Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy, #2)(15)

“What colors are popular, Master Bidwell?” I asked, waving the leather samples away. I needed advice, not a multiple-choice test.

“Ladies who are going to court are having white stamped with gold or silver.”

“We’re not going to court,” Matthew said swiftly.

“Black then, and a nice tawny.” Bidwell held up for approval a patch of leather the color of caramel. Matthew gave it before I could say a word.

Then it was the older man’s turn. He, too, was surprised when he took my hand and felt the calluses on my palms. Well-bred ladies who married men such as Matthew didn’t row boats. Somers took in the lump on my middle finger. Ladies didn’t have bumps from holding pens too tightly either. He slid a buttery-soft glove that was much too large onto my right hand. A needle charged with coarse thread was tucked into the hem.

“Does your father have everything he needs, Bidwell?” Matthew asked the shoemaker.

“Yes, thank you, Master Roydon,” Bidwell replied with a bob of his head.

“Charles will send him custard and venison.” Matthew’s gray eyes flickered over the young man’s thin frame. “Some wine, too.”

“Master Bidwell will be grateful for your kindness,” Somers said, his fingers drawing the thread through the leather so that the glove fit snugly.

“Is anyone else ill?” Matthew asked.

“Rafe Meadows’s girl was sick with a terrible fever. We feared for Old Edward, but he is only afflicted with an ague,” Somers replied tersely.

“I trust Meadows’s daughter has recovered.”

“No.” Somers snapped the thread. “They buried her three days ago, God rest her soul.”

“Amen,” said everyone in the room. Fran?oise lifted her eyebrows and jerked her head in Somers’s direction. Belatedly I joined in.

Their business concluded and the shoes and gloves promised for later in the week, both men bowed and departed. Fran?oise turned to follow them out, but Matthew stopped her.

“No more appointments for Diana.” There was no mistaking the seriousness in his tone. “See to it that Edward Camberwell has a nurse to look after him and sufficient food and drink.”

Fran?oise curtsied in acquiescence and departed with another sympathetic glance.

“I’m afraid the men from the village know I don’t belong here.” I drew a shaking hand across my forehead. “My vowels are a problem. And my sentences go down when they should go up. When are you supposed to say ‘amen’? Somebody needs to teach me how to pray, Matthew. I have to start somewhere, and—”

“Slow down,” he said, sliding his hands around my corseted waist. Even through several layers of clothing, his touch was soothing. “This isn’t an Oxford viva, nor are you making your stage debut. Cramming information and rehearsing your lines isn’t going to help. You should have asked me before you summoned Bidwell and Somers.”

“How can you pretend to be someone new, someone else, over and over again?” I wondered. Matthew had done this countless times over the centuries as he pretended to die only to reemerge in a different country, speaking a different language, known by a different name.

“The first trick is to stop pretending.” My confusion must have been evident, and he continued. “Remember what I told you in Oxford. You can’t live a lie, whether it’s masquerading as a human when you’re really a witch or trying to pass as Elizabethan when you’re from the twenty-first century. This is your life for now. Try not to think of it as a role.”

“But my accent, the way that I walk . . .” Even I had noticed the length of my steps relative to that of the other women in the house, but Kit’s open mockery of my masculine stride had brought the point home.

“You’ll adjust. Meanwhile people will talk. But no one’s opinion in Woodstock matters. Soon you will be familiar and the gossip will stop.”

I looked at him doubtfully. “You don’t know much about gossip, do you?”

“Enough to know you are simply this week’s curiosity.” He glanced at my book, taking in the blotches and indecisive script. “You’re holding your pen too tightly. That’s why the point keeps breaking and the ink won’t flow. You’re holding on to your new life too tightly as well.”

“I never thought it would be so difficult.”

“You’re a fast learner, and so long as you’re safely at the Old Lodge, you’re among friends. But no more visitors for the time being. Now, what have you been writing?”

“My name, mostly.”

Matthew flipped a few pages in my book, examining what I’d recorded. One eyebrow lifted. “You’ve been preparing for your economics and culinary examinations, too. Why don’t you write about what’s happening here at the house instead?”

“Because I need to know how to manage in the sixteenth century. Of course, a diary might be useful, too.” I considered the possibility. It would certainly help me sort out my still-muddled sense of time. “I shouldn’t use full names. People in 1590 use initials to save paper and ink. And nobody reflects on thoughts or emotions. They record the weather and the phases of the moon.”

“Top marks on sixteenth-century English record keeping,” said Matthew with a laugh.

“Do women write down the same things as men?”