“He’s done very well.” Rob nodded. “I’m glad for him. My mother was very glad to go back there, in her last years. It was a great repayment for her kindness to him.”

  “Lady Avery and I have agreed that Matthew would be a most suitable match for Hester,” she said, taking the plunge. “I thought of it when we met her at the Priory, and I visited her at court and she proposed it. Or I did. I can’t remember which of us spoke first—it’s so obviously the right thing.” She stole a quick look at his stunned expression. “You cannot be surprised! I thought you were encouraging him. Your sister did too!”

  For a moment he was silent. “Hester is far too young,” was all he could say.

  “She’s sixteen!” she exclaimed.

  “Her foot…”

  “You said yourself that it is almost straight. And besides, it makes no difference.”

  “Julia, I can’t consider it.”

  She laughed at him. “I have taken you by surprise, your little girl is fully grown, and she deserves the best settlement we can get for her. What good fortune that the most eligible young man is a friend of the family, and she is head over heels in love with him already. We are arranging a love match—the best of all possible worlds.”

  “I don’t believe it,” he said.

  “She hangs on his every word. Whenever they have been at the Priory, it is all ‘Matthew says…’ and ‘Matthew thinks’—what did you intend when you threw a pretty girl and a handsome young man together for days at a time?”

  “I thought they were, all four, children together.”

  “Well, the children are grown up, and will have children of their own!”

  As if those words unlocked something in him, he stood and pushed back his chair. “It’s not possible,” he said flatly. “They cannot marry.”

  She blinked at his tone. “My dear—you’re too late—the lawyers are drawing up the contracts.”

  “You cannot have instructed them without me!”

  “I did not instruct them. Papa did so. They are his lawyers.”

  “Does your father know that I have not been consulted?”

  “It’s his fortune that Hester inherits. It’s his lawyers that draw up the contracts.”

  “She’s my daughter!”

  “But of course. Which is why I want you here at teatime!”

  “It cannot be,” he said. “Believe me, Julia, I am completely serious about this. It cannot be.”

  “Then you can go and tell Papa,” she said easily.

  “I shall go at once, and see your father, and tell him that this cannot happen.” He bit down his anger that she had gone so far, knowingly defying him, and went from the room without another word.

  * * *

  Hester was waiting for him on the turn of the stairs, where she used to wait for him when she was a little girl. As he ran up to his dressing room to get his jacket and his hat, he found here there.

  “Papa, are you coming to tea? Did she tell you?”

  “She told me. Hester, it’s not possible. You’re both far too young.”

  “No, we’re not,” she said reasonably. “And we will be betrothed for a year anyway.”

  “There are obstacles, I can’t discuss them with you, but there are insuperable obstacles to the two of you marrying.”

  “You like him?”

  “Yes, I do. I don’t like his mother…”

  “That doesn’t matter.” She smiled at him. “You shall always come for Christmas to the Priory and she won’t. She doesn’t like to leave the queen. You’ll see no more of her when I am married to her son, than you do now. And that was only once, Papa!”

  Rob felt he was sinking into madness. “I cannot tell you my objection,” he said slowly to her smiling face. “But you must put this out of your mind. I am completely serious, Hester, it can’t happen.”

  She flushed, and her eyes filled with tears. “Papa! Don’t say such a thing. I love him. I truly do. And he loves me. I won’t marry anyone else but him. Papa, don’t say such things to me!”

  “My darling.” He took her hands, he could not bear to hurt her. “You’re young, you will—”

  “Is Mama canceling teatime?” she interrupted him.

  “No.”

  “Does Mama say I shall not marry Matthew?”

  “No, not yet. I have to see your grandfather.”

  Her face lightened. “Then I will see him this afternoon.”

  “You can see him!” he exclaimed. “But you can’t marry him!”

  “As soon as I see him, it will all be all right,” she said.

