‘I want you.’ He strode forward, and before I could thrust them behind my back he had clasped my hands in his. ‘Do you understand what I am saying? I want to kiss you, and I don’t mean a formal salute to your undoubtedly pretty fingertips.’ Which he instantly executed with neat precision. ‘I want to take you to my bed.’

Those fingertips lay nerveless in his clasp, my lips parted, but no words issued. Every sense, every feeling, seemed to be frozen in shock. In outrage when he raised one hand as if he would touch my cheek. I stiffened, anticipating what must surely be a caress. Then he simply ran his fingers along the edge of my veil, putting to rights its elegant fall. And I exhaled slowly, until he demanded:

‘I think you are not averse to me?’ He made of it a question. ‘Katherine…’ There was the exhalation, the familiar impatience that I recognised so well, but his voice and face were as smooth as the silk I had once worn, as I had hoped to wear again. ‘Will you come to me? You are a widow, owing loyalty to no man. You are without a protector. Will you give yourself into my keeping and allow me the honour of being your lover?’

Now I looked at him in sheer disbelief. John of Lancaster, the perfect knight, the most honourable and chivalrous of King Edward the Third’s sons, newly wed to Constanza of Castile a matter of months ago. And I, at twenty-two years widowed and of good repute, raised by his royal mother to uphold all the precepts of piety and virtuous dignity. And he was asking me if I would be his leman.

‘You stir my loins, Katherine de Swynford.’

Well, that pronouncement I could not mistake. The words slammed into my understanding. Was the Duke exerting some droit de seigneur, demanding my compliance? I did not wait the length of a breath to consider and select a reply; there was only one word I could say.

‘No.’ It was as flat a denial as I could summon.

‘Is that a considered refusal?’

‘Yes. My answer is no.’

‘Why not?’

I flushed. His brows indicated that he was surprised. ‘No,’ I repeated. ‘I don’t need to consider it.’ And bracing myself, for John of Lancaster had a chancy temper, I added, in case he had not taken my meaning: ‘My answer is without qualification. No, my lord, I will not. How could you ask it of me?’ I tugged my hands from his, thinking that perhaps I should escape before the torrent was released.

It was too late.

The Plantagenet prince lifted his chin as if he could not envisage a refusal, and then as I tensed against the verbal assault that would assuredly fall on my head, he gave a shout of laughter that reverberated from the walls.

Which was inexplicable. Was he mocking me? I bridled.

‘I see nothing to laugh at,’ I remarked coldly.

On which he stopped to draw in a breath, his eyes still gleaming with whatever it was that had moved him to a show of mirth.

‘You have a way with words, Lady Katherine.’

‘Because I said no?’

‘Exactly. I could not possibly mistake your sentiments, could I?’ He seized my hand again, and before I could stop him, saluted my fingers with a perfect propriety, at the same time as he executed a courtly bow.

‘I will have to make do with that after all,’ he observed, running his thumb across my fingertips.

‘And that is all I will offer you, my lord,’ I responded. That my hand tingled was not to be considered.

The Duke laughed again, but briefly. Whatever humour he had discovered in my predicament, or his own, had fled.

‘It seems that I have been too previous in my request. Now it is my turn to ask pardon. Forgive my insensitivity.’ He paused, his expression grave, the tendons of his jaw stark. And then a gleam appeared in his eye as he added: ‘But I should warn you, Lady Katherine. I will not be denied. It is not in my nature to accept so determined a rebuttal.’

And as he strode from the audience chamber, as his footsteps faded, as he crossed the antechamber beyond and took the stairs to the upper floor, I was left to wonder if I had imagined the whole unnerving incident. But when I heard his final parting shot, delivered to me and echoing from the well of the stairs, there could be no denying his meaning. There was no misinterpretation on my part of the whole of that inexplicable episode. His final words, which had floated back to me as clearly as if he had been standing in the room, had been quite as unambiguous as all the rest.

I sank down where he had left me, onto a stool that had been pushed with its companion against one of the walls. Hands clasped together, so tightly that my knuckles showed white against my dark skirts, I stared at the tapestry on the facing wall, a masterpiece in silk and wool.

