“Very,” Lucy managed, and he pulled her closer and slid a hand into her hair, angling her head so that he could kiss her more deeply. It felt so good; she’d forgotten how good it could be to be held. It was a shock as well as a draft of pure pleasure. She closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of his skin and felt all the heap of troubles melt away.

“Will you stay?” she asked when they drew apart a few inches. “If,” she added, “you think you’d like to experience my visions and dreams firsthand.”

She felt Finn smile against her mouth. “I’d like that very much,” he said.

Twenty

Anne Catesby

Rushden, Northamptonshire
October, 1605

Thomas’s bedchamber smelled of urine and sickness and was shrouded in darkness. I wanted to throw the window wide and allow the early autumn sunshine in, but I doubted that even that would banish the specter of death that lurked in the bed hangings, waiting. Thomas looked gaunt, his body wasted, his skin the color of old parchment. It was a shock to see him so, the vital spark that had driven him all but extinguished. I felt a pang of misery. So much loss and grief. Where did it end?

“Come sit by me, Anne,” Thomas said, gesturing weakly to the little wooden stool beside the bed. I did not care for it; not only was it low and hard, there was no backrest to support my aching bones. Instead I asked a servant to draw up the heavy armchair, and saw Thomas smile at all the scraping and puffing my order entailed.

“I married the wrong sister,” he said, a little dreamily. “Ah, what a partnership we would have made, Anne!”

Muriel, naturally enough, looked furious to hear this.

“Do not regard him,” I said. “He has the fever and speaks nonsense. Can you imagine Thomas and I wed? We would have fought likes cats in a sack.”

Muriel smiled, but it did not reach her eyes. “I will leave the two of you to whisper sweet nothings,” she said spitefully, sweeping from the room in an indignant rustle of silk.

“I meant it,” Thomas said, when the door had closed behind his wife and the servant. “Ah, Anne, you are a woman of such strength and principle. Together we could have taken on the world!”

“I move a chair and you hail me as Joan of Arc?” I said, “As usual you have everything the wrong way around, Thomas. You would not have tolerated opposition in your own household for a moment. No wife could have suited you better than Muriel. She is biddable and relies on your judgment, whereas I would have challenged you every step of the way. It would have been exhausting.”

Thomas gave me a ghost of a smile. “Perhaps you are right. She will fare badly when I am gone, I fear.”

That was typical Thomas, I thought, with a mixture of exasperation and indulgence. He was dying and still it flattered him to think of his wife lost without him to guide her. I could have told him then that the entire family was doomed without him—his elder son, Francis, was hotheaded and unreliable, the younger one, Lewis, was a wastrel, and Muriel was without a single independent thought. The girls, though... I had some hopes for them. Surely there was one of my nieces who had inherited some of Thomas’s stubborn will and would use it to good purpose? Elizabeth, Mary, Frances and Catherine... He had made or planned grand marriages for them all as part of his desire to live and to die a great man. I hoped it had been worth it.