led her away from the bowling green, down the winding path that led to a seat beneath a yew tree.
‘Miss Anne,’ he began.
‘Is it too damp to sit?’
At once he swung his rich cloak from his shoulder and spread it out for her on a stone bench.
‘Miss Anne …’
‘No, I am too chilled,’ she decided and rose up from the seat.
‘Miss Anne!’ he exclaimed, a little more crossly.
Anne paused and turned her seductive smile on him.
‘Your lordship?’
‘I have to know why have you grown so cold to me?’
For a moment she hesitated, then she dropped the coquettish play and turned a face to him which was grave and lovely.
‘I did not mean to be cold,’ she said slowly. ‘I meant to be careful.’
‘Of what?’ he exclaimed. ‘I have been in torment!’
‘I did not mean to torment you. I meant to draw back a little. Nothing more than that.’
‘Why?’ he whispered.
She looked down the garden to the river. ‘I thought it better for me, perhaps better for us both,’ she said quietly. ‘We might become too close in friendship for my comfort.’
He took a swift step from her and then back to her side. ‘I would never cause you a moment’s uneasiness,’ he assured her. ‘If you wanted me to promise you that we would be friends and that no breath of scandal would ever come to you, I would have promised that.’
She turned her dark luminous eyes on him. ‘Could you promise that no-one would ever say that we were in love?’
Mutely, he shook his head. Of course he could not promise what a scandal-mad court might or might not say.
‘Could you promise that we would never fall in love?’
He hesitated. ‘Of course I love you, Mistress Anne,’ he said. ‘In the courtly way. In the polite way.’
She smiled as if she were pleased to hear it. ‘I know it is nothing more than a May game. For me, also. But it’s a dangerous game when played between a handsome man and a maid, when there are many people very quick to say that we are made for each other, that we are perfectly matched.’
‘Do they say that?’
‘When they see us dance. When they see how you look at me. When they see how I smile at you.’
‘What else do they say?’ He was quite entranced by this portrait.
‘They say that you love me. They say that I love you. They say that we have both been head over heels in love while we thought we were doing nothing but playing.’
‘My God,’ he said at the revelation. ‘My God, it is so!’
‘Oh my lord! What are you saying?’
‘I am saying that I have been a fool. I have been in love with you for months and all the time I thought I was amusing myself and you were teasing me, and that it all meant nothing.’
Her gaze warmed him. ‘It was not nothing to me,’ she whispered.
Her dark eyes held him, the boy was transfixed. ‘Anne,’ he whispered. ‘My love.’
Her lips curved into a kissable, irresistible smile. ‘Henry,’ she breathed. ‘My Henry.’
He took a small step towards her, put his hands on her tightly laced waist. He drew her close to him and Anne yielded, took one seductive step closer. His head came down as her face tipped up and his mouth found hers for their first kiss.
‘Oh, say it,’ Anne whispered. ‘Say it now, this moment, say it, Henry.’
‘Marry me,’ he said.
‘And so it was done,’ Anne reported blithely in our bedroom that night. She had ordered the bath tub to be brought in and we had gone into the hot water, one after another, and scrubbed each other’s backs and washed each other’s hair. Anne, as fanatical as a French courtesan about cleanliness, was ten times more rigorous than usual. She inspected my fingernails and toenails as if I were a dirty schoolboy, she handed me an ivory earscoop to clean out my ears as if I were her child, she pulled the lice comb through every lock of my head, reckless of my whimpers of pain.
‘And so? What is done?’ I asked sulkily, dripping on the floor and wrapping myself in a sheet. Four maids came in and started to bale out the water into buckets so that the great wooden bath could be carried away. The sheets they used to line the bath were heavy and sodden, it all seemed like a great deal of effort for very little gain. ‘For all I have heard is more flirtation.’
‘He’s asked me,’ Anne said. She waited till the door was shut behind the servants and then wrapped the sheet more tightly around her breasts and seated herself before the mirror.
There was a knock at the door.
‘Who is it now?’ I called in exasperation.
‘It’s me,’ George replied.
‘We’re bathing,’ I said.
‘Oh let him come in.’ Anne started to comb through her black hair. ‘He can pull out these tangles.’
George lounged into the room and raised a dark eyebrow at the mess of water on the floor and wet sheets, at the two of us, half naked, and Anne with a thick mane of wet hair thrown over her shoulder.
‘Is this a masque? Are you mermaids?’
‘Anne insisted that we should bathe. Again.’
Anne offered him her comb and he took it.
‘Comb my hair,’ she said with her sly sideways smile. ‘Mary always pulls.’ Obediently, he stood behind her and started to comb through her dark hair, a strand at a time. He combed her carefully, as he would handle his mare’s mane. Anne closed her eyes and luxuriated in his grooming.
‘Any lice?’ she asked, suddenly alert.
‘None yet,’ he reassured her, as intimate as a Venetian hairdresser.
‘So what’s done?’ I demanded, returning to Anne’s announcement.
‘I have him,’ she said frankly. ‘Henry Percy. He has told me he loves me, he has told me that he wants to marry me. I want you and George to witness our betrothal, he can give me a ring, and then it’s done and unbreakable, as good as a marriage in a church before a priest. And I shall be a duchess.’
‘Good God.’ George froze, the comb held in the air. ‘Anne! Are you sure?’
