I shall have to sell land on a great scale. The little borrowings and sales I have bodged together since she arrived will no longer suffice. I shall have to raise mortgages. I shall have to enclose and put up the rents for tenants who are already behind in their payments, having wasted the winter in chasing around with the Northern army, which was her fault too. I shall have to levy extra payments on houses that are still missing men—hanged or run away for Mary Stuart. She will force me to be a harsh landlord and I shall get the blame for it. I shall have to take common land away from good villages and enclose it for crops. I shall have to drive people from their fields and make their gardens into sheep runs. I shall wring cash from the land as if it were a damp rag. This is not how to run a good estate. This is not how to be a good landlord. I shall become greedy in my need for money, and they will hate me and blame me for it and say I am a hard landlord and a harsh money-grabbing woman.

And she is not just expensive. She is a danger. One of my servants, John Hall, comes to me, his eyes down but his palm eager. “I thought you should know, my lady. I thought you would want to be informed.”

Will I ever again hear a muttered preamble like this and think it is going to be nothing more than a broken vase? Will I ever get back to the time when I feel only irritation? Now, and forever, I am going to feel my heart pound with dread, waiting for the news that she has escaped or that she has sent out a letter or received a guest who will ruin us.

“What is it?” I ask sharply.

“I thought you would be glad to know I was loyal.”

I itch to slap him. “And you will be rewarded,” I say, though every bribe is just another cost. “What is it?”

“It is the queen,” he says, as if I could not have guessed. “There is a plot to release her. The gentlemen offered me a gold sovereign to bring her to the high moor and they would ride away with her.”

“And she agreed?” I ask.

“I haven’t asked her yet,” he says. “I thought I should come straight to you. I am loyal to you, my lady, whatever bribe I am offered.”

“You shall have two guineas for this,” I promise. “So who are the gentlemen? What are their names?”

“Sir Thomas Gerard is the man,” he says. “But it was his friend met me at the inn, a gentleman called Rolleston. But whether there is a greater man behind them, I don’t know. I know another man who would be glad of the information.”