Page 141 of Dawnlands

I am pleased to tell you I have got a pupilage at Raynold and Barr, a senior law firm, and I will now practice as a lawyer and be paid a fee. Your late husband Sir James was so good as to remember me in his will, and I am now in a condition that I can support a wife.

I am going to propose to Miss Mia Russo, whom you met when you were last at the Priory. I cannot properly tell you how much Ilove and respect her. I should have been glad to come to speak of her, but I believe you are with the queen at Bath until later this month.

I shall write to her father, Sn. Felipe Russo, for permission to address his daughter with a proposal of marriage as soon as I have your blessing.

Your obedient son,

Matthew Peachey

“Lord, no!” Livia exclaimed, reading the letter and then rereading it. “Fool that I am not to have foreseen it!”

She scanned the letter again. “Typical of James to give him enough to make him think he can marry and yet not enough to keep a wife. Ridiculous.”

She flicked the page with her finger as if she would dust the words from the paper. “I’d like to see Felipe’s face!” she remarked. “Ha! Or the pert girl he married, Sarah. Lord! The daughter of Sarah, the milliner, and Felipe Russo, the mountebank, as a wife for my son? I think not!”

She set the page on her lap and gazed at it.

“Bad news?” asked one of the ladies-in-waiting, passing by her chair.

Livia looked up with her most charming smile. “My son, writing to me,” she said. “He is such a joy!”

THE COFFEEHOUSE, SERLE COURT, LONDON, AUTUMN 1687

Livia sat in her preferred seat in the coffeehouse, away from the central table where the clerks and the lawyers exchanged notes andread newspapers, close to the stove for the warmth, in the discreet high-backed settle.

Matthew came into the room and was greeted with new respect by the owner Mr. Hart. “Mr. Peachey, sir,” he said in greeting. “Lady Avery has just arrived.”

It had not taken Mr. Hart long to learn that the newly qualified Matthew was the only son and heir to the queen’s favorite, Lady Avery, owned the family seat of Fairmere Priory in Sussex, and would doubtless inherit Avery House in London.

“Shall I bring coffee over, sir? And pastries?”

“Yes, yes,” Matthew said, hurrying to greet his mother.

She did not rise to greet him but merely looked up at him. He was struck once more by the classic loveliness of her face, set off now by a black collar and a tall black hat with inky plumes that curled around the brim and rested against her perfect cheek, reminding him that she was still in mourning for Sir James.

“Signora Madre!” he said. He bent to her and she kissed his forehead. “I am sorry for your loss.”

“Your gain. He left you five hundred pounds. Have you had it yet?”

“Yes, a draft to my bank. It was very good of him! I did not expect it.”

“He did not surprise me with a legacy, I am sorry to say.”

Matthew was silent for a moment while Mr. Hart himself set the cups and poured coffee and left a large bowl of sugar on the table. Matthew thought that his mother did not look like a woman disappointed in her inheritance. The hat and the cloak were new, and she wore black opals in her ears and at her throat. “Signora Madre?I should be glad to give it to…”

She shook her head. “I don’t complain,” she said. “Your gain is my good. We are as one.”

He blinked a little at learning they were, once again, a couple with a shared endeavor.

“But five hundred pounds is not enough for you to marry a girl without a fortune.”

“Mia Russo…”

“I thought that she had come to England to study and to write? I was specifically told that she was not looking for a husband?”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“There is no money to be made from writing. Especially for a woman.”