‘He wants you to go to him, doesn’t he?’ Philippa said.

A statement that took me aback, and I found myself seeking wildly for a suitable reply, a reply that would cast neither their magistra nor their father into a contentious light. But before I could, Philippa was standing, curtsying, for there was Duchess Constanza in the doorway. She walked regally across the room, ignoring me, to see what it was that they were reading.

I waited, hands folded. I knew right well that the Duchess was not here to interest herself in the education of her stepdaughters.

‘Read me that,’ the Duchess commanded, as if needing proof that they were learning anything of value under my care.

After a few lines, when both girls read with their usual fluency, she stopped it with a sharp gesture of her hand.

‘Have you said your prayers today?’

‘Yes, my lady,’ Philippa replied, raising her eyes from her book with confidence.

‘And studied your catechism?’

‘Yes, my lady.’

‘And you too?’

The Duchess directed her question at Elizabeth, but without waiting for an answer, spun round to face me. The tears were dried, her earlier fury contained, her features composed as if she had come to a hard-won decision. She pointed at the open letter that I had carelessly left to lie for all to see on the desk.

‘Is that from him?’

‘Yes, my lady.’ It came to me that to prevent further recrimination I should have disguised it, but I replied without dissimulation because all I could recall was that throughout her intense disappointment, Constanza had not once asked after the Duke’s well-being. I could not forgive her that.

‘Where is he?’ she demanded.

‘At The Savoy.’

‘For how long?’

What did she wish me to say? Was she concerned for him despite her condemnation of his lack of achievement? And then beneath the anger I saw the torment in her face and could only pity her. In spite of everything between us, this woman retained the power to rouse my compassion. All she had ever dreamed of was lost to her, all her plans destroyed: my conscience was touched.

‘If you go to him at The Savoy,’ I found myself saying, ‘my lord will be able to explain what he intends to do.’

‘Go to him? I? And why should I do that?’

‘So that when my lord explains that the campaign will be renewed, your mind could be put at rest.’

Any compassion she had stirred in me was violently rejected. ‘Explain? How can he say more than the facts prove? I will not go.’ Irritably she kicked her skirts aside. ‘You go to him,’ she snapped with excruciating bitterness. ‘Help him to lick his wounds. That’s what he wants, isn’t it? That’s why he wrote to you.’

I hesitated.

‘He wants you with him, doesn’t he?’

‘Yes, my lady.’ It was an unequivocal response to an unequivocal question, and I expected an eruption of her fury against me.

‘He wants you, not me!’

The Duchess halted an arm’s length from me. When she stretched out her hand I almost flinched, recalling the affair of the salt cellar, but it was only to pick up the letter, which she allowed to fall before she had read more than one line of it. Her regard had the hardness of flint within it. I expected her refusal, and she knew it.

‘If I refuse to give you permission,’ her voice grated, ‘would you defy me?’

Which cast the decision fairly into my lap. To defy the Duchess so openly would fling her lack of authority over me in her face, and yet I did not hesitate. If Constanza had planned to forbid me, to exhibit my lack of power as the Duke’s mistress compared with her own as his wife, she had failed. I knew where my life lay and I had within me the strength to stand before her without the degradation she had envisaged.

‘Yes, my lady. I would defy you.’

I held her gaze as the air drew taut with tension between us, the girls sitting motionless as if they too were aware of the critical balance of power here. Here was a new layer in our relationship, wife and mistress, and, now certain of the Duke’s love, I would not retreat.

‘Can I stop you?’ Constanza demanded, eyes wide and fathomless, fingers slowly clenching into fists at her side.

‘No, my lady,’ I said softly, my defiance coming readily to my lips. ‘Not unless you resort to chains and a dungeon.’

Her laughter was brief and hard, lacking any humour.

‘So what do I say?’ She swung away from me, then back again, the motion of her skirts wafting the letter from table to floor. She paused, her tongue skimming over her lips. ‘Go to him.’

So this was the decision she had come to. I could barely believe it, my body still tensed against her expected rebuttal.

‘Do you not hear me?’ she repeated. ‘Go to him.’

There was the outcome I had hoped for, and relief swept aside every other emotion, but here was no time for triumph. I knew what it must have cost the Duchess to give me the victory. She had my compassion, even thought she would have despised it, but the only thought in my mind was that I need never fear the extent of her authority again.

‘I am grateful.’ I curtsied. ‘Do I take any message, my lady?’

