In addition to this I have been lending him money to pay for the queen’s keep for the past year, and I have known for the past six months that he won’t be able to repay me this either. The expense of housing and guarding the Queen of Scots has cost him all the rents and revenues of his land, and there is never enough money coming in. To settle his debt to me, to fulfil his marriage contract, he will have to sell land or offer me land instead of the money he should pay me.

He finally realized what a crisis he was in when he could not hold his usual open house at Christmas. He finally realized that he could not go on pouring his fortune at the feet of the Scots queen. When I told him that there was nothing left in the treasure room, no credit available for us in the whole of Derbyshire, he finally saw the disaster that has been building every day for the past three years, and of which I have warned him, every time that we sent out our bill to the queen and received no payment. I have been thinking every day for three years about what we should do about this unbearable expense, every day for the past three years it has nagged at me like a pain, and so I know what I want. His poverty has come as a surprise to him; to me it is an old enemy.

I have not been idle. Indeed, I have deliberately shifted his debt from the moneylenders to myself, securing his borrowings with my own funds, knowing that he would not be able to repay. Knowing what I want. I know what I will settle for, and I know what I will absolutely reject.

I sit on a straight-backed chair, hands in my lap, attentive, as the lawyer stands before me and explains that the earl’s financial position is straitened through no fault of his own. He has had expenses beyond what any lord could bear, in his service to the queen. I bow my head like an obedient wife and listen. My husband looks out the window as if he can hardly bear to hear his folly described.

The lawyer tells me that in view of the earl’s obligations in terms of our marriage contract, and his later obligations from his borrowing from me, he is prepared to make a proposal. My chief steward glances at me. He has been frightened by my loans; I can feel his hopeful look on my face, but I keep my eyes down.