“Good, good,” he says cheerily. “We’ll ask the queen for permission for you and Henry Herbert to marry, perhaps while she is staying here. If tonight goes well, and she is in a good mood, eh? You should see the size of my marchpane castle! If only they can carry it in from the subtlety kitchen without dropping it! I tell you, my heart will be in my mouth! It’s time you were wed, young Katherine.”

“Not yet.” I swallow down bile. “Don’t speak to the queen yet, I pray you. My lord Henry is displeased with me about a little thing. I have to send him a token. If I could send my maid to Westminster, she could find it for me.”

He laughs. “Oh, young love! Young love! You make such difficulties for yourselves! You send him a pressed rose from my hedgerow and that will be more than enough for him, you’ll see. And I will speak to the queen for you when she is in a good humor as soon as you give me the nod.”

“I’ll nod,” I say foolishly. “Don’t speak till then. I will nod.”

He pats my shoulder. “Go and change into your prettiest gown,” he says. “We are going to give Her Majesty a dinner and an entertainment that she will remember for all her reign.”

“I’ll go,” I say obediently. “Thank you, Uncle. I thank you very much.”

“And put all your pets in the stables,” he says. “I won’t have them dirtying my new house.”

I keep Ribbon in his traveling box because he is terribly inconstant and will wander off, but I smuggle Jo the dog and Mr. Nozzle the monkey into my rooms and give them the run of my chamber. God bless them, they are the only creatures in the world who care for me. I am not going to leave them in the stables, whatever my uncle says.

I get through the evening like a tired old actor, playing my part as my uncle’s beloved niece, the queen’s second-favorite cousin—after Mary Queen of Scots—her named heir, with the mindless accuracy of a sleepwalker. I cannot think what I can do. I cannot think who will help me. I cannot stop Henry Herbert naming my shame to his father, and then to the rest of the court. Even if I could find his damned keepsakes and send them to him in time, I doubt that would silence him, his pride is so wounded, his vanity so stung. So I have to think—if he speaks out and shames me, then the queen will know at once, and so will William Cecil and Robert Dudley and Lady Clinton and my uncle, and Catherine Brandon my stepgrandmother and my aunt Bess St. Loe; and everyone who has promised me their goodwill in the past will hate me for being a lewd girl and a liar.