  AMSTERDAM, HOLLAND, SPRING 1688

  Once again Ned was walking the cobbled streets of Amsterdam, crossing the narrow bridges, as he had done three years ago—three years to the very month. He could hardly believe that Rowan was not at his shoulder, hard on his heels. He remembered her dismay at the streets that stretched for miles, her contempt for the cozy little houses. He remembered laughing at her when she could not comprehend that people might choose to live indoors, build a house and stay in the same place all year round.

  He had thought that he would miss her for the rest of his life, but increasingly, he felt at peace, with a deep gladness that they had been together on such a journey, in step together on a long march. He was glad that she had never left his side, not through voyage nor march nor battle, not even when he had ordered her to go.

  Ned followed the directions he had been given to the English tavern in the city, limping a little on the slippery cobbles, but finding his way. He ducked through the low doorway, went down a short flight of wooden stairs. For a moment he paused, remembering the Duke of Monmouth looking up, illuminated by a shaft of light from a high window. He blinked his eyes against the smoke and the darkness of the room, and an English voice said: “God be praised! Is that you, Ned Ferryman?”

  It was Robert Ferguson, Monmouth’s preacher. Ned had last seen him praying with the troops for a righteous victory before the battle of Westonzoyland.

  “That you, Padre?” he said, his lopsided smile warming his face. “You here again?”

  “You here again?” the man repeated, clapping Ned on the back. “I thought you were transported? I thought they picked you up near dead?”

  “I was,” Ned replied. “Near dead and then transported. But it’s a hard task to kill an old dog, and now I’ve come home.”

  Ferguson drew him towards the table at the back of the room. Ned recognized a few faces from the Monmouth army. They gripped hands, they embraced each other, laughing at the fact that they had met again, naming quickly the men who had been lost.

  “Nathaniel Wade was the last man I saw, as I went down,” Ned said, looking round.

  Ferguson shook his head. “Turned his coat,” he said shortly. “D’you remember William Hewling? And his brother Benjamin?”

  “I knew William,” Ned said. “Met him at Lyme.”

  “His sister was whipped off Jeffrey’s coach door, begging for mercy. The two lads were hanged.”

  “God send England better lords,” Ned exclaimed. “Or no lords at all.”

  “Amen!” Ferguson replied. “Look. Here are some new comrades in place of the ones we have lost.”

  “Glad to meet them.” Ned nodded at the handful of men. “What’s the plan?”

  “We’re waiting,” Ferguson said. “When King James announces the birth of his son—that’s our signal to rise.”

  “We invade?”

  Ferguson nodded. “With William of Orange’s army, and we make him swear to a constitution. We crown William king and tie his hands, and stop his mouth.”

  “We have an army? We have ships?”

  Ferguson laughed. “It’s not like last time! We have his army and his ships, to fight our own battle. William of Orange knows he has to defend the English church or lose it to Rome forever. He’s paying, mustering, shipping, and he’ll lead us. He himself is invading England.”

  “And what happens if James Stuart, the king, doesn’t have a son?”

  “He’s never going to admit to a girl or a stillbirth. They’ll put some poor little bastard in the royal cradle.”

  There was a rumble of assent around the table. Some man said that he knew for a fact that a midwife had already been hired to bring in a changeling.

  “We wear the green sash again?” Ned asked.

  Ferguson laughed out loud and raised his glass. “We wear the green sash again. To liberty!”

  WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON, SPRING 1688

  Matthew was announced to Livia’s private rooms in the palace and found her tying the black silk bows of her hat under her chin before a large gilded mirror. He took her silk-gloved hand and bowed his head for her kiss.

  “Signora Madre, I don’t think we can go to Hatton Garden,” he said.

  Livia did not take her eyes from the mirror and moved the bow a little more to one side. “We have to go,” she said simply.

  “It’s not safe in the streets! I had to dodge two gangs of apprentices on the way here. There are people ringing the palace, shouting all sorts of things. The guards are closing the gates, but they can’t hold this palace against a full riot; there are too many entrances, they can’t guard them all.”

