Your furious assaults at unseasonable hours, my sadness and want of rest, have now made it known to many that we are in cross discourse. There must be amendment in your behavior toward me. The best remedy for this I shall tell you with my tongue. But to ease my grief, tell me that you never think to hold me but by love. I told you two or three times that you may lead me by the heart, not the nose. Let me not apprehend that you disdain me or that any of your former affection is cooled. Hold me by the heart and you may build upon me as a rock. I shall constantly show you affection and allow no other to rise in degree to even a twentieth of the favor I show you. Your good and heartily humble behavior will wash out of my heart all past grievances, yet never shall I pardon myself for raising a man so high as pierces my ears with such speeches as you have given me.

Do not you and your father-in-law hedge in the whole Court such that it depends upon you? I have set down my position, make of me what you please, either the best master and truest friend, or, if you cause me to call you ingrate, no earthly plague shall be worse than my wrath.

Frankie looked up and pointed out the last line, to be sure I had read it. Her face was flushed and I saw in it pain as well as fear. She left the letter on the window seat and walked over to her husband. Despite the anger he had shown, she curled her arms around him.

“My love,” she said, “you are part of my family now.”

I could not see what comfort lay in having a mother-in-law who despised him and a guileless father-in-law, but Carr rested his head against Frankie’s and I understood that he did not love the King most as a man and bedfellow, but as the father who had protected him since birth, when his own father had died fighting for James’s mother. The King’s admiration for Villiers was to Carr the agony of being cast aside for another son judged worthier.