‘I care not. I will not see him. He has no thought for me.’

Which caused justice to take a hold. ‘But he does, my lady.’

‘How can you say that? When he has banished my damsels to some distant place of confinement? So I am punished!’

I could think of no reply. The Duke had ordered the gossiping damsels to Nuneaton Abbey to learn discretion, but any attempt on my part to defend the Duke was superfluous—the Duchess marched out, leaving a palpable lightness in the air of the schoolroom. I inhaled sharply, pondering what I had achieved in my troubled relationship with Constanza, until I grew aware of Philippa standing quietly beside me.

‘Are you going to see my father?’ Without asking permission, she picked up my discarded letter, and I allowed it, since her tone was not judgemental. I let her be.

‘Yes. I am.’

‘Will you come back to us?’

It was a question that startled me in its maturity. Philippa was old enough to understand the implications of that recent exchange, and condemn me for the choice I had made. She was no longer the little girl who had clung to my skirts when I had left the household after her mother’s death. I must tread carefully here if my authority over her, and our affection, meant anything to me. I did not want to read disdain in her youthful regard, and so I tweaked the soft folds of her coif, raising the glimmer of a smile.

‘Do you want me to?’ I asked lightly.

Philippa did not answer. Instead: ‘My father says here that he has missed you.’ She looked down at the letter that was still in her hand as if she had every right to read it. ‘It does not say that he loves you. I thought he would have written that.’

I stiffened, unable for a heartbeat to dredge up a reply, then decided that she deserved my honesty, and I her disapproval if she chose to give it. Philippa could not be cushioned from what the household knew and she had the right to respond as her growing mind saw fit, even if her disdain hurt me.

‘How do you know that he does?’ I asked.

‘I’ve seen him look at you.’

‘And he gave you a merlin,’ Elizabeth, who had joined her sister, added.

I raised my brows at a logic I could not follow. ‘So he did. The Duke gives many presents. He is a very generous man.’

‘Yes.’ Philippa picked up the point, tapping her sister on her neatly braided head with the letter. ‘He gives costly gifts. When he does not care about the receiver, he gives a silver cup, jewelled and with a cover. But to you he gave a merlin, because he knows you enjoy hunting.’ Then, after reading to the end: ‘My father says he wants you to be with him. Is it a sin, when my father is wed?’

I regarded her steadily. ‘It is not what I would advise for you.’

‘I think I would want a husband of my own,’ Philippa agreed, returning to her seat and the exploits of Lancelot and Guinevere, another adulterous couple. ‘But it must make you very happy. To be so greatly loved.’

Astonished at her calm acceptance of a relationship that might justifiably have stirred her to rank disapproval, I could think of nothing to say other than ‘Yes, it makes me very happy.’

And, oh, it did. Deliriously happy, as it did in that moment. It had the power to stir the flames of the most intense joy that could be imagined when we were together. That it could cast me into a pit of despair when we were parted was a consequence of that love that I must accept.

But I said none of that.

I was packed and gone within the day, stopping only when the other Philippa, my sister—and far less accommodating of my disgraceful lifestyle—made her way to my side in the courtyard.

‘Will this happen often?’

‘When he needs me.’ I was trenchant.

‘And you need him.’ How blistering she could be, in so few words.

‘Yes. When I need him. When will I ever not need him?’ Short of time, risking a rebuff, I stepped forward and hugged her before she could retreat. And since she did not, we kissed, a sisterly reconciliation of sorts.

‘Give him comfort,’ she whispered.

‘I will.’

Constanza’s acquiescence had instilled in me a new power, an assurance that seemed to grow within me with every breath I took, with every mile I covered towards The Savoy.

The Savoy was uncomfortably quiet to my mind, without children’s voices, the servants solemn and soft-footed. As if there was an illness in the house. Or a death. I did not like it.

‘Where is my lord the Duke?’

‘In the library, my lady.’

‘I will announce myself.’

I did not knock, and he did not hear as I opened the door, absorbed as was often the case. He sat at a table where the light fell on his work, but, unusually, it did not seem to me that he saw the documents in front of him or the contents of the coffer to his right. Rather his thoughts were far away, taken up with some planning, some regret perhaps. Some ghastly scene from events in Aquitaine. Always lithe and rangy, I thought he had shed weight that he could ill-afford, but then starvation was no respecter of rank. I walked towards him until I stood at his side as once before. And as on that first time, I placed my hand on his shoulder.