‘If you insist on staying with him then you will have to remain here in the country with Amy,’ he warned me.

I measured the price I must pay to be Danny’s mother and to my own surprise, I found it worth paying. I would not leave him, whatever it cost me.

‘Very well,’ I said. I stepped back against the wall, out of the way of the porters carrying two great chairs and a table to the back of the wagon.

Lord Robert scowled at me, he had not thought I would put the child before my own ambition. ‘Oh, Hannah, you are not the woman I hoped you would be. A faithful wife and a devoted mother is not much use to me! Very well! I will send for you when I need you, probably May. You can bring the boy,’ he forestalled me. ‘But come as soon as I send for you. I will need your ears and your eyes at court.’

* * *

Lord Robert rode out at noon, a cold March day, and his wife got up from her sick bed to see him go. She stood, silent again, like a woman made of snow, in the hall of the house as he clapped his hat on his head and swung his cape around his shoulders.

‘I am sorry that you have been ill for all of my visit,’ he said brightly, as if speaking to a little-known host. ‘I have not seen you since dinner that first night.’

She hardly seemed to hear him. She managed a blank smile, more like a grimace.

‘I will hope that you are in better health and spirits when I come again.’

‘When will that be?’ she asked quietly.

‘I cannot say. I will send you a message.’

It was as if his refusal to make a promise was a spell that made her come to life. She stirred, and glared at him. ‘If you do not come soon, I shall write to the queen and complain of you,’ she threatened, her voice low and angry. ‘She knows what it is like to be abandoned by a false husband who runs after every pretty face. She knows what sort of woman her sister is. She has suffered from Elizabeth’s ways as I have suffered. I know about that, you see. I know what you and the princess are to each other.’

‘It is treason to say such a thing,’ he remarked quietly, in a pleasant tone. ‘And such a letter would be evidence of your treason. We have just got this family out of the Tower, Amy, don’t plunge us back in again.’

She bit her lip and the colour flooded into her cheeks. ‘At any rate your whore shall not stay here with me!’

Robert sighed and looked across the hall towards me. ‘I have no whore here,’ he said with elaborate patience. ‘I barely have a wife here, as you well know. The honourable lady, Mrs Carpenter, will stay here until I send for her to work for me at court.’