“Some men,” corrected Weston. “Not all of us grow our hair and pluck out our beards just as not all women wear a jaunty cap on their shorn heads. If my opinion is asked, it is unnatural, especially in a widow. If you married me, you could live a wholesome life again.”

This lonely old man wanted company and someone to make his dinner; he loved me, but not enough to see that he could never be a good match for me.

“Thank you, Weston,” I said, always forgetting to call him Richard, “but I am already promised to Sir Arthur, as you know.”

He turned on his stool to look straight into my face. In his countenance was a remnant of the handsome man he had been. “It is my opinion that Sir Arthur will not marry you.” The warmth I had been feeling toward him vanished. I had a momentary vision of my blood pouring into brass letting bowls all around me.

“He gave his word.”

“He said he loved this family, which is not the same thing. I have lived many years and rubbed shoulders with the best and the worst of men. Sir Arthur will never come good.”

“Sir Arthur knows what he promised,” I said, sharply. Weston’s words would pollute the air and make his dread vision more likely to occur.

“Why mention the ring in his Will if Dr. Turner wasn’t forcing Sir Arthur’s hand?” said Weston.

“Sir Arthur is merely waiting for the period of mourning to end. He loves me, and my friendship with the Countess of Essex will bring him advantage, even if I myself have no fortune.”

Weston stood and put his empty bowl on the table. “Have you not already done enough for him? Other couples marry a few weeks after the death of a spouse, even Catholics. He is leading you a merry dance to which you are blind because he has a title.”

I pushed the cat off my knee and rose too. “I wait because I love him. What would you have me do? Sit on my step like Mistress Bowdlery until I can afford that no more and sit instead in the gutter? The children with me? If Arthur does not marry me, that is what life holds in store.”

“If you marry me, and even if you do not, you can take up your needle and become a woman of trade,” said Weston, shrugging on a leather jerkin as scuffed and lined as his face.

“Go into trade? Should I send my children to be maids and water carriers? And when I am sick and cannot work, what then?”

Weston picked up the parcel for Frankie. “It is an honest existence.”

“It is hardly an existence at all. You are a man of the last century, Weston.”