“There is no one else.” Mary’s eyes are bright. “I can’t tell you how many friends I have at court now. You would think I was six feet tall. Everyone is my friend and everyone has been heartbroken for you. I have dozens of messages for you. Everyone knows that it has to be you. Even Elizabeth. She will have to announce it any day now.”

I pause for a moment so that I can feel my triumph. “It’s certain, Mary? I can’t stand another false hope.”

“It’s certain,” she says. “She will have to name you. She has to name someone, and there is no one else.”

“And release me,” I say.

“Of course release you,” my sister confirms.

“And Ned, and name him as my husband.”

“She has to. She cannot put a woman’s whim against the will of the parliament. She has publicly promised that she will take advice, and name her heir, and nobody advises anyone but you.”

“Is she very scarred by the pox?” I ask, thinking of Elizabeth’s frantic vanity.

“She’s doing all she can to overcome it. She has only a few marks on her face and she’s painting them out. They cut her hair when she was in the fever, so she’s wearing a wig of red horsehair. But she looked well when she went to parliament in her scarlet robe trimmed with ermine. One or two said that she looked so young and healthy she could give them an heir next year if only she would marry now.”

“But she’ll never marry at their bidding,” I predict.

Mary shakes her head. “I would swear that if she can’t have Robert Dudley, she’ll never take anyone. Most people think she showed that herself, naming him as her heir.”

“Then why does she not understand that I had to marry for love?” I ask. “If she is in love so deep that she would risk her kingdom? Why does she not sympathize with me?”

Mary shakes her head at the plaintive tone in my voice. “Because she’s not like you,” she declares. “You don’t understand her. Everyone thinks she’s a woman blown about by passion, that her heart comes first. But she’s not. She’s a woman who feels her passions but is not shifted by them. She’s determined and she’s selfish. She’ll never give Robert Dudley up, but she’ll never marry him either. She loves the throne more than him. He still thinks she will be unable to resist him, but I think he’s wrong. He’ll find he has the very worst of the bargain: always close to Elizabeth, but never on the throne.”

“You make her sound like a tyrant,” I whisper.

Mary raises her arched eyebrow. “She’s a Tudor,” she says. “They’re all tyrants.”