‘I set you free,’ I said. ‘Go home. Go back Wales.’

Owen stopped as if hit by a battle mace.

‘Katherine?’

Shock flattened his features. His face registering utter incomprehension, he took another step forward, but I retreated.

‘I have arranged for money. A horse. Take an escort.’ I dared not touch him. I dared not let him touch me or I would shred all my resolution and fall at his feet. ‘If you died because of me, how could I live knowing that you were dead? I don’t want you here.’ The words fell from my lips without restraint. ‘I will not see you done to death. I will not carry the guilt of harm coming to you. I relieve you of any obligation to me.’

‘What are you saying?’

I firmed my shoulders as if addressing the Royal Council. ‘I wish to end our marriage, Owen. I wish you to leave Hertford and find refuge in Wales. I will not allow you to remain here with your life open to constant danger.’ In spite of an anguish that was tearing me apart, never had I spoken so firmly. Never had I sounded so much the Queen Dowager. ‘I command you to leave.’

It was as if Owen had turned to ice. His hands fell loosely to his sides. His face as pale as wax, his eyes glittered like obsidian. His voice, when he finally spoke, was as emotionless as mine.

‘You would send me away? Am I still your servant, to be dismissed at your whim?’ It was like the lash of a whip. ‘Does our love mean nothing to you?’

I would not bow before his retaliation. ‘It means everything. For your sake, you must leave. And for mine. I cannot contemplate the possibility that we will not breathe the same air, feel the heat of the same sun on our skins. Do you not understand? Do you not agree that it must be so?’

‘I hear what you say. By God, woman! Will you take the decision out of my hands?’ I could hear the rumble of temper in the ominous quiet.

‘Yes,’ I responded, before I could be swayed.

‘And if I do not agree?’

‘You must. We will not be together in body, but we will in spirit, and I know that you will be alive, and safe, to live your life to its allotted time.’ How well I had learned my words, even though my heart shuddered. I missed him between our rising and sitting down to break our fast. How could I contemplate a lifetime apart? Knowing that I had come to the end of my control and that Owen’s temper was about to explode like a hunting cat after its prey, I turned my face from him. ‘I have made my decision. Go back to Wales, where you will find peace and safety.’

And I walked away, climbing the stairs, closing the door of my chamber quietly behind me, because to do otherwise would be to slam it shut so that the sound reverberated through the whole castle.

Owen did not follow. He did not see the tears that washed ceaselessly down my cheeks to mark the velvet of my bodice. He did not see me stand with my back to the door, my palms pressed there as if I needed support. He did not see me dry my tears and determine not to weep again because tears would solve nothing, then fall to my knees and hide my face against the coverlet of my bed.

What had I done? How could I have sliced my heart in two? Even worse, how could I have condemned Owen to the same wretched misery that made every breath I took without him a separate agony? I was beyond thought, beyond reason.

But reason returned, as it must, and with it all my previous conviction. I would live alone. I would send Owen away if it would save his life. I would live alone for ever if it meant he, my love, my life, would be free from Gloucester’s anger. I would do it. I would step away from Owen out of pure love.

It was the right thing to do.

So why did it hurt so much?

That night I slept alone. I barred my door to him, which I had never done before. And I waited, when my household settled for the night, until I heard his approaching footsteps. I swear I would recognise them in the turbulence of a winter storm. Breath held, I heard them pause outside, and placed my palm against the wood, leaned my forehead against the panels, as if I could sense him there. He did not knock or try the latch. I listened, but could hear no words. Not even his breathing. How long did we stand there? Time had no measure in my distraught mind. Then his footsteps passed on.

Tomorrow we would be separated for ever.

Exhaustion laid its hand on me but I did not sleep. I kept a solitary vigil for the death of our marriage.

‘Where is my lord?’ I asked Guille next morning. I rose late. Very late. I had not heard Owen and his escort leave, but there were the usual sounds of castle life reaching my windows from courtyard and stables. He would have seen the sense of it and gone at dawn, without my presence. I could not bear to watch him ride away. Neither would I wish to burden him with my volatile emotions.

