Page 39 of Dark Tides
“Rob thought of this?” Alinor asked blankly.
“Oh yes!” Livia responded. “It was all his idea. The best prices for the antiquities are paid by the English lords building their houses and making their collections. Is that not true?”
“It might be true,” Alys conceded. “But we don’t move in those circles.”
“I know that now!” Livia said with a hint of impatience. “But still it is my hope that I might bring my collection from Venice and sellhere. Sir James knows these people, and I think he will introduce me, so that I can sell the treasures. Roberto’s treasures, his inheritance to his son. And I hope you will ship them for me and store them here, so that I can sell them with Sir James?”
“Not Sir James,” Alinor said at once.
“Do you know another nobleman?”
“We don’t know him,” Alinor corrected her.
“Forgive me,” Livia said rapidly. “Of course, I know that you refused him, but I thought that you held him… in some esteem?”
Alinor rested her hand at the base of her throat and gestured to Alys to open the top half of the door to the balcony. The wind was coming from the east, and the stink of the tallow and burning fat from the tanneries on the Neckinger billowed in like a cloud of grease.
“If we sold the antiquities, we could buy a better warehouse further upriver where the air is cleaner,” Livia observed.
Alinor sat back in her chair. “Forgive me,” she said, clearing her throat with a cough.
“You are distressed that Sir James helps me?” Livia asked. “May I not ask him? When it is Roberto’s legacy to his son? What objection do you have to him when he offers you so much, so freely? How has he offended you?”
Alys closed the window as if she did not want even the seagulls, wheeling over the high tide, to hear what her mother was going to say.
“I was carrying his child when there was an accident,” Alinor admitted.
Livia nodded gravely, alert to every quiet word.
“My mother was nearly drowned.”
“And I lost the baby.”
“She nearly died herself,” Alys said quietly. “We came away—we could not live there after that. My husband’s family would not have me in their house, and we found a refuge here. I gave birth to my twins here. My uncle Ned left our home too, and Rob went to train at Padua as soon as he finished his apprenticeship in Chichester. We’ve none of us ever been back.”
“How you must have suffered!” Livia exclaimed.
“At first we did. Not now.”
Livia wrinkled her forehead as if she were puzzled. “You were expecting babies together? Both at the same time? But you had twins, Alys? And myCara Suoceramiscarried her baby?”
“Yes.”
“How very unlucky!”
“Yes,” Alinor confirmed without a tremor.
“But you made your living from what you had?”
“Yes. We have done.”
“But that is all that I want to do,” she said simply. “My son’s inheritance and my dower are in carved marble and bronze in my store in Venice. I want to sell them in London. I want to make a living out of what I have. You, of all people, would not tell me that is wrong.”
“No,” Alinor agreed. “If they’re yours, I am sure you’re right.”
“It was Roberto’s own plan. He said that you would send a ship for the antiquities and you would sell them for us.”
“We could try,” Alys said. “I suppose we could advertise that we have these goods? But people would not come down here to see them, we would have to find an agent who sells them?” She hesitated. “Do you have money for the rent of a gallery or a saleroom?”
