"My lady says for you to wait for her in the library, my lord!" Cathy called, billowing down the stairs in a sweep of deep pink skirts and loose hair. "She was churched just yesterday, my lord, you'll be glad to see her I'm sure!"

Charles was hardly in the door, and stepped neatly aside to let Cathy out into the gardens - half a dozen hounds followed at her heels like pets, and he could hear Edward shouting outside.

"Thank you, Catherine!" he shouted after her, laughing despite himself. It was rude, of course, but it pleased him that Cathy was no longer so fascinated by him that she felt that she had to stand attendance.

He had considered her, as a wife - she was inordinately wealthy, as pretty as her lady mother had been in her prime, and a pleasant girl. Not for a year or two, not until she was seventeen or so, but she was nothing at all like Margaret and he might have found her easier to become used than he was Mary.

Edward and Cathy both were shouting outside now, and when he glanced out they were waving up at the library window, shouting something - no gifts! Charles thought, which was typical. Edward was always overjoyed to have him home, but only until he saw that Charles was empty-handed.

Perhaps that was unfair. He did not spend nearly so much time as Edward would like at home, and often much of his time at Westhorpe was spent with tenants and debtors and all the rest. Was he a neglectful father? Margaret had sometimes said so, when they fought, and he sometimes worried over it while praying, but he did not think so. He loved Edward and Frances - and little Isobel, so new and unknown, her too - more than anyone or anything else, more than he had loved Margaret and more, he thought, than he was capable of loving any woman.

Was that enough, when he had not seen Frances in over a year? When even though Edward lived at home, Charles knew his son mostly in passing? Isobel was just over a month old, still a tiny pink thing in her cradle - would she remain such a mystery to him, even when she became a child, rather than an infant?

Childrearing was women's business, but his eldest children had no mother to rear them - only a stepmother who was their mother's niece and barely older than them besides, and an aunt who was likely mad and certainly scandalous.

And a step-aunt, he supposed, and paused a moment to pray that the Queen never thought to concern herself with his children.

He continued on past thrown-open windows, through which the warm August air poured like honey. The whole of Westhorpe seemed sweeter now than it had in years, since his and Margaret's great falling out, and he was glad of Mary's presence if only because it seemed to have lifted Edward's lonely spirits.

The library, then - Mary's favourite room, per both Edward and their tutors, the room with the biggest windows and the best views of the gardens, the brightest and warmest room in the whole house. Margaret had never liked it overmuch, had preferred to do her reading in his study, curled up in the chair by the fire with her feet tucked under her and her hair loose over her shoulders. It had made it easier for her to fight with him over whatever fancy took her that day.

Mary was not Margaret, was hardly like her at all - he could not imagine his new little wife fighting with him over scripture, no more than he could imagine her becoming easy enough in his company to sit with a book while he saw to his accounts.

She was sitting in the chair under the middle window, a book - like as not a prayer book - half-forgotten in her lap as she fidgeted at her bodice. She made a pretty picture, but a nervous one.

"My lady," he said, struck for once by her resemblance to her mother, to her grandmother, Queen Katherine's soft mouth and Queen Elizabeth's straight nose, and none of Henry or Margaret. It was a relief, and he felt a coward for it. "You seem well?"

She smiled for him, just slightly, and kept toying with the neck of her gown. She did seem well, even if she looked more exhausted than he had ever seen in her - her pale eyes seemed paler for the shadows below them, her sharp cheekbones sharper for the hollows under them. Was she ill, and only giving the appearance of health?

Was she thinner than she had been, too? Not thinner simply for not being fresh from the birthing chamber, but thinner in the face, in the pale, smooth throat?

And had he simply not noticed because of the swell of her bosom over her gown, under her dancing fingertips?

It had only been four days since he'd had a woman - surely he was not so desperate that he was ignoring his wife's health? He was a better man than that, wasn't he? He liked to think so, and knew that Mary thought better of him than that. She had told Chapuys so just last Christmas, that he was a good man. None other had ever said it of him, short of Henry, and Henry had a less-than-moral view of just what made a man good.

"Well enough," she said, gesturing for him to take the other seat. Her smile was warm, and uncertain, and terribly young. "Isobel is thriving - she has finally started sleeping for more than an hour at a time."

