Page 78 of Dawnlands

She seated herself and made a gesture that he should sit. He took the chair and thought it so odd that she, who had been little more than a beggar, born in the ferry-house a few miles from here, should reign in the parlor like a queen, while he, a gentleman from generations of gentry, should be as awkward as a schoolboy.

“You were kind to give us a lend of your carriage,” she said politely.

“You’re welcome… at any time… please let me send it for when you go home…” he started.

“Nay, I won’t go back to London until winter comes.”

“Really? You like it so much here?”

“It’s my home.”

“And nobody…” He did not know how to ask if she was notorious.

Her face, as open as he remembered, turned to him and her smile was as sweet. “Nobody remembers,” she said. “It’s probably a legend now, like the hushing well in the harbor. Long gone and forgotten.”

“The hushing well has stopped?”

“The harbor’s changed many times since you and I were last here. There’s no memory of the hushing well, it’s fallen silent.”

“The people at the mill…” He could not remember their names, only their avid faces as they clamored for her guilt.

“The daughter Jane—you won’t remember her—has bought out the lease.” Her smile invited him to wonder at the changes since they were last here. “She and her husband would be the last people in theworld to speak of us. Their marriage would be overset if Alys reappeared. There’s a new family at the ferry and no one thinks of the old Ferrymans. No one would link that family, that lowly family, to the Peacheys.”

“You pass off as Peachey?” he asked her, shocked that she should take a gentry name.

She shrugged. “Not I! It was your own wife, the Nobildonna, who chose the name for herself and so gave it to Matthew. Called herself da Picci, as luck would have it—and now everyone assumes we’re distant cousins of the old Peachey family.”

“And this place was Matteo’s choice?” he asked incredulously.

“We call him Matthew,” she corrected him gently. “Aye, he chose it, God bless him, as a gift for me: him that owes me nothing. But it’ll prove good. His ma can advise him about the land, Alys knows every yard of every hedge.”

“I didn’t think you would receive me,” he said, hoping they could speak of themselves.

“Your wife got Matthew the house,” she pointed out. “Does she know you’ve come?”

He flushed at her directness. “I am not obliged to tell her anything. But I did tell her I was coming.”

“She didn’t mind?”

“She made no complaint.”

Again, the light of laughter came into her eyes. “Not quite the same thing!”

“No. But this is important to me.”

She folded her hands in her lap and turned her gray gaze on him. “What is it, James? That you have come to me, after all this time?”

Now that he had her attention, he found that he did not dare to speak. “It is…” he began. “It is about myself. Forgive me. My physician tells me that I have a problem in my heart,” he said. “The beat is irregular. It does not go as it should.”

She said nothing.

“He tells me that, one day, it may just stop.”

“Stop?”

“Yes. Just stop beating.”

She frowned, looking at the fire as if she might see his future in the embers. “And that is fatal?”