I dress with meticulous care, sending my gown back once and changing my sleeves. I think I will wear purple and then I see that though it is the color of emperors it drains the flush from my cheeks and tonight I want to look young and lovely. So I wear my favorite red with a golden underskirt and red sleeves with gold slashes. I pull the neck of the gown down, so that my creamy skin is defined by the square cut and my auburn hair flames against the scarlet of the hood. I wear rubies in my ears and gold chains at my waist and looped around my wrists. I paint my lips with rouge and I rouge my cheeks.

“You look beautiful,” Nan says, a little surprised at the trouble I have taken.

“I’m showing the Howard household that there is a queen already in place,” I say staunchly, and Nan laughs.

“I think we had a lucky escape,” she says. “Thank God that they could not agree and Thomas Seymour never brought Mary Howard to court.”

“Yes,” I say, disregarding the fact that he was ready to marry her. “He saved us.”

“It leaves him a bachelor, though,” Nan points out. “No man will marry Mary with her father and brother in the Tower, and she giving evidence against them to save her own skin. Thomas Seymour rises up day after day. His family is the leading house in the kingdom and the king loves him. He could choose almost anyone.”

I nod. Of course he will marry Elizabeth if the king gives permission. Then he will be married to the third heir to the Tudor throne. Then I can dance at his wedding. Then I will have to think of him as my son-in-law.

“Who knows?” I say lightly. I nod to my ladies to open the doors and we walk from my bedroom into my privy chamber, and into my presence room, and there he is. He turns as he hears the doors open and I realize he has been waiting for me; and there he is.

When I see him a strange thing happens. It is as if I can see no one else. I don’t even hear the usual noise of the room. It is almost like a dream, like a slip in time, as if all my clocks freeze and everyone has gone and there is nothing but him and me. He turns and sees me, and I am blind to everything but his dark eyes, and his smile, and his gaze upon me as if he too can see no one else, and I think—ah, thank God, he loves me as I love him, for there could be no smile so warm, so directed, except from a man who loves the woman walking towards him, glowing, her hand outstretched.

“Good evening, Sir Thomas,” I say.