I smile bitterly. “What man objects to a younger bride? You know, I think he had me in mind even before the death of my husband, God rest his soul.”

“I knew it!” He slams his palm against the carved post of the bed. “I knew it! I’ve seen the way his eyes follow you around the room. I’ve seen him send you a little dish of this or a little piece of that at dinner, and lick his own spoon with his big fat tongue when you taste it. I can’t bear the thought of you in his bed and his old hands pulling you this way and that.”

I strain my throat and swallow down my fear. “I know. I know. The marriage will be far worse than the courting, and the courting is like a play with mismatched actors and I don’t know my lines. I’m so afraid. Dear God, Thomas, I cannot tell you how very afraid I am. The last queen...” I lose my voice; I cannot say her name. Katherine Howard died, beheaded for adultery, just a year ago.

“Don’t be afraid of that,” Thomas reassures me. “You weren’t here, you don’t know what she was like. Kitty Howard ruined herself. He would never have hurt her but for her own fault. She was a complete whore.”

“And what d’you think he’d call me, if he saw me like this?”

There is a bleak silence. He looks at my hands, clutched around my knees. I have started to tremble. He puts his hands on my shoulders, and feels me shudder. He looks aghast, as if we have just heard our death sentences.

“He must never ever suspect you of this,” he says, gesturing to the warm fire, the candlelit room, the rumpled sheets, the heady, betraying smell of lovemaking. “If he ever asks you—deny it. I will always deny it, I swear. He must never hear even a whisper. I swear that he will never hear one word from me. We must agree it together. We will never ever speak of it. Not to anyone. We will never give him cause to suspect, and we will swear an oath of secrecy.”

“I swear it. They could rack me and I wouldn’t betray you.”