What if my lover, my dearest friend, my only heart’s desire, the glorious apple of my very critical eye, were to wed again? What if the Duke of Lancaster should take another Duchess to his marital bed?

It was a thought that I despised, but one that kept me brooding company. I could see no reason at all why he should not. It would be good political strategy on the part of King Richard to arrange it. To insist on it, if he were of a mind to exert his authority over his family.

Duchess Constanza was dead. Constanza who had, in her eyes, failed to achieve her life’s wish, had died. We had not foreseen it. How would we? There had been no rumour of ill-health, only of the end when it came, when in March at Leicester Castle, surrounded by her Castilian ladies, Constanza breathed her last of English air.

In Lincoln, I had known of her death before the Duke, for he was in France concluding a long-awaited, four-year truce with the French. What a blow it had been for him to return to this loss, full of the success of his diplomacy, and be plunged into funerary rights. Even though they had lived apart since the abandoning of the Castilian campaign, yet his respect for her, his Duchess for more than twenty years, was great. He was not a man to be left unmoved, and in moments of honesty his conscience troubled him. He had not always made life easy for her.

He had not talked to me of it and I was too careful to step mindlessly where I might not be wanted. My discretion these days was a thing of wonder.

But now the Duke was free, had been free for four months. In excellent health in mind and body, he would be an asset to any plans Richard had for a European alliance. Would the King put pressure on the Duke to wed again at his dictates? I imagined that Richard already had such a plan in his mind, so that before too many more months, the Duke would be participating in a third nuptial celebration.

I could not think of that. Not yet.

Such a prospect would bring me too much pain in a year that had seemed to bring nothing but pain. What a year of deaths it had been. Of tears and graves and mourning. A year of portents, when I had set my mind to luxuriate in my restored happiness, even during John’s absence in France, but happiness is not in the gift of Man when God takes his due. For a year in which contentment should have enfolded me, blessed me, I spent an unconscionable length of time on my knees. And so did the Duke. Death had blown in without warning, as disturbing as a summer storm.

Now I knelt in Westminster Abbey with the royal court, for Queen Anne was dead from the plague, which took no account of her rank or her mere twenty-eight years. Richard, unhinged almost to madness, had ordered the rooms of the palace at Sheen where she had breathed her last to be razed to the ground.

I allowed my eyes to rest on the rigid shoulder-blades of the Duke. Straight backed, the Duke was suffering from grief too, and not only for the passing of Duchess Constanza. The wound of desperate loss was made so much worse for him for Mary, dear, sweet Mary, Henry’s child bride, was dead at Hertford with her seventh child—a daughter, Philippa—in her arms. I was there with her, and heartbroken. Henry was inconsolable. Had he not sent her a basket of delicate fish which she loved to help her through the pregnancy? And now she was dead.

What a crippling homecoming for the Duke, to bury Constanza and Mary at Leicester, within a day of each other.

The ceremony was drawing to a close. Ahead, Richard stood, looking distracted. Was he already drawing up new marriage contracts for himself and for the Duke? All I knew of high policy was that Richard had confirmed my lord as Duke of Aquitaine and that the Duke was already preparing to sail to enforce his authority there. What if he came back with a wife, some Aquitainian beauty, as he had once returned with Constanza?

There were rumours. There were always rumours.

Be sensible, I abjured myself. Rumours can be false as often as they are true.

My abjuration had no noticeable effect.

‘Do you intend to remarry? Will you return with a new bride?’

My demands were made as soon as I stepped across the threshold of the Duke’s record chamber at Leicester on this eve of departure. I had barely taken time to greet my son John whom I had passed between stable and Great Hall.

The Duke looked up but did not stir from where he sat. Demands—other than mine—lay heavily on him, as I could see. He was harassed.

‘And a good day to you, Lady de Swynford,’ he growled.

I strode up to stand before the long trestle table that habitually occupied the centre of the room. It was covered with documents from one end to the other.

‘I hear that Richard has a new marriage arranged for you. Has he?’

‘And who would be the fortunate lady?’ The pen was thrown aside. Elbows planted on the table, the Duke rested his chin on his hands and looked me in the eye.

‘I have no idea. Would you not know before me?’

‘I expect I would. Why would I want a wife when I have you to hound me?’

