Will had left his seat and was talking with his sister, Rose, and a demure friend of hers, auburn-haired like me. But I saw his face as I danced with Simon; it was tinted with jealousy.

My brother Edmund danced with Rose Ogilvy’s young friend. Anne sat in a corner, attended by several young men. I joined them and we chattered for a moment. I was about to suggest a walk in the garden when the young men disappeared like ice on a summer pond. Anne—Anne!—grew demure and I looked behind me. It was the king. I quickly dropped to a curtsey, but I needn’t have bothered as it wasn’t me he was looking at.

“Do I know you?” the king asked Anne.

“I am Mistress Anne Boleyn,” Anne said. I found it hard to believe that he did not remember Anne, having been to Hever Castle many times. But Henry was a man with a singular focus and it had been trained on another Boleyn girl for many years. And in the years since she’d left court Anne herself had blossomed from a somewhat cocky, self-sure girl to a young woman in complete command of her alluring repertoire.

“Why are you not at court?” Henry asked. “Surely such a lovely flower should not be hidden away in the countryside to blossom and die unheralded.”

Ah yes, the master of courtly flirtation.

“I had the privilege of serving the queen for some time, sire, but Cardinal Wolsey thought perhaps the fields of Kent were better suited to me than the garden of Your Majesty’s court.” The words themselves were straightforward but Anne, too, had been well trained in court manners and there was a certain lure in her voice that men found irresistible. Henry, it need not be said, was a man.

“The cardinal has made a grievous error, I fear,” Henry said. He bowed slightly, chivalrously. “A dance, mistress?” As if anyone would dare decline!

Although the king had been expected to return to Penshurst Castle that night he chose, instead, to accept Sir Thomas’s offer of hospitality and dwell a little longer at Hever. Anne and I spent the night awake, nearly all night, giggling like young girls in front of her fireplace talking about women and their clothes and their prospects and Will and Simon. And the king, of course.

The next evening Sir Thomas put on another dinner, smaller, of course, but certain to bring him to the edge of bankruptcy, as visits from the king were often the financial ruin of the host. George Boleyn was the king’s cupbearer, and as Anne and George sat idling, talking, the king beckoned to George. “I’m thirsty.” I watched from some feet away as Anne let go of George’s arm so he could assist the king with his wine. And then Henry spoke again, loud enough for all to hear.

“Bring your sister with you.” The king looked directly at Anne, comely in a yellow gown that didn’t fix her dark complexion as sallow so much as sun-kiss it. I wondered if anyone considered that he might have been asking for George’s sister Mary instead. But she was nowhere to be seen.

All those present separated to two sides and Anne glided along the open path toward the king. She approached him, curtseyed deeply, and held his gaze. It was rare for anyone to hold the king’s gaze, much less a woman. He reached out and took one of her hands in his own, and then took the other one. He held them for an exceptionally long time ere turning to speak to George.

“Methinks these hands are prettier than yours, Boleyn.” The room roared with laughter. “I should rather be served by yon delicate fingers than by your hairy ones.” George grinned, bowed, and handed the king’s gold cup to Anne. She approached the king and lifted the cup to the king’s lips, gaze never wavering. After a moment, she lowered the cup and stood fast. I realized, with a start, that I was not breathing and forced myself to do so.

The king spoke again. “I feel refreshed as I haven’t in some time, mistress. Where have you learnt such comely manners?”

Anne spoke clearly, sweetly, with a well-cushioned barb. “Here in the house of my father, sire. And at the French court.”

There was an audible gasp then, the implication being that etiquette was better learned in a French court than in an English one. But Henry seemed delighted by her forthrightness, becomingly coupled with her feminine charm. He laughed aloud.

“Well, then, mistress, I will depend upon you to share with us what you have learnt. The French court’s loss is our gain.” He indicated that she should take a seat next to him, and, in fact, fairly shoved the Duke of Suffolk out of the way to make room for her.

He never took his eyes off of her. It was as if he’d commissioned an expensive tapestry some months before and now, to his delight, it had been set before him. I suspected the musicians were going to have to play well beyond their commissioned hours in order to provide an extended, acceptable opportunity for Anne and the king to talk. She was bold but not bawdy as she paid him attention, a sophisticated flirt. I doubted he’d ever seen anyone like her.

