I wait till I am alone in my room to open my letters. The one from Bishop Lesley is in code, I shall work on it in the morning, but there is a note from Thomas Howard written in French, and a ring. The sweet man, the tenderhearted man! He has sent me a ring for our betrothal and I slip it on my hand and admire it. It is a diamond, a wonderful stone, cut square, and it shines with a fiery whiteness. It is good enough for a queen; it is good enough for me. I put it to my lips and kiss it for his sake. This man is going to save me, this man is going to restore me to my kingdom, this man is going to love me, and for the first time in my life I will have a lover who has the strength of a man and the breeding of an equal. Not a boy prince, not a half devil like Bothwell. I shall be loved by a husband who has spent his life at courts, who is kin to the monarchs of England, and who wants me and loves me as a woman as well as a queen.

I am glad that this has all been done by me, without even the smallest help from Elizabeth. She is a fool. If she had taken my part when I first came to England, she could have sponsored this marriage and restored me to my throne and I would have been forever in her debt. I would have loved her as her cousin twice over. We would have been friends for life. As it is, I will never forgive her. When I am on my throne again she will know that she has an enemy on her border, and that my friends are the Spanish who support me and the French who are my kin, the Northern lords who have been faithful and the Papists of England who wait for me to inherit and for the good days to come again. My new husband will come to see her as a reluctant friend and an unreliable cousin. I will prevail upon him to forget his loyalty to her and think only of himself and me. We will make a powerful royal couple and together we will free Scotland and make alliances with the great Papist powers. Then she will be sorry that she treated me with suspicion; then she will be sorry not to have treated me like a sister. Then she will sit alone in one of her cold palaces and know that everyone has left her to go to the court of her heir.