I do not sleep that night. In the morning, I am kneeling in the chapel, rosary wrapped around my fingers, when I feel someone next to me. I flinch, turning.
It is Richard, and I must look like a hunted animal, for he puts his hands before his body as if in surrender. "I am sorry. I did not mean to startle you."
He is dark where his cousin was fair, slim where the prince was broad. His features are fine, delicate. There is no reason to fear him. His lips turn down, and he frowns. "Are you happy here, Anne?"
My breath leaves me, and it is almost a laugh. "Happy, being shut away like a prisoner?"
"Then it is as I feared. I believe that George means to keep you until your mother dies. In possession of both you and Isabel, the entirety of your mother's fortune will pass to him."
"Then it is hopeless."
"No, Anne." He takes my hands in his, and his touch is warm, and I will myself not to shrink from him. "George locks you up because he is afraid that you will run away if he grants you the smallest bit of freedom. Make him think that you are content here. Make him believe that you will stay, that you are obedient to him and he has nothing to fear. He will allow you to rejoin the court, I am sure of it. Then, when the time is right, I will appeal to my brother the king and ask him to ensure that you are freed."
"The king will listen to you?"
His smile is confident. "I am his most loyal and beloved brother. I fought with him when George sided against us. I have led his armies since I was a boy. He will listen to me, Anne, and he will see you freed and restored to your rank, to your fortune."
I stare at him. "Why would you do this for me?"
His eyes are dark and glowing with promises. "Why do you think?"
My heart is pounding. Why do you think? Why do you think?
I look at him and I think that I should like to know that he cares for me. I think that I should like to come to him from a position of power and grace and austerity, and have the freedom to be coquettish; to tease him and flirt with him and deny him, as the queen did the king, as so many carefree young girls have done. I think that I should like to bring him to his knees, begging for a touch, for my favor, and then laugh and tell him that I must think upon it.
But I am not like that. Nor was Isabel. All our lives we were our father's creatures, designed to be shoved up towards royal men, and made to scheme and connive for every touch, every word, every scrap of attention. And now I am brought low, and Richard must stoop to help me, my champion, my savior, and I must take whatever he gives me with downcast eyes and humility.
"I must go. Isabel expects me." For a moment I think that he will reach for me, but he does not, and I scurry from the pew and leave him. I feel my hair ornament come loose as I flee, and it falls to the ground. It is Isabel's, borrowed. It doesn't suit me. I hurry on without picking it up.
—-
They are all at dinner that night when there is a knock on my door, and I open it, expecting a servant. Instead, Richard stands before me. The loose door latch slips beneath my shaking fingers.
"Your Grace. I– I cannot receive visitors. I am not dressed."
His gaze flits down. I know that he can only see part of me, and the door is barely opened, and I am wearing a nightgown and a shawl, but I feel naked, exposed. His eyes travel back to my face. "Of course, Lady Anne. Forgive me. I shall wait here while you change."
There is a command in his words, and he veils it, but it sets my teeth on edge. I shut the door. I take my time dressing, imagining him outside, waiting. I consider the dress that I had worn that day, but ignore it in favor of one that is a deep, burnished red. It is not made of fine cloth, and I would pale beside the queen, but I know that it brings out the cream of my skin and the hazel tint of my eyes. I cannot fully lace the back on my own, so I do as much as I can and then wrap my shawl around me again, hiding the exposed part of my chemise.
When I open the door again, I half expect him to have gone, but he is there, and he sweeps inside, cloak billowing behind him. Without waiting for an invitation, he sits in a chair near the fire.
"I have no wine to offer you."
He looks up at me, and I think that he is startled by my shortness, and I tingle with satisfaction as his lips part.
"I have no need of any, my lady. I came to return this." He reaches beneath his cloak, into his doublet, over his heart, and pulls forth the shining hair ornament that I had dropped.
I sink into the chair opposite him and take it from his hands. I take care that our fingers do not brush. If he touches me here, in the privacy of my rooms, with my hair loose and my dress half-laced, I think I shall burn until I am ash. "Thank you. You did not need to show me such kindness." I think of the way it had been tucked over his heart. "Indeed, it is Isabel's, and not mine."
