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Johnnie bowed low and led the way out of the room.
Sir James watched them go, the ink drying on the nib of his pen.
FOULMIRE PRIORY, SUSSEX, AUTUMN 1685
Alinor had been waiting all day, going from door to window in the Priory, not leaving the cold stalks of the autumn garden for fear of her guests arriving to find her away from home. The maid Lizzie, taking away an uneaten meal, pressed her to at least take a bowl of soup. “You’ll tire yourself out, ma’am.”
Alinor took it in her hand absentmindedly, and ate a few spoonfuls looking out of the window.
“I can watch for them while you eat,” Lizzie offered. “Coming by hired coach, are they? And Mrs. Shore bringing her granddaughters?”
Alinor nodded.
“They’ll not find husbands in Sealsea,” the girl warned. “Nobody here but fishermen and farmers. And most of them half-wits.”
Alinor knew it was pointless to say that the girls were looking for something more from English life than husbands. “Was that a carriage?”
“Yes! Yes! It’s them, turning in the gate.”
Alinor rushed to the door, limping without her stick. Lizzie followed behind her. Alinor threw the door open as the carriage drew up. The hired coachman pulled up the horses, the footmen jumped down from behind to let down the steps, and the two girls—Gabrielle followed by her sister, Mia—came tumbling out of the carriage, Alys behind them. Alinor had a confused sense of an old memory breaking into the present: she felt again her joy in her own children, her daughter and her son, Rob, the delicious smell of young hair and young skin, the tousled gleam of young curls and the brightness of a young smile. She felt as if she held the future of the family, the future of England, when her arms were around both girls and they were bobbing like apples on a springing bough to kiss her cheek and lay their heads on her shoulders.
“Gently! Careful! You’ll bowl her over!” Alys protested, as if calling off puppies. She steadied her mother as Alinor laughed. “You’ll never be English ladies if you fling yourselves on your friends like that.”
“Let them!” Alinor held the fresh rounded bodies to her. “We’ve got so much time to make up.” She led them into the parlor, but the girls could not sit still; they roamed the room, admiring the paintings on the panels and the little grate.
“Fancy that we never met you before, but I feel I know you, Mama talks about you all the time. About you and Grandmama… and now we are here? And was this your home when you were a young woman?”
Alinor laughed at the babble of the two girls. “No, this wasn’t my home. We weren’t wealthy like this, we had a little house near here.”
“Oh! A cottage!” Mia said. “The little country houses are so pretty!”
“Not quite like that.” Alinor met Alys’s amused gaze over the heads of the two girls.
“And what shall we call you?” Gabrielle asked. “We could call you Great-Grandmother? In Italian it is Bisnonna.”
“I’d like to be Bisnonna.” Alinor smiled.
Mia clapped her hands. “Bisnonna dearest! Can we look around?”
“Of course. You can go anywhere you like. Would you like to see your bedrooms? Would you like a rest?”
“They never rest,” Alys said grimly as the girls dashed out into the hall and ran up the stairs to see their bedrooms. “I swear, Ma, I feel about eighty. And they never stop talking.”
“Do they think we’re the Peachey family? The lords?” Alinor asked.
Alys smiled. “I don’t know what they think! They can’t imagine a past further back than yesterday, and I am so old in their eyes that they must think you came out of Eden.”
“So I did,” Alinor said with a gleam of a smile. “In a way, I did.”
“I’ve seen Ned,” Alys told her mother, pulling a note out of the pocket of her cape.
“I thank God,” Alinor said fervently. “And his girl?”
“Trouble, as I thought. It’s all about her in the note.”
“Ah.” Alinor put a hand to her heart. “Thank God Ned is safe at least. And bless Johnnie. And forgive me, Alys, for sending your son after my brother.”
“This is even worse,” Alys told her grimly. “Rowan has got herself arrested in Ned’s place and is to be transported as a rebel, and the two of them—Ned and Johnnie—are running all around London trying to raise money to buy her out. I said to Ned, you can look at the books yourself, you can look in the chest. We’ve got nothing to spare until we’ve sold the Venice cargo, and then we have to lay out on the next voyage. I can lend you a pound or two, but how’re you going to pay it back?”
