Mrs. Stoney pursed her lips.

“My son is to be apprenticed to a Chichester apothecary,” Alinor said, her voice level, but her heart pounding. “He’s to go in the Lent term when Master Walter leaves for his university. I know he would want to see his sister happily settled . . .”

“An apothecary?” Mrs. Stoney asked, and when Alinor started to explain, she interrupted: “But what use is that to us?”

“She and Rob will inherit the right to the ferry, and Ferry-house—”

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Stoney said finally, “but we’re looking for a bigger dowry, to be paid in full on the wedding day. Maybe with land adjoining, maybe one of our neighbors. Not pennies as and when. Not as and when, Mrs. Reekie. It’s a pity that you don’t have a husband to earn a living for you. A great pity. But we can’t let Richard throw himself away. For all that she’s a lovely girl, and we like her very much. She would have been our choice, if the money had been right. We thought you’d have had more, to be honest. I’m sorry. We thought you were in a better way.”

Alinor gritted her teeth to stop herself exclaiming that once she did have more: her inheritance from her mother, her dowry in her mother’s red leather purse; but Zachary had taken it, as a husband’s right, and wasted it as a husband can do, and now Zachary was not here to answer for it, and the red leather purse held only shavings of old coins.

“But she has her own wages,” Alinor urged him, growing more anxious. “If you want her to keep working at the Millers’, she could bring home her wages. And she can spin.”

“Then he might as well marry our servant Bess!” Mrs. Stoney objected. “Maidservant wages as dowry! No, no, she’s a lovely girl but if she’s got nothing but thirty-five shillings and farm work wages. I look higher for my son than that.”

Mr. Stoney looked as if he regretted her sharp tone. “No disrespect,” he said.

“What did you have in mind?” Alinor asked. “For my brother would perhaps—”

“Nothing less than eighty pounds,” Mrs. Stoney said smartly. “I’d take nothing less.”

“Eighty pounds!” Alinor gasped at the unimaginable sum.

“We’re going to have to refuse,” Mr. Stoney said gently. “Regretfully but—”

“I have sixty pounds!” Alys interrupted suddenly from the door. She stepped into the room, white-faced, Richard behind her, gripping her hand. “I have it,” she claimed. “I have savings of my own that my mother doesn’t know about.” One fierce glance at Alinor warned her to say nothing.

“Were you listening at the door?” Mr. Stoney asked his son, frowning.

“We came past the window and we overheard,” his son replied. “We weren’t eavesdropping, sir, but my mother was speaking very clearly. We must marry. We love each other.”

“How much d’you have?” Mrs. Stoney asked the girl.

“I have sixty pounds,” Alys said boldly. From the pocket of her gown she pulled a fat red leather purse and put it down on the dark wood table before her mother. “Sixty pounds,” she said defiantly. “Sixty pounds down, and the rest to come. Is that enough?”

With a pang of terror Alinor recognized at once the heavy red leather purse that Mrs. Miller had pulled from its hiding place behind the brick in the millhouse chimney: it was Jane Miller’s dowry. She opened her mouth and found she could say nothing.

“Is that enough?” Alys asked, her voice shaking. “Is it enough?”

“It’s a surprise,” Mr. Stoney remarked gravely. “How has a maid like you got more savings than her mother?” He turned to Alinor. “How have you got a fortune like this? Did you know she had put this by?”

“My father gave it to me,” Alys spoke rapidly before her mother could reply. “His prize money from the navy. He won it serving in the navy, and when he came home last time, he gave it to me for my dowry. I was always his favorite. He gave it to me for my dowry if I wanted to marry before he came back.”

“I should think your mother could have used the money often, over the past year,” Mrs. Stoney said mistrustfully. “Everyone knows how hard she works. Shouldn’t you have told her? And given it to her?”

“My father and my mother didn’t always agree,” Alys said boldly, ignoring Alinor, her eyes only on Mrs. Stoney’s grim expression. “My father told me to keep his savings safe for his return, and use it only for my dowry. I have to be obedient to my father, don’t I?”

She turned to Mr. Stoney, certain he would support male authority. Solemnly, he nodded: “An order from your father? Yes, you had to obey it.”

“He hasn’t left you, has he?” Mrs. Stoney turned to Alinor. “Deserted you? If he gave his daughter her dowry before he went? Was he planning on never coming back?”

At once Alys saw that she had overplayed her hand. Before Alinor could reply, the girl interrupted: “Oh, no! My da would never leave us! He promised to come home. He just left his savings with me, in case I wanted to marry before he returned. He’s a sailor at war, he knew that he might be a long time away. There was no way of knowing how long his voyage might last. He was just trying to do the best for me.”

“But you said that they did not always agree?”

Alinor, knowing that Mrs. Stoney would have seen her at Chichester market with a blackened eye, with a bruised cheek, shook her head. “I’ve no complaint against him and I know that he is coming home,” she said steadily. “We disagreed sometimes, like many a husband and wife—nothing out of the ordinary. Zachary signed up for a voyage with a coastal trader, and then we heard that he had been pressed into the navy. Then the navy went over to the prince. But I don’t doubt that when the peace comes, the sailors and the soldiers will be released, with their back pay and prize money. I don’t doubt that he will come home then.”

She kept her face very still, expressionless, and thought that she had promised James that she would tell everyone that Zachary was not coming home, and that she was a widow, and now here, the very next day she was declaring the contrary. But there was nothing she could do about it now, while Alys was holding the floor of the room and lying like a mountebank.

“And his pay,” Alys added. “Who knows what pay he’ll bring home? If he’s captured a ship he’ll be rich!”

“So he’s serving with the prince now?” Mr. Stoney seized on another problem. “We’re a parliament household, here.”

Alys shook her head. “We don’t know what ship he’s on. He might be on the ships that stayed loyal to parliament. My father’s a parliament man, like my uncle Ned. You know my uncle Ned!”

“We’re a parliament household too.” Alinor struggled to join the conversation, tried to drag her eyes away from the old red leather purse.

“Then shouldn’t they delay marrying till he returns?” Mr. Stoney turned to Alinor. “If he’ll come home when there’s peace, and the parliament are talking to the king right now?”

“Perhaps—”

“No!” Alys said quickly. “That wouldn’t be right at all. My da gave me his savings to use for my dowry so that we didn’t have to wait for him! He told me not to delay my wedding. And there’s no way of knowing when the king will agree to peace.”