Old Maggie, the cook and the kitchen maid were affronted by our invasion of their realm but could not object to my showing Frankie our modern range with built-in bread oven and spit. Sitting by its warmth, feeding titbits to the cat, was Richard Weston, George’s bailiff. In his sixtieth year or more, he was tall and strong. Although from Essex, near Hinxton where I was born, he had been apprenticed to a London tailor as a young man and had taught me much about men’s clothing. That aside, he was little educated and quick with his fists. He rose, hoping for an introduction, but as he is of no rank I only nodded. I left George undisturbed in the smaller parlor but took Frankie into the distillery that we had built onto the back of our house, where he and I brewed medicines, elixirs and tonics, and formulated new recipes, such as that for my yellow starch, which we had also patented. Of course, many women distil cures for their families and neighbors, there is nothing unusual in it, but I knew no other goodwife whose recipes received a patent.

“You are allowed?” asked Frankie, repeatedly. Although I was envious of the honor in which she was held, I understood that day what it cost her.

I led her back into the house and upstairs; she ran her fingers along both walls, perhaps never having trod stairs so narrow. She spent a long time in the girls’ chamber, asking them questions, letting the little ones play with her clothes, discussing recipes for face washes with Barbara. She made my younger daughters hoot like little owls, her affection for them unfeigned. How could I have thought her a Trojan horse? At one point, as she ruffled their curly heads, she looked at me inquiringly. I had been waiting for that look since she saw my children gathered in the parlor. The eldest three, fair and blue-eyed like George and me, so different from the little red-brown squirrels.

My husband understood that, being twenty years my senior and impotent for the past few years, my frustration would lead to greensickness. He liked and approved of my lover, Sir Arthur Waring, and knew I was no bedswerver. Arthur visited regularly and took the youngest three for rides in his carriage but was never openly referred to as their father. Knighted the year we met, he was carver to Prince Henry and steward to Baron Ellesmere, but earlier that month he had turned up at our door, elated.

“Francis Woolley has died!”

“Is that cause for celebration?” I asked him.

“I inherit.”

I was not pleased. More young women needing husbands would be thrust beneath his nose. I loved him. I loved George too. And I loved my children more than my own life. Neither in its giving nor receiving did I lack for love, yet still I sought honor. Reputation. The safety and respect that accompany title and wealth.