For a long, wordless moment his gaze held mine, in its glitter a great distancing and a wealth of grief and disappointment that wounded my heart. The failed campaign had touched him heavily.

‘John…’ I said. There was nothing else to say.

Then his self-command was back in place, and he smiled as if for me to be there with him was the most natural thing in the world, the most looked-for blessing. As if there were no restrictions on either our movements or our loyalties, and in the face of such a welcome I felt tears gather in my throat, and my heart seemed to be so swollen with love for him that it filled my breast so that I could scarcely breathe.

‘I wanted you to come.’

‘Yes.’ I took the liberty of touching his cheek with my fingertips, the gentlest of caresses. ‘If you recall, you ordered me to do so.’

How sure I felt in my decision. Constanza had given me leave, not just by her dismissal but by her rejection of the Duke’s suffering in her cause. Her lack of compassion, her vicious criticisms of all he had done, her lack of interest in his present state, had presented to me the freedom I needed to leave Tutbury and be openly with him here. None of which I explained. The Duke would not see my need for permission, or even necessarily understand that guilt still had a habit of perching like a hungry raptor on my wrist. Sometimes I was impatient with that wily bird. But Constanza’s condemnation of her husband had ensured that the raptor took wing: I was free of conscience.

The Duke had captured my hand, and was engaged in kissing his way across my knuckles in what could be construed, my fluttering heart announced, as light-hearted seduction.

‘I will listen, if you want to tell me how bad it was,’ I offered, still uncertain of his mood.

‘No.’ How wrong I had been, for there was suddenly no control at all in his face. Nothing at all of light-heartedness. Only rampant desire in the rawness of his voice. ‘This is not the time for exchanging views on English policy.’

Standing abruptly, arms sliding around my waist, he clasped me close, his mouth hot and demanding on mine.

‘You will stay.’ A command.

‘As long as you need me.’

‘For ever.’ He framed my face in his hands. ‘Before God, I want you, Katherine. I want you now.’

I shivered at his expression, at the slide of his fingers against my throat before he all but dragged me to the chamber I used at The Savoy, delighting me with his concern for my comfort in familiar surroundings despite the hot emotion that drove him.

‘When did you last sit at ease and laugh and talk of inconsequential matters?’ I asked, striving to keep the moment free from high drama.

‘Laughter? What’s that?’ He was already loosening his belt, sitting to unlace his boots with urgent fingers.

‘Do you realise how long it is since we were last together?’ I asked.

‘I’m sure you will tell me,’ he replied, actions governed by intense need.

‘Almost a full year.’

‘Then we will celebrate our reunion. We have spent enough time apart. We will spend no more. Stop talking, and come to me.’

Then high drama overtook us, and neither of us was in a mood to deny it as the Duke stripped me to my shift, and then took even that from me, trailing his fingers over the silvered lines of past child-bearing. They were not too disfiguring in the soft glow of costly candles whose flickering hid the worst ravages, and he knew them well anyway. I did not flinch from his appraisal.

It was a reunion of passion, tumbled and heated with no time for soft seduction. I had no need of it, and the Duke was stirred by an inner need to re-own me. It was a statement of love and longing and joy in being together again, a rejection of the failure and despair across the sea. Pain and loss were fast subsumed beneath the fire of lust that used no words, no endearments, nothing but the slide of flesh against flesh, hot kisses on even hotter skin. We feasted on each other, a glorious celebration in the end, to prove that love could conquer all and give relief from anguish.

What was there to say? We were together and our love could burn as brightly as the sun at noon, or as softly as the lapping of a kitten’s tongue.

He made me laugh anyway, and I reciprocated, my lips and fingertips explored anew the ducal skin. He made me sigh too for notwithstanding the driving force, the Duke sought my pleasure as well as his own.

‘Allow me to caress the arches of your delectable feet. I think I have neglected your feet.’

I was devastated by his success. My whole body was light with exultation.

‘You cannot imagine how I have missed you,’ he said, pinning me to the bed.

‘Of course not,’ I agreed. ‘I have been far too occupied to give you a second thought.’

My eyes were wet with tears, which he kissed away with tenderness. He understood all that I would not tell him. He knew how hard it was for women to be left behind and imagine the worst.

