There are no sentries posted at my lover’s door; it is unlocked as he promised. I turn the handle and slip in, and he is there, waiting for me at the fireside, the room empty, lit only by a few candles. He is tall and lean, dark-haired, dark-eyed. When he hears me, he turns, and desire illuminates his grave face. He grabs me, my head against his hard chest, his arms tightening around my back. Without saying a word, I am rubbing my forehead against him as if I would drive myself under his skin, into his very body. We sway together for a moment, our bodies craving the scent, the touch of the other. His hands clutch at my buttocks, he lifts me up and I wrap my legs around him. I am desperate for him. He kicks open the door of his bedroom with his booted foot, and carries me in, slamming it behind him as he turns and lays me down on his bed. He strips off his breeches, he throws his shirt to the floor as I open my cloak and robe and he presses down upon me and enters me without a single word said, with only a deep sigh, as if he has been holding his breath all day for this moment.

Only then do I gasp against his naked shoulder: “Thomas, swive me all night; I don’t want to think.”

He rears above me so that he can see my pale face and my auburn hair spilling over the pillow. “Christ, I am desperate for you,” he exclaims, and then his face grows intent and his dark eyes widen and are blinded by desire as he starts to move inside me. I open my legs wider and hear my breath coming short, and know that I am with the only lover who has ever given me pleasure, in the only place in the world where I want to be, the only place that I feel safe—in Thomas Seymour’s warm bed.

* * *

Sometime before dawn, he pours wine for me from a flagon on the sideboard and offers me dried plums and some little cakes. I take a glass of wine and nibble on a pastry, catching the crumbs in my cupped hand.

“He’s proposed marriage,” I say shortly.

Briefly, he puts his hand over his eyes, as if he cannot bear to see me, sitting in his bed, my hair tumbled around my shoulders, his sheets wrapped around my breasts, my neck rubbed red with his biting kisses, my mouth a little swollen.

“God save us. Oh, God spare us this.”

“I couldn’t believe it.”

“He spoke to your brother? To your uncle?”

“No, to me, yesterday.”

“Have you told anyone else?”

I shake my head. “Not yet. I’d tell no one before you.”

“So what will you do?”

“What can I do? I’ll obey,” I say grimly.