My mother keeps her head up and smiles. “And I thank you,” she says regally. “So much.”

“My son will see Princess Elizabeth.” Lady Margaret nods to a page. “Take the princess to the king’s private rooms.”

I have no choice but to go through the interconnecting room, to the king’s chambers. It seems the two of them are never more than a doorway apart. He is seated at a table that I recognize at once as one used in this palace by my lover Richard, made for my father, King Edward. It is so strange to see Henry seated in my father’s chair, signing documents on Richard’s table, as if he were king himself—until I remember that he is indeed the king himself, his pale, worried face the image that will be stamped on the coins of England.

He is dictating to a clerk with a portable writing desk slung around his neck, a quill in one hand, another tucked behind his ear, but when Henry sees me, he gives me a broad welcoming smile, waves the man away, and the guards close the door on him and we are alone.

“Are they spitting like cats on a barn roof?” He chuckles. “There’s no great love lost between them, is there?”

I’m so relieved to have an ally that for a moment I nearly respond to his warmth, then I check myself. “Your mother is ordering everything, as usual,” I say coldly.

The merry smile is wiped from his face. He frowns at the least hint of criticism of her. “You have to understand that she has waited for this moment all her life.”

“I am sure we all know this. She does tell everyone.”

“I owe her everything,” he says frostily. “I can’t hear a word against her.”

I nod. “I know. She tells everyone that too.”

He rises from his chair and comes around the table towards me. “Elizabeth, you will be her daughter-in-law. You will learn to respect her and love and value her. You know, in all the years when your father was on the throne, my mother never gave up her vision.”

I grit my teeth. “I know,” I say. “Everybody knows. She tells everyone that as well.”

“You have to admire that in her.”

I cannot bring myself to say that I admire her. “My mother too is a woman of great tenacity,” I say carefully. Privately I think: But I don’t worship her like a baby, she doesn’t speak of nothing but me as if she had nothing in her life but one spoiled brat.

“I am sure they are filled with bile now, but before that they were friends and even allies,” he reminds me. “When we are married, they will join together. They’ll both have a grandson to love.”

He pauses as if he hopes I will say something about their grandson.

Unhelpfully, I stay silent.

“You are well, Elizabeth?”

“Yes,” I say shortly.

“And your course has not returned?”