‘My love for you knows no end,’ I informed him when we at last took time to draw breath.

‘For which I thank God,’ he replied, and he was smiling at last.

Yet although I slid into some species of exhausted sleep in his arms, I knew that, as unconsciousness claimed me, he lay awake.

I woke to find him gone from the bed, but he had not left me. In shirt and hose he was stretched out on the low window seat, back propped against the stonework, a little pottery bowl in his hand. I thought that he was at ease, until I realised that the scene beyond the window did not take his attention. So I had not dragged his mind from the loss of English life for long, or from whatever it was that had now placed its hand on him. Grief, I would have said, studying the stark lines. I lay and watched him for a little while, shocked to see such torment. He was eating steadily from the bowl, as if the delicacy would assuage his worry as well as his appetite.

Eventually when I could remain apart no longer and the dish was empty—how could I enjoy my own happiness when he was clearly bleeding from some inner wound?—I wrapped one of the linen sheets round me since no other garment came to hand and walked slowly to stand at his side. But there I was even more disturbed, for although he acknowledged me with an arm sliding comfortably around my waist, a mask instantly fell into place to hide the rank despair of minutes ago. The mask was good, the muscles of his face relaxed and I followed his lead, calmly relieving him of the dish, placing it on the floor beside us, because I dare not tap the ugly depths of that distress.

Kneeling beside him, resting my head against his shoulder and feeling the tension there that the mask could do nothing to hide, I changed my mind.

‘Was it very bad?’ I asked. I thought he needed to speak of it after all. He did not resist.

‘It was bad. Our army suffered beyond belief.’ Then: ‘I hear no good of what I did.’ Straight to the point, as ever.

‘No.’ I could not deny it. The loss of men and land had come in for scathing criticism, the Duke’s reputation ravaged.

‘My policy in France has been stripped bare. Once we ruled a mighty Empire stretching from Calais to Bordeaux. And now we hold the towns but no land to connect them. Our Empire is no more and I failed to bring England a victory…’ He looked away towards the window, as if he could absorb the grumbling complaints from the London streets even at this distance. ‘What do you think?’

‘How can I judge?’ I combed my fingers through his hair. Nothing I could say would make matters any better. He would have to face his demons, as the burden demanded by royal blood, but I would stay at his side as he faced them. He would not be alone.

‘I am of a mind…’ He hesitated. ‘I think I was wrong…’

‘And I never thought to hear you admit that.’ I essayed a little humour.

And indeed the faint remnants of a frown were smoothed out by a wry twist of his lips. ‘Do you accuse me of arrogance, Lady Katherine? Many would.’ And then with a lift of a shoulder: ‘What value is there for England in such a war, to hold fast to territories so far away and surrounded by those who would take them from us?’

Such an admission astonished me, and he saw it.

‘Should I not admit to it, when I am coming to believe that it is true? What do we gain, except a drain on our wealth and the death of our soldiery? The Pope is calling for negotiations and a lasting peace. I think we should do it.’

‘It will not be well-received,’ I ventured.

‘I care not. It’s a storm I must weather. I am not popular now, and the losses at Bordeaux will bring more invective down on my head, but who can harm me?’ The Duke’s sardonic smile became even more pronounced. ‘Consider the advantages. Peace will bring an increase in trade, lower taxes. We cannot continue as we are with this vast drain of money and taxation so high that it all but beggars our merchants. The stain on England’s reputation is a wound on my soul.’

‘Parliament will not support peace with France,’ I suggested.

‘God’s Blood! I’ll be damned if I let Parliament dictate my policy.’

Which promised no good for the future when foreign affairs and finance must collide. ‘Will the King agree? To peace-making?’ I asked, to divert into calmer channels.

‘I must persuade him. Since my brother is too ill to hold the reins himself it’s for me to take up the banner of England’s future. I’ll do it readily, with or without Parliament behind me. They’ll follow me if they know what’s good for them.’

And as I felt a single, solid beat of his heart beneath my hand, my presentiment that this was not the full cause of his wretchedness was enforced as the Duke turned his face against my hair and, beneath my hands, in his laboured breathing, I felt the earlier grief rush back in a torrent.