“So you’re going through with your marriage to this man?” Felipe asked her, casually, as if he were only slightly interested. “And you intend to take Matteo—my son?”

“He is my son,” she said. “Perhaps Rob fathered him, or perhaps it was you, but I have decided that he shall be Matthew Avery, and that is final. In time he will be Sir Matthew Avery of Northside Manor, which is more than you or Rob could do for him.”

“Never,” Sir James said quietly without heat.

Livia glanced up at him. “I don’t think you can refuse me.”

“He can stay here,” Alys spoke for the first time. “He can stay here, with us.”

Livia checked. “Why would you want him?” she asked coldly, as if it was another ruse to overcome; and then she suddenly realized that Alys was speaking from love. “You want him?” she asked in a quite different tone. “You want to raise my son? You want to care for him?”

“Not because he’s yours,” Alys told her. “But he’s happy here. He doesn’t know that we’re lowly and poor. He doesn’t despise us. He likes it here, and he’s settled with us. I love him for himself, whoever his father is; and so does Ma. You’ve got no time for him, you never have any time for him, and Sir James once again loses a child through his own pride.” Her eyes flicked over him with contempt. “You neither of you know how to love him, nor how to love anyone. Give him a chance and leave him in our keeping.”

Livia did not even glance at James to know his opinion. “You will love him for me,” she whispered to Alys.

“I love him for himself,” she replied steadily. “And this is the only place where he will be loved.”

“Leave him here,” Rob advised her.

“I agree,” Felipe said.

“Very well,” Livia decided, her voice carefree. “What a good idea! He shall stay here for now. I shall send for him when I want him, and he will go to school where I decide. But he shall stay here for now.”

Sir James and Alinor exchanged one long look. “Another son and I don’t see him?” he asked bitterly.

“He’s best left here,” she told him. “Neither of you will be loving parents in that great house. You’re not going to be happy.”

He bowed his head, as if under a penance. “I know it.”

“And I?” Felipe asked Livia. “Your fiancé? And the father of the child?”

For a moment she hesitated, quickly thinking what she might pull from this disaster of her business. “Of course, you are still my business partner…” she began. “Nobody here is going to speak of this outside these walls. If you are prepared to overlook all that has been, we still have a fortune stored in your warehouse, and since you are here, and you have brought the antiquities, you can sell them and we can share the profit…”

“Good God! No!” Sir James started, but it was Sarah who stepped between Felipe and challenged her aunt.

“No, Livia. He’s not in business with you anymore. And this load is in our storehouse, shipped by us, owed to us.”

“He is not?” Livia asked, smiling at her niece. “He is no longer my partner, when we have been hand in glove for years? You know this? When we have committed every sin we chose and every crime that made a profit? For years? And you have had two weeks in Venice and you are now an authority?”

“Yes, I am,” Sarah said, ignoring the sarcasm. “I’m going to sell the antiquities. Not him, and not you. He is not your partner, he was not your fiancé; he never was.”

For the first time, Livia lost her smiling calm. Shocked, she looked from Felipe to Sarah. “What is this folly? Does the child have a fever that she thinks she can speak to me like this? Does she think she can claim my antiquities? Does she think she can claim you?”

Felipe did not even hear Livia’s outrage. The handsome Italian turned to the English girl. “I am not her fiancé? You have decided this, Miss Jolie? On your own account?”

“Yes,” she said bluntly to him. “She’s married another man, she’s given up her child. She runs everything as if she is a woman of the world and knows how it turns; but in truth she knows nothing. She knows about money but not about value. She knows everything about profit and nothing about love. I saved Rob from her. My ma has saved Matteo from her. And now I’m saving you.”

Felipe laughed out loud and caught both her hands. “Ah! Bathsheba!” he exclaimed. “Jolie! I knew you would not fail me! You have decided? You have finally decided in my favor though I am so very, very unsuitable and neither the uncle nor the grandmother will ever approve of me? And the mother will know I am not good enough for you—and she is right?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m saving you.”

FEBRUARY 1671, HADLEY, NEW ENGLAND

Ned was preparing his toboggan for travel, tying new buckskin leads to the wickerwork frame, fitting the harness over his oilskin winter cape, his essential foods packed at the back of the sledge, his warm clothes in the middle where the waxed leather cloth would keep them dry, and his tools and gun at the front where he could easily reach them. His cow and sheep he had pushed and driven and urged to his nearest neighbor, breaking them a path through the snow, telling the neighbors that the roof of his stable had collapsed under the weight of snow and asking them to house the animals. He had produced hens from under his arms and asked them to keep them warm. He could not bring himself to tell them the truth, he was not even sure of the truth himself.

He wanted to leave before the thaw, before the white world turned dirty brown, before the muster, so that his name was never called and there was no answer. He felt dishonored—an old comrade who was no longer guarding the north gate. He felt faithless—a traitor to his people; he felt loveless—a man who could not court a woman and take her where she wanted to be. But he knew he could not bring himself to serve in another army, especially one that would march with guns against people with bows and arrows.

He wanted to leave without saying good-bye to his friends, the men he had hidden and guarded and served for so long. He wanted to leave before the Council summoned the Indian king to stand before them at Plymouth and the Indians all around the Dawnland rose up in their righteous anger and their pride to defend him. He wanted to leave without saying good-bye to the men he had guarded for years. He could not bear to face them and tell them that, though he would have laid down his life to protect them when they were persecuted by a tyrant, he could not support them when they turned tyrant themselves.

He wanted to leave before the thaw so he could go by sledge on snow and across lakes, and on frozen ground. He was going north, away from the settlers into the forest, which had always frightened him, hoping to find empty lands, unclaimed unused lands, where he could live without choosing sides, where he could be himself: neither master nor man. Ned thought that it was as painful to leave the little village where he had made a home and the men he had promised to guard, as it had been to leave England. But in some ways, it was the same questions—the unanswered questions that had haunted him, for all of his life: what side was he on, what man must he obey, what did he want to protect?