Prologue

      Katherine’s fingers grasped the pale, uneven trunk of the beech tree. Laughing, she braced her body to stop her descent down the grassy slope, her grip slipping on the thin strips of peeling bark.

      She turned back to catch her friend’s hand.

      In fits of giggles, Margaret fell against the tree too.

      “Shhh … ” Eleanor whispered, her fingers pressing to her lips as she struggled to tame her own intemperate humour. “They will hear us.” Eleanor was Margaret’s younger cousin.

      More giggles erupted from the large group of younger girls behind them. Eleanor was the most boisterous of them, though.

      Looking across her shoulder, Katherine smiled.

      Katherine was the outsider here. The odd one out. A Spencer. All the other girls were the Duke of Pembroke’s grandchildren. Katherine was nothing compared to them. Her adopted father was a mere lowly squire. But Katherine had grown up amongst this family. These girls were more sisterly to her than her own sister. Her brother Phillip was John Harding’s friend and John was another of the Duke’s grandchildren, the eldest, and his heir.

      One day John would own the land they stood on, and a dozen other estates. He’d be rich.

      John. His name stilled Katherine’s heart and slowed her breathing as a secret longing welled inside her.

      She no longer felt like laughing, she clung to the tree, her palms pressing against the trunk as her gaze reached through the veil of branches and leaves that stirred gently on a warm summer breeze.

      “Can you see them?” Caroline, one of Margaret’s younger sisters, whispered.

      “What are they doing?” Margaret leant forwards, looking over Katherine’s shoulder.

      “Swimming,” Eleanor gasped with another giggle. “They’re naked.”

      The girls about Katherine broke into fits of laughter again, their fingers pressing over their mouths.

      “Hush,” Heather, Margaret’s older sister, who was the eldest of the girls, urged them to be silent. She was eight and ten. She had already curtsied to the Queen. Her father was an heir to a duke too. All the other girls were the daughters of dukes or earls. Katherine loved them all, but even so she wore the weight of her lower birth as prominently as her second-hand scarlet cloak. She stood out.

      “We should not have followed,” Heather said

      “Papa, will kill me,” Eleanor laughed, breathlessly pressing her fingers against her chest.

      “And Grandfather will kill John,” Margaret whispered.

      The girls looked at one another as Katherine looked about them all. John was their pattern card. All his younger cousins followed him like shadows, emulating everything he did. They were all mesmerised by him. But Katherine’s feelings were much more than just awe. She loved John, secretly, but without hope or expectation. When she was with him her heart ached and raced, and well… She did not know how to explain it.

      The