He was mortified that she had seen him listening, and had guessed what was being said. “She could have no influence on me. I wasn’t listening. I have no interest in village gossip.”

“She fears I will fall on the parish, but she is afraid of everyone falling on the parish,” Alinor said rapidly. “Her husband is church warden: he has to raise the funds for poor relief. It is her terror that they will have to provide for the poor wretches, the poor women—”

“Calm yourself. It doesn’t matter what she says—”

“It does matter! It does! It matters to me! She doesn’t care for anyone’s reputation but her own but if she told you she fears a pauper bastard from me then she is slandering me!” The tears started in her eyes, and she gave a little choked sob. “I have known her since I was a girl and she’s never had a kind word for me—”

“Hush!” he begged her. “Everyone is looking!”

He wanted to catch her in his arms and say there was no shame that could touch her. But far more he wanted to get away from her before she openly cried out. He wanted to be far away from this woman, engaged in some pointless fishwives’ squabble with her neighbor, weeping in public at a harvest home. A poor woman, with dirty fingernails, in a mud-stained gown, his friend’s meanest tenant, perhaps the chosen bawd of the manor’s steward, surrounded by her equally poor neighbors, who were all staring at him. Only the young people ignored them, whirling in a circle dance, Walter Peachey hopping about with somebody’s unsuitable daughter, as if there were no degree and order in the world anymore, as if the defeat at Preston had killed the proper distance between masters and men, between gentlemen and wretches, as well as the last hope of the royalists.

It was unbearable: “For Christ’s sake, be quiet!”

She froze at his oath, and shot him a horrified glance from under her drenched eyelashes.

“I cannot be watched,” he whispered urgently. “You know I must not be observed. I have to serve my cause. I cannot have people noticing me. I am going now. I cannot be seen with you while you are in this state. Everyone is looking at us. I cannot have you draw attention to me.”

She changed in a moment, her beauty suddenly pale and contemptuous, her tears frozen. “You go,” she advised him. “I don’t care. Go at once. I don’t care for your cause. I cared for you and I was a fool. But I won’t be a fool again.”

Without another word, with the disdain of an offended queen, she turned on her heel and walked away from him, walked to her brother, and left James all on his own, hopelessly exposed to the inquisitive stares of the mill yard, all of them wondering how Alinor Reekie—the poorest woman at the harvest home—dared to snub him: the greatest guest.