Tidelands

“Ah, well, perhaps your road lies that way, who knows? These are times of great change. Who knows what will happen? But there will always be a welcome for you here. If they send you back to England you can return here as Walter’s tutor until he goes to Cambridge, and as a welcome guest anytime after that.”

“What will become of young Robert?”

“I’ve taken care of that. We owed Goodwife Reekie a debt, don’t you think? She came as soon as I sent for her, and she went in with you when we didn’t know what was wrong. She could’ve been locked up with a dying man, for all we knew. She risked taking the plague and God knows what would have been the end of that. She nursed you well, didn’t she?”

James turned away and opened a cupboard door to hide his face. “Perfectly adequate,” he said to the empty shelves.

“And she made it clear that she’ll keep her mouth shut. She never said a word about finding you when you first came here. She can be trusted. I’ve promised her that her boy will have an apprenticeship. Mr. Tudeley will arrange it. Apothecary in Chichester. It’s not cheap, but it’s worth it for her silence, and it will keep her indebted and silent forever.”

“I’m glad!” James said, turning back to Sir William. “That’s generous and good of you, sir. She’s a woman who deserves some good luck. I didn’t tell you, but I ran into her husband at Newport. He told me he was never coming home to her.”

“Zachary Reekie.” His lordship named his missing tenant with aristocratic distaste. “No loss, if you ask me. Better for her if he’d drowned.”

“Maybe, but it leaves her in an awkward position.”

“No, it doesn’t. Not if she doesn’t see him, and no one sees him. If no one ever reports seeing him, then in seven years’ time she can declare him dead, and herself a widow.”

“Seven years?”

“That’s the law.”

“Would she know that?”

“No! How would she? Doubt if she can read.”

“She can read. But I doubt if she knows the law. I didn’t. If no one sees him in seven years she’s free?”

“Exactly.” His lordship tapped his nose, indicating a secret. “Seven years from when he first went missing. So, he disappeared—when?—last winter, I think, when the navy was still commanded by parliament, before we got the ships back. He ran away to serve them, as a rogue like him would, and never came back. So, he’s been gone nearly a year, at least. In six years’ time she’ll be free and can take another husband. She’s a young woman. If she can get through six years with her name untarnished, then she’ll have a life ahead of her. There’s more than one man who’d be glad to have her. I should think more than one would even marry her.”

“She could remarry?”

Sir William closed one eye in a slow wink. “As long as no one has seen Zachary alive. You might remember that. If you want to do her a favor, you might remember that.”

“No one has seen him,” James confirmed. He felt his spirits leap up at the thought that she might be free, that he might be released from his vows, that despite what she had said, they could have a future together. “No one has seen him at all. He’s dead, and she could declare herself a widow in six years.”

“That’s the way,” Sir William said. “Pretty woman. Shame to have her wasted on the edge of the mire like that.”

“I hadn’t really noticed,” James said cautiously.

“You must have done!” his lordship exclaimed. “She’s known from here to Chichester as the most beautiful woman in Sussex. Some fool wrote a song about her a few years ago: ‘The Belle of Sealsea.’ I’d have tupped her myself if it weren’t for having Walter in the house, and his mother not long dead, and everyone in this damn island knowing everyone else’s business and turned so godly.”

James felt his familiar sense of distaste at the trouble that seemed to follow Alinor even here, among her betters. “Better to leave her alone,” he advised rapidly, “and then she might make a good marriage and change her luck.”

“Oh, aye,” Sir William conceded. “And her brother is an army man and as free with his opinions as a dog with his piss, and times so changeable. It’s not like the old days when you knew where you were. My father would take a tenant’s wife behind the haystack and no one would say a word but ‘Thank you, your lordship!’ ”

“Yes,” James said repressively. “It’s not like the old days at all.”

“Anyway, they say you can’t force her,” Sir William confided. “They say some fool tried to take her against her will, when she was coming home from market, and she whispered something to him that completely unmanned him. He said his cock went limp and his blood froze. He said she ruined him, before he ruined her.”

“Really?”

“Gossip. Sort of gossip that collects around a beautiful woman. Especially a cunning woman. They say she can do all sorts. They called her a cock whisperer after that; said that she could blast a man with ice or harden him like a rock. Must say, I’d like to know.”