"Then I congratulate myself doubly, for saving you from her wrath." His eyes are twinkling but I stiffen at the idea of being even deeper in his debt. "Anne, my reasons for visiting you tonight are twofold."
It is agony, this pause. I wonder if he knows, if he does it purposefully.
"I wanted to ask you about your late husband."
It is like being dunked in a bath of ice water. "What do you wish to know?"
He leans forward. That is the Richard I know, eager, inquisitive, taking what he can with all the luck and confidence of a York boy.
"Were you well-treated in his house?"
I will not tremble. I will not. I think of my muffled cries, and a heavy weight atop me, and little stones digging into my chest when he took me in the gardens. I think of the bruises on my wrists and the pain, as though I had been stabbed through. "Yes, my lord Duke. I was treated as befits a lady of my station."
He makes a sound of disgust and rises. He paces before the fire. "You think me so weak that you must conceal this from me? Hide the suffering that I know you endured at his hands?"
"You do not know that. You cannot know that."
"You forget," he says. "You forget that he was my cousin, that I was raised hearing tales of him and met him in combat and saw him for the monster that he was. Anne, I once saw him rape a girl in the midst of battle. She was young, a village creature, and he held her down and when she cried out and shoved at him he took pleasure in it." His voice is rough and I do not know what to do with this, with the sudden rawness of the stoic young Duke I know.
"I wonder that you allowed him to continue."
"I was too late. But rest assured, dear lady, I remembered that girl when I met my cousin on the battlefield for the last time. Though she was not the first in my thoughts." His gaze burns on my skin, burns, and I think: he hints that he was the man who killed my husband, and yet I would still fall to my knees for him if he asked it of me. "You flinched from my touch today. I need to know if he is the reason."
"Why?" I whisper hoarsely.
"Because Edward has tasked me with arranging his burial, and if you came to any harm at his hands, I would see him dragged through the streets and buried in a pauper's grave."
Our eyes meet. In his face, I see barely leashed anger, and something else that looks like fear, though it cannot be so, for a son of York is never afraid. I drop my gaze. "Do what you think best, Richard. No treatment, the one you named or another, shall receive any sanction from me."
I hear his sharp intake of breath and he knows, he has identified the vague confirmation, all I dare to give. I cannot look at his face. I look at his hands instead, seeing the strain of them, the whites of his knuckles. He has calloused hands, warrior's hands, strong and steady. There is a ring on the smallest finger of his left hand. I wonder what his hands would feel like on me, if they would be gentle or rough, if the metal of the ring would kiss my skin. I think that he must be looking at me with pity, this girl who starts at the smallest movement, that he must think I am icy, made of glass, when all I want is to be shaken and shaped and remade in his hands.
For a long moment, there is only the sound of our breath and the crackling fire. Then he speaks. "You must tell me, Anne. If I ever do something that startles you, or frightens you, or makes you remember… You must tell me."
This is what I feared. When my husband moved atop me, when I shut my eyes and willed myself to leave my body, to shut him out, to become as limp as a doll, as a corpse, I feared this. I imagined Richard's face and I thought that he would never touch me if he knew: not out of disgust, but out of kindness. He is a gentle man, though many would laugh to hear me say it. Brutal to his enemies, but soft with his horses, his falcon, his family, with all the things he loves. And now he is being soft with me, and I hate it.
"I would not have you treat me like damaged property," I say.
He inclines his head. "That is not how I think of you, Anne. You have lived through horrors that many of my men have not faced, with more courage than any of them could muster." He pauses. "But I mourn the fact that you suffered. You should have been given into the hands of one who was gentle, who would worship you. You deserved that. You deserve it still." He stands. "I must bid you goodnight. The evening meal was half over when I left, and your ladies will soon be returning."
When I shut the door behind him, when I shed the dress and comb my hair, when I quickly send my returning ladies away, when I slip into my bed, I hear his low voice: gentle and worship you, over and over, and I think of warm, rough hands, swinging a sword, picking up a hair ornament, sliding over me.
