I liked Katheryn. She was lively and kind, if a touch naïve. Once more, we ladies could enjoy dancing and making music and all our old pleasures in the Queen’s chamber. Yet always, for me, the ghost of Tom was hovering. This was where we had fallen for each other.

Late in October, I received news that my mother had passed away after suffering an apoplexy. I had not seen her for thirteen years, and we had not been close or corresponded often. I still resented the fact that she had always preferred my brother to me, although my uncle had told me that, when I was in the Tower, she had been greatly distressed and done her best to save me from my fate. For that alone, I mourned her. And when the King showed me a report that her thoughts were with me at the last and that she had desired King James to be good to me and make sure I received the jewels she had left me, I wept for her.

I never did receive that bequest. Later, I learned that James had given my jewels to his new wife, Queen Marie.

I was hoping to take him to task for it in person, when, in the summer of 1541, King Henry departed with the whole court on a great progress to York, to meet with his nephew. But James never came, much to my, and my uncle’s, annoyance. He was furious at James’s perfidy. He would have been even more furious if he had known what was going on almost under his very nose.

I know now that, during the progress, and possibly before, Queen Katheryn was rashly carrying on a secret love affair with the connivance of Lady Rochford, one of my fellow ladies-in-waiting. I swear I knew nothing of it, nor saw anything that aroused my suspicions. But, if I had known, I would probably secretly have taken a sympathetic view, even though what Katheryn was doing was sheer folly.

For she was not the only one who was indulging in a clandestine liaison.

I ought to have learned a lesson from the tragic consequences of my love for Tom, but I didn’t. How quickly the young forget. And how blind, foolish and unheeding love can be.