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“Is it Aunt Alys come back so soon?” Hester asked.
The footmen jumped down from the back, opened the door, and let down the carriage steps. Matthew, still scrubbing flour from his forehead, recoiled when he saw his mother, the Nobildonna, step down from the carriage, shake the creases out of her rich silk skirts, push back the hood from her beautiful face, and smile at their aghast faces. “Allora!” she remarked. “You look as if you had seen a ghost.”
“Signora Madre,” Matthew stammered. “Signora Madre. I thought you went with the queen? Where have you come from?”
“From the royal court of King James, in exile at Paris,” she said, as if it were completely reasonable. “I was with the queen, of course.”
“But Nobildonna, why have you come back?”
She turned to wave the footman to take the many bags into the house. “My dear friend the queen does not need me at her side all the time,” she declared. “In exile, you understand, without a court, on the goodwill of the French… And no money…”
The girls exchanged a hidden look. “You tore yourself away?” Mia prompted.
“From the losing side,” Gabrielle whispered.
Livia turned her confident smile on them. “Of course, I have long admired Princess Mary, the new queen. She will need to know how to go on, she has been away from England for so long! But more than anything, I could not leave my home here! My England! I could never be parted from my only child: my son.”
“Your home?” Matthew queried. “Your England?”
“My son,” she said fondly. “Caro figlio!Where else should I go? I have come home, to live here forever. I shall make a home for you, as your loving mother. I have returned to my beloved home: Fairmile.”
“It’s Foulmire,” Gabrielle challenged her.
“Isn’t it Fairmere?” Hester suggested. “On the gates it says: ‘Fairmere.’?”
“Dear Hester!” She smiled. “I should think I know the name of my own home! It is Fairmile.” She smiled at them, quite indifferent to thehorror on their faces. “It has always been Fairmile. I will put up new stone gates. Heavens! How happy we shall be!”
