacs behind our backs. The Armagnacs are exhausted and out of men and funds, and you see how my lord struggles to raise an army in England. We are all of us ready for peace, and my lord will see the peace talks through. He will get peace in France before he leaves his post.’

‘So we will have to go back to Paris?’ I am reluctant to go. I have been using this time in England like a clerk at his lessons. I have been studying English, I have been reading the books in my lord’s library, I have employed a scholar to read the alchemy texts with me and explain them. I have been looking for a herbalist to teach me the skills. I don’t want to leave all this and go back to the grand palace in the starving city.

‘We will. But if you were free to choose, would you rather stay?’

I take a moment to answer; there is something in his voice that warns me that this is an important question. I look from the hedgerows where the red pebbles of the hips gleam among the fading leaves, to the distant hills of the downs, where the beech trees are turning bronze. ‘It is a beautiful country,’ I say. ‘And, actually, I prefer London to Paris.’

He beams with pride. ‘I knew you would,’ he says triumphantly. ‘I knew you would. You are an English duchess, you were born to be an Englishwoman. You should live in England.’

‘It does feel very like home,’ I concede. ‘Even more than France, even more than Luxembourg. The countryside is so pretty and the hills so green. And Paris is so poor and the people so angry, I can’t help but like it better here.’

‘I said to my father that you were an Englishwoman in your heart.’

I smile. ‘And what did your father say?’

‘He said that so pretty a duchess should be kept in England where she can flourish.’

‘Where does your father live?’

‘He has a small manor at Grafton; our family has been there for many years. He served the duke your husband, and the king before him. I think he willgo to war again, and muster his own troop to support us when we go back to France.’