Late that evening I spied someone in the tattle’s corner, a dark corner to hear from but not be seen. It was Mary Boleyn Carey. Our eyes met and I saw that she knew her time with the king had ended. He had nary a further thought for her, but he had given her a husband, a fine manor, some baubles, and two children.

My heart reached out. I pitied her, and Sir William Carey as well.

One week hence Simon and I met in my father’s chamber. The village priest was there, twitching in front of my father. I was to marry Baron Blackston by proxy. He was too ill to travel south to complete the marriage, but neither he, nor my father, wanted it delayed any further. Simon had told us that he’d argued against a hasty marriage but that the baron had pressed on. “I finally convinced him to do it by proxy, if he must,” he said. “I insisted that he didn’t want his young bride to come to him as a nursemaid and not as a wife, and he agreed.”

Since my mother’s death my father had grown less and less interested in the matters of our estate, so Edmund and Simon had completed the negotiation of my marriage portion. Neither shared the details with me. Simon would stand in for the baron and I would join him, at least for a time, within a year, for certes.

Edithe dressed me in a fine gown, merrily chattering as she did, though we both knew this had not been a wedding day any girl or woman should desire. As she spoke of the simple village wedding she herself had had, I wondered, for the first time, if perhaps simple folk had an easier life in some ways than the higher born. We made our way to my father’s study, where Simon waited.

The proxy words were read and I numbly nodded and added my agreement, though of course ’twere no agreement at all. After the priest married us, Simon spoke up. “A marriage isn’t complete till it’s been consummated. To the bedroom.”

Surely not…! But my father insisted. Simon gleamed with malice.

We walked to my bedchamber, and, to my horror, the priest instructed us to get upon the bed. “Bare your lower legs,” he said next, and, feeling somewhat immodest, I obeyed. “Touch them together,” he continued.

We did, although Simon pressed his firmly into mine and kept them there, rather than a moderate and transient touch.

When he took his legs from mine he gave me a look that told me he’d rather have dismissed them all from the bedchamber and consummated it the traditional way. Thankfully, as he was not my husband, that would never be.

I tried not to think about when I would have to consummate my marriage the traditional way with Lord Blackston. But I was wed now and there was no turning back.

With a wicked grin, Simon bowed to me and then left the chamber. After dinner he played cards with Edmund late into the night and then, the next day, left for the north.

I was a married woman and yet I’d never felt emptier. I stayed my mind from the memories of dreaming of my wedding day to Will and sat quietly in my chamber that night so as not to give others acquaintance with my sorrow.

I idled for a month, reading my books and talking to the servants as they prepared to finish the chores that accompanied our property just before harvest time. One day a Boleyn retinue arrived at Allington on horseback. Anne dismounted, her black hair shimmering against a French hood. I went to meet her.

“The king sent me a stag he’d killed at hunt,” she said. “And a letter.”

“A letter?” All knew that Henry detested writing.

She nodded, and we headed toward the sitting chamber, where she pulled me close and then handed the letter to me. I scanned it, amazed at some of the words as I read them aloud. “‘My mistress and friend, I and my heart put ourselves in your hands, begging you to recommend us to your favor and to not let absence lessen your affection to us. For it were a great pity to increase our pain, which absence alone does sufficiently and more than I could ever thought.’”

I stopped reading and looked at her with alarm. “What does he mean by this?”

“One can speculate,” Anne said. Her bemused expression told me she’d been doing just that. “He wrote to my father at the same time. I am commanded to court. At the very least, my father is sure to find a fine marriage match for me whilst I am there. After all, that’s how I met Percy….” Her face grew suffused with excitement. She’d been worried since negotiations with James Butler had soured and little else had surfaced in the ensuing years. The king kept her father busy, perhaps too busy to find a good match for Anne. Truth be told, she was indeed a flower who thrived on the close heat of the court and not the whistling breeze of an empty countryside.

And then, a surprise. “Come with me,” she said. “I need a friend. A true friend there, a trusted friend. I feel that it was my fault that you left court early last time and I’d like to make it up to you. I know the king would not take exception to my inviting you to join me in service to the queen again.” Henry would certainly not take exception to anything she asked, judging by the tone of his letter. But I shook my head. “I am married and will go north as soon as my husband has recovered his health.”