Her mood shifts, as quickly as a child’s. “Ah, here I am becoming as morbid as a Highlander!” she cries out. “Lady Seton, ask a page to come and sing for us and let’s have some dancing. Lady Shrewsbury here will think herself in prison or in mourning!”

I laugh, as if we were not in truth in prison and bereft, and I send for wine and for fruit, and for the musicians. When my lord comes in before dinner he finds us in a whirl of dancing and the Scots queen in the middle, calling the changes and laughing aloud as we get all muddled up and end opposite the wrong partners.

“You must go right! Right!” she calls out. “Gauche et puis à gauche!” She whirls around to laugh at him. “My lord, command your wife! She is making a mockery of me as a dancing tutor.”

“It is you!” he says, his face reflecting her joy. “No! No! Truly it is you. You shall not accuse the countess, indeed you shall not. Gauche means left in English, Your Grace! Not right. You have been commanding them the wrong way round.”

She screams with laughter and falls into my arms and kisses me the French way, on both cheeks. “Ah, pardon, Lady Bess! Your husband is right! I have been teaching you all wrong. I am a fool not to speak your difficult language. You have a most poor master of dance. But tomorrow I shall write to my family in Paris and they shall send me a dancing teacher and some violinists, and he will teach us all and we shall dance beautifully!”

TUTBURY CASTLE: GEORGE

SPRING, 1569

I draw Bess to one side before dinner and tell her. “Our guest is to leave us. She is to be returned to Scotland. I heard from Cecil himself today.”

“Never!” she exclaims.

I cannot restrain a knowledgeable nod. “As I said,” I remind her. “The queen said she should be restored to her throne and the queen honors her own word. We will take her back to Scotland. She will return in triumph. And we will be there with her.”

Bess’s eyes gleam. “This will be the making of us. Good God, she might give us a massive estate on the borders. She will have acres to give away; she will have miles.”

“The recognition we deserve,” I correct her. “And perhaps, a token of her thanks. But the messenger brought me something else.” I show her the sealed package and Norfolk’s letter. “Should I give it to her, d’you think?”

“What does it say?”

“How should I know? It is sealed. He wrote to me that it is a proposal of marriage. I can hardly pry into a courtship.”

“With her you can. You have not lifted the seal and resealed it?”