"Frances was the same," Charles said, wondering if Frances was still as poor a sleeper as she had been even until she left for Scotland. Would Lady Methvin send his daughter home to him, if he asked? Or was she as consumed by her madness as the Scots all said? "Is she feeding well?"

"She wasn't," Mary said, smile growing firm, "but she is now - I have taken to nursing her myself."

Her fidgeting fingers kept moving at the pearl-edged neckline of her deep blue gown, and it made sense - Margaret had complained of her breasts hurting when she'd nursed the children, and had needed some sort of salve for her nipples.

Would Mary mind him asking if she needed such a thing? Or would he be better asking Cathy? No, it would be on the cusp of sinfulness to ask Cathy such a thing. Best to ask one of Mary's ladies, the twittering girls who were sent by the Queen to spy and the quiet girls who had been gathered from such families as had little taste for the Queen and her people, sent by Thomas More and by Bishop Gardiner and by ever-surprising Tony Knivert, who had a fondness for Mary that superseded his loyalty to Henry in odd, small ways.

There were seven of them, including Cathy. Three sent by the Queen, three from parties loyal to Mary, and Cathy herself. Charles never saw a one of them save for Cathy, who spent half her time with Edward, because they confined themselves to Mary's finely appointed, west-facing suite of rooms, while Mary sequestered herself away in the chapel or the library, or in her private rooms with Cathy.

He did not even know their names, these girls who spied on his wife for friend and foe alike. There were two Howard girls, he knew, but could not have picked them out from the rabble. A More, he suspected, Thomas More's clever eldest daughter like as not, who had always been her father's greatest pride. He couldn't have said beyond that, but wondered - Tony had sent one of those girls. Tony, who had always denied any debts beyond those he owed to Henry...

And to the late, lovely Queen Elizabeth, who had chosen him out from a hundred better prospects to join her son's household. Mary had something of her grandmother's bearing - was Tony placing his debts in Mary's keeping now?

"She is so beautiful, Charles," Mary said softly, drawing him away from his thoughts. Her book was closed now, balanced on the arm of her chair, and he could see now that it was no prayer book - it was poems, the sort Cathy liked to read when he was not at home to forbid it. "I never thought I could love anyone the way I love her. I did not think I had any love left in me at all, save what remains for my mother."

"I will go to her as soon as we are finished here," Charles promised, and found that he was looking forward to it - it had been so long since Frances had been so small, longer even since Edward was a babe, and he had always liked holding them when they were smaller than his two hands together. "It is so easy to love your children."

It could not be easy for Mary to love anyone at all, he supposed, after all she had suffered at the hands of her own father, and it pleased him to see the flush of pride in her cheeks when she spoke of their daughter.

Her fingers were moving faster now, and harder, but Charles still did not know how she might react to him asking after her breasts. She liked him kissing them very much, and was very vocal about liking it, but only in their bed.

She was only ever vocal in their bed, it sometimes seemed.

"My brother is coming to visit us," she said, smiling wider now. "He has written to me to tell me that he has some special gift for Isobel - he is taking his role as her godfather very seriously. It is... Darling, in its way."

Bloody Richmond! He had a bastard's sense, to seek out company that would make a fuss of him, and to make a meal of them in the process, but he had not a lord's sense, to avoid risking the King's displeasure.

"It is going to get us all killed," Charles said, settling into his seat and rubbing one hand through his dirty hair, "because the King is sending Tony Knivert here to make an assessment of how likely you are to rebel, and having your fucking brother here will only make things worse for you, I fear."

"My fucking brother, my lord?" Mary said, voice sharp. He had never heard her swear before, not even in a moment of passion, and was surprised by how natural it sounded. "My fucking brother? How dare you? Who are you to insult my brother in this way?"

"Your husband," he said, just as sharp through gritted teeth, "who has three children and a ward to think of, and an ungrateful wife, and no claim to any throne. You and your brother have one child between you, and claims as solid as your grandfather's to the throne - you are dangerous, Maria. Dangerous. You are not a foolish woman, Maria. You know this."

He hadn't meant to call her Maria - he had heard Cathy saying it when last he was home, and had been amused by it, by the easy affection between the two of them that so reminded him of himself and Henry as boys.

