June 1485

Richard met Anne's eye as they squared off in his solar, his face granite.

"You're going to Burgundy and there's an end to it. I'll order you if I must – though God knows I'd rather not do that to my own wife - but you are going to Burgundy."

"Richard, I ought to be here and you know it," Anne lifted her chin, her usually mild blue eyes flashing with a hint of her father's steel, "I am your Queen, I am carrying your heir. You cannot deny that were I to ride with you, you'd make a far more credible showing with the lords. You'd be offering them a future more tangible than the upstart Henry Tudor ever could."

Richard looked Anne up and down. Her six-month belly was pronounced now, straining at the seams of her rich red brocade gown.

"You'll want to get Constanza to add some more panels to that dress," he commented absently, wondering with half his mind how she could actually stand against the weight of it. She was so slight apart from the bulge at her midriff.

"Richard!" Anne protested, "Stop changing the subject! You do this every time we discuss this!"

"Stop resisting me then," Richard snapped, "I've written to Meg, telling her to expect you within the month. You're going and that's that!"

"Oh no, I am not!" Anne tossed her head, her fine honey hair flying out behind her. It was a gesture far more suited to her young nieces or her more charismatic older sister, the late Duchess of Clarence. It was something she only ever did in a temper.

"I can't lose you!" Suddenly the words came easily. Richard flung them at his wife like hunting spears. She froze.

Sensing he had her attention, more keenly than he had possibly ever had it before, Richard exhaled, reaching out to her, though they were too far apart to touch.

"I can't lose you," he repeated, "I can't lose you and I can't risk our boy. If you are here, in England, when Tudor lands, which you know our scouts are saying he could do any day now, then I won't be able to give my full thought to the campaign against him. Not if I have to keep you safe as well. I need to know you'll be safe, that my sister will look after you. Please. Don't fight me anymore. Please."

"My sister lost her child, Richard." Like Richard, Anne seemed to let her anger go in a great rush, replacing it with exhaustion as she slumped against the table, her belly spilling out across the polished wood surface. "The last time a woman in my family went to sea six months pregnant, it was my sister Bella and we lost the child in the seas outside Calais. Don't ask it of me, please."

There was a real, raw grief in Anne's words, and Richard's heart clenched at the sight of her, barely holding herself upright against the strain of the whole situation. He crossed the room and put his arms around her, cupping her belly as best he could.

"I know," he said softly, "I know, and I am sorry, truly. I wouldn't ask it of you if I didn't have to."

"Why can't I just go into sanctuary? Like Elizabeth did?"

A biting retort sprang to Richard's lips, but he forced it back. Anne was scared. She was doing everything she could to support him. She did not need him to be sarcastic. Not now.

"Elizabeth was lucky," he replied at last, "Elizabeth was lucky in the fact that the Lancastrian King Henry was too pious for his own good. He'd never have allowed his soldiers to take a woman and her children out of sanctuary, no matter who they were. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for his great-nephew and I will not risk you like that."

"Yet you'd risk me on the seas."

There was nothing Richard could say to that. Besides, he had a feeling Anne didn't want him to say anything. Her voice was too bleak to garner a response.

They stood together for several moments. At last, Anne turned in his arms, grunting with the effort.

She put her hand to his stubbled cheek.

"If you really want me to. If you are truly asking this of me, then how can I deny you? You ask so little of me, Richard, considering who you are. How can I deny you?"

"You'll go?" Richard couldn't keep the hope from leaping in his voice.

"How can I deny you?" Anne repeated, pressing her hand into his skin so hard it almost hurt, "All I ask, husband, is that you will pray for me and for our child, as I will pray for you."

A whirl of conflicting emotions knotted in Richard's throat. He had to swallow hard as he answered.

"Always," he murmured, reaching up with one hand to push her hood aside and bending his head to kiss the crown of hers, "Always."

Richard longed to send his wife away with all the pomp and circumstance that befitted her rank, but the twin circumstances of the country being in dire defensive readiness and her advanced pregnancy made that impossible. Instead, he had to content himself with sending her away with a small contingent of ladies, sailing under her father's old banner of the bear and ragged staff for safety.

So keen was his urgency to get her away, now that she had finally agreed, that the sun was barely up, despite it being the height of summer, when they stood together on the shore at Dover for what they both knew might well be the final time.

He glanced over his shoulder to John, who was just seventeen and the newly-created Captain of Calais, "I'm looking to you to keep her safe, John of Gloucester," he barked, hiding his trepidation at their parting in angry bluster.

Fortunately, John knew him well enough by now not to take his sharp tone personally. He nodded, "Of course, my Lord Father. I'd expect nothing less. God be with you."

"And you, my Lord of Gloucester," Richard replied, before clapping the young man on the shoulder and turning to the ladies clustered about Anne.

"Kate, Constanza, I look to you to have the greatest care for the Queen. My sister the Dowager Duchess will aid you where she can, no doubt, but she does not know my Anne as you do, and you've an arduous journey ahead of you. Take care of her, and of my son. That goes for all of you," he continued, raising his voice so that the other ladies could hear his words over the whipping of the wind.

They all nodded and curtsied, but it was Kate, his nineteen-year-old daughter, who knelt before him.

"I ask for your blessing, Father," she whispered.

Richard smiled down at her.

"You have it, Kate, as always," he responded, laying a hand briefly on the top of her hood before gesturing to her to rise and kissing her forehead, "Godspeed."

She nodded and stepped back, ushering the other ladies back with her so as to give Richard some semblance of privacy to say goodbye to his wife.

For a moment, he simply stared at her, drinking her in, trying to commit every whorl of her features to memory.

"Anne…," he began, before giving anything he might want to say to her up as a lost cause. He sank to his knees before her, as Kate had just done to him.

No words passed between them as she laid one hand fleetingly on his bent head, as he took her other hand between both of his own and kissed it. A passionate glance passed between them as he lifted his head and that was enough.

"You'd better go. Godspeed," he said huskily.

"God be with you, Richard," Anne answered.

Releasing her hand, he let her turn to take John's arm and proceed up the gangplank of her ship.

He stood as if turned to stone, watching as the anchors were weighed, the ropes cast off and the sails unfurled. He didn't take his eyes from the ship until the last speck of it had vanished over the horizon. How could he? It was carrying his greatest earthly treasure. He'd be damned if he'd let it out of his sight a moment sooner than he had to.

When he turned his back at last, then, it was not as a husband or as a father. It was a King. A King preparing to defend his realm against all comers.