‘I am allowed to hound you. I am your love.’ I smiled with deceptive sweetness. ‘I am told that you intend to wed again. For an alliance.’

‘I intend to go to Aquitaine. If I can ever manage to get the fleet together and the forces to accompany me. And Richard has his mind set on his own new wife rather than on mine.’

I was almost intrigued enough to ask who she might be, but would not be distracted. He was short on temper, but then so was I. Short on patience too. I saw documents, lists and tallies under his hand. In the circumstances he might wish I wasn’t there. I hunched a shoulder as I moved to occupy one of the stools set along the wall, as if I were a clerk waiting instructions.

‘When will you return?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. I have to get there first.’

‘When do you go?’

‘Next week. From Plymouth if I’m allowed to get on with it.’

I breathed out, no better at bearing the looming absence than I had twenty years before, for that was at the heart of my ill-humour. I would be alone, without knowledge of him, for as many months as it would take. There were plenty who would try their hand again, to rid the world of the new Duke of Aquitaine, with a cup of poison. Or a hidden dagger.

The Duke stacked the documents into a pile, then the endless lists with brisk irritability, before tunnelling his fingers through his hair. The sun highlighted more silver than I had recalled. And I sighed.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, quite as irritable as he. It did not sound like an apology.

For what?’

‘For disturbing you when you might wish to be left alone. But I had to come.’

He stared at me. I knew he would wait until I had confessed all.

‘And for thinking that you would marry again without telling me.’ I scowled a little. ‘I still think you might.’

The Duke thrust aside the papers, stood and stepped round the table and in one fluid movement, lifting me to my feet, took me in his arms. He could still move fast enough to take me by surprise. Especially when I did not try very hard to escape.

‘If I take a wife, you will be the first to know.’ He kissed me gently. Then more fiercely, after which I smoothed the line between his eyes with my finger. ‘Does that settle your ill-temper?’

‘A little.’ I was almost won over.

‘Where will you go?’ he asked.

‘To Lincoln. It suits me very well. Send word to me when you can.’

‘You know that I will.’ He kissed me again. Then, ‘Pray for me,’ he said suddenly.

‘When do I ever not?’ His urgency had surprised me.

‘Pray that Richard isn’t swayed into seeing me as his enemy who has an eye to royal power. Pray for me and for Richard, Katherine. He’s not to be trusted in where he takes his advice. Who will advise him to have that good sense when I am away?’

There was no answer to the question. ‘I will pray.’

‘And pray that Henry can keep his head and not provoke Richard to something outrageous, from which there is no way back.’

‘I will.’

For a long moment he rested his cheek against mine so that we stood, breathing slowly together, his arms holding me firmly against him, and I allowed myself to hold fast to what would be a precious memory in the coming months.

‘I feel set about with worries for this kingdom,’ he said at last.

‘Then I will pray all the harder.’ I smiled in an attempt to lift the burden by whatever small amount I could manage. ‘If you kiss me. And at least pretend for the next few hours that you have time for me.’

He did. He did both.

Yet next morning when I left him to his arrangements, his embrace was perfunctory and abstracted. I would also pray that he did not return with a new bride of European importance. I could withstand it. But I would not like it.

It was January with snow on the ground yet the Duke, new returned from Aquitaine, had braved the roads to come to Lincoln with an impressive retinue. This no longer stirred any surprise in me, although his choice of travelling weather did. So what was afoot? I surveyed his arrival most deliberately from the vantage point of my parlour in the Chancery. There was the Duke, of course, swathed in heavily furred cloak and hat. A tight knot of soldiers and a sergeant-at-arms. A clerk, his confessor, a master of horse and sundry others of squires and pages.

My heart was thundering beneath the heavy volume of my houppelande.

And then my heart steadied. There was no female figure. He did not have a new wife with him. He was alone and here with me at last, filling my vision completely, and I was smiling when I drew him into my parlour, all the niggling worries of my days smoothed out like a new wool cloth. Once alone, he duly kissed my cheeks and lips in formal acknowledgement, and sank into the chair I pushed him towards. I did not bother him with personal questions or demands. It always took a little time for us to step across the divide that the months apart had created. The moments of intimacy would present themselves eventually, and would be sweeter for the delay