‘You betray him in your heart,’ Robert said cheerfully. ‘You lean back against my arm, you tip your head, you open your mouth for my kisses. He is betrayed already, Mistress Boy. The rest is just enacting the desire. It is no worse than what you have done already.’

I smiled at his persuasive, self-serving logic. ‘Perhaps, but it is wrong. My lord, I tell you true, I have adored you since the day I first saw you. But I love Daniel with a true and honourable love, and I want to be good wife to him, and faithful to him.’

‘This is nothing to do with true love between us, sweetheart,’ he said with his simple rake’s brutality.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘And now I want love. Lust is no good for me. I want love. His love.’

He looked at me, his dark eyes brimming with laughter. ‘Ah, Hannah, this is a big mistake for a woman like you, with everything to play for and nothing to lose. You are the closest thing to a free woman I have ever known. A girl educated far beyond her sex, a wife with a husband miles away, a woman with gifts, ambition, the sense to use them and the body of a beautiful whore. For God’s sake, girl, be my mistress. You don’t have to descend to being a wife.’

I could not help but laugh. ‘I thank you,’ I said. ‘But I want to be a wife without descending. I want to choose Daniel when I find him again, and love him from my heart and with faithfulness.’

‘But you would so enjoy a night with me, you know,’ he said, partly from vanity, partly as a final attempt.

‘I am very sure of it,’ I said, as shameless as he. ‘And if I cared for nothing but pleasure then I would be begging you for tonight and every night after. But I have fallen in love, my lord, and no-one but my lover will do for me.’

He stepped back and swept me a beautiful courtly bow, as low as if for a queen. ‘Mistress Boy, you always exceed my expectations. I knew you would make a wonderful woman but I never expected you would make a surprising and honourable woman. I hope your husband is worthy of you, I do indeed. And if he is not . . .’

I laughed. ‘If he breaks my heart a second time then I will come back to you as heartless as you are yourself, my lord,’ I said.

‘Oh well, it is agreed,’ he said with a laugh, and went to his bed alone.

* * *

Within a few days his lordship and John Dee were ready to return to court. John Dee would go back to Bishop Bonner and would note the detail of the charges and the words of the interrogation of hundreds of men and women charged with heresy. He would see them sent for torture, and then when they confessed, he would see them sent for burning.