Looking at the name now, at this Spanish name for his halfways Spanish wife, it seemed to fit her better than he had realised. Still, she was angry with him, and likely would not appreciate the show of familiarity.

"I have no one else in the world but Isobel and Hal who are mine," she said, quiet and furious. He had never seen such a rage in her, and wondered what it was that young Richmond had done to inspire such loyalty in her in so short a time - he'd had her for a wife for the better part of a year, given her a child and a home when before she had had nothing at all. "You belong to my father, Edward and Cathy to you. Isobel and Hal are mine, though. Mine, Charles! I would never do anything to risk any harm coming to my baby!"

"But others will use you," he said. "And Richmond, and you both together - don't you see, Mary? Don't you understand? You are an intelligent woman, Mary, you and I both know it, but you refuse to look."

"I know well how dangerous Hal and I are, Charles," she snarled, like the wolf-bitch they had all named the last French Queen, surging upright to stand over him. "I know better than anyone just how dangerous Hal is - until that Boleyn bitch threw down my mother, Hal was dangerous to me! While I was at Ludlow, all I ever heard was the danger Hal and the witch posed to me. But he is mine, Charles! I know him now, and I trust him - he would never risk Isobel, either."

"I do not know your brother," Charles said, holding hard to the arms of the chair so he couldn't hold hard to her. "I barely know you, my lady. You have been a part of this household for most of the last year, have been my wife for almost all of that time, and I still know you hardly at all."

She made to speak, but held her tongue when he held up a hand to her. She stepped back just a little when he stood to face her down, and he very nearly regretted that - her odd little shows of fear shamed him, for he seemed their sole cause of late.

"I trust that you will not rise up against your father only because I can guess just how deep your loyalty to him runs, because I know your mother. I lived in her court for years, and I know her."

Margaret had always spoken of her sister-in-law in almost adoring terms, fascinated by the infanta who had held such sway even without a prince to secure her - until the bitch came to power, anyhow. He laughed without meaning to, because it was all so absurd. "I know my mother-in-law better than I do my fucking wife!"

She slapped him - twice as hard as she had before, and twice as beautiful, too. She was entirely herself now, with that rage of hers blazing in her red cheeks, and her eyes dark, not pale at all, and, and-

And had she been Margaret, he would have taken her wrists, held them behind her back, and kissed her until she cursed him. Then he would have fucked her against the wall between the windows, and kissed her in the aftermath to take the sting out of the force of their coupling.

But she is not Margaret, he reminded himself, instead taking her hands together in one of his, instead lifting one hand to curl around her flushed, ticking jaw.

"If you slap me again," he said, very quietly, as gently as if he was asking if he could visit her bed, "I will lock you in your room and keep you away from Isobel, and from Cathy, and from your precious Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset. Am I understood?"

She nodded, eyes wide and explosive colour fading from her cheeks, and took her hands from his to press them to his chest.

"I have so little, Charles," she said, easing up onto her toes. She was small enough that to kiss her, he had to bend right down, but less so when she rose like this, so her nose was brushing to his. "Please let me keep what I have. Don't be like him."

Him. The great ghost that haunted them. Henry had taken everything from her, and she thought of him still as part of Henry's power.

Was he no more than Henry's puppet? Or was he his own man, as he had been when he had wed Margaret, when he had sent Frances to Scotland against royal advice?

"Richmond will be welcome here," he heard himself saying, almost able to taste her. "But only for so long as it is safe for our children for him to be here."

She moaned when he pressed her back to the wall. She was lovely, and wholly herself, as she came apart around him.

Mary staggered into the nursery after leaving Charles, ashamed of herself.

How had she- After the way he had spoken about Hal! About her! It was-

Was this how her father's women felt, after he had used them? Cheap and worthless? Ashamed?

And to have pushed herself on him so, to get her own way! She was no better than the harlot, taking advantage of her husband's avarice and lust just so she would not lose her brother.

Oh, God. Oh, God. How ashamed her mother would be, if she knew how Mary was behaving!

