I sit on the bed and kick off my shoes, and he kneels before me and takes the riding boots, holding one open for my bare foot. I hesitate; it is such an intimate gesture between a young woman and a man. His smiling upward glance tells me that he understands my hesitation but is ignoring it. I point my toe and he holds the boot, I slide my foot in and he pulls the boot over my calf. He takes the soft leather ties and fastens the boot, at my ankle, then at my calf, and then just below my knee. He looks up at me, his hand gently on my toe. I can feel the warmth of his hand through the soft leather. I imagine my toes curling in pleasure at his touch.
‘Anne, will you marry me?’ he asks simply, as he kneels before me.
‘Marry you?’
He nods. ‘I will take you to sanctuary and then find a priest. We can marry in secret. Then I can care for you and protect you. You will be my wife and Edward will welcome you as his sister-in-law. Edward will grant your share of your mother’s inheritance when you are in my keeping. He won’t refuse my wife.’
He holds out the other boot, not even waiting for my reply. I point my toe and slide my foot in. Again he gently ties the laces at ankle, calf and knee. There is something very sensual about his careful tightening of the laces, working his way slowly up my leg. I close my eyes, I am longing for the sensation of his fingers brushing gently on the inside of my thigh. Then he takes the hem of my skirt and pulls it down to my ankles, as if he will defend my modesty, as if I can trust him. He puts his hands on the bed either side of me, still kneeling before me, looking up at me, his face filled with desire.
‘Say yes,’ he whispers. ‘Marry me.’
I hesitate. I open my eyes. ‘You will get my fortune,’ I remark. ‘When I marry you, everything I have becomes yours. Just as George has everything that belongs to Isabel.’
‘That’s why you can trust me to win it for you,’ he says simply. ‘When your interests and mine are the same, you can be certain that I will care for you as for myself. You will be my own. You will find that I care for my own.’
‘You will be true to me?’
‘Loyalty is my motto. When I give my word, you can trust me.’
I hesitate for a moment. ‘Oh Richard, ever since my father turned against your brother, nothing has gone right for me. Since his death I have not had one day without grief.’
He takes both of my hands in a warm grip. ‘I know. I cannot bring your father back, but I can put you back in his world: at the court, in the palaces, in line for the throne, where he wanted you to be. I can win his lands back for you, you can be landlord to his tenants, you can fulfil his plans.’
I shake my head, smiling though there are tears in my eyes. ‘We can never do that. He had very grand plans. He promised me that I would be Queen of England.’
‘Who knows?’ he says. ‘If anything should happen to Edward and his son, and George – which God forbid – then I would be king.’
‘It’s not likely,’ I say, my father’s ambition prompting me like a whisper in my ear.
‘No,’ he says. ‘It’s not likely. But you and I of all people know that you cannot foresee the future; none of us knows what may happen. But think of what you might be right now. I can make you a royal duchess. You can make me a wealthy man. I can make you the equal of your sister and defend you from her husband. I will be a true husband to you. And – I think you know, don’t you? – that I love you, Anne.’
I feel as if I have been living in a loveless world for too long. The last tender face I saw was my father’s when he sailed for England. ‘You do? Truly?’
‘I do.’ He rises to his feet and pulls me up to stand beside him. My chin comes to his shoulder, we are both dainty, long-limbed, coltish: well-matched. I turn my face into his jacket. ‘Will you marry me?’ he whispers.
‘Yes,’ I say.
My belongings go into one bundle, and he has a kitchen maid’s cloak for me with a hood that I can pull forwards to hide my face.
I protest as he puts it round me. ‘It stinks of fat!’
He laughs. ‘All the better. We are walking out of here as a manservant and a kitchen maid and nobody will look twice at either of us.’
The great gates are open, the people are coming and going as they always do, and we slip out with some dairymaids driving their cows before them. Nobody sees us go, and nobody will notice that I have gone. The house servants will assume that I went to court with my sister and her ladies, and only when she comes home in a few days will they realise that I have escaped them. I laugh out loud at the thought and Richard, holding my hand as we go through the busy streets, turns and smiles at me and suddenly laughs too, as if we are embarking on an adventure, as if we are children running away and laughing as we go.
