With a little smile at me, he unties the laces on his breeches and strips so that he is naked but for his shirt; he takes the hem and draws it over his head so that I can see all of him, the whole lean length of him. He hears my little sigh of desire and he laughs, and takes the hem of my smock and draws it over my head, and though I turn away and put my arms across my breasts, suddenly shy, he takes my hand and draws me to the bed. He gets in first, pulling me in beside him, and I slip between the cool sheets and shiver, and then he is on top of me and kissing me and I forget embarrassment and cold sheets and even the wedding and the minister. All I can think is “Ned” and all I can feel is my joy at the sensation, for the first time in my life, of his naked warm body against mine, from his whispering mouth in my hair to our entwined feet.

* * *

We make love, and then we doze, and then we wake and are filled once again with desire as if we will never again sleep. I am dizzy with pleasure when I hear, as if from a long way away, a tap on the door and Janey’s voice calling me: “Katherine! We have to go! It’s late.”

Shocked, Ned looks at me. “It feels like minutes,” he says. “What’s the time?”

I look to the window. I came here in the cold bright light of a frosty winter dawn and now I can see the yellow of the setting sun. “Ned! Ned! It’s nearly sunset!”

“Fools that we are,” he says indulgently. “Come up, my countess. I shall have to be your maid.”

“Hurry,” I say.

I pull on my clothes and he laces me, laughing at the intricacy of the fastenings. My hair is falling down and I want to wear my wife’s kerchief over it, but he says I cannot; I must keep it with his two rings close to my heart until we are allowed to tell everyone that we are wedded and bedded.

“I shall wear my rings on a chain around my neck,” I promise him. “I will put them on when I am alone in bed at night and dream that I am with you.”

He pulls on his breeches. “It will be soon,” he promises me. “I know Robert Dudley takes my side. He will speak for us.”

“William Cecil does, too,” I say. “He told me so. And Elizabeth will forgive us. How can she not? How can anyone say it is a bad thing to do? Our own mothers gave their permission.”

“Ned!” Janey calls from behind the door.