Mine shivered with anticipation.

There was no need for anxiety, I told myself. We were friends. Once lovers but now friends with a host of memories between us. I had been invited here to Hertford as a friend, summoned indeed, as he used to do in another life.

Lady Katherine de Swynford is requested to attend on Monseigneur de Guienne at Hertford for the celebration of the Birth of the Christ Child and the New Year. The Earl and Countess of Derby will be pleased to welcome her in my name.

I smiled thinly at the new title. A sign of Richard’s good graces, if they could be relied on, John was now Duke of Aquitaine, addressed as Monseigneur de Guienne. He would always be the Duke of Lancaster to me.

Duly received by Henry and Mary, during all the days before the celebrations began in earnest I waited for him, my senses alert at the arrival of every new guest, searching every new face that appeared at dinner in the Great Hall, chiding myself for foolishness. As if he would slip in quietly and without undue fuss to take his place on the dais. Unless he had changed greatly in three years, Monseigneur de Guienne would arrive with as much ceremony and fanfare as he had always done.

And then he was there in our midst, and I hung back until Mary, chivvying the rest of the family whether they liked it or not, found entirely spurious things to do elsewhere, as clumsy a ruse as ever I had experienced, but it left the Duke alone with me in the Great Hall. It also left me nervous. It did not suit me to be uncomfortable in my own actions and thoughts after years of ordering my life to my own liking.

I looked at him. He looked at me.

I was right about the ostentatious impression. The Duke’s herald had announced his arrival and his tunic was a thigh-length creation in silk damask, furred and gold-stitched, enhanced by an embroidered sash that crossed his breast from left to right. It was a pure expression of wealth and power and authority, for prominent in the embroidery was the sleek white hart, emblem of King Richard himself.

But that was not important.

He was here, he was alive.

‘I am come home, Katherine,’ he said.

So simple a statement. So lightly announced, so uncomplicated after all those years when we had said nothing to each other. How portentous it was, but I was too wary these days to grasp it without due care.

‘And I am come to welcome you, my lord,’ I remarked dutifully. My hands were lightly clasped too. I tilted my head a little, recalling us using similar greetings in the heat of denial at Pontefract, when all was black and full of pain. But now winter sun shone through the windows and gilded us, although the warmth that flushed my face with colour had nothing to do with the elements.

The Duke was exhibiting nothing but unimpaired urbanity. He bowed with infinite grace.

‘Well, Lady de Swynford? What do you see?’

I flushed even more brightly. I had been very obvious. ‘Forgive me…’

‘Look your fill.’ He raised his hands, palms upwards, in invitation.

So I did as invited.

The Duke had aged. At first my heart tripped a little in its normal beat, for the three years had taken their toll. Pared down, I decided. That was it. Pared down to the fine essentials by grief and strain and a good dose of poison. Lines I did not recall marked his face, between his brows, scoring the flesh between nose and mouth. They had never been so deeply engraved as they were now, and having lost flesh, his nose was blade thin. And for a moment the austere expression, coupled with all the old glamour and the magnificence of his clothing, particularly the glossy fur and those resplendent sleeves, distanced him from me. He was as superb as the peacock in full plumage, scarred with age and battle, but still triumphantly majestic. I could imagine him no other way.

Yet still I looked.

He was not wearing a pinchbeck pilgrim’s badge. Of course he would not.

‘Do I horrify you?’

He had lapsed into a familiar stance with hands clasped around his belt, chin raised, and it came to me that his energy was as great as ever. There was a hint of grey in his dark hair but it still sprang from his brow with all its old virility. His hands still had all their old grace and beauty. He was as confident as I had ever known him.

He was, I acknowledged, still the most handsome man I had ever seen. I was not too old to admire a beautiful man whom I had once known better than I had known myself. But that was many years ago. Eight years we had been adrift, unknowing of each other in any intimate manner. Such passion that we had enjoyed must surely have died. It could not be resurrected, nor would it be good for either of us if it were.

I frowned at the thought.

Which he took note of. ‘I see that I make a grievous impression,’ he remarked. ‘I must apologise.’

He bowed again with impeccable gravity and a tightening of his lips. He had changed very little in one respect at least: his arrogance was as vital as ever. I shook my head, delighted that I had given him cause to reflect. But I did not smile: all was too uncertain here.

