‘Anne,’ he says simply.

‘Richard,’ I reply, giving him no title if he gives me none, though he is the Duke of Gloucester, and a royal duke, and I am a girl with no name.

‘I’ll be quick,’ he says, glancing along the corridor where his brother and his friends are strolling away speaking of hunting and a new dog that someone has brought from Hainault. ‘If you are happy living with your sister, with your inheritance robbed from you and your mother imprisoned, then I will not say another word.’

‘I’m not happy,’ I say rapidly.

‘If you see them as your gaolers, I could rescue you from them.’

‘I see them as my gaolers and my enemies and I hate them both.’

‘You hate your sister?’

‘I hate her even worse than I hate him.’

He nods, as if this is not shocking, but utterly reasonable. ‘Can you get out of your rooms at all?’

‘I walk in the privy garden in the afternoon most days.’

‘Alone?’

‘Since I have no friends.’

‘Come to the yew arbour this afternoon after dinner. I’ll be waiting.’

He turns without another word and runs after his brother’s court. I walk swiftly to my sister’s rooms.

In the afternoon my sister and all her ladies are preparing for a masque, and they are going to try their costumes in the wardrobe rooms. There is no part for me to learn, there is no ornate costume for me to try. They forget all about me in the excitement of the gowns and I take my chance and slip away, down a winding stone stair that leads directly to the garden, and from there to the yew arbour.

I see his slight form, seated on a stone bench, his hound beside him. The dog turns his head and pricks his ears at the sound of my shoes on the gravel. Richard rises to his feet as he sees me.

‘Does anybody know you are here?’

I feel my heart thud at this, a conspirator’s question. ‘No.’

He smiles. ‘How long do you have?’

‘Perhaps an hour.’

He draws me into the shade of the arbour, where it is cold and dark but the thick green branches hide us from view. Anyone would have to come to the very entrance of the circular planting of trees and peer inside to see us. We are hidden as if enclosed in a little green room. I draw my cloak around me and sit on the stone bench and look up at him, expectantly.

He laughs at my excited face. ‘I have to know what you want, before I can suggest anything.’

‘Why would you suggest anything at all for me?’

He shrugs. ‘Your father was a good man, he was a good guardian to me when I was his ward. I remember you with affection from childhood. I was happy in your house.’

‘And for this you would rescue me?’

‘I think you should be free to make your own choices.’

I look at him sceptically. He must think I am a fool. He was not thinking of my freedom when he led my horse to Worcester and handed me over to George and Isabel. ‘Then why didn’t you let me go to my mother, when you came for Margaret of Anjou?’

‘I didn’t know then that they would hold you as a prisoner. I thought I was taking you to your family, to safety.’

‘It’s because of the money,’ I tell him. ‘While they hold me, Isabel can claim all the inheritance from my mother.’

‘And while your sister does not protest they can hold your mother forever. George gets all your father’s lands, and if Isabel gets your mother’s lands that great inheritance is made one again, but inherited by only one of the Warwick girls: by Isabel, and her wealth is in George’s keeping.’

‘I am not allowed to even speak to the king, so how can I put my case?’

‘I could be your champion,’ Richard suggests slowly. ‘If you wanted me to serve you. I could speak to him for you.’

‘Why would you do this?’

He smiles at me. There is a world of invitation in his dark eyes. ‘Why d’you think?’ he says quietly.

‘Why d’you think?’ The question haunts me like a love song, as I hurry from the chilly garden and go up to Isabel’s rooms. My hands are freezing and my nose is red from the cold but nobody notices as I slip off my cloak and sit by the fire, pretending to listen to them talk about the gowns for the masque, though all I hear in my head is his question: ‘Why d’you think?’

It is time to dress before dinner. I have to wait on Isabel as her maids lace her gown. I have to hand her little flask of perfume to her, open her jewel box. For once I serve her without resentment; I hardly even notice that she asks for a collar of pearls and then changes her mind, and then changes back again. I just take the things from the box and put them back and then get them out again. It does not matter to me if she wears pearls that her husband has stolen from someone else. She is not going to steal anything from me, ever again, for I have someone on my side.

I have someone on my side now and he is a king’s brother just as George is a king’s brother. He is of the House of York and my father loved him and taught him like a son. And, as it happens, he is heir to the throne after George, but more beloved than George, and more steadfast and loyal than George. If you were going to pick one of the York boys it would be George for looks, Edward for charm, but it would be Richard for loyalty.

‘Why d’you think?’ When he asked me he gave me a naughty smile, his dark eyes were so bright; he almost winked at me as if it were a private joke, as if it were a delightful secret. I thought I was being clever and guarded to ask him why he would help me – and then he looked at me as if I knew the answer. And there was something about the question, about the gleam of his smile, that made me want to giggle, that even now, as my sister moves to her hand-beaten silver mirror and nods for me to tie the pearls around her neck, makes me want to blush.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ she says coldly, her eyes meeting mine in the silvered looking glass.

I steady myself at once. ‘Nothing.’

Isabel rises from the table and goes to the door. Her ladies gather around her, the door opens and George and his household are waiting to join her. This is my signal to go to my room. It is generally agreed that I am in mourning so deep that I cannot be present in mixed company. Only George and Isabel and I know that it is they who have made this rule: they don’t allow me to see anyone or speak to anyone, they keep me like a mewed hawk that should be flying free. Only George and Isabel and I know this – but Richard knows it too. Richard guessed it because he knows what I am like, what Isabel is like. He was like a son to my father, he understands the House of Warwick. And Richard cared enough to think about me, to wonder how I was faring in Isabel’s household, to see through the façade of guardianship to the truth: that I am their prisoner.

I curtsey to George and keep my eyes down so he cannot see that I am smiling. In my head I hear again my question: ‘Why would you do this?’ and his answer: ‘Why d’you think?’

When there is a knock at the door of the privy chamber I open it myself, expecting it to be one of the grooms of the servery with dishes for my dinner, but the presence chamber is empty except for Richard, standing there, magnificently dressed in red velvet doublet and breeches, his cape trimmed with sables slung around his shoulder as if it were nothing.

I gasp. ‘You?’

‘I thought I would come and see you while they are serving dinner,’ he says, strolling into the privy chamber and seating himself in Isabel’s chair under the cloth of estate by the fireside.