‘I’m not sure, my lady.’ Guille was carefully not noticing my wan cheeks, her fingers busy as she pinned my hair beneath a simple veil. My temples were too sore to support close padding.

‘Has he left the castle?’

She took a breath. ‘I think he might have.’

‘Did you see him?’

She affixed a pin with deliberation. ‘No, my lady.’

I inhaled against the blow. However much I had anticipated his leaving, nothing could have prepared me for the force of it. Owen had gone. He had left me. I knew he must have because, unless away from the castle, his routines always brought him back to me at mid-morning. But not today. It felt as if he had taken my heart with him, leaving a space of pain and loss in my chest. And I would accept it because Owen would live.

Now I must begin the impossible task of living my life without him. I inspected my face in my mirror. I straightened the hang of my sleeves, the fall of my girdle, checked the safety and position of the chain that Guille had clasped around my neck. Little details of my existence that I attended to every day.

I stepped outside my door.

‘What time is this to rise from your bed? Your sons are asking for you.’

The question, soft-voiced, slammed into my mind as if it were a roll on a military drum. Collecting my thoughts was almost beyond me. I stared at him, unable to trust my reactions.

‘Guille told me that you were gone.’

What a facile reply, when he was clearly not. When everything I wanted in life was there before me. Within touching distance. Within kissing distance. Owen should not be here.

‘I ordered her to,’ Owen said.

‘Why?’

‘To catch you off guard. So that I could talk some sense into you before you could resurrect the fortifications against me.’

‘I told you to go, Owen.’ To my horror my voice wavered.

‘And I choose not to.’

I could see that he had slept as little as I. Now he pushed himself to his feet, from where he had been sitting on the floor, his back against the wall with his arms resting on his bent knees, outside my chamber. It might have seemed the demeanour of a servant outside his mistress’s chamber, but there was nothing servile in Owen’s stance, as he drew himself to his full height and stretched cramped limbs, or in his expression. It was thunderous. He was wearing, I decided, the same clothes as he had worn when I had delivered my royal command.

‘How long have you been there?’ I asked, inconsequentially. I suspected he had been there all night. He should not be there at all.

‘Long enough.’ His hands were clamped around the broad leather belt that rested on his hips. How easy it was for me to recognise the strength of will in that posture. Far stronger than mine, I feared.

‘You must not make it harder for me than it is,’ I said as I raised my chin.

‘It is my intent to make it impossible for you!’ Yesterday his anger had been cold with shock: today it had the heat of a sleepless night behind it. And I braced myself. ‘I will not go. I will not run off to Wales like a whipped cur. Neither will I let you make a martyr of me, or of yourself, for that matter. Are we made to live apart? I love you. God help me, I love you in all ways known to man and angels.’

‘Owen—’ All my carefully built ramparts were crumbling under the onslaught.

‘You are my soul, Katherine. And I defy you to tell me that your feelings for me have died. Unless you have indeed suffered an aversion to me. Have you? For that is the only reason that would drive me from your door. Is that true?’

‘No.’

Owen drove on. ‘Do we sacrifice everything that binds us, for the sake of what might—or might not—happen?’

‘I cannot bear that you should die because of me. I will willingly bear the pain of our parting if—’

‘But I will not. Better to live a day with you, dear heart, than a lifetime with the breadth of the country separating us.’

Dear heart. His voice might lash at me, but the endearment undermined me completely and I covered my face with my hands, for all my carefully reasoned argument lay in pieces at my feet. Then he was there, in front of me, holding my wrists.

‘Don’t weep, my dear love.’

‘I am not weeping. I vowed I would not.’ I looked up, dry-eyed, furious that he could reach me so easily. ‘Why will you not see the sense of us living apart?’

‘There is no sense. Are we not two halves of one entity? You might be prepared to spend your life in abject regret, but I will not.’ He placed a fierce kiss on my brow. ‘Hear me, Katherine. I will not live a day apart from you or from my sons.’

My hands, clenching into fists, beat in despair on his chest. Without any noticeable effect. Then all it took was the warm enclosing of his hands around mine, the smoothing out of my fingers within his clasp, and I was still. I knew I had lost.

‘I am not the enemy here, Katherine.’