‘Then you must be the only person in England who has not deserted her,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I took on her cook last week. Does she get anything to eat at all?’

‘She manages,’ I said drily. ‘And even the Spanish ambassador, Count Feria, her greatest friend and trusted councillor, was missing from court when I left.’

She shot a quick look at Robert Dudley and I saw him nod permission for her to speak.

‘I refused his request,’ she said gently. ‘I have no plans to marry anyone. You can assure the queen of that, for it is true.’

I gave her a little curtsey. ‘I am glad not to have to take her any news which would make her yet more unhappy.’

‘I wish she would feel some distress for the people of the country,’ Elizabeth said sharply. ‘The burning of heretics goes on, Hannah, the agony of innocent people. You should tell the queen that her sadness at the loss of a child who never was is nothing compared with the grief of a woman who sees her son go to the stake. And there are hundreds of women who have been forced to watch that.’

Robert Dudley came to my rescue. ‘Shall we dine?’ he asked lightly. ‘And there will be music after dinner. I demand a dance.’

‘Only one?’ she queried, her mood lifting at once.

‘Only one,’ he said.

She made a little flirtatious pouting face.

‘The one that starts when the music starts after dinner and ends when the sun comes up and no-one can dance another step,’ he said. ‘That one.’

‘And what shall we do then, when we have danced ourselves to a standstill?’ she asked provocatively.

I looked from her to him, I could hardly believe the intimacy of their tone. Anyone who heard them would have thought them to be lovers in the very first days of their desire.

‘We will do whatever you wish, of course,’ he said, his voice like silk. ‘But I know what I would wish.’

‘What?’ she breathed.

‘To lie with . . .’

‘With?’

‘The morning sun on my face,’ he finished.

Elizabeth stepped a little closer to him and whispered a phrase in Latin. I kept my expression deliberately blank. I had understood the Latin as readily as Lord Robert, she had whispered that she wanted kisses in the morning . . . From the sun, of course.

She turned to her court. ‘We will dine,’ she announced out loud. She walked alone, head up, towards the doors to the great hall. As she went into the dark interior she paused and threw a glance at Lord Robert over her shoulder. I saw the invitation in her look, and almost like a moment of dizziness, I recognised that look. I had seen that very same look before, to the queen’s husband King Philip. And I had seen that look before then, when she had been a girl and I had been a child: to Lord Thomas Seymour, her stepmother’s husband. It was the same look, it was the invitation of the same desire. Elizabeth liked to choose her lovers from the husbands of other women, she liked to arouse desire from a man whose hands were tied, she liked to triumph over a woman who could not keep her husband, and more than anything in the world, she liked to throw that look over her shoulder and see a man start forward to go to her side—as Lord Robert started now.