Despite his sense that he should silence the gossiping woman, James could not help but lean forward.

“On the edge of starving last winter, I swear it. Knocking on the yard door and asking for work, anything. It was charity to buy her herbs. But now, from nowhere she has a boat, her son is in service at the Priory, and her daughter is making eyes at Richard Stoney and him a farmer’s son, the only son, and certain to inherit the farm! How’s that come about? For I know for a fact that her brother has nothing but the ferry and whatever was left of his army pay, and her husband has been gone for months.”

“Robert is my pupil,” he said cautiously. “He’s a good companion to Master Walter and paid for his service. Mrs. Reekie is well liked at the Priory.”

“By who?” she exclaimed as if scoring a point. “Who likes a common cottager so much that her son is suddenly Master Walter’s companion? Two months ago, the lad was bird-scaring for me after school, and glad of the work. Barefoot half the time. So where did she get the money to buy the boat? When she couldn’t afford shoes?”

James, knowing very well that it was a bribe for her silence about him, muttered that perhaps she had savings.

“Savings?” She snorted. “She has none! I say to my husband, please God that she does not fall on the parish, for we’re a poor church, and can’t support everyone, especially women who are neither widows nor wives, with a son and a daughter to keep. We can’t support a woman who may have beauty but not enough wit to keep her husband at home.”

“She has her craft and her boat and her herbs,” he protested. “I am sure she can keep herself.”

“She has no business keeping herself!” Mrs. Miller protested. “She’s neither a widow nor a wife, and when she walks across the yard, the work stops dead as if the Queen of Sheba was dancing on my cobbles. If her husband is gone, she should declare herself a widow and remarry—if anyone will have her, given what they say about her. If he’s alive, she should get him home. Then we’d all know where we are. She’s nothing but a worry as she is. Nothing but a worry to good wives. Who would give her money for a boat? And why? It’d better not be Mr. Miller, that’s all I can say!”

James finally understood the objection to Alinor. “She can’t be a worry to an established housewife like yourself,” he said soothingly. “There can be no comparison. Look at the dinner you put on today! Look at where you are in the world! The respect you are shown! You are blessed indeed. Mr. Miller must know that in you he has a helpmeet appointed by heaven.”

She flushed a little under his attention. “It’s not easy for me,” she reminded him. “Everything that I have, whether it is respect, or hams in the chimney, I have worked for. Every penny of my little savings I’ve worked for. Years of money I have saved up. Jane’s dowry is ready, for the first good husband to offer for her. You don’t find me without a penny to my name! But where does Goodwife Reekie get her money from? Her own husband swore she had faerie luck; perhaps he spoke true for once. How can she buy a boat if not by some double dealing? I tell you one thing: whenever she has something to sell, my husband buys a dozen of them—as if he needs lavender bags!”