“I have prayed every night to see her restored to her own again,” I say quietly to my friend Percy, and I hope he cannot hear the tenderness in my voice. “She is not a woman who can be confined in one place. She does indeed need to be free. It is like mewing up a falcon to keep her in one small place. It is cruel. I have felt as if I were her jailer. I have felt that I was being cruel.”

He shoots a sideways look at me, as if considering something. “But you would never have let her go,” he suggests in an undertone. “You would never have turned a blind eye if someone had come to rescue her.”

“I serve Queen Elizabeth,” I say simply. “As my family have served every King of England since William of Normandy. And I have given my word as an English nobleman. I am not free to turn a blind eye. I am honor bound. But it does not stop me caring for her. It does not stop me longing to see her as she should be—free as a bird in the sky.”

He nods and compresses his lips on his thought. “You have heard she is to marry Howard, and they will be restored to Scotland together?”

“She did me the honor of telling me. And Howard wrote to me. When did the queen give the marriage her blessing?”

Percy shakes his head. “She doesn’t know yet. She flies into such a temper over the marriages of others that Howard is waiting to pick his time to tell her. Dudley says he will broach it when the time is right but he is delaying too long. There are rumors, of course, and Norfolk has had to deny it twice already. He’ll probably tell her on the summer progress. Dudley has known from the beginning; he says he’ll introduce the idea gently. It makes sense for everyone; it guarantees her safety when she is back on her throne.”

“What does Cecil think of it?”

He shoots me a quick hidden smile. “Cecil knows nothing of it, and there are those who think that Cecil can steep in his ignorance until the matter is signed and sealed.”

“It would be a pity if he advised against it. He is no friend of Howard’s,” I say cautiously.