He glares at me, as if he would see past my steady gaze and into my heart. I meet his eyes without flinching, for so much that I say is true. I honor him, I love him as a loyal subject and an honorable wife who has promised before God to love him. I never think of his death. It has been a long time since I dreamed of being free. I truly believe that he will recover from this illness and go on and on. This marriage will be my last. I may go to my grave loving Thomas Seymour, but I never think now that we will be together some day. There are no imaginable circumstances in which we could be together. He never looks at me, and I keep my passionate thoughts to myself and see his smile only in rare erotic dreams.

“You cannot doubt my love for you,” I whisper.

“You pray for my health,” the king says, soothed at the thought of me on my knees.

“I do. Daily.”

“And when the preachers come to your room and you read the Bible, do you speak of a wife’s obedience to her husband?”

“We do. We all know that a wife worships God in her husband. That is unquestioned.”

“And do you doubt purgatory?” he asks.

“I think a good Christian goes to heaven because of the saving grace of Jesus,” I say carefully.

“At his death? At the exact hour and minute of his death?”

“I don’t know when, exactly.”

“So will you pay for Masses for me? Will you establish a chantry for me?”

How to answer this? “Whatever you wish,” I promise him. “Whatever Your Majesty would prefer. But I don’t expect to see it.”

His little mouth trembles. “Death,” he repeats. “Thank God I am afraid of nothing. It’s just that I cannot imagine the country without me. I cannot imagine a world without me here, without the king that I have become, the husband that I am.”

I smile tenderly. “I can’t imagine such a thing either.”

“And your loss.” He gives a little choke. “Yours, especially.”

His grief is catching; tears come to my own eyes. I press his hand to my lips. “Not for years yet,” I assure him. “If ever. I might die before you.”

“You might,” he says, cheered at once. “I suppose you might. You might die in childbirth like so many women. Because you are quite old to have a first child, aren’t you?”

“I am,” I say. “But I pray that God will grant us a child. Perhaps in the summer when you are well again?”

“Well enough to come to your bed and make another Tudor heir?” he asks.

I turn down my eyes and nod modestly.

“You long for me,” he says, his mouth moist now and smiling.

“I do,” I whisper.

“I should think so!” the king says more cheerfully. “I should think so.”

* * *