I nod. ‘They are punishing us.’

‘They are destroying us!’

‘We can find the money,’ I say. ‘And we are banished from court, but we don’t care, dowe? We can go together to Calais?’

He shakes his head. ‘I’m not taking you there. I’m not taking you into danger. The Earl of Suffolk has offered me a property where you can live. He has taken most of your wealth as a fine, and he is prepared to take the rest as a rent. He has said he will lease his manor at Grafton to us. It’s not much of a favour since we cannot afford to pay him. But he knows I want it. It is near my home, I have had my eye on it since I was a boy.’

‘I will sell my jewels,’ I say. ‘And books if we have to. I have lands that we can borrow on, some things that we can sell to raise the rent. This is the price of our life together.’

‘I have reduced you to the position of a squire’s wife with a nobleman’s debt,’ he says furiously. ‘You should hate me. I have betrayed you.’

‘How much do you love me?’ I counter. I take his hands in mine and I hold them to my heart. I can feel him catch his breath at my touch. He pauses and looks at me.

‘More than life itself, you know that.’

‘If you had to put a price on it?’

‘A king’s ransom. A fortune.’

‘Then consider, husband mine, that we have a bargain, for our marriage has cost us only a thousand pounds.’

His face lightens. ‘Jacquetta, you are my joy. You are worth tens of thousands.’

‘Then pack your things for we can leave court this afternoon,’ I say.

‘This afternoon? Do you want us to flee from disgrace?’

‘I want us to be at your home tonight.’

He hesitates for a moment and then his smile breaks out, as he realises what I am saying. ‘We will spend our first night together as a married couple? We will go to our bedroom as husband and wife? And tomorrow we will go to breakfast together openly? Ah, Jacquetta, this is the start of everything.’ He bows his head and kisses my hands. ‘I love you,’ he says again. ‘And please God, you will always think that you have a good bargain for our thousand pounds.’

GRAFTON, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE,

AUTUMN 1436–1439

I do think it a good bargain. We raise the money for the fine by borrowing against my dower lands, and then we borrow more to buy the manor house at Grafton from the Earl of Suffolk. For all his sly smiles he does not refuse to sell to the disgraced duchess and her squire. He wants our friendship so that we can be his allies in the country as he gains power at court. Richard goes to Calais and prepares the garrison for a siege as my kinsman, the faithless Duke of Burgundy, marches against his former allies. The great lords of England, the Earl of Mortmain and the Duke of York, turn out for their country and Richard holds Calais for them. Finally Humphrey, the Duke of Gloucester, sets sail for Calais and earns much credit for the saving of the town, though, as my husband points out, the siege was already defeated before the king’s uncle came in with his standard flying.