Page 79 of Dawnlands

“Yes,” he said. “Fatal.”

She nodded, saying nothing.

“In a way I’m glad,” he said hastily. “For so many years I thought of your suffering, the water in your lungs, your struggle to breathe. Now I feel that I am a little like you. I too am under a sentence of death. I’m not surprised. My heart broke that day, when you were half drowned. I truly believe that it has never beat in time since that day. My doctor cannot tell me how long I might live.”

She waited.

“Months rather than years, he thinks.”

The log shifted in the grate and sent a shower of sparks up the chimney. He thought that if he had not been a fool and a coward, this might have been their parlor, and the wood in the grate might have been logged from his forest and dried in his wood store, and they might be facing his death after a long life together. They would have had their own children to inherit his fortune, and she would have held his hand as the light went to darkness.

“I am sorry,” she said levelly.

He wanted to kneel at her feet and put his face in her lap. He wanted to feel her cool hand on the nape of his neck. “If I were to kneel at your feet, I wouldn’t be able to get up again,” he said, trying to make a joke of the pain in his heart.

“Did you come here to kneel at my feet?”

He flushed, feeling the heat rise in his face as if he were still a young man with a strong heart. “Yes. I suppose I did. I came to beg your forgiveness—”

“You did that, and I forgave you.”

“And to ask if I might spend the rest of my life with you? Here with you? In the house as a friend? If I might live my last months with you?”

He saw her eyes warm at the thought of it. “Ah, James—I don’t know—”

“You’re thinking of Alys,” he said suddenly. “But she can have no objection. She’s not your keeper. And Livia won’t care. We don’t live as husband and wife, she thinks of nothing but her place at court. Iam free, Alinor. I have been freed by this promise of my death. Let me come to you.”

Still she said nothing, her gray eyes on his pleading face.

“I love you,” he admitted, very low. “I have never stopped loving you.”

She was as quiet as a deer in the woods, watching silently falling snow.

“Do you love me?” he demanded. “Have you loved me for all these years?”

She blinked as if he had pulled her from an inner vision. “Oh yes,” she said, as if it were unimportant. “I never stopped loving you. But as for your living here, I should have to think about it.”

“Of course!” he said hastily. “Of course.” He had expected her to turn to him, that he would reach for her, that he would hold her in his arms once again, that he would feel her body against him and smell the perfume of her hair. He had thought she might cry at this happy ending of their story. But she was far away, seated in her chair, dreamily watching the fire.

After a while she gave a little sigh and rang a small bell that stood on the table beside her. “I have to go to bed,” she said, as if they were not in the middle of a conversation—the most important conversation of his life. “Ask them for anything that you want. They will serve you a supper. Please excuse me.”

“But I thought—” He jumped to his feet and took a hasty step towards her. She put out her hand and he stopped at once, as the door opened and a maid came in.

“Lizzie, I need to go to bed.” Alinor smiled at the girl. “And when you come down again, please serve Sir James his supper and show him to his room.” She turned to him with quiet confidence, as if she had been giving orders as the lady of the manor for all her life. “Shall we take breakfast together at ten?”

With the maid in the room he could do nothing but bow. “Good night,” he said formally, though he had hoped she would be in his arms and he would spend the night in her bed.

“Good night,” she said; she had no such thought.

REEKIE WHARF, LONDON, AUTUMN 1685

Captain Shore’s ship,Sweet Hope, nosed towards her home wharf, the Captain on the bridge in his best coat and hat, bellowing orders to his crew to get the lines on the quay capstans, and loose them from the barge which had towed them in.

Alys stood on the quay, proudly watching her husband’s ship come in. She waved to his stocky figure on the bridge, and then gave a little gasp as she saw two girls beside him.

“Captain Shore, are those my granddaughters?” she shouted at him.

He waved his hat like a boy and yelled: “Ahoy there! Two precious cargos from Venice, Miss Gabrielle and Miss Mia! Safely delivered and undamaged by salt water.”