But... Surely she did not have to be ashamed. Surely her mother did not have any true cause for shame. Charles was her husband, after all, the father of her beautiful girl, the only man whose bed she had ever shared. So what if it was sinful to share a bed for pleasure's sake? She would go to her confessor and make confession, and she would-

What would she do? What good Christian wife hit her husband and then let him take her against a wall in daylight like a common whore? What good Christian wife enticed her husband to use her like a strumpet under the light of the sun?

It had felt so good, though! It always felt so good when Charles came to her bed, with his strong hands and his plush mouth, and it had not felt any less good against the wall in the library, with Cathy and Edward playing with the dogs on the lawn below, with her ladies - her cursed, blasted, unwished for ladies - trapped away in her presence chamber, which they never wished to leave so far as Mary could tell.

Isobel was sleeping in her rosewood cradle, with Charles' dark hair and Mary's long nose and a beauty entirely her own, a beauty that shocked Mary every time she looked and saw that her daughter was not crying. She was a delicate little thing, small for her age according to the nursemaid Cathy had found through the jolly midwife who had shown Mary how best to hold Isobel while nursing and given her a salve for her poor aching nipples.

"I do not know what to do with a man like your lord father," she said, leaning over the rails of Isobel's cradle. "I was never told how to manage a man like him - your lady grandmother taught me that a husband would respect me, would confine himself only to visits at respectable times, and your lady godmother promised me that your father would be a respectable man."

"I am a respectable man, Maria," Charles said, and when she looked, he was leaning against the doorframe, arms and ankles crossed. "I did not mean any disrespect."

"I will not have this discussion before our daughter," she said. "Just as I should not have- What if Edward and Cathy had heard me, Charles?"

She was always so embarrassed by how loud she was when he was touching her, but what she had felt before was nothing compared with now. At least then, they had been abed. At least then, there had only been him to hear her - today there had been the children outside, and God himself, too!

"There is nothing to be ashamed of," he said, haltingly. "In what we share - even if that is all we share."

"We share a daughter, too," she reminded him. "And a home, I think. Or the makings of one."

Something in his fine face twisted at that, and she cursed herself for such a turn of phrase - every such thing reminded him of Aunt Margaret, and every reminder of Aunt Margaret pained him.

What must it have been like for Margaret, to know that someone loved her so fiercely? Mary doubted that she would ever know such a love, and was not so sad as she might have been a year ago, because she had a better love - she had Isobel, and what other children she and Charles would have in time.

"I understand that you have been lonely for a very long time, my lady," he said, coming to stand beside her, one hand resting on the cradle railings and the other resting somewhere above her waist. "And I understand that you are denied what little family is left to you. But for your sake, and for hers - show caution with your brother. Your father is a fickle man, and I have already lost his favour once, and risked it very much twice only since you joined my household."

"Twice? How so?"

"Once by enquiring after your marital prospects," he said, his smile teasing, "and a second time by indulging you and giving our daughter a Spanish-sounding name."

"My father did not approve, then," she said, disappointed. He had always spoken with such deep love and respect for his lady mother that Mary had hoped he would appreciate the name Charles had picked for their girl. How typical that she had hoped in vain.

"He did eventually," Charles assured him, "but not at first. He will wish her to come with us for Christmas, I think."

"I don't want her near that woman if I can help it," Mary said sharply, unable to help herself. "I don't want-"

"There are a great many things that I would spare you if I could," he said, hand settling finally on her hip, heavy through her skirts. "But her presence is not one of them - we must endure, until we are free."

"Free, Charles? Whatever does that mean?"

He sighed, tugging her closer by the hand on her hip, and kissed her brow - an unusual gesture of affection, but one she did not mind at all. If he were becoming fond of her for something other than her presence in his bed and her mercifully fertile womb, she would not mind it.

"It means," he said, "that I ought to tell you all the news I have from court - and that is a conversation I will not have over our daughter's cradle. Come, my lady. Your ladies are doubtless starving for your company, since you deny it to them so often."

Her ladies could starve their ways back to London and Lambeth and wherever else they had come from, for all Mary cared. She would leave them in her fine, elegantly appointed rooms, and she would keep to the library, and to her room and Cathy's, and she would have some measure of peace.

Particularly if she had the right of Charles' meaning - could it be that the harlot's fall was near?

Perhaps, in this at least, her hopes were not in vain.