“Ah, don’t fuss,” he said, grinning at her. “I was out drinking with the other lads last night and I have a headache from bad wine.”

“So, does he not get scolded for spending his wages on drink?” Sarah demanded. “Ribbons are forbidden, but drink is all right?”

“He’s a boy,” her grandmother teased her. “He can do as he wishes.”

“You’ll never get a husband if you’re such a shrew.” Johnnie winked at her.

Sarah kicked his chair with her foot under the table. “Don’t want one!”

“Now stop, you two,” Alys said quietly. “What will your aunt be thinking?”

“I think they are adorable!” Livia said warmly. “But tell me—am I trespassing in someone’s bedroom? I am in the attic room next to Tabs?”

“That’s my room,” Johnnie said.

“I thought it must be, with the books and the charts. My nursemaid and baby have taken the bedroom downstairs.”

“That was mine,” Sarah said.

“Could you sleep with your baby and the nursemaid for tonight?” Alys asked Livia.

The young woman spread her hands in apology. “Alas, I cannot! If I sleep near Matteo he cries for me, and it wakes me and I can never sleep again. He seems to know that I am in the room, and he calls for me! It is so sweet! But if Miss Sarah would condescend to sleep with my nursemaid, Carlotta, and the baby, I know the baby would be quiet as a little mouse? Would you agree? You don’t object?”

“All right,” Sarah said. “Since it’s my bed anyway. But where is Johnnie to sleep?”

“I can bed down here,” he offered.

“I would never dream of it. He must have his room and I will share with your mamma if she permits.”

“Me?” Alys demanded.

Livia smiled. “Of course,” she said blandly. “There is nowhere else. You don’t object to sharing with me? I don’t snore at all.”

“No,” said Alys. “Of course.”

* * *

Alinor went up to her room early; but the rest of the little family sat at the table playing Game of Goose and talking about their week. Livia’s bright assessing gaze went from one young face to another looking for the resemblance to Sir James, wondering if it was possible that the handsome youth and the pretty girl were not twin brother and sister. Raised together and always in each other’s company, they knew what the other was thinking and often finished each other’s sentences, their expressions mirrored each other. Livia thought they could well be twins—only a mother could have known the truth. Only a father seeking an heir could have dreamed of separating them, could have wanted one, without the other.

At midnight Alys said, “Come, you two. You’ve got to be up in the morning for church. It’s time for bed now.”

In the hall their nighttime candles were each in a candlestick. Alys went to the kitchen to check that the back door was locked, and the fire banked down for the night.

“All safe?” Johnnie asked, his foot on the bottom stair, his candle lit.

“All safe,” she confirmed.

“D’you still draw the runes against house fire in the ashes?” Sarah asked.

Alys smiled. “Of course! Think what your grandma would say if she found me letting the house burn down for want of a mark to keep the fire in the grate.”

“Good night.” Sarah kissed her mother and then, when Livia opened her arms, she kissed her aunt too.

“Good night,” Johnnie said from the cramped landing.

“You don’t kiss me good night?” Livia teased, and laughed to see him blush, and hurriedly go up to his attic room.

Alys turned into her mother’s room to say good night, as Livia went into Alys’s bedroom. She set down the candle on a washstand and looked around the room. It was sparsely furnished with a large wooden chest at the foot of the bed. She lifted the lid and found thick jackets and winter cloaks, and—she rummaged into each corner—a metal box which might hold money or perhaps jewelry. She flicked open the catch and lifted the lid. On the top was writing paper and a stick of old sealing wax, and underneath it were white ribbons, now brown with age, and a posy of dried herbs tied in with some dry and wrinkled berries. Livia glanced at them: a bridal buttonhole—a winter bridal buttonhole—but who had worn it? And where was he now?

She took off her black trimmed cap and put it beside the small silvered mirror on the little table. She unbelted her overdress and laid it carefully in the top of the chest. Underneath she had her silk underdress which she hung to air on the back of the door. By the time Alys came in, Livia was in her beautiful linen nightshift, trimmed with the finest lace, her hairbrush in her hand.

“Would you?” she asked familiarly, and sat on the end of the bed and tossed her mane of dark glossy hair over her shoulders.

“D’you like it plaited for the night?” Alys stumbled.

“Please. I usually ask Carlotta to do it, but I don’t want to disturb them.”

“Of course.”

Gently, and then with more confidence, Alys swept the brush through the thick mass of black hair. “It is beautiful,” she said.

“Roberto used to brush it for me. He said that your mother had hair like a wheat field, yours was the color of barley, and I had hair the color of night.”

Alys finished the plait with a neat bow of white ribbon, and turned to undress herself, as Livia went to the bed. “Which side do you like?”

Alys kept her face turned away. “I never slept in the same bed as my husband. I don’t have a side. I don’t know which.”

“Ah,” Livia said quietly. “I will go this side, then, near the door in case I have to go to little Matteo in the night, and you shall sleep by the window, unless the sunlight is too bright for you when it rises?”

“No, no,” Alys said. “The shutters are closed, and anyway, I’m an early riser.” She coiled her hair into a loose knot, pulled on a cap, dragged a nightgown over her clothes, and then blew out their candle. In the dark she shuffled out of her gown and petticoats under her nightgown before shaking them out and laying them on the chest and getting into bed. It occurred to her, for the first time, that though she had lain with a man she had passionately loved, they had never had even one night together, parting on their wedding day.

She lay rigid, stiff as a bolster, her head on the pillow pointing south, her feet due north, like a locked compass. She did not dare to stretch or slump.

“Are you cold?” came a whisper out of the darkness.

“A little.” She did not know what she felt.

A warm hand reached under her shoulders and drew her close. “Rest your head here,” Livia invited. “We are both lonely, we are both alone. Rest your head here, and we can sleep together.”

Through the thin nightgown Alys could feel the warmth of the young woman, she could smell her perfume of roses. Slowly she relaxed, and they fell asleep lulled by the quiet lapping of the low tide.

JUNE 1670, LONDON

In the morning Livia was still sleeping, dark eyelashes swept down over the soft curve of her cheek, as Alys got up, dressed in silence, and tiptoed from the room for fear of waking the young woman who slept through the noise of the stirring house as if she were the princess in the story, and would wake only to the kiss of a prince.