He had placed his hands on my shoulders and was pressing the robe from them. I felt the familiar excitement creeping over me.

"I am not Douglass Sheffield, my lord."

"Nay, you are my bewitching Lettice, and there is none to compare."

"I hope those words never reach the Queen's ears."

"The Queen is outside all this. And I would risk her knowing ... for this."

"Robert," I insisted, "I am not a light of love to be taken up and cast aside."

"I know it well. I love you. I never ceased to think of you. Something is going to happen, but you must not believe evil tales of me."

"What is going to happen?"

"The day will come when you and I will marry. I know it."

"How? You are committed to the Queen. I have a husband."

"Life changes."

"You think the Queen will turn her favor in some other direction?"

"Nay, I shall keep it and have you too."

"You think she would agree to that?"

"In time. As she grows older."

"You are greedy, Robert. You want everything. You are not content with a share of life's good things. You want yours and everyone else's."

"I do not expect more than I know I can get."

"And you believe you can keep the Queen's favor and have me too?"

"Lettice, you want me. Do you think I don't know that?"

"I admit I find you personable enough."

"And what is your life with Walter Devereux? He's a failure. He's not your kind. Admit it."

"He has been a good husband to me."

"A good husband? What has your life been? The most beautiful woman of the Court moldering in the country!"

"I may come to Court providing I do not offend Her Majesty by attracting the attention of her favorite man."

"We must be careful, Lettice. But I tell you this: I am going to marry you."

"How and when?" I laughed at him. "I am no longer the young innocent I was. I shall never forget that when she sent for you, when she hinted that she knew you were not indifferent to me, you let me go. You behaved as though I meant nothing to you."

"I was a fool, Lettice."

"Oh, never that! You were a wise man. You knew where the advantage lay."

"She is the Queen, my dearest."

"I am not your dearest, Robert. She, with her crown, is that."

"You are wrong. She is a woman who will be obeyed, and we are her subjects. Therefore we have to placate her. That is why things are as they are and must be. Oh, Lettice, how can I make you understand? I never forgot you. I longed for you. All those years I was haunted by you ... and now you have come back ... lovelier than ever. This time there must be no parting."

He was beginning to win me over—although I only half believed him, but desperately I wanted to.

"What if she decrees otherwise?" I asked.

"We will outwit her."

The thought of our standing together against her intoxicated me. He understood very well my weaknesses as I understood his. There could be no doubt that we were meant for each other.

I laughed again. "I would she could hear you now," I said.

He laughed with me, for he knew he was winning. "We are going to be together. I promise you. I am going to marry you."

"How would that be possible?"

"I tell you I have made up my mind that it shall be."

"You do not always get your will, my lord. Remember you once made up your mind to marry the Queen... ."

"The Queen is set against marriage." He sighed. "I have come to believe she will never take a husband. She plays with the idea. She likes to be surrounded by suitors. If she had ever married I should have been the chosen one. But in her heart she has decided never to marry at all."

"So for this reason you feel you may turn to me?"

"Let us face the truth, Lettice. If she would have had me I should have married her. Of course I would. Only a fool would not. I should have been a king in all but name. But that does not prevent my loving the most beautiful, the incomparable Lady Essex. Oh my God, Lettice, I want you. I want you to be my wife. I want to see our children ... a son to carry on my name. Nothing but that will satisfy me. It is what I shall aim for and I know it will come to pass."

I was not sure whether I believed him, but how I wanted to! And when he talked he spoke with such conviction that I was carried along. He was the most plausible of men; he could talk himself out of any difficulty as he must have so many times with the Queen. Few could have lived so dangerously and yet preserved themselves as Robert had.

"One day, my dearest," he assured me, "it shall be as I plan."

I believed him. I refused to look at all the obstacles.

"And now," he said, "enough of talk."

We knew what we were risking, but we could not leave each other. The dawn was just appearing in the sky when we parted and went to our rooms.

The next day I was apprehensive, wondering whether the events of the previous night might be obvious, but none looked at me questioningly. I had reached my room without being detected and Robert evidently did too.

The children were excited by all that was happening in their home, and, listening to their talk, I learned that they were already fascinated by Robert. In fact it was difficult to know whom they admired most—the Queen or the Earl of Leicester. The Queen was remote of course, but she had insisted that they be presented to her, and she asked them several questions, which I was proud to see they answered with intelligence. Clearly they had found favor with her as most children did.

There was an occasion when Leicester was missing and had been for some time. The Queen had asked for him and he was not to be found. I was with her at the time, and her growing impatience worried me. I wanted no display of the royal temper in my house which would make the visit a failure and all our efforts in vain. Moreover I was growing as suspicious as the Queen. Memories of our encounter were still strongly with me. I could not stop thinking of his protestations and imagining that we were indeed married and that this was our home. I thought then that I should have been quite content to stay in the country with Robert Dudley.

But where was he now? Douglass Sheffield was not here, but was there some other beauty whom he met in the night, to whom he had promised marriage, always supposing the Queen would permit him to marry and the prospective bride's existing husband be conveniently removed?

The Queen said she would look at the gardens. Quite clearly she suspected he was out there with someone and she was determined to catch him. I could guess what her fury would be like—it would match my own.

Then a strange thing happened. As we stepped into the grounds we saw him. There was no beautiful young woman with him. In his arms he carried my youngest, Walter. The other three children were with him. My Lord Leicester looked slightly less immaculate than usual. There was a smudge of dirt on his cheek and another on one of his puffed sleeves.

I felt the Queen relax beside me and I heard her low chuckle.

She cried out: "So my Lord Leicester has become a stable lad."

Seeing us, Robert hurried forward, put down Walter and bowed first to the Queen, then to me.

"I trust Your Majesty did not need me," he said.

"We wondered what had become of you. You have absented yourself these last two hours."

How magnificent he was! He was facing his royal mistress and that other mistress with whom, shortly before, he had been passionately preoccupied, and none would have guessed the relationship between us.

My Robert ran up to the Queen and said: "That Robert ..." pointing to the Earl of Leicester, "says he never saw a falcon to match mine. I want to show it to you."

She put out a hand and Robert took those white slender fingers into his grubby ones and started to pull her forward. "Come on. Let's show her, Leicester," he shouted.

I said: "Robert! You forget to whom you are speaking. Her Majesty ..."

"Let be," interrupted the Queen, her voice soft, her eyes tender. She had always loved children, and they took to her immediately, probably for that reason. "I am about to be engaged on an important mission. Master Robert and I have a falcon to inspect."

"He will only obey me," young Robert told her with pride. Then he stood on tiptoe and she leaned down that he might whisper. "I'll tell him you are the Queen, then perhaps he will obey you. But I couldn't promise."

"We shall see," she replied conspiratorially.

Then there occurred this spectacle of our magnificent Queen's being dragged across the grass by my son and the rest of us following while Robert chatted about his horses and dogs, all of which he was going to show the Queen, Leicester having already seen them.

She was wonderful. I had to grant her that. She seemed but a girl herself among the children. She was a little wistful, and I guessed she was envying me my pleasant family. The girls, being older, were a little restrained. But they behaved rightly of course, for too much familiarity from them would have been frowned on. In any case it was my elder son who had caught the Queen's fancy.

He shouted and laughed and pulled at her gown to take her to another side of the stables.

I heard his high-pitched voice. "Leicester says this is one of the finest horses he ever saw and his opinion is worth something. He's the Queen's Horse Master, you know."

"I did know it," answered the Queen with a smile.

"So he must be good or she wouldn't have him."