Prologue
1805. Duchy of Abingdon.
George found Phoebe in the blackness of the priest hole. She wasn’t afraid of the dark. Of course, she wasn’t. Her name meant light. He had taught her that.
He had to stoop as he came in, holding a candle. He stifled a shudder as he sat beside her. The candlelight made the priest hole tolerable for him. Just barely.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said.
A sob from her.
“Why are you crying, Phee?”
“I’m not pretty!” she howled.
He let her cry for a few minutes until she got tired and began hiccoughing instead.
“I don’t like it when you cry. I really wish you wouldn’t.” An idea struck him. “See here. From now on, when you feel like crying, come to me, and I’ll tell you if you really have a reason to cry or not.”
She snuffled and looked at him in the flickering light.
“I’m never going to get married.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Abigail said I look like a little frog and Judith and Deborah said I am ever so much shorter and fatter than they were when they were my age.”
Phoebe’s leap from her older sisters’ comments to the conclusion that she was both ugly and condemned to spinsterhood made no sense to George. But she was only eight. And a girl. His own six-year-old sister mystified him, too.
He folded himself into a cross-legged position. “All right, Phee. I’ll tell you the truth. I didn’t want to because it might go to your head. You must promise not to let it.”
She wiped her face with her hands, leaving dirty smudges on her round cheeks. “I promise.”
“You are uncommonly pretty.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And you’ll have no problem getting married. You’ll have a husband if you want one.”
“Will you marry me, George?”
“No, of course not.”
The corners of her mouth turned down and new tears began to fill her eyes and brim over.
“Stop that. You’re much too young for me. You’re only eight, and I’m twelve. And the lady never asks the gentleman. It must be the other way around.”
She snuffled again. “That doesn’t seem fair.”
He shrugged. “It’s the way things are.”
“When I am closer to you in age, will you ask me?”
“You will never be closer to me in age, Phee. We will always be four years apart. When you are twelve, I will be sixteen and will have already met my wife.”
“Yes.” A tremble to her chin.
“And you can’t ask me to ask you. That’s the same thing as asking me.”
