She did not move from him, she did not take her eyes from his face, his mouth, his dark gaze.

“Kiss me again,” she said quietly, and he did.

They stood enwrapped in each other’s arms, his body pressing against her, his mouth on hers, his arms tightening around her, and then she moved a little away from him and at once he let her go. In silence, just a halfpace apart, they waited to see if they would move together again, if he was going to take her hand and lead her into the little cottage to make love in her missing husband’s bed. She shook her head, as if he had said words of desire out loud, but she did not speak.

“I will come to you again next month, in the evening at this time,” he said as if a month apart would teach him what to do and what to say to her, while today each was dazed by the other’s closeness.

“Next month?” she queried, as if it were a year away. “Not till next month?”

“I have to go away tomorrow,” he said.

She made a little gesture as if she would take his hand and delay him. “Not back to France?”

“No, no. But I have to serve . . . I have made a promise . . . I will go and I will return.”

She guessed at once it was the secret business of his Church, and the king imprisoned on the Isle of Wight. “Into danger? Are you going into danger?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “But I hope to be back with you within the month.”

She heard, as a woman in love will always hear, the promise of love more than the meaning of the sentence. “Here, with me,” she repeated.

“Without fail.”

“Can’t you refuse to go?” she demanded. “Can’t you say you’ve changed your mind?”

He smiled. “But I have not changed my mind,” he said. “I think as I did about everything, and I cannot break my word. There are men depending on me; there is a great man depending on me. Nothing has changed . . . except . . .”

She was silent, while she waited for him to say what had changed.

“My heart,” he told her.

TIDELANDS, AUGUST 1648

Alinor worked as usual, through the next weeks of summer storms and sudden days of heat, which made a haze on the mire that looked like palaces and streets and warehouses. The visions made her wonder what James was seeing, if he was admitted into great buildings or was walking down beautiful streets, far bigger and cleaner than Chichester, far grander than anything she had ever seen, if the gates of palaces opened for him, if there were garden doors into beautiful houses.

She walked to Chichester market and at the secondhand clothes stall she bought Alys a pair of boots, hardly worn and with a good sole that would keep her feet warm and dry through the coming autumn and winter. She bought linen shifts and caps for both of them, and a new petticoat for Alys. She bought a ribbon to trim it, since Alys had so few pretty things. It was too hot to imagine that winter would ever come, but the secondhand clothes were cheapest in August, so Alinor bought her daughter a winter shawl and a cape of waxed cloth that would keep her dry when she had to go out across the ferry to the tide mill or work outside.