All seemly and formal, as it should be.

But the nights…

Where was the seemliness, the formality, of my nights? For when I dismissed my maidservant, the Duke came to me. And then he was the Duke no more.

‘John…!’

I laughed as he kissed my shoulders, for I could call him by his name, which I could never do in the Great Hall or the public chambers. Even in my thoughts he was the Duke, as he had always been, royal to his fingertips.

‘Say that again,’ he ordered.

‘John.’ And I delighted in softening my voice until I made of its single syllable a caress.

‘I never thought that I would hear you call me by my given name so effortlessly.’

Which brought to me how few people did so, outside his immediate family. Not even Constanza in my hearing chose to make use of such intimacy.

‘I will call you John,’ I repeated, for my pleasure and his. I stood at the foot of my bed in my shift, my court robes discarded, and whispered his name again as he drew me into his arms.

‘I cannot believe how much I have missed you.’ His lips were hot where my blood beat hard at the base of my throat. ‘Should I not be able to control my appetites? But with you I cannot.’ He cupped my cheeks so that I must meet his eyes. ‘Do you suppose Gloucester would have been shocked if I had kissed you at supper?’

‘No, but his Duchess might. She would have called for my excommunication at least,’ I said.

Before he kissed me, I watched myself reflected in his gaze, saw my smile, the glow in my own eyes. I saw the planes of his face alter, tighten, as he read the desire in mine.

‘Will you lie with me? Will you lie with me, that we might—just for this night—and perhaps tomorrow—forget the world beyond these four walls?’

‘I will.’

Ah, yes. We forgot the world. Or I did, and I think the Duke did too for those enchanted days when he conducted business from The Savoy yet found time to walk in the gardens when he knew he would meet me there with the child. The presence of the nursemaid who acted as unknowing chaperone could not stem the happiness that filled me from my pleated hair to the soles of my shoes.

‘I want you,’ the Duke said, his lips against mine when the night was ours again and the pleats were all undone.

And so he proved it with a tenderness that belied his sometime reputation for harsh and impatient judgement, wooing me with soft words and compelling kisses. Until, with an unapologetic slide into male ribaldry, he ordered me to remove my shift:

‘Before I fall into pieces with longing.

‘I have a gentle cock,

Croweth me day:

He doth me risen early,

My matins for to say…’

And he tumbled me into his bed. The world was ours, to do with as we wished. I was entirely seduced.

At the end, when I must return to Hertford, when an embrace would have been too painful, too indulgent, he simply held my hands.

‘Always know, even when we are apart, when time does not allow me to touch your thoughts over the miles that separate us, that you are held close in my mind. Nothing will separate us. We are made to be together.’

Our road stretched out before us without blemish. There were no personal gifts, no public displays of affection. I did not need them. I read his hunger for me in every careful choice he made to give me seven days of perfect delight. This would be my life, cared for and cherished, even in the servant-cushioned silence between us as we rode through the streets of London. The lengthy absences I could tolerate, my uneasy life at Constanza’s side I could support. The Duke’s ownership, wrapped around me, was a thing of beauty beyond compare.

‘Walk with me,’ he invited, for those final moments in the garden.

And for me the world stood still, the air hot on my skin, the sun blinding my eyes.

‘I will walk with you,’ I replied.

That is where it happened, that exact moment where I slid from being captivated by the Duke’s unquestionable glamour into the powerful clutches of pure love. I might speak of its intensity, I might read the romance of it, but I had never known it.

Walk with me, he said.

Until that moment, I had been tiptoeing in the safe shallows of love. Now I fell into its depths. I would walk with him until the day I died, of necessity matching my footsteps to his. Yet although the intensity of that moment was hammered into every element of my body, I did not speak of my shattering conversion, for I thought the Duke would not understand. I was content simply to enjoy his proximity amidst the scented shrubs.

When I began my journey back to Hertford, my horizon was cloudless despite the farewell we had been forced to make. I was effortlessly, thoughtlessly, happy.

I curtsied before Duchess Constanza, my hands clasped around the little jewelled casket quite secure. My mind was equally secure in the decision that had been forced on me since my return. My heart had plummeted to somewhere in the region of my gilded court shoes.

‘We are pleased to see you, Lady de Swynford.’

