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wondered if you were quite well.”
    â€œI am well enough. It was just very crowded in the gallery. Please, do come sit with me for a moment,” Lady Catherine said. Her face looked rather hopeful, as if she much desired some distraction from whatever her sad thoughts were. “If my royal cousin can spare you.”
    Kate nodded, and slowly walked toward the fireplace. “She is with the Spanish ambassador right now, of course,” she said, thinking of how Lady Catherine had just been in conversation with the ambassador’s secretary.
    Lady Catherine laughed, an echo of her usual distinctive silvery giggle that had often sounded in the privy chamber. She jumped up to tug another stool closer to the fire, disturbing the dog at her feet. “Everyone is always so very busy this time of year. I never really noticed it before. It’s so difficult to find a quiet spot like this one.”
    Kate carefully lowered herself onto the stool, watching Lady Catherine as she settled back onto her seat. She still smiled, but her sky blue eyes were shadowed. “Do you not enjoy the Yuletide, Lady Catherine?”
    â€œOh, aye. It’s usually one of my favorite times of the year! When I was a girl, at our house at Bradgate, my parents would have the loveliest parties. Dancing all night, with games for all the children, sleigh rides, fireworks. My sister Jane always berated us for having such elaborate celebrations, I fear. She was always buried in her books, and wanted only to think of churchly doings. But I loved the parties, too. My mother was always so elegant, the house so bright and full of noise and warmth. . . .” A flash of pain suddenly creased her brow, and she shook her head. “We were all so merry then, my parents and my sisters, our whole household. Now there is only Mary and me, and my poor stepfather, who is sunk into grief. How is that possible?”
    Kate thought of her own father, of how they hadalways been their own small family, and yet there had been so much loss for them both. Though not as much as Lady Catherine had endured. “There is your cousin the queen, Lady Catherine.”
    â€œAh, yes. The queen.” Her smile turned brittle, and she shook her head again, as if driving away the past—or the painful present. A lock of golden hair fell from beneath the gilded edge of her black headdress, and she tucked it back. “I know
you
must know something of what I feel, Mistress Haywood. I hear it so often in your music, such emotion, so very many things we poor humans can’t say in mere words.”
    Lady Catherine had surprised Kate yet again. “If I could not write such things in music, pour them out in the notes, I think my heart would burst. It would be much too full,” she said honestly.
    Lady Catherine nodded eagerly. “My sister Jane, she was immensely clever. She could express herself in her writing, using words as I never could. But I fear my heart is not as wise and cool as hers was. As cool as the queen can be. Sometimes I feel I will start screaming with it all, and never be able to stop. A song can help me hold it all in. But now . . .”
    Kate swallowed hard. Lady Catherine, who had always seemed so impetuous, so very conscious of her high rank and all it entailed, had captured so many of her own feelings about music. “You must miss your mother now, Lady Catherine.”
    â€œI do, so very, very much. No one understood me as she did. The worst of it is, I know I shall never haveanother friend as my mother was to me.” Lady Catherine’s eyes shimmered brightly, and she blinked the tears back. “Tell me, Mistress Haywood, do you perchance have a sweetheart?”
    And there was that surprise again. Kate had certainly not expected such a question. “I fear I am too busy for such things.”
    â€œAs are we all.” Lady Catherine’s smile turned teasing, her tears dashed away. “And