My new sister-in-law, Katherine Dudley, is a vain thing. They have given her to Henry Hastings, a highly educated scholar and courtier. He looks at his little bride bobbing up and down with a patient smile that will soon wear thin. My sister Katherine’s husband, Henry Lord Herbert, the young son of the Earl of Pembroke, never says one word to anyone throughout the whole two days. He is as white as a corpse and so sick that he can hardly stand. They say that they dragged him from his deathbed though he swore he could not walk to the altar. He is only fifteen years old. I hope that he does not make my sister a widow before she is a wife. Certainly, they cannot consummate the marriage while she is so young and he is so ill, so she is spared the ordeal that they force on me. These three unions that cannot be consummated only make me feel worse. I am the only girl who has to be both a bride and a wife, in deed as well as in name.

“I don’t see why you have such a long face,” Katherine, my foolish sister, says. “You knew that if you were married you’d have to be fully married. It would be just the same for me if he were not ill.”

“And me,” Mary says.

“It wouldn’t be the same for you,” I say to Mary.

“I don’t see why not,” she says stubbornly.

I am too exhausted to argue with her. “And you’re too young,” I say to Katherine.

“No, I’m not,” she says. “And anyway, you certainly aren’t.” She gives a little tweak to the kerchief I wear over my hair to indicate that I am now a married woman. “Come on, you’re to be first to go to your wedding chamber. Lucky you.”

I feel unfairly forced, as my mother and new mother-in-law and all their ladies appear at the door and then come with me to the bridal chamber, watch as my ladies undress me, and then abruptly leave me with my new husband.

It is not that he is unpleasant, not in any way. He is a handsome young man, fair and with a pleasing open face and bright blue eyes. He is far taller than I am. The top of my head does not even reach to his shoulder, and I have to crane my neck to look up at him, but for all his height he is light on his feet—a good dancer, they say—and he rides, hunts, jousts, just as he should. He has been raised in a godly household and is well read. If we were not married, I could say nothing against him but that he looks to his mother for every single thing. The big baby looks at her before he even opens his mouth, before he sits or stands.