“You’ll be brewing wedding ale?” Mrs. Miller asked Alinor.

“I’ll strain it and pour it tomorrow,” Alinor said. “I think it’ll be very good. Mr. Stoney is picking it up when he drives to church on Sunday morning.”

“They set a good table at Stoney Farm. You’re a lucky girl,” Mrs. Miller said to Alys, who forced herself to smile and nod. Mrs. Miller turned to Alinor. “I doubt they’d even have allowed the wedding if she hadn’t worked here so long. They know I’ve taught her well.”

“Never even have met if she hadn’t worked here,” Jane chimed in.

“Yes.” Alinor leaned her shoulder gently against Alys to make her keep silence. “We’re both grateful.”

“The Stoneys wouldn’t have trusted anyone else with their Richard,” she added. “There’s not another mill in Sussex that would be good enough for them.”

“I’ll always remember your harvest home,” Alinor said, turning the conversation. “When the two of them brought in the harvest together? That was a merry day.”

Alinor had meant to divert Mrs. Miller to pride in her harvest home but she had accidentally summoned a vivid memory of James Summer standing before her, and her own flare of temper when he said she must not dance.

She bowed her head as if she were giving thanks for her food; but in reality she was hiding a pain so sharp that she might almost think that her heart was breaking. She took a deep shuddering breath and turned her mind to the dairy and the work they still had to do. She had promised herself that she would not think about losing James, nor about how she would manage without him. She would not think of anything, until after Sunday, Alys’s wedding day. Only then, when Alys was married, and safe, would she allow herself to look clear-eyed at the ruin she had made of her life.

“I always give a good harvest home,” Mrs. Miller said complacently. “Sir William always says so. Says he would rather be at my harvest home than anywhere in the county. D’you remember, he brought the tutor, didn’t he? Mr. Summer?”

“Yes,” Alinor said steadily. “Mr. Summer. D’you want to see the butter before I set it into shape?”

Mrs. Miller rose from the table and left Jane and Alys to clear up. “You can wash the plates,” she said over her shoulder, and went into the dairy with Alinor. She closed the door behind them to keep the dairy cool, though it was already as cold as the ice house at the Priory.

“That’s doing well,” she said, looking into the churn where the butter was pale and creamy and starting to separate from the buttermilk. “It always comes so quick for you, Alinor.”

Alinor smiled. She knew it was because she worked harder and churned faster than Mrs. Miller, but the woman would never say so.

“I tell my husband, you must whisper a charm into the milk,” Mrs. Miller said. “A good charm, of course. I wouldn’t suggest other . . .”