How formal she was, even in her confinement, even with my intimate services to her. She had still to be churched and there was an air of restlessness about her slight figure. Her eyes remained fixed on my face, to my discomfort.

‘You look strained, Lady de Swynford. I trust you are not ailing? Is there plague in London? I would not wish any harm to come to my daughter.’

My lips curved into what would be interpreted as a smile by those who did not know me. ‘Merely the weariness of travel, my lady.’

‘Was the King graciously pleased to receive his grand-daughter?’

‘Yes, my lady. He has sent you this gift, as a token of his pleasure.’ I proffered the casket. She made no move to take it.

‘So he was in his right mind?’

Duchess Constanza did not mince her words. Even in seclusion as she was, the court gossip had reached her. A cold breath of air shivered along my arms in the heated room, and I swallowed before replying.

‘The King was well, my lady. The gift came from his hand. The sentiments were his own.’

‘I will thank him when I can travel again. It will be good to have his support for my campaign.’

It was all strikingly familiar. The luxurious setting of her apartments. My sister Philippa standing beside the door to my right, two of the Castilian damsels stitching beside the fire, chattering softly in their own language, a third with a lute in her hands. Mistress Elyot was stitching some small garment in fine lawn. And there was Constanza, quick of action and ever impatient, with the desire for her distant throne uppermost in her mind. Just as it all had been before I left.

But not so. Taking her daughter from the nursemaid, Constanza was standing by the window with the infant in her arms, inspecting her closely. Constanza had rarely held the baby in the days before I left for London.

I lowered my eyes, unable to watch.

‘Did you see Monseigneur in London?’ she asked, looking back over her shoulder.

‘Yes, my lady.’

‘Does he come here to me?’

‘He has gone to Wallingford, my lady.’

Constanza wrinkled her nose prettily. ‘Ah, yes. The wedding. I wish I could be there with my sister.’

For Constanza’s younger sister, Isabella, made welcome at the English court, had found a most advantageous match with another son of King Edward: Edmund of Langley, the Duke of York.

But Constanza was not concerned with her sister’s marriage. Gilded by the sun that made a halo of her loosely veiled hair, she was smiling down into the face of Katalina. I had never seen her look so beautiful, so maternal and contented. The jewels set in the little domed lid of the casket glittered as my hands around them trembled. Here was reality in all its cruelty. Constanza’s pleasure would turn to wrath in the blink of an eye if she could read my mind.

I dragged in a breath.

Constanza looked up as if I had spoken. ‘Yes, Lady de Swynford? There is more that I should know from your lengthy sojourn at The Savoy? Is the English army soon to sail to Castile?’

I placed the casket on the coffer at my side, the fine metal clattering a little as I set it down, drawing, as I was aware, a speculative look from Philippa. I was not normally clumsy.

‘I know not, my lady.’ I felt perspiration clammily unpleasant along my spine as I considered my next words.

Ignoring me the Duchess smiled down at the baby. ‘My daughter grows more beautiful every day.’ She smoothed the linen coif from the baby’s head. ‘Look how dark her hair is. A true Castilian princess.’ And she bent to caress the fragile curve to the child’s ear. ‘I had forgotten how blue her eyes…’

Conscience was a slap to my cheek, a clenched fist in my belly, and I flinched, momentarily closing my eyes so that I might not see. I had thought Constanza unmoved by her child, but as she had regained her strength, maternal love had touched her.

Do it. Do it now!

Straightening my spine, firming my knees, I spoke clearly and carefully because there was really no other way.

‘I have a request to make, if it please you, my lady.’

Constanza raised her brows in polite interest. Then walked slowly towards me, and placed the child in my arms.

‘Whatever you need, Lady de Swynford.’

The baby whimpered and squirmed for a moment until, warm and sleepy, she settled with a sigh. My heart clenched at my awareness of the little body against my breast.

‘I wish to leave, my lady,’ I said rapidly. ‘I wish to leave your service.’

I felt the silence that invaded the room, as I marvelled at the evenness of my request. I felt Mistress Elyot’s sudden interest as her needle stilled. I felt Philippa’s stare, gouging like a bodkin in an inexperienced hand, between my shoulder blades. Even the Castilian damsels looked over with a cessation to their chatter.