I was settled at Hertford in stifling luxury, far from the glamour of Westminster and the questionable allure of John Holland’s personality, and decidedly unhappy. Men, I decided, were the source of much heartache for women.

At court, John Holland had become a necessity for my happiness. Now that I had rejected him and his campaign for self-aggrandisement, there was no place for him in my existence. This was my life, Countess of Pembroke, waiting for her lord to reach maturity, while Jonty, running wild with the other lads of our household whenever the Master of Arms took his eye off him, showed little sign of arriving there.

I hoped the Duke was satisfied with the sacrifice I had made in the name of family alliances, for I was buried in impossible boredom and exasperation. Moreover I felt that I had been dispatched here in disgrace, although my father had been more circumspect in his wording. Still it rankled.

John Holland had promised that he would never allow me to forget him. The silence from that quarter was shrieking in my head.

The Duke, as a placatory gesture, had offered to take me with him to Calais. I was not invited.

Jonty had promised me a pair of new gloves. I was still waiting, and would wait for ever. When he went north to Kenilworth, my husband sent a scribbled apology for his omission and information that he had a new hound. Not that I lacked such items or the wherewithal to purchase a pair with the finest leatherwork around the gauntlet, exactly like the one in John Holland’s possession.

Why would he not return it?

How repetitious my life became in those months after my return. Early rising for Mass. Some reading, stitching, conversation with Constanza. Perhaps a little hunting or hawking, or walking in the gardens as the weather grew milder. The day-to-day affairs of Hertford ran as smooth as the length of silk of the altar cloth I was stitching. Our steward would have politely deflected any interest I might show. And rightly. I would have been dabbling for dabbling’s sake. I had no interest in domestic affairs.

‘Are you quite well?’ Constanza asked, when I must have sighed inordinately over the gold thread that tangled itself into knots in my careless fingers. I cared not whether the panel was ever complete.

‘I am in perfect health.’

I resisted casting it onto the floor. I must not sigh or draw attention to my restlessness.

‘You are very self-absorbed. Which is unlike you.’

‘I find the days heavy,’ I said, as much as I was prepared to admit. ‘The time hangs as if it were still.’

‘Prayer would help.’

Prayer would not help. ‘The fine weather will improve my mood.’

‘Perhaps you feel for your brother’s grief,’ Constanza suggested, her own eyes moist.

‘Yes.’ And I bowed my head so that she could not see how deeply I grieved for him. And for Mary. The much desired child, a son, born at Rochford Hall, had lived no longer than four days. I had not seen Henry, and could only imagine his distress, but I mourned for him, recalling our quarrel at Westminster, which might be healed but still hovered over me. The sad loss and Mary’s devastation, even though I had no experience of such grief, merely added to the weight of those days.

‘I would still recommend prayer. We will pray together after supper.’

I sighed.

How lacking in excitement, in flavour, my life had become, like a winter repast, stripped of spice and herbs. Like a constant diet of salt fish and pottage. Even our visitors were dull, with nothing to say for themselves.

And still John Holland haunted me.

And what was he doing? John Holland was far too busy to have any thought of me, honing his diplomatic skills in embassies with the Duke in Calais. He was in good favour with my father. Obviously my support for his cause was an irrelevance.

As his presence was to me.

I set another row of stitches with consummate concentration before abandoning it, informing Constanza that she would find me in my own chamber. I did not know what to do with my thoughts or my restless feet and fingers, but at least I could pace there without drawing attention.

‘Don’t forget to meet for prayers, Elizabeth.’

‘Nothing would please me more, madam.’

And then it began, with a Lancaster courier bringing letters and news to Constanza, as they frequently did, passing over a little package with what could only be described as a sly grimace and well-practised guile, as if he often delivered packages which should not be delivered. I received it with equal sleight of hand, hiding it in my oversleeve. And when I unwrapped it, it was to find a silver pin in the shape of a heart, quite plain without gems, but snapped in two. Wrapped around the damaged silver was a twist of parchment and a note in a hand I did not know.

A trifle, broken asunder, as my heart is damaged.

It gave me much food for thought, wagering an emerald pin on the author of that sentiment. It was not Jonty, for whom poetic chivalry was still buried deep beneath the urgent training of hawks and hounds.

Who would single me out for a gift worthy of a chivalric troubadour?

Ha!

And with the passage of days and weeks the gifts continued, all under cover, all small enough to be hidden away from prying eyes in my elm coffer. In some weeks not one courier set foot in Hertford without some item accompanying him, cleverly wrapped in leather or a screw of paper, and the note that accompanied each was brief, enigmatic and unsigned. There was no clue here to the author of the gifts. But for me, there was no riddle to solve.

A pilgrim’s token from the shrine at Walsingham, the cheap pewter dull with the damp of travel.

May the face of the Blessed Virgin smile on you, when you do not allow me the privilege.

A mirror case carved in ivory showing a lady crowning her chosen knight with a garland.

I cannot see my true love, but you can see the face that stops my heart.

A pair of candle trimmers. Very practical!

As you douse your candle, imagine my arms enfolding you in the dark of your bed.

A feathered mask, its edges frayed with age, reminiscent of some past Twelfth Night masque.

Would you hide your true emotions from me?

A ribboned lover’s knot, nothing more than a fairing.

What value my love for you, Lady of Lancaster?

