“It’s a pity that the skills should be lost. Our family have been herbalists and midwives for generations. And with your uncle Ned sending us herbs from abroad—who knows what he might find, and what properties they might have? Your uncle Rob started as an apprentice to an apothecary.”

“And we were fishermen,” Johnnie pointed out. “And farmers,” he added, thinking of his own missing father, a Sussex farmer who abandoned his pregnant wife on their wedding day. “And scoundrels,” he added.

“Some trades are worth forgetting,” Alinor ruled. “We’ve not been so lucky with fathers.”

“So, what did Sir James want with you?” Sarah asked casually, twisting stems of mint into a posy. “What did he want with us?”

“He was a friend many years ago,” Alinor said, choosing her words with care. “He wanted to offer us a refuge at his house.”

“A refuge?” Sarah demanded skeptically. “What sort of refuge?”

“We couldn’t go,” Johnnie spoke at once with his sister.

“No, of course not,” Alinor agreed. “It’s in the far north, I’ve never been, though I dreamed of it once…”

“Did he love you?” The thought struck Sarah and she turned to her grandmother. “Before your accident, did he want to marry you?”

Alinor answered at once, not pausing for a moment. “Oh no, my dear! And besides, I was married to Alys’s father! It’s such a long time ago—he was Rob’s tutor and very kind to him. And now he thinks to be kind to us. But we could never go. However would we run the business? And I’d never leave you two, and your indentures not up yet. It’s not to be thought of.”

“He’s thinking of it though,” Johnnie remarked.

“He’ll think of it no more,” Alinor said with quiet dignity.

“He’s very particular with Johnnie,” Sarah remarked. “He couldn’t take his eyes off him.”

“It’d be the resemblance to his uncle Rob,” Alinor replied without hesitation.

“I thought I looked like Uncle Rob?” Sarah challenged.

Alys came into the kitchen carrying a tray of things from the parlor. She put them on the sideboard for want of space on the table which was heaped with sweet-scented leaves as Alinor stripped the bottom leaves and Sarah tied them in posies. “Whispering secrets?” she asked lightly.

“No secrets,” Alinor said smoothly. “But Johnnie’ll have to dig out some of the mint. We’ve got too much.”

* * *

On Horsleydown, the poor houses gave way to little fields and then to wide green rolling hills, with beechwoods crowning the hills on either side of the road. Carlotta, the nursemaid, dawdled behind the couple who walked, arm in arm, their heads together. Beside a fallen tree Livia hesitated. “May I sit here?”

“Of course, of course!” James brushed the trunk with the gloves that he held in his hand and spread a silk handkerchief from his pocket. He helped her to sit, and remained standing before her. Carlotta plumped down on the grass and put the baby on her shawl so he could look up at the sky and the crisscrossing birds.

“You don’t answer me?” Livia spoke lightly, as if she were remarking on the view behind them, the silvery river snaking into the heart of the City hazed with smoke from a thousand hearths. “Few men would hesitate.”

“Of course,” he hurried. “But my circumstances are peculiar. My long affection for your family, my relationship to Rob… And it is my own son that I want. If they say he is not here, have they sent him away? If Johnnie is truly Mrs. Stoney’s son, what has become of my boy?”

“But if you find your son—how old would he be now?” she asked, looking up at him.

“Twenty-one,” he said, knowing at once, without calculating. “Twenty-one this summer. I swore I would find him when he was twenty-one if they did not send for me before.”

“Allora!” she said, waving away the longing in his voice. “This is very old history! Say you find him and he does not want to come to you? Perhaps he ran away from the warehouse? I know I would! Perhaps he was a bad son and that is why they have forgotten him? Perhaps he has another life of his own, married to a woman you could not countenance, with a disagreeable family? Perhaps they are in want, perhaps he has a dozen ugly bastards? There are many reasons for you not wanting to own him. Many good reasons not to find him.”

“I never thought—”

“Of course not! Why should you? Because you were trusting that they would keep and raise your child! But they have not done so! He is not the young man you dreamed of, just as La Suocera is not the loving mamma that I imagined, and the rich wharf with a beautiful house is not as it should be. Are we trapped by our plans? No! I thought they would be wealthy and living in a beautiful London house. I thought they would take me in to a great family and I would be able to sell my antiquities and make my fortune. But no! It is not as Rob told me at all, and I have to change my plans. Just as you do.”

“You are very…” He could not find the word for her bright determination which was at once so gratingly unfeminine and yet so charmingly bold.

“Yes I am!” She took his unspoken word as a compliment. “And you too should see that things are not as you have dreamed but that you can make something of them. Isn’t that what this whole city is about? Rebuilding from the ruins? What the new king is like? A restored mistake? Not as you thought; but something can be done with him. Isn’t that what you would call the spirit of the age?”

“You think the spirit of the age is to seize whatever there is, even if it is not true to your vision?” he asked bitterly. “To give up your ideal for what you can win?”

She stood and gestured at the view behind her, towards London where she knew there was wealth and opportunity, and decadence too. “Oh yes!” she declared. “If it was exiled: let it return. If it burns down: rebuild it. If it was robbed: restore it. If it is free—let us take it. I shall be an English lady in a beautiful grand house with a thriving business in antiquities, a storehouse in Venice and a gallery in London because I have set my heart on it—one way or another—why not? You should have a wife and a baby son, because that is what you desire. Why should you not restore yourself? Why should you not come into your own again? Why should we not take what we want and go where we are not invited? Why should we not be happy?”

They walked home together without him giving her an answer, but she was content that she had put a swirl of ideas in his head. At the front door she put her hand on the latch and said carelessly over her shoulder: “Come for me tomorrow, and I will have discovered where your son is. I will tell you.”

“I’m grateful.” He stumbled on the words. “I would not have you spy on them… but I have to know…”

She shrugged. “Of course you must.” She smiled. “Good day.”

She opened the door, waved the nursemaid and the baby inside, and gave him her hand. He bowed over it and she leaned towards him. “But think of me,” she whispered. “Why not?”

He had no answer for her, but she did not wait for one. In a moment, she was gone and only her rose-petal perfume was left on the heavy summer air.