‘You misread my expression, my lord.’ And I added with some mischief. ‘And do you look at me too?’

‘I do, my lady.’

What would he see in me? Childbearing had, I feared, taken its toll on my hips, but I could wear the soft folds and high neck of the houppelande with fashionable elegance. My hair was not untouched by the passage of time, but I was vain enough to take pride in it when well covered with a crispinette and jewelled fillet. I was no longer young, but I did not yet abjure my looking glass. Nor was I a dowdy peahen. The rich cloth of green and blue, sumptuous with stitched flowers at neck and sleeve, would defy anyone to label me widow. Yet who knew how many young Castilian women, dark haired and dark eyed with flawless skin, had taken the eye of the Duke?

‘You are still beautiful,’ he said. ‘Even when you frown.’

I had been frowning again.

‘If I pour you a cup of wine,’ he offered, ‘and lead you to sit beside me on that cushioned seat by the fire, will that perhaps enable you to smile at me at last? You have been staring at me since I first entered this room as if I had committed even more misdeeds than those that separate us. I would make amends.’

‘I don’t need wine,’ I said. ‘Nor do I need to sit. But I will judge your misdeeds, if that is what you wish. Have you accepted the loss of Castile?’ I found myself asking, as I might in the past.

And wished I hadn’t, for his expression acquired the blandness of controlled disinterest, and his reply was bleak.

‘I had no choice. It was the best solution, to disengage from an impossible situation.’ He hesitated as if he might say more and then he deftly turned the conversation. Or not deftly at all. It was brusque and deliberate. ‘You look well. As dignified as I ever recall.’

Here in his brusqueness but still clear to my eye at least was a draining sense of disappointment. All those wasted years, wasted lives, ending in failure. Yet I followed his lead, since he would not speak of it.

‘My thanks, my lord. I am in good health.’ I could adopt dignity very well after all these years of maintaining it in the face of public denigration.

‘Are the children well?’

‘Yes. When it comes to rude health, the Beauforts are touched with magic.’

‘Constanza and I mourned the death of Mistress Chaucer. As you must have done.’

‘Yes.’ I did not know what else to say about this loss that still gnawed on my heart.

‘I thought I would lose my daughter Philippa.’

‘It was tragic,’ I agreed. ‘And the loss of the child.’

‘She is recovered now.’

Was this why he had asked me to Hertford, to exchange family histories? Our conversation had become formally courteous, as flavourless as a junket, as we steered around intimate matters. Would he talk to me of Constanza, who had, on her return to England, shut herself away in her own household, as chaste as a nun?

He did not. So, with a similar bland smile, I would continue in the same vein.

‘I hear you brought home great wealth.’

‘Yes.’

‘And that the King smiles on you.’ I indicated the chain around his neck. Although the familiar Lancastrian livery collar I had known all my life, it had the addition of King Richard’s white hart to match the embroidered figures. ‘A lord of the Council, in fact.’

‘Indeed.’ He looked taken aback at my diversion into the political, but did not demur. ‘Your interest in politics is as keen as ever I see. Today the King smiles on me. He rode out two miles from Reading to show the warmth of his welcome home, and took my collar of Lancaster to wear around his own neck.’ The Duke’s expression was wry as his hand rested on the royal symbol. ‘Richard proclaims his love for me. Thus I was duty bound to follow suit and wear the white hart.’

This was better. Not personal, but with a cutting edge that I recognised.

‘So what does Richard want from you?’

‘He needs me to mend the bridges between himself and his other uncles, of course.’

‘Can it be done?’

‘It remains to be seen. We will work on it, to try to bring reconciliation.’

And that was as much as he would say. I sought for another less contentious path to go down. Unfortunately my mind was a blank.

‘Now what shall we discuss, Lady de Swynford?’ There was a glint in his eye.

Snatching at an innocuous subject: ‘Henry and Mary are content,’ I said.

‘They are as smitten as two ring doves. She is carrying another child.’

‘I know.’

There! What was left? Nothing, except appertaining to the two of us, which was apparently forbidden since we had commented on each other’s ageing grandeur. Had he not kissed me on our last meeting, as if passion was not dead between us? Entirely frustrated, I raised my brows in polite but stricken query.