Of all the tapestries in the superbly appointed Savoy palace, why did it have to be this one, with its frivolous portrayal of courtly love, a lady and her lover languishing in a field of blossoms beneath a flowering tree, while silky rabbits frolicked at their feet. He held a hawk on his fist; her arms were entwined around his neck, her hair mingling with his as he reclined in her arms. His stitched eyes were admiring; her red lips were full of longing. I imagined they were not wed, or in any way concerned about the sinfulness of their relationship. They looked untrammelled by any pious demands on their virtuous behaviour.

‘I wager you would share your lover’s bed without any holy water sprinkled over you,’ I informed the red-haired wanton, crossly.

I thought that she smirked as I imagined her reply. ‘And would you be prepared to languish in the arms of a lover, Katherine de Swynford?’

I most certainly would not. I was no Alice Perrers, infamous royal mistress, who shared the King’s bed with bold impunity, careless of the vilification. My behaviour must be beyond criticism. I must be able to kneel at my prie-dieu or before my priest with a clean heart. How could the Duke have so demeaned himself, and me, to offer me such an outrageous position? I was no wanton.

I want to kiss you.

He had had the temerity to make such a request of me, clad as I was in full widow’s weeds from chin to toe to indicate my deepest mourning. If my dark robes had not heralded my state to the whole world, the all-enclosing wimple and long veil should have been as obvious as a slap in the face to any man with ulterior motives. I was no loose harlot, willing to accept any position offered at court to secure my future comforts.

Flexing my fingers, I smoothed the black cloth over my knees. Hugh had been dead so short a time, struck down in the Duke’s own service in Aquitaine. Did the Duke think I would soil my husband’s memory by leaping into his bed—or that of any man—at the first opportunity? I could not comprehend any action of mine in the past to give him the opinion that I would care so little for my reputation, or for God’s judgement on what would be a blatant act of adultery.

Adultery.

The harsh judgement shivered over me and as my outrage built, I pondered all I knew of the Duke. A prince with a reputation for high-minded courtesy and chivalry, he had adored his first wife, Blanche, and was plunged into desolation by her untimely death three years before. He would never have strayed from her side. And now he had a new wife, a marriage of three months’ standing, and the prospect of a new child and a new kingdom to rule if he could enforce Constanza’s claim to Castile in his own right. A man of ambition, the Duke would do nothing to jeopardise the authority in that distant kingdom if he wore its crown. He would not take a mistress within three months of bedding a new wife.

It was all beyond sense. The Duke of Lancaster was not the mindlessly pretty, disreputable young man of the tapestry whose sole concern was dalliance.

And yet, at the same time I was forced to acknowledge that the puissant Duke of Lancaster, raised in royal indulgence from his cradle, was the possessor of a will as strong as cold steel. I will not be denied, he had said. It is not in my nature to accept so determined a rebuttal.

It was an uncomfortable thought.

And my next proved to be an even more disconcerting companion.

Was the fault mine? Had I, however inadvertently, however cleverly cautious I had considered myself to be, encouraged the Duke to think that I would welcome so impious a request? I could not imagine that I had dropped so careless a word, made so flirtatious a gesture, just as I was certain that I had never led him to believe that I would step so far beyond seemly behaviour. Inappropriate desires and longings, even if I had them, were to be held under restraint and confessed only before the priest.

I cast my mind back over the three years since I had left the household on Duchess Blanche’s death, when we had all been deluged in mourning black, overwrought with grief. The only occasion on which I had seen the Duke was two years ago at the interment of Queen Philippa in Westminster Abbey, when he had pinned a mourning brooch to my bodice. Hardly an occasion for unseemly flirtation.

So perhaps I had misconstrued the whole of the past hour, making my present tumbling concerns entirely irrelevant. But of course, I had not misconstrued it. I would have been witless to put a wrong interpretation on his parting shot

And I don’t like you in widow’s weeds, he had informed me from a distance. They don’t become you. If I were your lover I would clothe you in silk and cloth of gold.

No, I was under no delusion about that: so intimate, so personal a comment on how I looked, what I wore and how he would remedy it. What right had he, when custom demanded that I wear mourning for a year? Vanity—assuredly a sin—lit a little flame of anger, as I spread out my skirts, disliking the weight of them in the voluminous amount of material, fretting that my wimple and veils leached colour from my skin. I knew I did not look my best, and was woman enough to regret it.