That night she slipped through the secret doorway into Robert’s adjoining chamber. He was waiting for her, a warm fire in the grate, two chairs drawn up before it. His valet, Tamworth, had put out wine and little pastries for them, before leaving the room to stand guard outside the door.

Elizabeth, in her nightgown, slid into Robert’s arms and felt his warm kisses on her hair.

“I had to wait forever,” she whispered. “I was sleeping with Laetitia and she chattered and chattered and would not sleep.”

Resolutely he turned his mind from the picture of the exquisite young woman and his mistress in bed together, combing each other’s copper hair, their white nightgowns open at the neck. “I was afraid you could not come.”

“I will always come to you. Whatever anyone says.”

“What has anyone said?”

“More scandal.” She dismissed it with a shake of her head. “I can’t repeat it. It’s so vile.”

He seated her in the chair and gave her a glass of wine. “Don’t you long for us to be together openly?” he asked softly. “I want to be able to tell everyone how much I adore you. I want to be able to defend you. I want you to be mine.”

“How could it ever be?”

“If we were to marry,” he suggested quietly.

“You are a married man,” she said, so low that not even the little greyhound sitting at her feet could hear. But Robert heard, he saw the shape her lips made, he never took his eyes from her mouth.

“Your father was a married man when he met your mother,” he said gently. “And yet when he met her, the woman that he had to have, the woman that he knew was the great love of his life, he put his first wife aside.”

“His first marriage was not valid,” she responded instantly.

“And nor is mine. I told you, Elizabeth, my love for Amy Robsart is dead, as is hers for me, and she means nothing to me. She lives apart from me now, and has done for years, of her own choice. I am free to love you. You can set me free, and then you shall see what we shall be for each other.”

“I can set you free?” she whispered.

“You have the power. You are head of the church. You can grant me a divorce.”

She gasped. “I?”

Robert smiled at her. “Who else?”

He could see her brain working furiously. “You have been planning this?”

“How could I plan such a thing? How could I dream that this would happen to us? Parliament made you supreme governor and gave you the powers of the Pope without a word from me. Now you have the power to annul my marriage; the Commons of England gave you that power, Elizabeth. You can free me, Elizabeth, as your father freed himself. You can free me to be your husband. We can be married.”

She closed her eyes so that he could not see the whirl of thoughts in her head, her immediate frightened rejection. “Kiss me,” she said dreamily. “Oh, kiss me, my love.”


Thomas Blount was in Robert’s private chambers over the stables the very next morning, leaning against the door, cleaning his fingernails with a sharp knife, when the opposite door opened and Dudley came in from riding, a sheaf of farriers’ bills in his hand.

“Thomas?”

“My lord.”

“News?”

“The Earl of Arran, James Hamilton, has arrived and is in hiding.”

“Arran?” Dudley was genuinely astonished. “Here?”

“Came into London three nights ago. Housed in some private rooms at Deptford.”

“Good God! That was silently done. Who brought him in? Who pays his bills?”

“Cecil, for the queen herself.”

“She knows he is here?”

“She commanded him. He is here at her invitation and request.”

Dudley swore briefly, and turned to the window overlooking the vegetable gardens where they stretched down to the river. “If it’s not one damned opportunity seeker, it is another. To what end? Do you know that?”

“My intelligencer, who knows the maid where the noble gentleman is staying, says that he is to meet the queen privately, to see if they can agree, and then when they have terms, she will publicly announce his arrival, they will be betrothed, and he will march to Scotland to claim his throne. When he is King of Scotland he will return in triumph and marry her, uniting the two kingdoms.”

For a moment Dudley was so shocked that he could not speak. “And you are certain that this is the plan? You could be mistaken? This could be Cecil’s plan and the queen might know nothing of it.”

“Perhaps. But my man is sure of it, and the maid seemed to think she had it right. She’s a whore as well as a maid and he was bragging to her when he was drunk. She is sure that the queen had consented.”

Dudley tossed him a purse of coins from a drawer in the desk. “Watch him, as you would watch your own baby,” he said shortly. “Tell me when he sees the queen. I want to know every detail, I want to know every word, every whisper, every creak of the floorboard.”

