‘Forgive me, my lady.’

Instantly remorse shook me, so that I returned to where Guille stood and placed my fingers on her wrist. ‘No. It is I who should ask forgiveness.’ I tried a smile. ‘I have no excuse for ill humour. I promise I will confess it.’

‘Do you care what Lady Beatrice says, my lady?’ Guille asked after a moment of uncomfortable reflection for both of us.

I thought about that. ‘No, I don’t think I do. But I would not court infamy.’

‘Some would say better infamy than a cold, lonely bed. Try him, my lady.’

‘I cannot.’

‘I can arrange it. I can make an assignation for you.’

‘It is not possible. We will forget this conversation, Guille. I am ashamed.’

‘Why should a woman be ashamed that she desired a handsome man?’

‘She should not—but when the handsome man has no feelings for her, and his birth and situation put him far beyond her grasp, then she must accept the inevitable.’

‘His birth has no influence on her female longings.’

This offered no answer to my dilemma. What do I do, Michelle? I received no reply. I was alone to trace my uncertain path through an impossible maze.

Dismiss him!

Before God, I could not.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

When Henry died, I was beyond loneliness. Misery kept my spirit chained and I sank into unrelieved gloom, as if I were permanently shielded from the sun’s warmth by a velvet cloak. Edmund’s un-chivalrous rejection of me—his deliberate choice of personal advancement over what might have passed for love in his cold heart—left me equally bereft.

But whereas in the aftermath of Henry’s denial of me I had embraced despair, I now rejected any notion of melancholy. Anger blew through me like a cleansing wind, ridding me of any inclination to weep or mourn my seclusion or even to contemplate the pattern of my never-ending isolation. A fury hummed through my blood, instilling in me a vibrancy equal to that which I had experienced at the hands of Edmund Beaufort on that fatal Twelfth Night. Fury was a hot, raging emotion, and yet my heart was a hard thing, a block of granite, a shard of ice. Tears were frozen in my heart.

Neither was my anger turned solely on Beaufort. I lashed myself with hard words. How could I have allowed myself to be drawn in, won over? Could I not have seen his empty promises for what they had been? I should not need a man’s love to live out my life in some degree of contentment. Obviously I was a woman incapable of attracting love: neither Henry nor Edmund had seen me as the object of their devotion. How could I have been so miserably weak as to be tempted into Edmund’s arms, like a mouse to the cheese left temptingly in a vermin trap? Oh, I was beyond anger.

Holy Virgin, I prayed. Grant me the strength to live out my life without the companionship of a man. Give me patience and inner contentment to spend every day until I die in the society of women. Let me not count the passing years in the lines on my face or mourn as my hair fades from gold to silver.

The Virgin smiled serenely, her face as bland as a junket, so much so that it drove me from my knees, stalking from my chapel, to the astonishment of my chaplain, who was preparing to hear my confession, and my damsels, who must have seen more than religious fervour stamped on my features. My anger refused to dissipate.

‘Love without anxiety and without fear

Is fire without flames and without warmth.’

Beatrice, fingers plucking the plangent chords, sang wistfully as we stitched in one of the light-filled chambers at Windsor. Detesting those melancholy sentiments, reminding me as they did of Edmund Beaufort’s silver tongue, I stabbed furiously at the linen altar cloth with no regard for its fragile surface.

‘Day without sunlight, hive without honey

Summer without flower, winter without frost.’

As her voice died away, there was a concerted sigh.

‘I would not wish to live without the sweetness of honey,’ Meg commented.

‘But I would,’ I announced. I was still careful around my English women, but I found the words on my lips spilling out before I could stop them. ‘I reject all sweetness and honey, all fire with its hot flames. In fact, from today, I forswear all men.’

For the length of a heartbeat they regarded me as if I had taken leave of my wits, to be quickly followed by a slide of knowing glances. My estrangement from Edmund must have given them hours of pleasurable conjecture. And then they set themselves, as one, to persuade me of the value of what I had just rejected.

‘Love brings a woman happiness, my lady.’

‘A man’s kisses puts colour into her cheeks.’

‘And a man in her bed puts a child in her belly!’

Laughter stirred the echoes in the room.

‘I will live without a man’s kisses. I will live without a man in my bed,’ I said, for once enjoying the quick cut and thrust. ‘I will never succumb to the art of seduction. I will never give way to lust.’

