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forwards, and saw her curb her instinct to flinch away. He took her firmly at the shoulders and kissed one warm, smooth cheek and then the other. The perfume of her hair and the warm female smell of her body came to him, and he felt desire pulse in his groin and at his temples. Quickly he stepped back and let her go.
    “You are welcome to England,” he said. He cleared his throat. “You will forgive my impatience to see you. My son too is on his way to visit you.”
    “I beg your pardon,” she said icily, speaking in perfectly phrased French. “I was not informed until a few moments ago that Your Grace was insisting on the honor of this unexpected visit.”
    Henry fell back a little from the whip of her temper. “I have a right . . .”
    She shrugged, an absolutely Spanish gesture. “Of course. You have every right over me.”
    At the ambiguous, provocative words, he was again aware of his closeness to her: of the intimacy of the small room, the tester bed hung with rich draperies, the sheets invitingly turned back, the pillow still impressed with the shape of her head. It was a scene for ravishment, not for a royal greeting. Again he felt the secret thud-thud of lust.
    “I’ll see you outside,” he said abruptly, as if it were her fault that he could not rid himself of the flash in his mind of what it would be like to have this ripe little beauty that he had bought. What would it be like if he had bought her for himself, rather than for his son?
    “I shall be honored,” she said coldly.
    He got himself out of the room briskly enough and nearly collided with Prince Arthur, hovering anxiously in the doorway.
    “Fool,” he remarked.
    Prince Arthur, pale with nerves, pushed his blond fringe back from his face, stood still, and said nothing.
    “I’ll send that duenna home at the first moment I can,” the king said. “And the rest of them. She can’t make a little Spain in England, my son. The country won’t stand for it, and I damned well won’t stand for it.”
    “People don’t object. The country people seem to love the princess,” Arthur suggested mildly. “Her escort says—”
    “Because she wears a stupid hat. Because she is odd: Spanish, rare. Because she is young and—” he broke off “—pretty.”
    “Is she?” he gasped. “I mean: is she?”
    “Haven’t I just gone in to make sure? But no Englishman will stand for any Spanish nonsense once they get over the novelty. And neither will I. This is a marriage to cement an alliance, not to flatter her vanity. Whether they like her or not, she’s marrying you. Whether you like her or not, she’s marrying you. Whether she likes it or not, she’s marrying you. And she’d better get out here now or I won’t like her and that will be the only thing that can make a difference.”
    *     *     *
    I have to go out. I have won only the briefest of reprieves and I know he is waiting for me outside the door to my bedchamber and he has demonstrated, powerfully enough, that if I do not go to him, then the mountain will come to Mohammed and I will be shamed again.
    I brush Doña Elvira aside as a duenna who cannot protect me now, and I go to the door of my rooms. My servants are frozen, like slaves enchanted in a fairy tale by this extraordinary behavior from a king. My heart hammers in my ears, and I know a girl’s embarrassment at having to step forwards in public but also a soldier’s desire to let battle be joined, the eagerness to know the worst, to face danger rather than evade it.
    Henry of England wants me to meet his son, before his traveling party, without ceremony, without dignity, as if we were a scramble of peasants. So be it. He will not find a princess of Spain falling back for fear. I grit my teeth. I smile as my mother commanded me.
    I nod to my herald, who is as stunned as the rest of my companions. “Announce me,” I order him.
    His face blank with shock, he throws open the door. “The Infanta Catalina, Princess of