“He has seen her already,” Blount said with a grimace. “He came here under cover of darkness last night and she saw him last night, after dinner, after she withdrew for bed.”

Dudley had a very vivid memory of the previous night. He had knelt at her bare feet and her hair had tumbled over his face as she leaned toward him, enfolding him in her arms. He had rubbed his face against her breasts and belly, warm and sweet-smelling through her linen.

“Last night?”

“So they say.” Thomas Blount thought that he had never seen his master look so grim.

“And we know nothing of what was said?”

“I didn’t pick up the trail until this morning. I am sorry, my lord. Cecil’s men had him well hidden.”

“Aye,” Dudley said shortly. “He is the master of shadows. Well, watch Arran from now on, and keep me informed.”

He knew he should mind his temper and bite his tongue but his quick pride and quicker anger got the better of him. He flung open the door, leaving the papers blowing off his desk, and stormed out of his room and down the twisting private stairs to the garden where the court was watching a tennis match. The queen was in her chair at the side of the court, a golden awning over her head, her ladies around her, watching two players jostle for the prize: a purse of gold coins.

Robert bowed and she smiled on him and gestured to him to come to sit at her side.

“I must see you alone,” he said abruptly.

At once she turned her head, took in the white line around his compressed lips. “Love, what is wrong?”

“I have heard some news which has troubled me.” He could hardly speak, he was so angry. “Just now. I must ask you if it is true.”

Elizabeth was too passionate to tell him to wait until the end of the tournament, even though there were only a few games left to be played. She rose to her feet and all the court rose too, the men on the court let the ball bounce off the roof and roll out of play. Everything was suspended, waiting for the queen.

“Sir Robert would speak with me privately,” she said. “We will walk alone in my privy garden. The rest of you can stay here and watch the tournament to the finish and…” She glanced around. “Catherine can award the prize in my place.”

Catherine Knollys smiled at the honor, and curtsyed. Elizabeth led the way from the court and turned into her privy garden. The guards on the wooden door set into the gray stone wall leapt to attention, swung it open. “Let no one else in,” Elizabeth commanded them. “Sir Robert and I would be alone.”

The two men saluted and closed the door behind them. In the sunlit empty garden, Elizabeth turned to Robert. “Well, I think I have done enough to earn me another lecture from Kat on indiscretion. What is it?”

As she saw his dark expression the smile drained from her face. “Ah, love, don’t look like that, you are frightening me. What is it? What is wrong?”

“The Earl of Arran,” he said, his tone biting. “Is he in London?”

She turned her head this way and that, as if his glare was a beam of light shining on her. He knew her so well he could almost see the quick denials flying through her head. Then she realized she could not lie directly to him. “Yes,” she said unwillingly. “He is in London.”

“And you met with him last night?”

“Yes.”

“He came to you in secret, you met him alone?”

She nodded.

“In your bedchamber?”

“Only in my privy chamber. But, Robert—”

“You spent the first part of the night with him and then came to me. All that you told me about having to wait for Lettice Knollys to fall asleep: all that was a lie. You had been with him.”

“Robert, if you are thinking—”

“I am thinking nothing,” he said flatly. “I cannot bear what I might think. First Pickering, when my back is turned, and now Arran while we are lovers, declared lovers…”

She sank down on a circular seat built around a wide-trunked oak tree. Robert rested one boot on the seat beside her so that he towered over her. Pleadingly, she looked up at him.

“Must I tell you the truth?”

“Yes. But tell me everything, Elizabeth. I cannot be played with as a fool.”

She drew a breath. “It is a secret.”

He gritted his teeth. “Before God, Elizabeth, if you have promised yourself in marriage to him you will never see me again.”

“I have not! I have not!” she protested. “How could I? You know what you are to me! What we are to each other!”

“I know what I feel when I hold you in my arms and I kiss your mouth and bite your neck,” he said bitterly. “I don’t know what you feel when you meet another man just moments before you come to me, with a pack of lies in your mouth.”

“I feel as if I am going mad!” she cried out at him. “That is what I feel! I feel as if I am being torn apart! I feel as if you are driving me mad. I feel that I cannot stand another moment of it.”