It is time to dress before dinner. I have to wait on Isabel as her maids lace her gown. I have to hand her little flask of perfume to her, open her jewel box. For once I serve her without resentment; I hardly even notice that she asks for a collar of pearls and then changes her mind, and then changes back again. I just take the things from the box and put them back and then get them out again. It does not matter to me if she wears pearls that her husband has stolen from someone else. She is not going to steal anything from me, ever again, for I have someone on my side.
I have someone on my side now and he is a king’s brother just as George is a king’s brother. He is of the House of York and my father loved him and taught him like a son. And, as it happens, he is heir to the throne after George, but more beloved than George, and more steadfast and loyal than George. If you were going to pick one of the York boys it would be George for looks, Edward for charm, but it would be Richard for loyalty.
‘Why d’you think?’ When he asked me he gave me a naughty smile, his dark eyes were so bright; he almost winked at me as if it were a private joke, as if it were a delightful secret. I thought I was being clever and guarded to ask him why he would help me – and then he looked at me as if I knew the answer. And there was something about the question, about the gleam of his smile, that made me want to giggle, that even now, as my sister moves to her hand-beaten silver mirror and nods for me to tie the pearls around her neck, makes me want to blush.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ she says coldly, her eyes meeting mine in the silvered looking glass.
I steady myself at once. ‘Nothing.’
Isabel rises from the table and goes to the door. Her ladies gather around her, the door opens and George and his household are waiting to join her. This is my signal to go to my room. It is generally agreed that I am in mourning so deep that I cannot be present in mixed company. Only George and Isabel and I know that it is they who have made this rule: they don’t allow me to see anyone or speak to anyone, they keep me like a mewed hawk that should be flying free. Only George and Isabel and I know this – but Richard knows it too. Richard guessed it because he knows what I am like, what Isabel is like. He was like a son to my father, he understands the House of Warwick. And Richard cared enough to think about me, to wonder how I was faring in Isabel’s household, to see through the façade of guardianship to the truth: that I am their prisoner.
I curtsey to George and keep my eyes down so he cannot see that I am smiling. In my head I hear again my question: ‘Why would you do this?’ and his answer: ‘Why d’you think?’
When there is a knock at the door of the privy chamber I open it myself, expecting it to be one of the grooms of the servery with dishes for my dinner, but the presence chamber is empty except for Richard, standing there, magnificently dressed in red velvet doublet and breeches, his cape trimmed with sables slung around his shoulder as if it were nothing.
I gasp. ‘You?’
‘I thought I would come and see you while they are serving dinner,’ he says, strolling into the privy chamber and seating himself in Isabel’s chair under the cloth of estate by the fireside.
‘The servers will come with my dinner at any moment,’ I warn him.
He makes a careless gesture with his hand. ‘Have you thought about our talk?’
Every moment of this afternoon. ‘Yes.’
‘Would you like me to be your champion in this matter?’ Again he smiles at me as if he is proposing the most delicious game, as if asking me to conspire against my guardian and my sister is like inviting me to dance.
‘What would we do?’ I try to be serious but I am smiling in reply.
‘Oh,’ he whispers. ‘We would have to meet often, I am sure.’
‘Would we?’
‘Once a day at least. For a proper conspiracy I should want to see you once a day, probably twice. I don’t know that I wouldn’t need to see you all the time.’
‘And what would we do?’
He pulls a stool towards the chair with the toe of his boot and gestures that I should sit near him. I obey: he is mastering me as he would pet a hawk. He leans towards me as if to whisper, his breath warm on my bare neck. ‘We would talk, Lady Anne, what else?’
If I were to turn my head just a little then his lips would touch my cheek. I sit very still, and will myself not to turn to him at all.
‘Why? What would you like to do?’ he asks me.
I think: I would like to do this, all day, this delicious play. I should like to have his eyes on me all day, I should like to know that he has moved at last from a nonchalant childhood acquaintance to lovemaking. ‘But how would this get my fortune restored to me?’
