“They have set your wedding day?”

“My betrothed came to tell me himself. Sir John. I shall be Lady Welles. And he is so handsome! And so rich!”

I look at her, a hundred harsh words on the tip of my tongue. This is a man who was raised to hate our family, whose father died under our arrows at the battle of Towton when his own artillery could not fire in the snow, whose half brother Sir Richard Welles and his son Robert were executed by our father on the battlefield for treachery. Cecily’s betrothed is Lady Margaret’s half brother, a Lancastrian by birth, by inclination, and by lifelong enmity to us. He is thirty-six years old to my sister’s seventeen, he has been our enemy all his life. He must hate her. “And this makes you happy?” I ask.

She does not even hear the skepticism in my tone. “Lady Margaret herself made this wedding,” she says. “She told him that though I am a princess of York I am charming. She said that: charming. She said that I am utterly suited to be the wife of a nobleman of the Tudor court. She said I am most likely to be fertile, she even praised you for having a boy. She said I am not puffed up with false pride.”

“Did she say legitimate?” I ask dryly. “For I can never remember whether we are princesses or not at the moment.”

Finally she hears the bitterness in my voice and she pauses in her jig, takes hold of my bedpost, and swings around to look at me. “Are you jealous of me for making a marriage for love, to a nobleman, and that I come to him untouched? With the favor of My Lady?” she taunts me. “That my reputation is as good as any maid’s in the world? With no secrets behind me? No scandals that might be unearthed? Nobody can say one word against me?”

“No,” I say wearily. I could weep for the aches and pains, the seep of blood, the matching seep of tears. I am missing my baby, and I am mourning for Richard. “I am glad for you, really. I am just tired.”

“Shall I send for your mother?” Our cousin Maggie steps forwards, frowning at Cecily. “Her Grace is still recovering!” she says quietly. “She shouldn’t be disturbed.”

“I only came to tell you I am to be married, I thought you would be happy for me,” Cecily says, aggrieved. “It is you who is being so unpleasant . . .”

“I know.” I force myself to change my tone. “And I should have said that I am glad for you, and that he is a lucky man to have such a princess.”

“Father had greater plans for me than this,” she points out. “I was raised for better than this. If you don’t congratulate me, you should pity me.”

“Yes,” I reply. “But all my pity is used up on myself. It doesn’t matter, Cecily, you can’t understand how I feel. You should be happy, I am glad for you. He’s a lucky man and, as you say, handsome and wealthy, and any one of My Lady the King’s Mother’s family is always going to be a favorite.”