“We can’t let him throw himself away,” he explained.

“I can add from my fees as I earn them,” Alinor said. “I attend almost all the births in Sealsea Island. I could promise a monthly payment in their first year of marriage—say—from my fees.”

Mrs. Stoney pursed her lips.

“My son is to be apprenticed to a Chichester apothecary,” Alinor said, her voice level, but her heart pounding. “He’s to go in the Lent term when Master Walter leaves for his university. I know he would want to see his sister happily settled . . .”

“An apothecary?” Mrs. Stoney asked, and when Alinor started to explain, she interrupted: “But what use is that to us?”

“She and Rob will inherit the right to the ferry, and Ferry-house—”

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Stoney said finally, “but we’re looking for a bigger dowry, to be paid in full on the wedding day. Maybe with land adjoining, maybe one of our neighbors. Not pennies as and when. Not as and when, Mrs. Reekie. It’s a pity that you don’t have a husband to earn a living for you. A great pity. But we can’t let Richard throw himself away. For all that she’s a lovely girl, and we like her very much. She would have been our choice, if the money had been right. We thought you’d have had more, to be honest. I’m sorry. We thought you were in a better way.”

Alinor gritted her teeth to stop herself exclaiming that once she did have more: her inheritance from her mother, her dowry in her mother’s red leather purse; but Zachary had taken it, as a husband’s right, and wasted it as a husband can do, and now Zachary was not here to answer for it, and the red leather purse held only shavings of old coins.

“But she has her own wages,” Alinor urged him, growing more anxious. “If you want her to keep working at the Millers’, she could bring home her wages. And she can spin.”

“Then he might as well marry our servant Bess!” Mrs. Stoney objected. “Maidservant wages as dowry! No, no, she’s a lovely girl but if she’s got nothing but thirty-five shillings and farm work wages. I look higher for my son than that.”

Mr. Stoney looked as if he regretted her sharp tone. “No disrespect,” he said.

“What did you have in mind?” Alinor asked. “For my brother would perhaps—”

“Nothing less than eighty pounds,” Mrs. Stoney said smartly. “I’d take nothing less.”

“Eighty pounds!” Alinor gasped at the unimaginable sum.

“We’re going to have to refuse,” Mr. Stoney said gently. “Regretfully but—”

“I have sixty pounds!” Alys interrupted suddenly from the door. She stepped into the room, white-faced, Richard behind her, gripping her hand. “I have it,” she claimed. “I have savings of my own that my mother doesn’t know about.” One fierce glance at Alinor warned her to say nothing.

“Were you listening at the door?” Mr. Stoney asked his son, frowning.