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courtiers step aside. They bow and curtsy, and some of the servants even call blessings.
    I feel like a fraud. Like I’m playing a game. Pretending to be regal. Pretending to be elevated. I’m just a little girl in nice clothes. Married, but not married. Daughter of a duke. Wife of a duke. But really . . . nothing.
    Just like Mother said, the day I told her I’d agreed to marry the king’s son.
    “You will always be subject to the king’s will,” she said. “Not a Howard. Certainly not a Stafford. And in the end you will amount to nothing.”
    I’ve always had my mother to tell me who I am. Or at least how I should act. Stand up straighter. Walk more slowly. Keep your head still. Keep your head up.
Keep your damn head up!
    I snap my head up. I’ve been watching my feet, as I did as a child.
    I wish I knew what I was doing.
    I wish someone could tell me. Someone besides my mother. I can’t ask my father—I can’t risk him thinking that I’m stupid. That I’m not worthy of this honor. I can’t tell Fitz. I almost laugh at the very idea.
    I glance over my shoulder. Madge is frowning.
    I can’t ask her, either. She thinks all my problems are solved already. She may be my dearest friend, but this has already started to come between us. This and my brother.
    Even before we reach the queen’s watching chamber, I hear the buzz from her rooms. It fizzes down the stairs and hums on the landing. My footsteps slow of their own accord. I can picture the crowd already. The press of doublets and sleeves, feet tangled in skirts that aren’t their own. The inability to escape stray elbows or rank breath.
    Madge reaches forward and squeezes my hand. Only she knows that I’m not comfortable entering a crowded room. I gather up my courage and my skirts and walk through the open doors.
    The room is a riot of color. Walls and windows and courtiers decked in greater finery than usual. In spite of my wedding bodice, I feel underdressed.
    “Happy Christmas!” Henry Norris cries, and then announces my presence to the room. “The Duchess of Richmond and Somerset.”
    The entire assembly sinks to the floor.
    Except the queen, of course.
    My breath leaves me. “Mistress Shelton.” Norris is bent in reverence over Madge’s hand. Her face is lit like a candelabrum. She’s truly beautiful in her kingfisher dress.
    It’s no wonder I get lost in a crowd.
    “Come,” Madge whispers in my ear. “Let’s play that we’re at court.”
    She sweeps me into a dance of her own devising, improvising to the flow of the music, with much swirling of skirts. Her movements are extravagant and spontaneous, and she doesn’t care a whit what others are saying or thinking or judging. Or that they’re laughing.
    She whips me around and lets go, and in my dizziness I spin directly into a girl who has just walked in the door. She is very tall and thin, with a long, narrow nose and a swath of rich mahogany hair showing beneath her hood. Her gray eyes are sharp and her gaze penetrating.
    I’ve met her before. She’s Margaret Douglas, the king’s niece. Daughter of his older sister and a Scottish earl.
    She used to live in the household of Lady Mary—the king’s daughter with Katherine of Aragon. I’d heard she might be moved to court, and here she is. In June, during Anne Boleyn’s coronation, Margaret had worn an expression of detachment. I’d thought at the time that she didn’t accept Anne as queen. Now I wonder if she is just proud.
    A moment stretches into eternity as we gaze at each other. She does not curtsy.
    Neither do I. I don’t know if I’m supposed to.
    Margaret is in the line of succession to the throne. I am the wife of the king’s only son. By law, the king’s children should inherit based on sex and birth order. But Fitz is the son of the king’s mistress, not his wife. Lady Mary, the king’s oldest daughter, was declared illegitimate and stricken from the succession when the king’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon