“A matter of honor?” He could hardly follow her. “How is it a matter of my honor?”

“They are your antiquities!” she exclaimed impatiently. “You are my husband! What is mine is yours. Would you handle anything but a true thing? Have you become some sort of mountebank?”

“Of course not!” he exclaimed. “Of course I am not!”

“Well! There you are!” she said simply, as if the discussion was completely ended and he had agreed with her.

They finished their wine in silence, and he glanced at her face to see if she was as his first wife had been: silently, chillingly sulky; but she returned him a radiant smile, as if there were nothing wrong, and then she asked him to show her around the house. As the mistress-to-be she wanted to see it from attic bedrooms to cellars, and his spirits rose as he showed her the wine stocks in the cellar, each carefully racked and numbered. “Collected by my father and my grandfather and his father,” he told her.

She had seen far greater cellars in the vineyards around her home where they had been making wine for centuries and keeping only the best; but she nodded as if she were hugely impressed. “And nobody tells you they are not good!” she said, as if it were a shared joke.

He showed her the imposing rooms on the ground floor that led off the grand marble hall: the dining room, the parlor, and the receiving room with the double doors that could be thrown open to the hall.

“But this is a perfect house for grand parties!” she exclaimed.

“My mother and father entertained the king here,” he said. “The king and the whole court.”

“Oh, we will do that,” she said instantly.

“That was the old king,” he corrected. “King Charles, not his son. I don’t think the court is a suitable place for a lady now.”

She looked up into his face and reached up and patted his cheek. “We will be grand,” she said. “And we will entertain the king. There will be no impropriety in your house, but we will take our place where we belong.”

He felt a leap of hope that she might make his house the place that it should be, that somehow the king and the country would be as they should be, that the old days would be truly restored to him, that he would not have to feel so many doubts about this shallow polished replica of his old life. He took her hand to lead her up the stairs to see the bedrooms. They were all shrouded in linen sheets to keep out the moths and the dust. Only in his own room, facing over the garden and the river, was the bed made up, and the shutters open to the sunshine.

“You sleep here?” she asked, leaning against the bed.

“I do.”

“And not in the big bedroom with the four-poster bed?”

“That was the room I shared with my wife. It is too big for one man, and I don’t come to London very often.”

“But we shall use that one, the biggest bedroom?”

“Yes,” he said. “When we visit London. And we must decide when our wedding should be. We shall marry at my home, Northside Manor in Yorkshire. I shall go to my home and send for you and we shall have the banns called in my parish church.”

“I thought we would marry at once!” she said. “Didn’t we agree at once?”

“We did, but I cannot,” he started.

Her gaze was as sharp as a knife. “You promised me.”

“I have to be married in my own parish,” he said gently. “I cannot be married in secret, in a hurry, as if we had something to hide. I have to be married at the church where all my family have been baptized and married and buried.”

“Then shall we go to your home at once?”

“I will have to make it ready…” He suddenly checked as a thought struck him. “You are Protestant? You are of the reformed religion?”

She had not thought of this. “I am Roman Catholic,” she admitted. “But I have no objection…”

“I didn’t think! Before we can be married, you will have to be instructed and confirmed in the English church,” he said. “I will have to find you a minister here, in London, to instruct you. When he has seen you through baptism and confirmation, you shall come to Northside Manor, to me, and we will marry.”

“There’s no need…”

“My dear, it has to be done.”

“I can take baptism at once. Surely I can be baptized tomorrow!”

“Not without instruction. The religion is one of understanding, not simply faith.”

She could not hide her irritation. “But how long is all this going to take?” she demanded.

He thought for a moment. “Six months? No more than a year.”

“We can’t wait a year to be married!” she exclaimed shrilly.

“Why not? We are young.”

“But we want a child at once!”

He took her hand and kissed it. “A true Avery, born of a Protestant father and mother and baptized into the church in Northallerton parish.”

“But I thought you were a Roman Catholic anyway?”

“I was raised in the true—” He cut short the heretical phrase. “I told you I was raised as a Roman Catholic, but my parents and I had to surrender our faith to come home and reclaim our lands. It was an act that was very painful to me, very costly to my pride and my soul. It felt wrong, it still tears at me. But I will allow no doubt over my ownership of my lands, and over the inheritance of my son. As a Roman Catholic I would be barred from public office, but I was born to serve and lead my community. I am honor bound to take up my duties. So there can never be any question about my wife and my heir. You will have to convert immediately—even little Matteo will have to be baptized into the Church of England. I can have no doubt over the affiliation of anyone in my household.”

She held up her hands. “Stop! Stop!” she said urgently. “Don’t be so serious, my darling, so grave about a happy matter! We will marry in whatever church you like, and Matteo can be christened at the same time. He can take your name and be your son. But I cannot wait forever. We must marry this year, before Christmas. I cannot survive winter in that dreadful little warehouse—you have no idea how uncomfortable and crowded it is. I am sure I would be ill, it would make me ill, I have to be Lady Avery before the winter sets in.”

“Can’t you move?” he asked uneasily. “Move house, if it is so sickly? Why d’you need my name? Why would it make any difference? And surely, my dear, Matteo must keep his father’s name. Wouldn’t they think I was taking him from them?”

She saw at once that she had gone too fast for him, and she hid her impatience. She stepped closer and put her hands on the rich velvet of the lapels of his jacket. “I want your love and protection, I want to be somewhere warm,” she whispered. “That’s all I’m thinking. Somewhere warm with you. Do you not want me there, in your cold northern nights? When the wind howls outside and the snow drifts up to the door, will you not want me for company? For joy?”

She put her hands at the back of his neck and he felt a shiver all down his spine, as if she had touched the very core of his body; at once he lost his train of thought and all caution. She pulled his head towards her as if for a kiss; but as he bent forward she leaned back, pulling his mouth to her exposed throat, and let herself fall back on the bed and he, following her, was on top of her in a moment. His instinct was to rise, to apologize, but she kept her grip on him, wrapping her arms around him, opening her mouth and arching her back so she pressed against the length of him, until with a gasp he decided that he could not stop himself. Hungry to feel her, desperate to be inside her, he fumbled at his breeches as she pulled up her dark mourning silk gown, her silk petticoat, and he entered her with a groan of pleasure. At once she moved against him, urging him on.