The front door opened with a creak from disuse, and Mrs. Stoney stood in the doorway, her maidservant behind her.

“Good day, Mrs. Reekie,” she said formally.

“Good day to you, Mrs. Stoney,” Alinor replied, struggling for calmness.

The woman turned to her son. “Go and fetch your father,” she said. “He’s in the barn.”

Richard looked as if he did not want to leave Alys, but he went obediently as Mrs. Stoney led the mother and daughter into the best room at the front of the house. It was furnished sparsely with solid dark furniture; a large cupboard laden with expensive pewter took up all of one wall. There was one great chair with a woven back and arms, which was clearly for the master of the house, and a second chair beside it. Alinor put her basket of oils down by the door and moved tactfully to a smaller chair beside the dark wooden table, laid with a small piece of tapestry, anchored by a bowl of heavy pewter. Mrs. Stoney seated herself in the second-best chair; Alys stood beside her mother and was not invited to sit at all.

They heard the men coming in the back door and the noise of Mr. Stoney knocking mud off his boots. Then he came into the room. He was a short, bluff, red-faced man with a ready smile and a handshake for Alinor, who rose to greet him.

“How do?” he said to her. “How do?” Then he turned to Alys. “And how’s the prettiest maid in Sussex today?”

Alys curtseyed and went to him for a smacking kiss on both cheeks.

“Will you take a glass of ale, Mrs. Reekie?” he invited.

“Bess is fetching it,” his wife said.

“And the young people can walk round the orchard, I suppose,” he said.

Bess entered with a tray of pewter mugs, and Richard and Alys escaped.

“He loves to walk her round the farm,” Mr. Stoney confided. “He’s that proud of it. Our only child, y’know.”

“I know.” Alinor took a cup and sipped. It was home-brewed small ale and Mrs. Stoney had sweetened it with apples from her orchard. Alinor could taste the fruit. “This is very good, Mrs. Stoney.”

The woman smiled at the polite compliment. Alinor observed her smugness and wondered if she would be a kind mother-in-law to Alys, who would live with them at this farm and share a house with this woman for life.

“So, our young people want to make a match of it,” Farmer Stoney said to Alinor. “Richard came to me after harvest home and said he had plighted his troth without a word to me.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “Boys, eh? And he’s brought her back here a few times, and we like her very well. But I should really be talking with her father.”

“As you know, my husband’s at sea,” Alinor said cautiously. “He’s been gone nearly a year now. All the arrangements fall to me.”