“I don’t know. I didn’t even know she was out,” Alys said indifferently. “Perhaps she’s walked over Horsleydown.”
“Wouldn’t she have taken the nursemaid? Wouldn’t she have taken the baby for fresh air?”
“I don’t know,” Alys said again. “Ma, this afternoon…”
“Yes?”
“Are you sure you want to see him? You don’t have to see him at all, of course. I can just tell him…”
“What’s he coming for?”
“I don’t know.”
“For his child?”
“He doesn’t have a child,” the younger woman replied stubbornly. “He’ll never learn it from me.”
“Nor me,” Alinor promised, and when her daughter looked at her she smiled, with her old confidence. “Truly.”
“He knew you were with child back then?”
Alinor turned her head away.
“Ma, did you tell him?”
“He knew I was carrying his child; but he did not claim me, nor own it.”
“He may claim you now,” Alys warned her; and was surprised by the luminous clarity of her mother’s smile as she raised her head.
“Then he’s a bit late,” she said.
* * *
Livia returned from her walk just as Sir James stepped ashore from a little wherry boat at Horsleydown Stairs. Sir James paid his fare and climbed the greasy steps as she waited at the top. She smiled, as if surprised at their meeting, and gave him her hand. He bowed and kissed it.
“You have been out?” he asked, glancing around at the wharf and the idle men who were openly staring.
“I have to walk, for my health,” she said. “Behind these houses and these warehouses are some beautiful fields, so green! Rob always told me that England is so green all year round.”
“You should not walk alone,” he said.
“Who is there to walk with me?” she asked. “My sister-in-law works all day long, she has no time for me! And my mamma-in-law is delicate.”
“Your maid,” he said. “Or their maid.”
She gave a little giggle. “You have seen their maid?”
She let the silence lengthen, until the thought came to him that he could walk with her.
“Shall we go in?” he asked.
“Of course!” she said. “Forgive me, I have forgotten my Italian manners in this rough place! Please come in.”
She preceded him into the little hall and took off her bonnet, keeping on a little cap deliciously trimmed with black ribbons. She led the way into the parlor that overlooked the quayside and dropped the blinds on the noise and the heat with a sigh, as if they were unbearable. In the shaded room, she turned back to him. “May I offer you some tea? I suppose you want tea? Or do gentlemen take wine in the afternoon in England?”
“Nothing, I thank you,” he said. “I am here to visit Mrs. Reekie. Would you be so kind as to ask the maid to tell her I am here?”
“I will tell her myself,” she said sweetly. “She’s not the sort of maid who announces visitors. I had better do it. What business shall I say?”
His grip on his hat tightened. “Nothing… nothing… Just… she will know.”
“A personal matter?” she suggested helpfully.
“Exactly so.”
“I will tell her at once. May I plead on your behalf? Is there anything I can say to help you?”
He loosened his collar under her dark, sympathetic gaze. “No. I had better… I believe she will… at any rate. It is about the child. But she knows that, she will know that.”
“Her grandchildren? Is there some way I can help you?”
He let out an exclamation and turned from her. “I am afraid you cannot help me,” he said. “I am afraid nobody can. These are old troubles, and in my case, old sorrows.”
“Is the boy yours?” she asked very quietly, coming to stand close to him, her face filled with compassion at his distress. “Do you think he is your own son?”
He turned and she saw his mouth tremble. “Yes,” he said. “I believe so. I think he is mine. I think I have a son.”
“Then he should know his father,” she whispered gravely. “And you should know him.”
* * *
Livia led Sir James up the narrow stairs, tapped on the door, and swung it open. He had to squeeze past her to enter the room but he was unaware of her perfume or the swish of her silk skirts as she drew them back; he saw nothing but Alinor, leaning on her high-backed chair, waiting for him, as she had waited for him in the meadow, as she had waited for him on the rickety pier.
“We were almost always out of doors,” he blurted out, and he closed the door behind him.
“We were,” she agreed. “There was never anywhere that we could go.”
They both fell silent, looking at each other. He thought he would have known her anywhere, her gray eyes were the same, the direct gaze and the slight lift to her lips. Her hair, smoothed under her cap, was not the rich gold he had loved but bleached into a pale beauty. Her face was white, even her lips were cream; but she was the same woman he had loved and betrayed, the set of her shoulders and the turn of her head was instantly recognizable as the woman who lived, indomitably, on the edge of the mire and defied ill luck or high tides to wash her away.
She regarded him carefully, looking past the gloss of his prosperity, the fine clothes, the thickened body, to the troubled young man she had loved with such a reckless desire.
“You are ill,” he said, his voice filled with pity.
She gave a little grimace at his tone. “I never recovered.”
“You have a consumption?”
“Something like drowning,” she said. “I drowned then, and I go on drowning. The water sits in my lungs.”
He shut his eyes on the memory of the green water pouring from her mouth when they turned her limp body on her side. “I failed you.” He found that he was on one knee before her, his head bowed. “I failed you terribly. I have never forgiven myself.”
“Aye,” she said indifferently. “But I forgave you almost at once. There was no need for you to set your own penance.”
“I have served a hard penance.” He looked eagerly upwards, wanting her to know that he too had suffered. “I was restored to my home, to the lands that I loved, and I married, but my wife took no pleasure in our life, and she never conceived a child. I am a widower now. I am alone with no one to continue my name.”
“And so now you come to me?” She sat down and gestured that he should rise and take a seat.
“Now I am free to do what I should have done that day. I am free to claim you for my wife, my beloved wife, and to name your child as my child, and to give you both the home you should have had, and the future you should have had.”
She said nothing for a long moment and the silence made him realize for the first time how arrogant he sounded. Outside the seagulls wheeled and cried. He heard the clatter of the sheets against the masts, and at that sound, which had always meant leaving and loss to him, his heart sank and he knew that she would refuse him.