Which silenced them, my damsels who gossiped from morn until night over past and present amours, causing them to look askance, as if it might be below the dignity of a Queen Dowager to admit to so base an emotion as lust.

I regarded their expressive brows as I acknowledged that today I wanted their companionship; today I would be part of their gossip and knowing innuendo. I had spent my life in England isolated from them, mostly through my own inability to be at ease within their midst, but no longer. A strange light-heartedness gripped me. Perhaps it was the cup of wine we had drunk or the unexpected camaraderie.

‘I will show you.’ I lifted a skein of embroidery silks from my coffer, deciding in a moment’s foolishness to make a little drama out of it. ‘Bring a candle here for me.’

They did, and, embroidery abandoned as Cecily brought the candle, they seated themselves on floor or stool.

‘I will begin,’ I said, enjoying their attention. ‘I forswear my lord of Gloucester.’ There was an immediate murmur of assent for consigning the arrogant royal duke to the flames. ‘What colour do I choose for Gloucester?’

They caught the idea.

‘Red. For power.’

‘Red, for ambition.’

‘Red for disloyalty to one wife, and a poor choice of a second.’

I had difficulty in being mannerly towards Gloucester, who had attacked my future with the legal equivalent of a hatchet. The Act of Parliament he had instigated would stand for all time. No man of ambition would consider me as a bride. I was assuredly doomed to eternal widowhood. And so with savage delight I lifted a length of blood-red silk, snipped a hand’s breadth with my shears and held it over the candle so that it curled and shimmered into nothingness.

‘There. Gloucester is gone, he is nothing to me.’ I caught an anxious look from Beatrice as we watched the silk vanish. ‘I can’t believe you are a friend of Gloucester, Beatrice.’

‘No, my lady.’ She shuddered. ‘But is this witchcraft. Perhaps in France…?’

‘No such thing,’ I assured her. ‘Merely a signal of my intent. Gloucester will be hale and hearty for a good few years yet.’ I looked round the expectant faces. ‘Now Bishop Henry. He has been kind—but to my mind as self-interested as are all the Beauforts. Not to be trusted.’

‘Rich purple,’ from Beatrice. ‘He likes money and self-importance.’

‘And the lure of a Cardinal’s hat,’ Cecily added.

The purple silk went the way of its red sister.

Who next? I considered my father, who had instilled in me such fear—mad, untrustworthy, kind one moment, violent and cruel the next—but I knew that it had not been his choice to be so.

And then there was my brother Charles, who would be King Charles the Seventh if he could persuade enough Frenchmen to back him, and would thus usurp my son’s claim to France. But was it not his right, by birth and blood, to rule? I could not deny him his belief in his inheritance. This was no easy task, but the fascination of my damsels urged me on.

I chose a length of pure white silk.

‘Who is that?’

‘My husband. Henry. Sadly dead before his time.’

They became instantly solemn. ‘Pure.’

‘Revered.’

‘Chivalrous. A great loss.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed, and said no more, knowing it would not be politic. Henry, as pure and cold as the coldest winter, as cruel through his neglect as the sharpest blade. I admired his talents but did not regret his absence, as the white silk flamed, and died as he had in the last throes of his terrible illness. ‘He no longer has a place in my life.’

‘He was a great king,’ Meg stated.

‘He was,’ I agreed. ‘The very best. In his pursuit of English power he had no rival.’

The memory of my immature infatuation, his heedless forsaking of me, flooded back and for a moment my hands fell unoccupied in my lap, the silks abandoned, and my women shuffled uncomfortably. The joy had gone out of it.

‘What about Edmund Beaufort?’ Beatrice asked, immediately looking aghast at her daring, for here was a sensitive issue. Would I lash out with anger at their presumption? Would I weep, despite all my denials of hurt? Would I embarrass myself and them?

And I thought momentarily of Edmund, how I had fallen into the fantasy of it, as a mayfly, at the end of its short existence, drops into the stream and is carried away. Edmund had woven a web to pinion me and take away my will. How I had enjoyed it, living from moment to moment, day to day, anticipating his next kiss, his next outrageous plot. How could any woman resist such a glorious seduction?

She could if she had any sense. He was as self-serving as the rest, and I had been a fool to be so compromised, with no one to blame but myself. In my folly I had trusted so blindly. I would not do so again. I would not be used by any man again. I would never again be seduced by a smooth tongue and clever assault. No man would command my allegiance, my loyalty. Certainly not my love.