I realize: this is how it will be from now until death us do part; he will wait for my assent or continue without it. I will have to marry this man who looms larger and stands higher than anyone else. He is above mortals, a heavenly body just below angels: the King of England.

“I am so surprised by the honor,” I stammer.

The pursed pout of his little mouth widens into a smile. I can see the yellowing teeth and smell his old-dog breath.

“I don’t deserve it.”

“I will show you how to deserve it,” he assures me.

A coy smile on his wet lips reminds me, horribly, that he is a sensualist trapped in a rotting body and that I will be his wife in every sense of the word; he will bed me while I am aching for another man.

“May I pray and think on this great proposal?” I ask, stumbling for courtly words. “I’m taken aback, I really am. And so recently widowed...”

His sprouting sandy eyebrows twitch together; this displeases him. “You want time? Weren’t you hoping for this?”

“Every woman hopes for it,” I assure him swiftly. “There is not one lady at court who does not hope for it, not one in the country who does not dream of it. I among all the others. But I am unworthy!”

This is better, he is soothed.

“I can’t believe that my dreams have come true,” I embellish. “I need time to realize my good fortune. It’s like a fairy story!”

He nods. He loves fairy stories, disguising and playacting, and any sort of fanciful pretense.

“I have rescued you,” he declares. “I will raise you from nothing to the greatest place in the world.” His voice, rich and confident, lubricated for all his life with the finest of wines and the fattest of cuts, is indulgent; but the sharp little gaze is interrogating me.

I force myself to meet his gimlet eyes, hooded under his fat eyelids. He doesn’t raise me from nothing, I don’t come from nowhere: I was born a Parr of Kendal, my late husband was a Neville, these are great families in the far North of England, not that he has ever been there. “I need a little time,” I bargain. “To accustom myself to joy.”