You are my heart. Even if you are a broken heart

And – I think you know, don’t you? – that I love you, Anne.’I feel as if I have been living in a loveless world for too long. The last tender face I saw was my father’s when he sailed for England. ‘You do? Truly?’‘I do.’ He rises to his feet and pulls me up to stand beside him. My chin comes to his shoulder, we are both dainty, long-limbed, coltish: well-matched. I turn my face into his jacket. ‘Will you marry me?’ he whispers.‘Yes,’ I say.

The tears in my eyes are now running down my cheeks at the thought that I have been his wife and his bedfellow, his companion and his duchess, and even now, though he is near to death, still he does not love me. He has never loved me. He never will love me.

I am, at this moment, what I have always been to him: an object of beauty. He has never loved me as a woman.

I turn around from the window and for the first time I see him... It is Richard, smiling at my surprise.I run to him, without thinking what I am doing. I run to the first friendly face that I have seen since Christmas, and in a moment I am in his arms and he is holding me tightly and kissing my face, my closed eyes, my smiling mouth, kissing me till I am breathless and have to pull away from him.

But Anne, do you love him?" I asked curiously.The curve of her hood hid all but the corner of her smile. "I am a fool to own it, but I am in a fever for his touch.