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He blinked, observing that now there was a shared view of what mattered to them—that now they were a couple. “Well, anyway,” he said uncertainly. “I don’t look for Sir James’s estate, and I know of no other.”
“They do, though,” she said as a thought struck her. “The women. They are continually speaking of the place where they lived. In the tidelands, what do they call it, Foulmire? I always thought it sounded completely vile.”
“Could I get a house there?” he asked, startled.
She shrugged. “If you wanted it, I could discover if there was a royal manor that we might get.”
“It’s the only place I would want! Mother Alinor could live there! She has always wanted to return, she’s never even gone back for a visit. It’s her home, her childhood home.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I offer you the chance of any royal manor in England and you want a house in a sea of mud so an old lady can live there?”
He did not hear the sarcasm in her voice. “Yes! Yes! It would be to repay their kindness to me. She’s been like a mother to me, she and Ma. If I could get a house for them there, and they could live in comfort, restored to their home, and if it was the big house that they speak of, Mother Alinor could have her own stillroom and an herb garden!”
“Toll-loll!” she said, smiling at him. “I can ask; if that’s what you really want, and if it is good enough for us, rents and so on. But it shall be in our name, not theirs. And you shall be the lord of the manor, not them. They will have no rights there, they will be your guests.”
“It would be such a wonderful thing!” He was filled with enthusiasm. “I would be so happy.”
She smiled. “See? You do want a reward for service! Everyone has a price, Son. Remember it. But I hope you learn more ambition. This place sounds like a lonely muddy little strand. But I will ask: if it is your choice. If the house has an estate of a decent size, and if there is a church with the living attached, and a parliamentary seat, then I shall try for it. What’s it called again?”
“Foulmire!” he exclaimed. “Foulmire, near Sealsea Island, south of Chichester.”
“Dismal name!”
A bell rang the hour, and then distantly, others joined in; the clock on the wall of the coffeehouse rang a silvery note, and some of the clerks gathered their papers and went out, the black sleeves of their gowns billowing. Livia rose to her feet and stood still as her maid arranged her cloak around her shoulders. “You must come to the palace when I send for you,” she told him. “Come by boat and keep it waiting at Whitehall Stairs. You won’t speak of this to anyone else. And you won’t fail.”
“I won’t!” he promised her.
Her rouged lips parted over little white teeth. “And I shall see what I can get us.” She smiled. “The Picci family seat.”
REEKIE WHARF, LONDON, SPRING 1685
The Reekie family were going to dinner on Saturday evening. Johnnie laid a gentle hand on his grandmother Alinor’s arm, and held her back to ask her: “Grandma, have you heard anything from my uncle Ned?”
“I don’t expect to hear from him,” she told him. “He won’t write until it’s over.”
“Is she with him?” he asked quietly.
She looked at him with interest. “Rowan? You care for Rowan?”
Though he was a man of thirty-five, he looked bashful, like a boy. “Of course not! I hardly know her. And she is… perhaps… unknowable! But I don’t like to think of her in danger.”
“I expect he’ll send her back here if there’s danger,” Alinor predicted.
“He should have left her here!”
Alinor looked at the troubled face of her handsome grandson. “Ithink it was her choice,” she told him gently. “If you care for her, you will have to learn that she thinks that no man is her master.”
“I found her a place of work,” he said. “I said I would befriend her.”
“Did she ask you to?”
He looked rueful. “I meant to help her.”
Her smile was knowing. “Some people only want to find their own way.”
“Did she tell you?”
“No; but I was once a woman who wanted to find her own way.” She paused. “I expect we will see her again.”
