Silently, honestly, I nodded.

He smiled. ‘So I shall stay this side of the table and you shall stay that, and you shall remember when you are a virgin and a girl no longer, that I desire you, and you shall come to me.’

I should have protested my genuine love and respect for Daniel, I should have raged at Lord Robert’s arrogance. Instead I smiled at him as if I agreed, and stepped slowly backwards, one step after another, from the desk until I reached the door.

‘Can I bring you anything when I come again?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘Don’t come until I send for you,’ he ordered coolly, very far from my own state of arousal. ‘And stay clear of Kat Ashley and Elizabeth for your own sake, my bird, after you have given your message. Don’t come to me unless I send for you by name.’

I nodded, felt the wood of the door behind me, and tapped on it with fingers which trembled.

‘But you will send for me?’ I persisted in a small voice. ‘You won’t just forget about me?’

He put his fingers to his lips and blew me a kiss. ‘Mistress Boy, look around, do you see a court of men and women who adore me? I have no visitors but my wife and you. Everyone else has slipped away but the two women that love me. I do not send for you often because I do not choose to endanger you. I doubt that you want the attention of the court directed to who you are, and where you come from, and where your loyalties lie, even now. I send for you when I have work for you, or when I cannot go another day without seeing you.’

The soldier swung open the door behind me but I could not move.

‘You like to see me?’ I whispered. ‘Did you say that sometimes you cannot go another day without seeing me?’

His smile was as warm as a caress and as lightly given. ‘The sight of you is one of my greatest pleasures,’ he said sweetly. Then the soldier gently put a hand under my elbow, and I went out.

SPRING–SUMMER 1555

At Hampton Court they made the room ready for the queen’s confinement. The privy chamber behind her bedroom was hung with the richest of tapestries especially chosen for their holy and encouraging scenes. The windows were bolted shut so that not a breath of air should come into the room. They tied the posts of the bed with formidable and frightening straps that she might cling to, while her labour tore her thirty-nine-year-old body apart. The bed was dressed with a magnificent pillow cover and counterpane which the queen and her ladies had been embroidering since her wedding day. There were great log piles beside the stone fireplace so that the room could be heated to fever pitch. They shrouded the floors with carpets so that every sound should be muffled and they brought in the magnificent royal cradle with a two-hundred-and-forty-piece layette for the boy who would be born within the next six weeks.