Then she saw his face, closed and angry. “But I would never have done it. I wouldn’t use herbs to poison any baby. I certainly wouldn’t poison my baby. And I’d rather die than poison a baby of ours.”

She saw his shoulders hunch with an instant revulsion. “It’s not a baby yet,” he said. “Not in law. Not till it quickens. Not in the sight of God. Has it quickened yet? No?”

Wonderingly she looked from his scowling eyes to his hardened mouth. “Yes,” she said quietly. “Of course. We conceived him in September. I felt him move at Christmas. I know there is life in him. He sleeps and wakes inside me, I can feel him. Perhaps he dreams.”

“It’s not a boy child!”

Again, she looked at him with her steady dark gaze. “Of course, no one can say for sure. But it is a child, and I believe it is a boy.”

“It’s not. It’s a nothing. It’s not too late . . .”

“Too late for what?”

“For you to take the herb or the drink or whatever it is that you know. Not too late for that.”

“Not too late for me to push a bodkin into my belly to kill it in the womb,” she remarked.

He gulped. “Of course, I wouldn’t want you to do that. But, Alinor . . .”

“Yes?”

“Alinor, I want to take you to my home, I want you to live there as my wife. You will be the next Lady Avery.”

At once she was diverted. “Is that your name?”

“Yes, yes, what of it? That’s not the point. What I am saying is that I cannot take you to my mother and my father if you are big with a child and you are still another man’s wife. If you allow it to be born, it will take Zachary’s name. I cannot raise a child named Reekie in my own home! Bad enough that my mother will have Alys and Robert as her grandchildren! I cannot, Alinor. You must understand, I cannot. It would be to shame you, and shame me and my name.”

“I didn’t know that was your name,” she repeated. “Avery! Are you Lord Avery?”

“No. My father is a baronet. Not that it matters.”

“But I’ve thought of you all this time as James Summer. Is your given name not James? How shall I call you anything else?”

She was so ridiculous, so frivolous, that he grabbed her by the shoulders and at once, she jerked back to avoid a blow, following an old lesson that a shaking was followed by a blow, and if she let herself be knocked to the ground she would get a kick to the belly or in the face. At once he released her, horrified, dropping his hands from her shoulders and spreading them wide as if to show that he had no weapon.

“Don’t!” he said. “For Christ’s sake, don’t! I’m not that brute. I wouldn’t hurt you. Forgive me, forgive me! But I can’t make you hear me! Alinor, you must listen to me.”