  “Rowdy apprentice lads,” she suggested.

  “Not just young lads, it’s the market people, women as well as men. A lot of tradesmen, by the looks of it, and watermen, chairmen, grooms. Everyone, really. People from the country, farmers and countrywomen. Everyone is up in arms about the king trying to destroy the church.”

  She snapped her fingers with irritation. “We know nothing in this palace, and everyone tells the king only what he wants to hear.”

  “You don’t know about the embassy?”

  “Allora! What?”

  “The Spanish ambassador has closed up his house and run away—no one knows where. The mob threatened to burn the embassy to the ground. The new chapel has been closed. They broke in and robbed it of everything, they pissed on the walls.”

  She was pale. “Why doesn’t the Lord Mayor stop this?”

  “He’s out every weekend, trying to control the streets. They won’t listen to him.”

  “I never get outside these walls, and all we talk about in here is the baby.”

  “She’s not safe here. She should go to somewhere that could be defended.”

  “She wanted to go to Windsor, but they say the birth has to be here, witnessed by all the privy councillors… what with everyone saying…”

  “What?”

  “…all the things that they are saying,” she finished.

  “She can’t give birth here. What if they break in?”

  “Surely we have the militia?”

  “Signora Madre, the London militia is the very people who are running wild in the streets, shouting that they won’t have a changeling foisted on them, that the nuncio is the real father, and the Pope is invading! They are the same men and lads as the rioters.”

  “Hush, hush, don’t say such things! The king will have to bring in the army.”

  “Won’t that make everyone take up arms against him?”

  “They would be massacred in France.”

  “They’ll think they’re going to be massacred here, if he calls in the army.”

  “When an heir is born, they will submit,” she said stubbornly.

  He spread his hands. “Maybe. Or maybe it will be the last straw.”

  She was not in the least afraid. “We’ll have to go to St. James’s Palace. They can bar the gates there, and we can defend her and the baby prince. But anyway, we’re going to tea.”

  HAYCROFT AND JOHNSON GOLDSMITHS, LONDON, SPRING 1688

  Alderman Jeremiah Johnson was a big man, dressed in a jacket of double-breasted dark navy wool with pairs of ostentatious gold buttons straining across his chest. He sat in a grand chair behind a broad desk covered with papers, freighted with silver pieces of equipment: a heavy paperknife, a set of goldsmith’s scales as if he were taking in coin at his desk, a silver tinderbox and sealing wax, his own silver seal, a large silver tray for his letters, a substantial silver box for deeds.

  “Now then, Doctor?” Jeremiah Johnson said with pleasure. “Not often you find the time to visit me in the City. Did you get here without trouble? I have my lads on the front and back doors and even a few keeping watch in the streets. We close early every day now.”

  “I came by the backways. Half of London is boarded up.”

  “It’ll go on like this until she gives birth,” the Alderman predicted. “But the Lord Mayor himself said to me: soon as a boy is born and we put a roasted ox and free ale in every borough, they’ll all be royalists again.”

  “I suppose so,” Rob said. “I came about a grave matter in my own family.”

  “Aye, Julia sent me a message, that you weren’t best pleased.”

  “It’s not a question of my pleasure, sir.”

  “She says that you like the lad?”

  “It’s not that. You remember that when I asked for Julia’s hand in marriage I told you that I had been married… that is, I had gone through a ceremony… you remember?”

  The Alderman steepled his fingers over his broad belly and regarded Rob as he might look at an unreliable debtor. “I remember you told me that you had gone through a form of marriage with a strange woman overseas, in Venice, in the English church in Venice, when she was neither English nor Protestant, and there were no family witnesses.”

  “You remember very well, then.”

  “And she abandoned you on your wrongful arrest, came to England, stayed with your mother and sister under the pretext of being your wife, converted to the Church of England, and had the good fortune to marry a gentleman of an old and highly regarded family.”

