Perturbed, Richard nevertheless unfolded the parchment.

To my lord of Norfolk, my friend and my uncle’s trusted councilor, I greet you well. I write to beseech you to intercede for me with my dear uncle, that if he has a mind to marry again after the queen’s passing, I am willing—nay, desirous… Richard looked up aghast: “By Christ’s nails, what is this? It is fabricated, forged, fraudulent! Bess seeks to replace Anne, and so soon? She insinuated herself into Anne’s kind graces and all the time wished she were dead? She is not so unkind. It has to be a forgery. A monstrous jest!”

“Read on,” Francis insisted. “Bess is not false-hearted. ’Tis a girl infatuated, nothing more.”

Richard continued reading. He is my dearest love, as I have told you… “Damnation,” Richard interjected again angrily, “Howard knew this before and did not tell me? I’ll have his guts for garters.” He read on, …and I believe he has a fondness for me. “I did, I did,” Richard mumbled, “but as I have a fondness for all my nieces. Why must my actions be so misconstrued?”

He threw the parchment on the table and speared it to the table with his dagger. “Am I to be hounded even in my hour of grief. I must send Bess and her sisters away. Out of my sight and out of people’s minds.” He looked across at Francis who was shaking his head. “You don’t agree? Then what, pray, does Lord Lovell think I should do?” he snapped. “Poison her as I did her brothers?” And he grabbed an inkwell John Kendall had left open on the table and flung it at a valuable tapestry.

Francis bided his time as Richard stalked to the window to stare out at the mantle of daffodils below him in Westminster’s well-kept garden.

“It is the view of your privy council that you make a public denial of this rumor. It is the only way to put it behind you.”

He stopped there. Francis had been Richard’s friend long enough to know that, after an explosion of ill-judged temper, Richard had to process information before he could be reasoned with. Usually, he was reasonable, but Richard was not himself these days—Francis had not heard him laugh for weeks—and so he braced himself for the next onslaught. Richard suddenly swung round and said coldly, “I will not do it, and there is an end to it. Let the rumor-mongers go to hell.”

Francis bowed and quietly left the room. Richard was wrong, he knew, and needed time to calm himself. In the meantime, he went to find Jack Howard.

Richard stood by the fireplace and turned the delicate gold-filigree ring around the tip of his finger, wondering what had prompted Kate to send the keepsake back to him. When he had given it to her those many years ago, he had made her promise that if ever she had need of him she would send it and he would see her. Jack Howard had delivered it from Suffolk the day before, saying Kate had accompanied him and was now a guest at his townhouse in Stepney.