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trees. How had she changed so much in just a year?
    As though his mother could read his mind, she leaned in and said softly, “Genevieve was so quick and impatient when she came to me, but she has learnt to control herself and turn her energy to elegance.”
    “You have taught her well, Mother,” William said, and meant it. There did seem to be something of his mother in the way Minuette held herself, as though aware of everyone watching her.
    “She is a good girl. Elizabeth must see to it she remains that way.”
    “Of course she will,” William said sharply, indignant at the thought that Minuette could be anything but entirely good. Mischievous, yes, but never a hint of … whatever his mother was implying. But beneath his denial lurked uneasiness, as he remembered Giles Howard on the staircase earlier. Minuette’s virtue would never falter, but the men around her might not be so cautious. He would have to keep an eye on her.
    The Graces finished their performance in a swirl of white silk. Through the applause, William turned his attention to Eleanor Percy, seated across the room. She was eighteen and newly come to court as an attendant to Lady Rochford. He had been watching her for the last month, at the way she moved as though wearing the thinnest nightdress rather than layers of stiffened fabric, at the way she looked at a man through lowered lashes, all warmth and promise. Tonight he stared at her until her cheeks coloured faintly, but she did no more than flick a single glance his way and catch her lower lip with her teeth—a gesture that made William want to bite it in turn.
    His father had married for the first time at seventeen, but William did not find that idea appealing. Marriage was about politics, and what he wanted at the moment was not a matter for negotiations and treaties. He wanted someone soft and pliable—a woman who would share his bed and his company when convenient, and willingly retreat when not. Eleanor was of the perfect social standing: sufficiently below him that her father and brothers would gladly accept any honours offered while she shared the king’s bed, not so low that he would feel guilty about damaging her future.
    He continued to stare at her until she at last met his gaze fully and smiled—an inviting smile that decided him then and there. He would have to find her a husband. That was a necessity, for he knew that ambitious families still remembered his own mother’s elevation from lady-in-waiting to queen. He could not afford to let the relatives of attractive women dream of a throne.
    He would wed for practicality, and take his pleasures where he could. For all the unorthodoxy of his parents’ marriage, that was the way of kings.
    Elizabeth spent nearly all her waking hours weighed down by the responsibilities of her life: how she should dress, what she should study, whom she should speak to, where she should go.
    Dancing with Robert Dudley teetered on the very edge of those responsibilities, and she was aware of how quickly she could fall over the edge into scandal. Tonight she didn’t care. William was ogling Eleanor Percy, her mother had retired to her chambers, and the French ambassador was busy with Northumberland. To hell with what anyone else thought.
    Robert knew every aspect of her—especially the rebellious, temperamental part, which he delighted in bringing out. And not just in her. Robert seemed born to stir up tempests.
    Tonight he said what everyone else was thinking but was too circumspect to say aloud. “Lady Mary is going to get herself in trouble one of these days. Even a half sister can only defy a king for so long.”
    Elizabeth shrugged, annoyed at having Mary dropped into the conversation. Even absent, her half sister had a dampening effect on everything around her. “William knows perfectly well that Mary will not attend any court function at which my mother is present. He invites her because he must, but he does not care that she does not