Certainly no one is watching me, no one is watching Ned. We meet in Janey’s bedroom when she is too ill to get up from her bed. I am there to care for her; he is a good brother, visiting his sister. As she lies on her pillows and smiles sleepily on the two of us, we sit in the window and hold hands and whisper. We meet in every corner and doorway around the court for an exchange of half a dozen words and a brush of his kiss on my hand, on my neck, on the sleeve of my gown. When he passes me in the gallery, he catches at my fingers; when he plays a lute and sings a love song, he glances first at me, as if to say: these words are for you. We play cards together with Janey and my aunt Bess, now Lady St. Loe, in the evening, and we dance together when they call for partners. Everyone knows that Ned Seymour always partners Lady Katherine. Nobody else even asks me to dance, none of the girls flutter at Ned. Even the old ladies at court—his mother, my mother, and their sharp-eyed friends—have to observe what a pretty couple we make, so tall and so fair with royal connections on both sides.

What nobody sees is that when the dancing is over, we go to the corner of the great hall and his hand comes around my waist and he turns me towards him as if we are still dancing and he might hold me close.

“Katherine, you are my sweetheart,” he whispers. “I am mad for you.”

His touch makes me dizzy. I think I will faint but he holds me up. I let him put his hand under my chin; I allow him to turn my face up to his for a kiss. His lips are warm and urgent, and he smells deliciously of clean linen and orange water. He buries his face in my neck, and I feel him nibble the lobe of my ear. I cling to him, so that I feel him down the length of my body, his strong arms, his broad chest, his hard lean thigh against me.

“We have to marry,” he says. “It is a jest no longer.”

I can’t nod for his mouth is on mine. He releases me for a moment and I put my hand on the back of his neck to pull him back into the kiss.

“Marry me?” he says as his mouth comes down again.

HAMPTON COURT PALACE,

SUMMER 1559

Álvaro de la Quadra, the new Spanish ambassador, comes striding down the garden path in his sweeping bishop’s robes to bring me the news, as if we are friends and conspirators.

“Thank God I found you! The King of France is dead!” he says.