“God! No! I have bribed the guard for an hour with you. Kitty, I love you so. I have never stopped loving you. God forgive me for leaving you. I should never have gone.”

“Oh, I know! I know! I should have been clearer. But I knew you would come back. Did you not get my letters?”

“No! I had no letters from you! I could not understand it! I had only one, when I was ordered back, and they told me you were with child and under arrest. I had no idea what to do. The French told me I was safer staying with them than going home to face Elizabeth. They begged me not to leave them, but I could not abandon you here.”

“You did not get my letters? I wrote! I wrote often, begging you to come home. They cannot have gone astray.”

We look at each other, the truth dawning on us, the realization that we have been surrounded by enemies.

“Ned, I wrote so often, it cannot have been an accident. They must have been stolen.”

“We’ve been surrounded by spies from the first,” Ned says, drawing me to the bedroom. He throws off his hooded robe, tears off his jacket, and shucks his shirt over his head. He is thinner from his imprisonment, and his skin is creamy pale in the twilight. I am at once breathless with a desire as urgent as his.

“Oh, but you must see Teddy!”

“I will, I will, but first I must see you. I have dreamed of you for so long.”

We are through the doorway and at the side of my bed. I have not a moment of hesitation. I throw back the covers and get in. Ned leans forward, naked to the waist, and strips off my nightgown over my head. I fling up my arms and it ripples away.

“You swore to the archbishop that we were married?”

“I did! I never let him say we were not.”

He laughs shortly. “So did I. I knew you would not betray me.”

“Never. I will never deny you.”

I reach for him and he pulls down his hose and comes towards me. We are urgent, passionate. We have been parted for more than a year; we were new lovers then, we could not get enough of each other. I have dreamed of this moment and ached for his touch. He hesitates above me, looking down into my rapt face.

“My love,” I whisper to him, and he falls on me like a falcon stoops on a lure.

* * *

We have only an hour together, and when he stumbles from my bed and I help him pull on his shirt, it reminds me of our wedding day when we dressed each other, fumbling with the laces, and Janey and I had to hurry home for dinner.

“Now let me see my son!” he says.