“Rob’s boy,” was all she said.

“Your grandson,” Lady da Ricci whispered, and put the baby into Alinor’s arms. “Doesn’t he look like Roberto?”

Alinor received the baby with the confidence of a midwife who has attended hundreds of births, but she did not embrace him. She held him on her lap so that she could look down at the sleeping face, round as a moon with red lips that showed a rosy little sucking blister. She did not exclaim with instant love; strangely she said nothing for long moments as if she were interrogating the dark eyelashes on the creamy cheeks and the snub little nose, and when she looked up at the widow kneeling beside her sofa, her pale face was grave: “How old is he?”

“Ah, he is just five months old, God bless him, to lose his father when he was newborn.”

“And his eyes?”

“Dark, dark blue, you will see when he wakes. Dark as the deep sea.”

The Italian lady felt, rather than saw, the little shudder that Alinor could not suppress.

“He is so like his father,” she asserted louder. “Every day I see it more.”

“Do you?” Alinor asked neutrally.

“He is Matteo Roberto, but you must call him Matthew of course. And Robert, for his father. Matthew Robert da Ricci.”

“Da Ricci?”

“My title, and my married name.”

The widow saw her mother-in-law’s hand tighten on the beautiful lace trim of the white gown. “I’ll call him Matteo, like you,” was all that the older woman said.

“I hope it will comfort you, that though you have lost a son, I have brought your grandson to you?”

“I don’t think…”

“You don’t think…?” the Italian woman repeated, almost as if she were daring Alinor to finish her thought. “What don’t you think, Nonna? I shall call you dearest grandmother, you are his only grandmother!”

“I don’t think that one child can take the place of another. Nor would I wish it.”

“Oh! But to watch him grow up! An English boy in his father’s country? Won’t that joy take away the pain of your loss? Of our loss?”

Alinor said nothing, and the widow sensed that her lilting voice was somehow off key. “I must not tire you with my baby, and my sorrows.”

“You don’t tire me,” Alinor said gently, giving the baby back to her. “And I’m glad that you have come and brought your son. I’m sorry we’re not made ready for you. We only just got your letters. But you must have a home here as long as you want. Rob wrote that you have no family of your own?”

“No one,” she said swiftly. “I have no one. I am an orphan. I have no one but you!”

“Then you shall stay as long as you wish, I’m only sorry that we don’t have more to offer you.”

The widow did not allow herself to glance around the room which was obviously a workplace, a sitting room, and a bedroom in one. “I want only to be with you. Is this your only house? What about your home in the country?”

“This is all we have.”

“All I want is here,” she breathed. “All I want is to live with you and with my sister, Alys.”

Alinor nodded; but said nothing.

“Will you bless me?” her daughter-in-law prompted. “And call me Livia? And may I call you Mamma? May I call you Mia Suocera, my mother-in-law?”

Alinor’s face paled as she closed her lips on a refusal. “Yes,” she said. “Of course. God bless you, daughter.”

* * *

The two young women dined alone in the parlor while the maid took a tray up the narrow stairs for Alinor. The nursemaid ate in the kitchen, sulking that there was no servants’ hall. She took the baby under one arm and her candle in her hand and went up the narrow wooden stairs, to the first-floor bedroom, opposite the big front room that Alinor seldom left.

“Your mother is ill?” Livia asked Alys. “Roberto never told me she was so very ill.”

“She had an accident,” Alys replied.

Livia shook her head. “Ah, how sad. Just recently?”

“No, it was many years ago.”

“But she will recover?”

“She can walk out in fine weather, but she gets very tired. She prefers to rest in her room.”

“Oh, so sad! And she must have been a beautiful woman! To be struck down so!”

“Yes,” said Alys shortly.

“Roberto never told me! He should have told me!”

“It was—” Alys broke off. She thought she could not answer for her brother to this exotic bride he had chosen. “It was a great shock to us all. We never spoke of it. We never speak of it at all.”

The Nobildonna considered this for a moment. “An accident too terrible to discuss?”

“Exactly.”

“You are silent?”

“Yes.”

The pretty young woman considered this. “Was it your fault?” she asked baldly. “Since you have made a silence of an accident?”

Alys’s face was stricken in the candlelight. “Yes, exactly. It was my fault. And I never speak of it, and nor does Ma.”

The younger woman nodded as if secrets came naturally to her. “Very well. I shall say nothing also. So, tell me about the rest of your family. You have an uncle, do you not? Rob’s uncle Ned?”

“Yes, but he is not in London. He would not live here, under a king. He writes every season from New England, and he sends us goods. Mostly herbs, he sends us rare herbs that we can sell to the apothecaries…”

“He leaves his home because he does not like the new king? But why should he care?” She laughed. “It’s not as if they are likely to meet?”

“He’s very staunch,” Alys tried to explain. “He believed in the parliament, he fought in the New Model Army, he hates the rule of kings. When his leader Oliver Cromwell died, and they brought Prince Charles back, my uncle left the country with others who think like him—great men, some of them. They would not live under a king and he would have executed them.”

“He is wealthy in the New World?” she inquired. “He has a plantation? He has many slaves? He makes a fortune?”

“No, he has half a plot and the rights to the ferry. No slaves. He would never own a slave. He went with almost nothing, he had to leave our home.”

“But it still belongs to the family?”

“No, it’s lost. We were only ever tenants.”

“I thought it was a great house, with servants and its own chapel?” she demanded.

“That was the Priory, where Rob stayed as a companion to the lord’s son. My uncle Ned just had the ferry-house, and Ma and Rob and me lived in a little fisherman’s cottage nearby.”

Livia’s pretty mouth pursed. “I thought you were a greater family than this!” she complained.

Alys gritted her teeth on her shame. “I’m afraid not.”

But Livia was pursuing the family history. “Ah well, but you have children! Are they doing well? I so long to meet them! Where are they?”

“They are twins. My son, John, is at work, apprenticed to a merchant in the City. My daughter, Sarah, works as an apprentice milliner, she’s nearly finished her time at the shop. She’s very skillful, she takes after her grandmother—not me. They come home on Saturday after work.”