He crosses the room in one stride and he takes my hand and kneels at my feet as if I were going to dub him a knight. “Of course I am pleased,” he says, his face hidden from me. “I am delighted. There is nothing that I want more than our child, and how wonderful that he should come so soon.”

“The heir to the throne,” Janey reminds him. “The only Tudor boy of this generation. I don’t count Margaret Douglas’s boys.”

“If it’s a boy. And if I’m not mistaken altogether,” I remind them.

“Boy or girl, I shall love this baby for his beautiful mother,” Ned says. He kisses my hand and then he rises up and kisses me on the mouth. Jane moves tactfully towards the door, but he gestures that she shall stay.

“Wait, Janey, we need to talk. And besides, we can’t use your bed now.”

He smiles at me and I realize that if I am with child, we cannot lie together until after I am churched after childbed. This is months and months away.

“I am not sure,” I say again. I cannot bear the thought that we will not make love when I feel the same urgent desire as always, when I am not even sure that I am with child. Surely, this too is an outworn superstition that we need not observe?

“Of course,” Janey says delightedly. “And we have to plan what we do.”

“We’ll have to tell the queen,” Ned says.

“We have to tell her before I start to get fat,” I say. “But not before then. There’s no need for us to tell her before then, is there?”

“Perhaps we should. Then we could space it out, so it’s not such a shock for her. First, we could tell her that we are married, and later tell her that you are with child.”

I say nothing. I feel quite sick with fear at the thought of telling Elizabeth that we are married.

“She should be pleased,” Janey says. “It leaves her free to stay unmarried for all her life, if there is a boy baby in the royal cradle.”

“She should be pleased,” I say cautiously. “But what if she isn’t?”

“Oh, what’s the worst she can do?” Janey demands boldly. “Send you from court for a while? You’d be going into confinement anyway, and if she sends you into exile you can go to Hanworth for the birth, and Ned and I can come, too.”

“If she is furious...”