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Fen nodded. “Though it is a long time since anyone addressed me as such.”

Linnet leapt out of her chair. “But this is wonderful!” she exclaimed, her face aglow. “It means everything Father wanted has come to pass. Well, almost everything,” she amended. “Except Roland.” She clapped her hands to her face. “And it all happened by itself! Oh, how thankful I am!” She surged forward and clasped Fen’s upper arms. “Welcome sister,” she kissed Fen on both cheeks.

“Thank you,” stammered Fen.

“I do hope you will not hold it against me that I tried to play the match-maker for Oswald,” said Linnet in sudden dismay. “Indeed, I was never proficient in the role and Oswald told me himself, that he and my friend Enid Jauncey were not remotely suited!”

“Of course not,” Fen hurried to assure her, ignoring a pang. Enid, who?

“If I had known that he was already married, I never would have dreamed of such a thing!“

“Oh, I’m sure.”

“But what a stroke of good fortune, that your marriage turned out to be legally valid,” Linnet rattled on. “That must have been why Father was so fixated on Oswald’s marital standing. He must have wanted things set to rights.”

Fen was starting to feel awkward. In an effort to distract Linnet, Fen asked. “But what was it that Baron Vawdrey wished you to do about Roland?”

Linnet’s face fell. “Oh that. Well,” she looked around furtively. “Well, Father said ‘Whatever you do, Linnet, do not allow that rascal Roland to marry some fool girl with more hair than sense. I won’t have him saddling my poppets with a litter of idiot cousins.” Though how he expected me to prevent it, I do not know!” She looked aggrieved. “And Mason won’t even enter into any discussion about it, for he says it’s all a piece of nonsense and I should put it from my mind.”

Fen pulled a sympathetic face, though to be honest, she thought brusque Mason had a valid point. Trying to get Roland to do anything would be an uphill battle. Trying to prevent him from doing something, would probably be even harder.

Fen retired not long after. It had been a long day and she felt surprisingly exhausted. However, once she had climbed under the covers sleep eluded her. Worry crept into her mind - that confounded play, Bess’s strange behavior. She rolled first onto one side and then the other, but found she could not settle. She was lying flat on her back with the sheet over her face, when she heard the door open and close again. Lying quietly, she listened to her husband undress and wash. She was just considering folding down the blanket to speak, when she felt the covers draw back and the mattress dip. Oswald reached for her in the dark and drew her against his warm body. With a sigh, Fen rolled into him and felt herself relax against his solid form. His hand rested at her waist, in a light clasp. Even the sound of his breathing was comforting. Fen felt her eyes drift shut as sleep washed over her. Just before all was dark, she fancied she felt his lips brush her brow, and smiled.

**

Again, when she awoke her husband had already left for the day.

Trudy was laying out her clothes for the morning. “I hope I didn’t wake you, milady.”

“Not at all, I have sadly overslept the hour,” Fen said, flinging back the bedcovers. “What o’clock is it?” She was supposed to sit for another four hours that morning, she remembered joylessly and cursed the day she had ever agreed to have a portrait painted. Whoever would have thought it would be so onerously time-consuming? Surely it would be soon finished now? Even Bess thought so, and she seemed something of an expert these days.

“The clock has not long struck nine,” Trudy replied, crossing the room to fling open a trunk.

Fen hurried to the washstand. “Did you see Lord Vawdrey, before he left?” She had barely spoken to him yesterday, she thought with a pang. It made her uneasy, or mayhap that was just her guilty conscience?

“No, milady. Uncle said he left at the crack of dawn.”

“So early?” Fen turned to look over her shoulder as her maid laid out green stockings and red garters for her. It seemed to her that husband had hardly been around the last two days.

“Everyone’s talking about that business with the northern princess, milady,” said Trudy by way of explanation, and looked around excitedly. “They say, the King do wish he’d married her now, instead of the western Queen.”

Fen almost dropped her sponge. “Surely not,” she said in a startled voice.

“That’s what they do say,” said Trudy. “After all, she’s not given him any heirs, have she, Queen Armenal? Not like good Queen Eleanor.” She sighed.

Fen digested this as ran a dry cloth over her neck and shoulders.

“Do come over by the fire, my lady. You’re a mass of goose-flesh. I can brush your hair in the warm.”

Fen drifted over to the fireplace and Trudy attacked her tangles industriously.

“I wonder why the King does not have his heir at court,” she said aloud. “Is it due to poor health? I had heard the young prince’s constitution is considered delicate like his mother, the old Queen’s.”

Trudy hesitated. “They do say Queen Armenal is not very maternal,” she said, her mouth thinning with disapproval.

Fen wondered. It seemed a little hard to blame it on the Queen. “Lady Linnet did say that the Queen was very good with her daughters yesterday.”

“Oh yes, I daresay,” said Trudy. Her lips pressed firmly together.