“It is not that which pleases me,” I say. I am irritated by her assumption that all I think of is my own safety. But I am always irritated by her these days. She cannot say a word that does not grate on me. Even when I know that this is unfair, I find that the way that she walks into a room sets my teeth on edge. She has a way of putting down her feet, heavily like a woman going to market, a way of carrying her eternal accounts books, a way of being always so busy, so hardworking, so efficient. She is more like a housekeeper than a countess. There is no grace about her. She utterly lacks any elegance.

I know, I know, I am wickedly unfair to blame Bess for lacking the charm of a woman raised in a court and born to greatness. I should remember that she is the woman I married for choice, and she has good looks, good health, and good spirits. It is unfair to complain that she does not have the looks of one of the most beautiful women in the world or the manners of the queen of one of the finest courts in Europe. But we have such a being in our house; such a paragon smiles at me each morning; how can I help but adore her?

“So what pleases you?” Bess asks encouragingly. “This is good news, I think. I expected you would be happy.”

“What pleases me is that I shall be spared his trial.”

“His trial?”

“I am still Lord High Steward of England,” I remind her, a touch sourly, “whatever your friend Cecil thinks of me and would do against me if he could. I am still Lord High Steward and if a peer of the realm is to be tried for treason, then I would be the judge who would sit on his case.”

“I hadn’t thought,” she said.

“No. But if your good friend Cecil had brought my true friend Norfolk to trial for his life, it would have been I who would have been forced to sit with the axe before me and bring in a verdict. I would have had to tell Norfolk, a man I have known from his boyhood, that I found him guilty, when I knew he was innocent, and that he was to be hanged and disemboweled while still alive and cut into pieces. D’you not think I have been dreading this?”

She blinks. “I didn’t realize.”

“No,” I say. “But when Cecil attacks the old lords, this is the consequence. We are all torn by his ambition. Men who have loved each other all their lives are thrown one against the other. Only you and Cecil don’t see this, for you don’t understand that the old lords are as a family of brothers. Newcomers cannot know this. You look for conspiracies; you don’t understand brotherhood.”