Page 40 of Dark Tides
Livia spread her little hands. “I have nothing. Roberto spent all his time on poor patients who could not pay. He left me and his son penniless.”
“That’s not like him,” Alinor observed quietly.
“Oh no! For I have my treasures,” the widow assured her. “But I have to sell them! Surely I may ask Sir James to show them for me, to the people that he knows. If you would only allow me to use him for our good? You need never meet him again. I would manage him. I would never bring him here.”
Alys looked at her mother for refusal. “We can do it without him,” she said stubbornly. “We don’t need him.”
“He will keep coming here, and keep coming here, until he knows about his son,” Livia warned her. “Why should I not meet him for you and tell him? You owe him nothing! Let me tell him there is no son, and no hope; but that I will work with him.”
“I think you’ve made your mind up to do this?” Alinor asked, and was rewarded by a gleam of Livia’s impertinent little smile.
“Ah, you understand me,” she frankly admitted. “You see the sort of woman I am—like you, like you both. I am determined to survive this terrible loss, and I hope I am brave as you were. Yes, indeed, I am determined; but I have not spoken to him. If you allow me to do business with him you will never meet him again; but he can be of service to me, and to Roberto’s son.”
Again, Alys looked at her mother for a refusal.
“Very well.” Alinor turned to her daughter. “She’s right, Sir James knows these people and this is his world.” A twist of her mouth showed what she thought of Sir James’s world. “Let him introduce her—we can’t.”
“You permit?” Livia turned to Alys. “You will let me share with you in this business? You will send a ship for my treasures and let me keep Sir James from you and your mother and the dear children?”
The swift grimace that came and went on Alys’s face told Livia that she had guessed correctly that, more than anything, Alys wanted the wealthy nobleman kept away from her son.
“I shall keep him from the children and from your mother,” Livia promised. “I will tell him that his own child died in the accident, and that the two children are yours. I will convince him of it. He will believe me, I shall persuade him. I am good at persuading people.”
“Are you?” Alinor asked.
“When it is the right thing.”
“It’s such a great expense,” Alys said awkwardly. “It’s not the sort of thing we usually do. We’re not merchants, Livia. We just load and unload for the merchants and the captains.”
Livia widened her eyes. “Do you not have enough money?” she asked. “Not for one voyage going only one way?”
Alys flushed. “I could find it, I suppose. I could borrow some of it. But we’ve never borrowed. We’ve never put all our money in one venture.”
“Shall I ask Sir James if he will pay for the shipping?” Livia asked. “I am sure that he would.”
“No!” Alys said abruptly. “Don’t do that.”
“Then what?” Livia asked helplessly. “What shall we do?”
Alys exchanged a glance with her mother. “I’ll find the money,” she said. “Just this once.”
JUNE 1670, LONDON
That afternoon, Sir James, waiting at the bridge over the canal, saw Livia come out of the warehouse front door, put up a black-trimmed parasol against the bright sunshine, and then beckon the nursemaid and baby to follow her. He was relieved to be chaperoned; but he feared that the presence of the maid would not prevent Livia from saying anything that she liked.
“You don’t have a parasol for the baby?” he asked.
“He is Italian,” she replied. “The sun is good for him.”
“Half Italian,” he corrected her.
“Of course, half Italian, half English, and perhaps he will be a—what do you say?—a York-shire-man.”
The matter was too serious for him to return her smile. “Your ladyship, I don’t think that can be. I must say—”
“No, no, don’t say a word!” she interrupted him. “Let us walk in the beautiful fields and I will tell you something that you should know. I have permission fromLa Suocerato tell you, and from her daughter too. I think the daughter is the strictest of the two, don’t you? But a mother of twins must be obeyed.”
“Alys? You say twins? Both children are Alys’s children? You know that for sure?”
