“What is it, Katherine? What is it, dear?” she asks. She looks concerned. I think, if I had a mother who looked at me like that, I would be able to tell her anything.

“I... I...”

Her gaze narrows. “What?” she demands. “Are you in trouble?”

In answer, I part the heavy folds of my night robe. Underneath it, my white linen nightgown clings to my plumper breasts, my swollen waist. She can see the unmistakable curve of my swollen belly, the little pronounced dimple of the button of my belly, which has popped out despite my strapping myself down.

She claps both her hands over her mouth, and above her fingers her brown eyes widen in a silent scream.

“Good God, what have you done?” she whispers.

“I am married,” I say desperately.

“What? To Henry Herbert?”

“No, no, I only promised him when I was desperate, but he knows about this.”

“Good God!”

“I am married to Ned Seymour.”

“Are you?”

“Yes. But he has gone away and does not write to me.”

“He denies the marriage?”

“I don’t know. I hope not.”

“Does he know of this?”

“I don’t know. We weren’t sure. Janey knew.”

“What good is that to anyone?” Lady Bess demands furiously. “She’s dead and he’s missing. Does anyone else know? William Cecil?”

“No, no, I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t tell Lady Clinton either, and I—”

“Why the hell tell me?” she hisses, her hands still at her face. “Why the hell would you come and tell me?”

“I thought you would help me?”

“Never!” she says flatly.

“But, Lady St. Loe—my mother—your old friendship? You promised me...”

“I loved your mother and she was good to me when I married my second husband at your house, and then again when I married my third. Note that, child: married. Publicly married. She would kill you rather than see you in this state and no husband to be found. She would not ask me to help you; she would bundle you out of court to somewhere in the country and pray to God that the baby is stillborn and that you can hide your shame.”

“Lady Bess...”

“I don’t have credit,” she says as flatly as a Genoese banker refusing a loan. “I don’t have credit to carry you through this. Nobody does. Nobody has enough. You’ll have to go away.”

“I don’t want money...”

“You do,” she says. “Desperately. And a home, and a husband, and a sponsor to explain it to the queen. I have none of these for you, and if I did, I am not sure that I would extend all the credit I have in the world, for a stupid, stupid girl like you.”