The river had brought her here, but the water was tainted from the caves of horror it had swept her through. The current had been fast and now it was slow, yet she was still fearful. She hid the horror from Toby, pretending it did not exist, yet she feared marriage because Faithful Unto Death Hervey had put a poison in her.

Toby led her away from the Thames, their horses ambling northward through rich fields and woods to a lush meadow that fringed a stream going south to the Thames. He tethered their horses to a fallen tree and carried a basket to a patch of grass beside the stream.

They talked as they had talked for three weeks, and it still surprised her how much they could say and how much she liked to talk with him. He amused her, educated her, listened to her, argued with her, and even the smallest thing could throw up a great conversation because they shared a curiosity about their world.

They ate by the stream, sharing bread and cold meat and drinking wine. Afterward she lay on her back, her head pillowed by her saddle, while Toby lay on his stomach a few feet away. He looked at her. “They’ll know you’re here by now.”

“Yes.” It was a subject that kept coming back. Sir Grenville Cony, Toby thought, must have his informants in Oxford. The wine had made Campion drowsy. “Can we manage without the seals?”

“If you want to.” He was picking the tiny petals of clover and touching nectar to his tongue. “Do you want to forget them? Throw this one away?” Toby wore the golden seal about his neck.

She sighed. “They’ve caused so much trouble. I didn’t ask for them. I didn’t want all this to happen. I didn’t ask for Ebenezer to hate me, and for Cony and for men like Vavasour Devorax.” She twisted her head to look at him. “I didn’t want to be in the Tower.” She could feel the horror inside her.

Toby rolled on to his side, wincing as his weight went momentarily on to his damaged shoulder. “You didn’t ask for it, but without the seals you’d probably be married to someone like Samuel Scammell by now. You’d probably have your own little baby Scammell with its own little Bible and its own little scowl.”

She laughed, turning her face back to the sun. “Yes.” The stream’s murmur was a background to her thoughts. “Poor Scammell.”

“Poor?”

“He didn’t ask for it either. He was harmless.”

“He was greedy.”

There was silence. The sun was bright on the inside of her eyelids. She heard the horses stirring, a fish plopping in the water. “Do we need the seals, Toby?”

He rolled back on to his stomach, his dark red hair shading the fine-boned face he had inherited from his mother. He did not reply immediately and Campion turned her face to look at him. She loved his face. It was not, she supposed, a classically handsome face. Eyes would go much faster to a man like Lord Atheldene, but the memory would fasten on Toby. His eyes met hers.