‘Oh.’

He fell into step beside me. ‘Surely you don’t need to serve him now.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He has released me.’ I very much wished that Daniel would go away so that I could think of the kiss on my neck and the warmth of Lord Robert’s breath against my ear.

‘So you won’t serve him again,’ he said pedantically.

‘I just said,’ I snapped. ‘I am not serving him now. I am delivering books for my father. It just happened to be to Lord Robert. I did not even see him. I just took them in and gave them to a guard.’

‘Then when did he release you from his service?’

‘Months ago,’ I lied, trying to recover.

‘When he was arrested?’

I rounded on him. ‘What does it matter to you? I am released from his service, I serve Queen Mary now. What more d’you need to know?’

His temper rose with mine. ‘I have a right to know everything that you do. You are to be my wife, your name will be mine. And while you insist on running from court to Tower, you put yourself into danger, and the rest of us into danger too.’

‘You’re in no danger,’ I retorted. ‘What would you know of it? You’ve never done anything or been anywhere. The world has turned upside down and back again while you have stayed safe at home. Why should you be in danger?’

‘I’ve not played off one master against another, and shown a false face and spied and given false witness, if that’s what you mean,’ he said sharply. ‘I did not ever think those were great and admirable acts. I have kept my faith and buried my father according to my faith. I have supported my mother and my sisters, and I have saved money against the day of my marriage. Our marriage. While you run around the dark streets, dressed as a pageboy, serve in a Papist court, visit a condemned traitor, and reproach me for having done nothing.’

I pulled my hand away from him. ‘Don’t you see he’s going to die?’ I shouted, and then I was aware that the tears were streaming down my face. Angrily, I rubbed them away with my sleeve. ‘Don’t you know that they’re going to execute him and no-one can save him? Or at best they’ll leave him in there to wait and wait and wait and die of waiting? He can’t even save himself? Don’t you see that everyone I love seems to be taken from me, for no crime? With no way of saving them? Don’t you think I miss my mother every day of my life? Don’t you think I smell smoke every night in my dreams and now this man . . . this man . . .’ I broke off in tears.

Daniel caught me by the shoulders, not in an embrace, but with a firm grip to hold me at arm’s length so that he could read my face with a long impartial measuring glance. ‘This man is nothing to do with the death of your mother,’ he said flatly. ‘Nothing to do with someone dying for their faith. So don’t dress up your lust as sorrow. You have been serving two masters, sworn enemies. One of them was bound to end up in there. If it was not Lord Robert then it would have been Queen Mary. One of them was bound to triumph, one of them was bound to die.’