I have Mr. Nozzle on my lap and I am tickling his fat little tummy. His eyes are closed with pleasure. Every now and then he gives a little yawn or perhaps it is a silent laugh. “If I had been married...” I think of the Dudleys planning, campaigning, and fighting for Jane. Where might I be now, if I had a powerful family to conspire for me, if my father were still alive? If I had a husband and his father saw what we could be?

“Oh, yes, but the Herberts aren’t going to risk anything against Elizabeth.”

“I never think of Henry Herbert,” I lie, and Janey catches my eye and goes off into a peal of laughter that ends in a coughing fit.

“Of course you don’t. But you’re still heir to the throne, and his father doesn’t forget that! He’s always so polite to you now!”

“I don’t care!” I toss my head, and sit Mr. Nozzle up on his little bottom so he watches us with his serious eyes.

“But you have to marry,” Janey says, when she has her breath back. “Elizabeth isn’t going to find you a good match. She wants nobody courting but her. She’d make us all into nuns if she could. Does your mother plan nothing for you now that Queen Mary did not name you as heir after Elizabeth, now that Elizabeth does not promise you?”

“She’s hoping that Elizabeth will come to favor us,” I say. “I’d get a better match if Elizabeth would only recognize us, her family. But obviously, she thinks only of herself. I have been quite forgotten. I don’t even have my rightful place in the privy chamber. I’m not in the inner circle. You would think I am a complete stranger, waiting about outside in the presence chamber like some unknown petitioner, when my place is inside like a kinswoman. Queen Mary would never have treated us so.”

Janey shakes her head. “It’s just jealousy,” she says as the door to her privy chamber opens and her handsome brother Ned puts his head into the room and, seeing that Janey and I are alone, comes in.

“What webs are you spinning, little spiders?” he asks, and throws himself down on a stool at the fireside between our two seats.

I can feel myself sit up a little in my chair, and lift my face to the light and tilt it to the best angle. I have adored Edward Seymour ever since he was betrothed to my sister Jane and I told her then that he was the most handsome young man in the world, with the kindest eyes; but she would have none of it. Now I see him almost every day, and he teases me with the familiarity of an old friend, but I still think he is the most handsome young man in the world.