JUNE 1670, LONDON
That afternoon, Sir James, waiting at the bridge over the canal, saw Livia come out of the warehouse front door, put up a black-trimmed parasol against the bright sunshine, and then beckon the nursemaid and baby to follow her. He was relieved to be chaperoned; but he feared that the presence of the maid would not prevent Livia from saying anything that she liked.
“You don’t have a parasol for the baby?” he asked.
“He is Italian,” she replied. “The sun is good for him.”
“Half Italian,” he corrected her.
“Of course, half Italian, half English, and perhaps he will be a—what do you say?—a York-shire-man.”
The matter was too serious for him to return her smile. “Your ladyship, I don’t think that can be. I must say—”
“No, no, don’t say a word!” she interrupted him. “Let us walk in the beautiful fields and I will tell you something that you should know. I have permission from La Suocera to tell you, and from her daughter too. I think the daughter is the strictest of the two, don’t you? But a mother of twins must be obeyed.”
“Alys? You say twins? Both children are Alys’s children? You know that for sure?”
She walked beside him, her hand lightly on his arm. “I will tell you it all,” she promised him. “When I am on my little seat.”
He forced himself to speak of the weather and of the flock of sheep in the distance. She asked how far it was to the warehouse from his home, and how long it took him by boat, or by horse.
“About half an hour by boat. If the tide is with me,” he said.
“And if you wanted to send something from the warehouse to the City?” she said. “Some big, bulky things? Would you send them by boat or by wagon?”
He guessed she was speaking of her antique objects. “I think they would have to go to the Custom House near Queenhithe,” he said. “To pay duties.”
“I have to pay duties before they are sold?” she asked. “I pay duties on the value of them before I sell them? They think I can afford to pay duties before I have made any money?”
“I don’t know.” He felt very tired. “It’s not something I’ve ever gone into.”
As if she sensed his mood, she glanced up at him and smiled. “Ah, business!” she said with a wave of her gloved hand. “We will not talk about business. It is beneath us.”
They had reached the fallen tree where she had sat before. Again, he spread a fresh silk handkerchief and she perched on the trunk of the tree while he stood before her, and the nursemaid put a shawl on the grass and laid the baby down, bending over to see his smile. She gave him a leaf and took it from him when he put it in his mouth. She showed him a twig. She tickled his round cheeks with a buttercup, smiling at his rich chuckle.
Livia held her parasol over her head and peeped up at Sir James. “I have found out about your child,” she said. “As I promised I would.”
Now that he was about to know, he found that he almost wanted to be left in ignorance. “Tell me,” he forced himself to say.
“They trusted me with the truth, so that I might tell you.”
“Yes,” he said. “And?”
“You know that Mrs. Reekie was carrying your child before the accident?”
The drop of his head told her that he had known this, and that still he had failed to save her.
“After the accident she nearly died.”
“The child? What happened to the child?” he whispered.
“She miscarried the baby. It died. There is no child. You have no son.”
He gave a little stagger, as if a blow had finally fallen. “You are sure? There is no doubt? No… deceit?”
“I am sure. They would not lie on a matter so sacred.”
“But Johnnie? I was so sure he…”
“He is Alys’s boy. Sarah is hers too. Alys was carrying twins when she left her husband.” She paused. “I don’t know about him,” she said. “I’ll ask if you want.”
“No, it doesn’t matter. It was their wedding day. I’m not interested in him.”
She was shocked. “Their wedding day? Heavens! What happened?”
“It was their wedding day—the day it… all happened.”
“A winter wedding?” she asked, thinking of the ribbon and the dried berries in Alys’s cupboard. “How sad. Very sad and tragic.”
“Are you sure of this?” he asked her. “It is not a lie they have made up together?”
“Why would they lie about something like this, against their own interests? They would be far more likely to say Johnnie is your child and claim your fortune!”
He tried to speak; he turned away. “So I have no son,” he said, almost to himself. “All these years when I have been hoping… and I sent money. But there was no child. There never was.”
She gave him a moment to walk up and down, he went past Matteo, who crowed to see him and waved a blade of grass; but James was blind to everything. He came back to stand before Livia. “Forgive me,” he said. “It’s a blow.”
“But you are free perhaps now? From your sorrow?” She lifted her parasol so he could see her encouraging smile. “You are free to make a new life again.”
“I would not blame her if she had given the child away, or hidden him from me,” he spoke half to himself. “I wouldn’t blame her if she had found a family to take him and he had been adopted. I would forgive her even if I could never see him.”
“Yes, but she did not.” Livia had to nip her plump lower lip to contain her irritation. “She told me. Alys heard her tell me. Just as I said. He died, and she buried him.”
“I can see his grave?”
“At sea,” she said quietly. “They would not have received him in the churchyard. A miscarried bastard.”
That silenced him. He bowed his head. “God forgive me.”
“I swear this, on the life of my own son,” she said earnestly. “You have no child. He died. You are free.”
He took a little step away from the beautiful young woman seated, as if posed for a portrait, on the fallen tree with the midsummer green meadow all around her, and a flock of sheep in the middle distance. She turned and beckoned to the nursemaid, who picked up Matteo and gave him to his mother. When Sir James turned back to look at her, she was smiling down at her son. She looked up, and when she saw he was watching her, she kissed Matteo’s little head.
“And so, I told him,” Livia told Alys, seated on the bed as Alys brushed her black hair that night. “He took it very calmly.”
“He will leave us alone now?”
“I need his help to sell the antiquities; but he will never trouble you or Mia Suocera again. He may come to see me; but he will leave without seeing either of you.”
Alys finished plaiting Livia’s hair and got into bed, ready to insist that Sir James was never to come to the warehouse, that was their agreement. Slowly, Livia loosened her gown and stepped out of it, pulled her dayshift over her head and laid them both in the chest. Naked, she stood before the bed, as the candlelight played on her olive skin, made shadows between her breasts, between her legs, as beautiful as a statue and as alluring as a nymph. She unfolded her nightshift and tossed it high in the air, so for a moment she stood, arms raised, her head up, then she caught her shift over her head and pulled it down.
“You agree?”
Alys, stunned by Livia’s shameless beauty, could not speak.
Livia turned back the bedsheets and slid into Alys’s arms. She repeated the words she had said to Sir James. “It was very sad and surely very tragic. But we can be happy now. Sir James is forgiven and will not see your mother, you and your children are safe, and I”—she caught a little breath of anticipation—“I shall make my son’s fortune. Roberto’s son will be brought up as a gentleman.”
Alys could not speak, could not even think with the image of the upflung nightgown and the upreaching curved brown body, feeling the warmth of the beautiful young woman slowly enfolding her.
“You say nothing?” Livia whispered, her breath against Alys’s neck. “But I think we will all be happy.”