She laughed, but there was a desperate worry in her. “They’ll find you, Toby!”

“I’ll put on a disguise, like those actors.”

“Be careful!”

Toby was taking some precautions, however. He had stopped sleeping at his father’s house, using instead the rooms of a friend in the city itself, but the experience with the angry man in St. Giles had worried him. “There’s only tomorrow.”

“Then what?”

They had paused outside Mrs. Swan’s house. He smiled down at her; the gentle, amused smile she liked so much. “Then we’ll marry.”

“We can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Your father!”

“My father will fall hopelessly in love with you.”

“Toby! You said he won’t even meet me!”

Toby smiled again, one finger on her cheek. “He will. He’ll have to. He can’t refuse to meet my wife, can he?”

She looked at him, a small frown on her face. “Are we mad, Toby?”

“Probably.” He smiled. “But all will be well, I promise you. All will be well.”

She believed him, but then she was in love, and lovers always believe that fate is on their side.

Sir George Lazender, alone in his upstairs parlor of the house he would leave in two weeks’ time, lit a pipe of his beloved tobacco and wished that the popular belief, that the tobacco-leaf was a dangerous substance giving rise to unnatural fervor and strange fancies, was true. He faced too much reality, too many problems.

He was about to alienate his son-in-law and his eldest daughter. He did not think the enmity would run deep, but they would undoubtedly become enemies.

Now he had estranged Toby.

Twice the soldiers had searched the house for his son, and twice Sir George had truthfully said that he did not know Toby’s whereabouts. He suspected his son was staying in the city and he hourly dreaded the news that Toby had been arrested and imprisoned.

It was the girl’s fault. The Slythe girl. Sir George felt anger. She must be a conniving, ambitious girl to have snared his son.

He walked to the eastern window and stared down into the street. It was dark, the lights of a few torches fitful. Two soldiers, their helmets catching the red glare of the flames, paced toward the Royal Mews. An empty cart went the other way.

And what a story she had told Toby to snare him! Tales of a Covenant, of a seal, of a fortune so big that it belonged to a child’s imagination. Yet Toby believed her! He had spoken to his father of Sir Grenville Cony, of Lopez and Aretine, of a jewel on a chain. It was all nonsense.

Sir Grenville Cony was a respected member of Parliament, a Chancery lawyer who had done brilliantly and who now moved the levers of power in the Committees of Parliament. What could Sir Grenville have to do with a country Puritan?

Lopez. Sir George knew of a dozen Lopez’s, Spanish Jews all, and none were left in England, though Sir George suspected that a few Jews lived quietly and untroubled within the city. Lopez. What could a Spanish Jew have to do with a girl from Dorset?