  Again, Rob nodded in silence.

  “Who accepted her?”

  “Yes.”

  “As your agreement with her was no marriage.”

  “Yes.”

  “He remembered her in his will? And named her as his widow?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what is your difficulty, with Hester’s marriage, into that very same, highly regarded family?”

  “Matthew is the stepson of Sir James Avery, not his son.”

  “His stepfather acknowledged him with a considerable legacy.”

  Rob leaned towards the desk, rested his hands on the deeply polished surface. “Alderman Johnson, even if Matthew had been adopted by the Averys, we could not allow Hester to marry him, we have no idea who his father is…”

  The Alderman shook with a silent laugh. “It’s a wise child who knows his father,” he quoted an old proverb. “And it behooves us to speak of a lady such as Dowager Lady Avery with utter respect.”

  “Of course, I always do. And I would never say anything to Matthew. But sir—you cannot want Hester to marry a young man whose father might be an Italian count or might be Felipe Russo, a Venetian master mason and dealer in antiquities, or might be… he could be… he could be of my fathering, sir. What if he is my son? He was born during our… our time together, and when she came to England she brought him to my family, and told them he was my son.”

  “Conceived during your connection?” the Alderman asked.

  “Conceived before the ceremony,” Rob said wretchedly. “She was my lover before she was my wife.”

  “She was never your wife, at all,” the Alderman corrected him. “The ceremony was invalid, so the question of his fathering does not come into it. My daughter tells me that Matthew is the son of Lady Avery’s first husband, the Prince Fiori, and the stepson of Sir James Avery. Anything else is slander.” He looked severely at Rob. “Probably actionable.”

  Rob dropped his face into his hands and rubbed his aching forehead. “He wasn’t even a prince!” he exclaimed. “Look, sir, I have no wish to bring this all up again. I am just anxious for Hester’s health and happiness—”

  “Julia says that she is halfway to being in love with him already?”

  “I should never have allowed him to come to the house. I should never have allowed Hester to visit him.”

  “Spilt milk,” the older man said shortly. “And how could you have denied your mother’s foster child? Look, Julia wants the connection, she’s no fool when it comes to her advantages. The lawyer has drawn up the contract and the settlement is generous. We haven’t heard from the Yorkshire executors yet—there’s no post from the north while these damned riots are going on. Hester likes the young man, he likes her. She gets a great name, and an introduction to the royal court. She might even get a post as a royal lady-in-waiting. Think of that! The young man gets a good dowry just as he is starting out in life, and he has a handsome manor to spend it on. You need meet his mother only once, at the signing of the register. She’s a lady, she’ll make no mention of the past—” He broke off. “You’ve told Julia nothing about Venice?”

  “Nothing! As we agreed.”

  The Alderman nodded his great head. “As we agreed. Good. And the lady is not going to discuss it. I think we’re all well and good.”

  The grandfather clock behind him made a whirring noise and began to strike the hour. The Alderman became paternal. “You’re my son-in-law,” he told Rob. “You don’t have a father to advise you, so I’ll tell you something… What happened in Venice between a pretty widow and a young man was an affair, a secret affair, a sowing of wild oats. Whether you thought you were married, or she did, is neither here nor there. It’s not the sort of thing you tell your wife, it’s the sort of thing you forget about. The lady has put it behind her and gone on to rise very high in society. It’s not for you, as a gentleman, to bring it up again. It was many, many years ago. Forget it.”

  “They cannot marry if they are within the proscribed degrees of affinity,” Rob said tightly. “They cannot marry if they are closely related in blood, even if not in law.”

  “And that’s where we leave it to the young man’s mother, who is the only one of all of us who knows who his father is. She’s not going to let something like that darken his life, spoil the line. She wouldn’t have suggested it, if there was any doubt in her mind. Of course she would not. She’s not going to risk having a misbegotten misconceived grandson! Obviously, she knows you’re not his father. Who are we to raise the question? Such an indelicate question!”