Howard approaches. “The brilliance of Elbenese humour is that you will never know.”
“Well, that sounds like a recipe for anxiety.”
Florin’s expression turns thoughtful a moment later.
“I think you are a good person too,” he says.
“I try to be.”
“Do you believe in true love?”
The question is so unexpected that Howard stutters, worried she has given him the wrong impression. He would not be the first man to declare himself when she had not meant for him to develop feelings. Usually she would take pride in such unintended seduction, but this – this would be awkward and counterproductive. The other queens would talk about her as some harlot. Florin holds out his hands, placatingly.
“Not you, Your Majesty. We barely know each other.”
“Oh,” she says. Then, “Oh,” with more relief.
“I speak of another. An Elbenese lady whom I loved. Love. She always spoke in such a way, so I never knew if she was teasing me or praising me.”
Howard thinks of Henry, and her stomach twists painfully. “That sounds … intoxicating.”
His face lights up. “Yes. That is the word for it. But intoxicating is not always a good thing, is it?”
“No.”
Howard does not want to have this conversation, but Florin is lost in his own rumination, and she is not sure that it would be right to break him out of it. For trust is born of familiarity, is it not? And she needs him to trust her.
“This lady – will you find her again?” she asks.
Florin shrugs, his eyes downcast. “I do not think she is alive.”
“The ship,” she guesses.
“The ship, yes.”
She thinks of the way he laughed when she told him she was a queen, and she makes another guess.
“Henry’s sister. Cecilia.”
He looks up at her, eyes wide. “How did you know?”
“She is alive, Florin,” Howard says, grasping his hand. “My friends have her in their custody. But she is alive, and unharmed.”
His reaction is fascinating. It reminds her, in a strange way, of Boleyn in her final moments – the way she had stood on the edge of that cliff, poised between victory and hope and the dregs of adoration, and then resigned herself to what must come next.
“You wish to go to her,” Howard ventures.
Florin laughs. “No,” he says. “And yes.”
“Please do not betray me.” Howard removes her hand from his and wraps her arms around herself. Her chest is tight. Cleves was right. She has been so foolish.
Florin reaches for her. “Oh, Katheryn. We both of us have trusted the wrong people in the past, I think.”
“Yes.”
“I have been thinking a lot about love, since before I even stepped foot on that cursed ship. I thought for the longest time that the kind of love that can survive deep, deep hurt must be the truest kind of love.”
Howard thinks of Henry, and then she thinks of her father.
