I beam at my new title, remembering when I asked my sister Jane to pray for a duke for me. She must have done so, and God must have listened to her, for now I have a man who was the son of a duke and whose title might be restored by Elizabeth’s goodwill, if she ever has any. Then I will be a royal duchess. “Thank you, my lord husband.”

He pours me a glass and one for himself. We sit in the window seat and look out over the muddy riverbank and the tide coming in, the seagulls soaring and bobbing down. He settles me with my back to his chest, leaning against him, his arms around me. I am embraced and held and I have never known such safety and comfort.

“I have never been happier,” he says. “It is as if every moment I spend with you is a gift.”

“I know,” I say. “I have loved you ever since I was a little girl and I thought that Jane my sister was going to marry you.”

“God bless her! I will make it all up to you,” he promises. “You will never be alone and afraid again.”

“I will be your wife,” I say. “I cannot be alone and afraid if we are one.”

He reaches into his pocket. “I had this ring made for you. I sketched it out for the goldsmith as soon as we were betrothed.”

I give a little gasp of pleasure as he shows me his clenched hand then opens his fingers to show me his gift. It is exquisitely made. A hidden spring opens the broad ring and shows five golden links that form an inner ring.

“And I wrote you a poem,” he tells me.

I am entranced. I turn the ring over and over in my hand, admiring the little catch and how the entwined rings spring out and then hide again.

“As circles five, by art compact, show but one ring in sight,

So trust unites faithful minds, with knot of secret might,

Whose force to break (but greedy death) no wight possesseth power,

As time and sequels well shall prove; my ring can say no more.”

“A knot of secret might,” I repeat.

“I promise you,” he says. “No wight possesseth the power to break us.”

“No one,” I say, putting my hand in his.

The door bursts open without announcement and Janey comes in, feverish and flushed, with a rosy-faced redheaded man with a beard, dressed like one of the Swiss reformers in a black furred gown.

“Here,” says Janey, gesturing to both of us with a flourish.