A pair of finches in a wicker cage, which arrived in the full light of day, singing cheerfully.

They will sing my petition for your true regard, whereas I cannot sing at all.

Which was true enough. John Holland might have no voice but he was not without low cunning. Had he also lost his wits to send me so winsome an offering, but something so obvious and impossible to accept discreetly?

‘Who are the birds from?’ Philippa asked when I had hung them in my chamber and they began to trill in the sunshine. Philippa had returned to Hertford for which I was inexpressibly grateful.

‘Jonty,’ I replied. ‘In recompense for forgetting the gloves.’

Whether my sister believed me or not I had no idea, but I found myself waiting, day after day, for the next offering, disappointed when none materialised, setting up a dialogue that part infuriated me, part intrigued.

He will grow tired of it.

He will not. He is trying to wear down my resistance to him.

He will grow weary if you do not reply.

But I will not reply. To reply will put me in his power. To show any interest whatsoever will tell him that he is in my thoughts.

Some of them are charmingly subtle.

And some are particularly crude!

Some are romantic.

Wait until he sends me a dose of agrimony to move the bowels …

What does he intend, with a wooing of such charming foolishnesses?

I knew exactly what he intended. He had great practice in seduction. Did Isabella not have a coffer full of such offerings?

Do you care what Isabella has?

No. And I wish he would stop!

But he did not, and the gifts, trivial as they were, warmed my heart’s blood. But I was not seduced. I would not be. My feet could never walk in unison with those of John Holland.

And then. A single glove, which I recognised full well. My own. Was he returning it to signal he no longer had a care to keep it? Perhaps he would at last allow me to forget him, for my mind and my senses to live at ease.

My heart leapt, dismay a chill coating in my belly. I did not want that. I tore at the wrapping, dropping it to the floor. ‘It’s just the glove I lost.’ Philippa was keeping a closer eye on my gifts. I busied myself discovering its mate in my coffer to hide any heat in my cheeks

‘No need for Jonty to buy you new ones then!’ she remarked dryly. ‘You seem to be in receipt of many packages.’

I crunched the message in the palm of my hand, smoothing it out as soon as I could, and exhaled with relief.

To restore the lost glove to its partner. They were not made to exist apart. As you were not made to live apart from me …

Slowly I pulled on the reunited pair, smoothing the soft leather over my fingers. No, they were not made to exist apart. This was right that they should be together. But was I prepared to acknowledge my own need? He was not allowing me to forget him. It exercised all my will to struggle to banish him from my memory. I was burning with loss and longing. And would have continued to do so until another torn piece of parchment, finely folded, made its way to me. As I opened it, suitably intrigued at the blank sheet with no message, a smattering of coarse dust fell to the floor. I knelt. Not dust but tiny pieces of dried leaves. Rescuing some of them, I placed them in my palm and sniffed. The aroma was very faint.

‘What’s this?’ I asked Philippa, holding out my hand.

She too sniffed. ‘An herb. Is it rue?’

It could be. So what was this? A pinch of rue and no words of love or seduction. I knew its uses, but not its meaning. As it crossed my mind to wonder which of his female acquaintances had supplied him with this, I headed to the kitchens for a discussion with Constanza’s cook, to ask the question: ‘If a woman receives a gift of rue, what should she understand by it?’

John Holland intrigued me, fascinated me, repelled me. I despised the artifice he employed to woo my senses, for rue implied regret. It implied grief and farewell.

He had given up on me at last.

Or had he? Was this merely another ploy to whet my appetite, enticing me with sentimental humours, only to cast me adrift with a clever pinch of crushed leaves that I had dusted from my hands to the floor?

I cared not.

Oh, but I wished … But then, I did not know what it was that I truly wished for. All I heard was the echo of John’s voice in my mind, in my ear, whispering inducements with all the subtlety of the snake in the Garden of Eden. It was dangerous, but I enjoyed the danger. What woman would not?

One of Philippa’s women fetched me, with a warning that set my heart racing. My sister was unwell. When I came into her bedchamber, it was to find her weeping without restraint, her ladies fluttering round her.

‘Philippa!’

I was across the space from door to bed in an instant, taking her in my arms.

‘Don’t mind me.’ Her reply was muffled against my shoulder. ‘It’s nothing.’

My sister did not weep for nothing. My sister rarely wept. I cast about in my mind for a reason that would reduce her to such misery.

‘Is it Henry?’

‘No.’

‘Mary, then …’ Had she not recovered from the tragic birth of their little son?

‘No. They’re happy enough. They’ve agreed to wait before Mary invites him to her bed again.’

And Philippa wept even harder.

‘Tell me.’ Waving her women away, I shook her gently. ‘I’ll hang the finches in your room if you don’t.’ Their shrill singing wearied after a while.

‘What will become of me?’

‘I can’t imagine. Are we talking about the next hour or the next three years?’

She did not smile, but at least she told me.

‘I am twenty-two years old. Where is the marriage plan for me? What if there never is?’

‘But there will be.’

‘Don’t tell me there is a foreign prince just waiting for me to land in his lap. Sometimes I have a terrible conviction that I will end my days in a convent.’

I smoothed her hair, wiped her cheeks. Philippa was softer than I, gentler, far kinder. What a waste it would be if she did not have her own family to love and cherish.

‘It will happen. You know that the Duke will …’