She shrugged as if the world were full of incomprehensible disappointments, and this was another. “I wish it was different,” was all she said. He came closer and she stretched out her hand to him, but she was not reaching for him, she was gently fending him off. She touched his cheek with the back of her fingers. He caught her hand and pressed it to his mouth.

“Don’t hold me,” she said very low. “I can’t leave you if you take hold of me. I can’t pull away from you. I think I’ll die if I have to push you away. Please let me go. I’ve got to leave you now.”

“I’ll come to your cottage tonight,” he whispered. “We can’t say good-bye like this.”

“I’m not for you. Our worlds are very far apart.”

“I’ll come to you. I’ll come tonight.”

“Then we’ll only have to say good-bye again.”

“I want to say good-bye again. This cannot be the last time that I see you.”

“Tonight, when it is dark,” she agreed reluctantly. “But I’ll come to you. It’s high tide, the path isn’t safe for you. I’ll meet you in the sea meadow outside the Priory. Where we said good-bye before.”

“Tonight,” he said again as she turned, unbolted the hatch, and made her way down the ladder to the stable yard, where the grooms were sleepily watering the horses, and brushing them down.

He watched her go, the basket on her arm, the neat white cap on her head. He saw her speak a pleasant “good morning” to the grooms, and saw them turn and watch her as she walked across the yard to the house. Behind her back one lad made an obscene gesture pumping his buttocks to mimic lust, but the other did worse: he gathered spittle in his mouth and he spat on her tracks, and clenched his thumb inside his fist, in the old, old gesture of guarding against a witch.

“His lordship wants to see you,” Mrs. Wheatley said to Alinor as she came into the kitchen. “Good Lord! Mrs. Reekie! I’ve never seen you in such good looks. You’re glowing!”

“Your good cooking,” Alinor said lightly. “I’ve eaten better these last two days than I have for weeks. I shall come to nurse at the Priory again if I can.”

“Pray God we’re spared illness,” Mrs. Wheatley said.

“Amen,” Alinor answered correctly. “His lordship is well?”

“Yes, but he asked you to go to his gun room before you leave this morning. You can go now. Stuart will show you in.”

“Why does he want to see me?” Alinor hesitated.

“It can only be to thank you,” the cook replied. “You saved us all from great worry, and perhaps you saved the island from sickness. Go, you’ve got nothing to fear.”

“Thank you,” Alinor said, going to the door into the house.

“Come back this way and I’ll give you a loaf of bread to keep that bloom in your cheeks,” Mrs. Wheatley said.

Alinor smiled and followed Stuart down the corridor towards the garden door and his lordship’s gun room.

Sir William was seated at the table, cleaning his flintlock rifle. He glanced up and nodded when Alinor knocked, came in, and stood before him.

“Goodwife Reekie, I’m grateful to you,” he said, looking down the barrel. “Thank God it was no worse than a fever.”

She nodded. He took care to pay attention to his gun and not to look at the curve of her breasts under the bulky jacket.

“Your son, Robert, found his way round the stillroom. He’s a bright lad. He fetched all the things you needed?”

“Yes, he knew what was wanted for a fever,” she said. She thought her voice sounded thin, as if the light was too bright and Sir William was too loud.

“Nobody told him what to get. He picked out the things himself?” He took up a piece of wadding and polished the beautiful enameled stock.

“He’s watched me since he was a baby. He’s got a gift with herbs and their use.”

“James Summer said some time ago that he was fit to be a servant to a physician, or apprenticed to an apothecary.”

Alinor bowed her head. “I think so, but we couldn’t afford his entry fee.”

His lordship put the cleaning cloth and the oil to one side, racked the gun, and sat back in his chair. He looked her up and down, and felt again the regret that she was a respectable woman and the sister of a pious man. “I tell you what, Goodwife, I’ll do it for you. He’s a good lad, a credit to you. He’s been a merry companion for Master Walter and you’ve been a great help to me and my house. Just now with the tutor falling sick . . . and I know about earlier.”

For a moment, she could not speak. “Your lordship!”

He nodded. “I’ll get Mr. Tudeley to arrange for him to go as an apprentice, an apprentice to an apothecary, so he can get a training and a trade. Chichester or perhaps Portsmouth, I suppose.”

She was breathless with shock.

“Aye,” he nodded, thinking again that she was a beautiful woman. If only Sealsea Island had not been such a center of gossip, and so damnably godly, he might have brought her into his household, called her a housekeeper, and used her as his whore.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t accept. I can’t afford even the clothes he would need,” she said. “I don’t have the savings—”

“Tudeley will take care of that,” he said, waving away her objection. “How’s that? We’ll give him a suit of clothes, and buy him his apprenticeship as payment for your . . . help. How’s that?”

Her face lit up. “You would do that?”

His lordship thought that he would do much, much more, if she were willing. But he merely nodded.

“He’ll be so glad. I know he’ll work hard.” She stumbled over her thanks. “We’ll owe you a debt of gratitude . . . forever . . . I can’t thank you—”

“I’ll get it done,” Sir William concluded. “These are difficult times for all of us, you know.”

She nodded earnestly, wondering what he meant now.

“Dangerous times for some.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I suppose in his fever, the tutor didn’t speak out at all?”

Alinor checked her breathless thanks and stole a quick look at her landlord from under the brim of her white cap, knowing that this question was the most important moment in the whole of this interview.

“Speak out? Sir?”

“In his fever. Men say odd things when their minds are affected by illness, don’t they? He didn’t say anything, did he? Anything that I’d not want widely known? Or known at all? Anything that I wouldn’t want repeated? Not even here?”

“He didn’t say anything that I heard.” She picked her words with care, knowing that this was important, feeling perilously ill prepared to deal with a powerful man like her landlord. “Sir, people in fever often say fanciful things, things they wouldn’t say in waking life. I never take notice, never repeat them. I wouldn’t speak of things that I see and hear in the sickroom. Being deaf is part of the craft. Being dumb is part of being a woman. I don’t want any trouble. The day I spent nursing him, I won’t speak of, not to anyone.”