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wouldn’t want to disappoint her by telling her I wasn’t a real lady at all. Just a merchant’s widow with money. And what will happen to me when the money’s gone? I wondered. I could be trapped here forever, doing other people’s mending—the useless younger son’s useless wife.
    Now if only the property claims could be settled, then Gregory could take me away, I mused. Without his relatives, everything would be better. After all, a man and a woman don’t have to love each other to live well together. Look at last night. It’s good, that part of it. And he does care for me, in his own way. And he’s clever—we’d have things to talk about. We could be happy. We could visit his family twice—oh, maybe once a year. Yes, once—that was about right. Just until the furniture started flying. That wouldn’t be many days at all. Living with relatives, that’s what makes things bad in a marriage. Not that just about everyone doesn’t do it, especially the landed gentry. But usually it’s only the older son who has to live in his father’s manor until he inherits, and often enough it drives him crazy. So if I can get Gregory to see it right, he’ll understand that we’re fortunate, we have possibilities.
    By this time Cis had remembered herself enough to make a curtsey, before clattering off through the groaning and stirring bodies. I pulled the curtains and had just settled back to eating when I heard rustling outside the bed.
    “Mama, can we get in?”
    “Mama, I need you to tie the lace at the back of my dress.”
    “Mama, have you got breakfast in there? We’re hungry too.” They had dressed themselves in the eccentric fashion that children have: Cecily had put Alison’s dress on her inside out in the bargain. They clambered up into the bed.
    “Look at the feathers! Mama, you’ve spoiled the whole bed, and nobody’s here to fix it.” They were right—I hadn’t even a needle to sew up the pillow again. They’d not thought to bring away a single useful item from the London house. Men. They’d brought the carved chest with Master Kendall’s astrolabe, his books, and the Saracen scimitar, but they hadn’t brought a needle, or a distaff, or anything a woman might need. Well, surely, I thought, if they’ve got clothes here, there must be a needle and thread. I’ll wait a decent interval to satisfy Gregory, then get dressed and go hunting. Somebody has to be doing the mending. Maybe I can get that laundress to put the feathers back and tidy things up. By this time, the girls had eaten most of the breakfast and begged to go downstairs.
    “Now you go straight to John in the stable, and you are to ride the donkey only in the courtyard. Be sure to share. Cecily, don’t be greedy and take all the turns. And look after Alison, because she’s little and could get hurt. Do you promise?” They looked so sweet as they promised. Cecily, tall and thin for a girl not so far from six, bobbed her unruly mass of red curls. She never could keep them properly combed; they were as troublesome as the splash of freckles across her nose that simply would come out every summer, even when I rubbed cucumber on them. Alison, eventhough she’s not yet four, so it’s a little early to tell, will probably never have a freckle problem. She’s as pink and white as a rose. The sweet little thing put two fingers in her mouth as she looked solemnly out of her great blue eyes at me.
    “Iss, Mama. I pwomise,” she said. The waves of her strawberry blond hair glistened in a ray of early morning sun that fell through the narrow slit of the window. An angel, I thought. She looks just like an angel. God protect them both. But I guess I’ll never learn. There are only two times when the girls look likeangels. One is when they’re sick; the other is when they’re planning something. It is a good thing I couldn’t see the something they had in mind. It was the beginning of events that changed everything.

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