‘I cannot know what the future will bring us,’ he says in a rapid undertone. ‘I cannot know where you will be given in marriage, nor what life might hold for me. But I can’t let you go without telling you – without telling you at least once – that I love you.’

I snatch a breath at the words. ‘Woodville . . .’

‘I can offer you nothing, I am next to nothing, and you are the greatest lady in France. But I wanted you to know, I love you and I want you, and I have done since the day I first saw you.’

‘I should . . .’

‘I have to tell you, you have to know: I have loved you honourably as a knight should do his lady, and I have loved you passionately as a man might a woman; and now, before I leave you, I want to tell you that I love you, I love you . . .’ He breaks off and looks at me desperately. ‘I had to tell you,’ he repeats.

I feel as if I am becoming as golden and as warm as alchemy could make me. I can feel myself smiling, glowing at these words. At once I know that he is telling the truth, that he is in love with me, and at once I recognise the truth: that I am in love with him. And he has told me, he has said the words, I have captured his heart, he loves me, he loves me, dear God, he loves me. And God knows – though Richard does not – that I love him.

Without another word we turn into a little room at the end of the gallery and he closes the door behind us and takes me in his arms in one swift irresistible movement. I raise my head to him and he kisses me. My hands stroke from his cropped handsome head to his broad shoulders and I hold him to me, closer and still closer. I feel the muscle of his shoulders under his jerkin, the prickle of his short hair at the back of his neck.

‘I want you,’ he says in my ear. ‘Not as a duchess, and not as a scryer. I want you just as a woman, as my woman.’

He drops his head and kisses my shoulder where the neck of the gown leaves my shoulder bare for his touch. He kisses my collar bone, my neck, up to my jaw line. I bury my face in his hair, in the crook of his neck, and he gives a little groan of desire, and thrusts his fingers in my headdress, pulling the gold net off so that my hair comes tumbling down and he rubs his face in it.

‘I want you as a woman, an ordinary woman,’ he repeats breathlessly, pulling at the laces of my gown. ‘I don’t want the Sight, I don’t want your ancestry. I don’t know anything about alchemy or the mysteries or the water goddess. I am a man of the earth, of ordinary things, an Englishman. I don’t want mysteries, I just want you, as an ordinary woman. I have to have you.’