“If only your mother would speak to Elizabeth! If only Elizabeth would declare you as her heir; if only we could marry, I would make you safe.”

“I won’t marry a Spaniard,” I gabble. “I won’t! I won’t! I’ll only marry you.” I cling to him and I am distracted at once by his arms around me, his kisses on my face, the warmth of his mouth going down my neck. “Oh, Ned,” I whisper. “We can’t wait any longer. This changes everything. Don’t let the Spanish take me. I will be your wife. I won’t be forced to the throne like Jane. I won’t die like her without ever being loved.”

“Never,” he says. “They’re all as bad as each other, queen and Spanish ambassador, your mother and mine. All they think about is the throne. They don’t think about us at all. We were born for each other, we have to be together.”

I melt against him; I cannot care for the consequences. I want to live, I want to be loved, I want to be his wife. Ned gives a little groan and pulls me down to sit in an arbor. I press forward on him, he fumbles with his breeches, I lift my skirts like a whore in Southwark. I don’t care. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to die young without love. I don’t want to go another moment without him. He pulls me towards him and I gasp with the sudden pain that is such a joy, and then I gasp again for the flood of pleasure, and then I sigh, my face buried in his shoulder, and I am overwhelmed with the sensation and I am blind and deaf to anything but our own hushed panting and then a long deep sigh and silence.

We can be together for only a moment. As soon as I realize where I am, what I am doing, I have to scramble off him, take a snatched kiss, and dash back to my room. I change my dress as fast as possible, hurrying my women with the laces on my sleeves, the slow tying of my bodice, snapping at my maid as she pins my hood on my rumpled golden hair, and I get to Elizabeth’s rooms at a half run and join her court at the back, hoping that no one has seen that I am late.

Her dark gaze sweeps the rooms, like a peregrine falcon looking for prey, halts at my blushing face, comes back to me. “Ah, Lady Katherine,” she says, though she has not singled me out for months. I bob a shallow curtsey, swallowing down my fear. I am beloved of a great man, I am a Tudor. We are betrothed. This is more than she can say for sure.