Innumerable pounds raked in by nobleman’s wife (9)
I believe the answer is:
countless
'innumerable' is the definition.
(I know that innumerable can be written as countless)
'by nobleman's wife' is the wordplay.
'by' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'nobleman' becomes 'count' (count is a kind of nobleman).
'wife' becomes 'less' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'count'+'less' is 'COUNTLESS'.
'pounds raked in' is the link.
I am not very happy about this link. Some or all of it may be part of another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for countless that I've seen before include "Legion seeming to be" , "Innumerable" , "Very many" , "not so important" , "Infinite" .)