“Oh, very well. What did Ned say?” I demand confidently. I have Jo the pug on my lap, entwined with Ribbon the little cat, and I gently pull her silky ears. “Does he want to wait till I go back to court after mourning? Or is he going to speak to her now, while we are still away?”

Adrian Stokes shakes his head, his eyes on my face. “I am sorry,” he says awkwardly. “I am very sorry, Katherine. I know your mother would have been sorry, too. But I don’t think he will undertake it. He said as much to me, actually. Without your mother here to argue your case to the queen, his mother has changed her mind and does not want the match to go ahead. Lady Seymour does not want to speak to the queen without your mother to support her, and neither does he. Put it bluntly: neither of them dares.”

I can hardly believe what he is saying. “But she has just made me a princess of the blood!” I exclaim. “She recognizes me as a member of the royal family! I have never been so high in her favor!”

“That’s the very thing,” he replies. “Now you are named a princess she will be all the more determined to command your marriage, and she won’t want you to marry someone with a claim to the throne himself.”

“To Hertford!” I raise my voice to my stepfather. “She should command my marriage to Hertford! And you should insist on it for me!”

He shakes his head. “You know that I have no influence, Lady Katherine. I am a commoner without great wealth. But I know that the queen won’t want to marry you to a lord who has his own claim to the throne. And she won’t let you marry while she is unmarried herself, and risk you having a son who would have a stronger claim than she does. I can see what the Seymours are thinking: obviously the queen won’t want a Tudor-Seymour boy at court until she has a husband and son of her own. The Seymours don’t want to take the risk of offending her.”

“None of you understand her!” I exclaim. “She doesn’t think like that; she doesn’t plan ahead like that! All she thinks of is being at the center of attention and holding Robert Dudley at her side.”

“I think she does think very carefully,” he cautions me. “I think she is having you watched, and I think she will take no risks that might create an heir with a strong claim to her throne.”

“Elizabeth doesn’t watch me!”

“William Cecil does.” He sees the shock on my face and gives a helpless little shrug. “He watches everyone.”

“Are you saying that she will not let me marry till she has married and given birth to her own son and heir?”