The Privy Council is meeting and the queen is attending with two of her ladies to stand behind her chair, but I am not required. Quietly, I drift from the presence chamber, up the stairs to the room for the maids of honor. Janey is waiting for me, and we go to her private room off the main chamber.

She fusses over me, taking off my hood, combing my hair, and pinning the hood on again. “This was a lovers’ quarrel,” she says. “Nothing more. Thank God that it is over and done with.”

I find I am smiling as if, suddenly, nothing mattered after all. “He wrote such a wonderful letter.”

“He’s a poet,” she replies. “His heart is in his words. And Frances Mewtas is nothing to him.”

“He should never have taken her hand after they had finished dancing,” I say.

“He knows that,” Janey agrees.

“And the next evening, was he with her?”

“He did not even see her. He was playing cards with the squires. He promised me it was so, and I saw him myself. That was your jealousy.”

“I am not jealous!”

Janey regards me with her head on one side. “You are not?”

I laugh but there is a catch in my throat. “Janey, it is this place, full of lies. And being so uncertain, and having no permission to marry and never a good time to ask! And now with Elizabeth and Robert Dudley parted forever, and him back at court but not able to be with her, everyone despising him for being a wife murderer and Elizabeth too afraid to even speak to him... how will she ever be happy again? We can never ask permission for our wedding! Elizabeth will never allow anyone happiness. Not when she has lost her own lover forever.”

In answer, Janey goes to the door and makes a beckoning gesture. Ned slips in. I get to my feet. “Ned,” I say uncertainly.

He does not scoop me into his arms this time, he does not sweep me off my feet. He bows very formally, then says, as if he has a prepared speech in his pocket, “I have borne you goodwill of a long time, and because you should not think I intend to mock you, I am content, if you will, to marry you.”

He takes my hand. I can feel that I am trembling. From his pocket he takes a ring and he slides it on the third finger of my left hand, it is a betrothal ring. It is a diamond, cut to glitter, elegantly pointed along the length of my finger, as if it would join our two hearts with its bright fire.

“What d’you say?” he whispers. “How d’you like me? How d’you like my offer?”

“I like both you and your offer, am content to marry with you,” I say solemnly.

“Will you witness our betrothal?” he asks Janey shortly.