Queen of Silks. Vanora Bennett

And, several seconds later, ‘I suppose.’

      Isabel could hardly contain her impatience.

      ‘So … will you?’ she said.

      Alice Claver dragged out her pause for longer than Isabel would have thought possible. But when, finally, making a show of reluctance, she did nod agreement – then leaned forward, with a shadow of her usual market manner, and shook Isabel's hand as if to close the deal – Isabel thought she could see a gleam of satisfaction in those puffy dark eyes.

       4

      ‘But I want to stay with her,’ Isabel said wearily. The conversation seemed to have gone on for hours.

      ‘But you can't,’ her father said again. ‘Not as an apprentice.’

      She knew his style of argument. It was merchant style: repeating himself, without raising his voice, until the sheer boredom of the discussion wore whoever he was arguing with into reluctant agreement. He called it consensus. And what he'd been saying today was: You could marry anyone in the City with your dower. And: No daughter of mine need ever work; I've given you the best opportunities in life; what will people think? And: Just look at your hands; lady's hands; think what they're going to look like once your new (eyebrows raised, shoulders raised) mistress gets you throwing raw silk or dunking yarn into pots of dye.

      John Lambert glanced round his great hall, as if trying to draw inspiration from his lavish tapestries and his cupboard full of gleaming silverware. He was visibly longing to go back to their more pleasurable earlier conversation, in which he'd been able to boast that Lord Hastings and the Duke of Gloucester had paid him a personal visit at the Crown Seld that morning – ‘Just sauntered in; His Grace was gracious enough to remember me from the Lord Mayor's banquet; two of the greatest men in the land …’ – and they'd looked at his imported Italian silk cloths, and Hastings had ended up shaking hands on a promise to buy a length of green figured velvet. He poked at the remains of his meal.

      ‘Look,’ Isabel said impatiently, ‘I didn't want to marry a Claver in the first place, but you insisted. You said it would be good for your business to make a relationship with the Clavers. Now I want to stay; but you're saying I shouldn't. It's only a month later. Tell me this: what's changed?’

      ‘That was a marriage,’ her father said, sounding impatient at last. ‘This is …’ he wrinkled his nose, ‘business. And an unsuitable business for a young lady of your accomplishments, if I may say so. A waste of your French … your Latin … your lute playing.’

      Isabel bared her teeth at him in a grin so angry it felt almost like a snarl. ‘Well, why shouldn't I learn the business?’ she said. ‘You do it; and a lot of girls I know learn it too. We Lamberts are the only ones who think we're too grand. But what's wrong with doing something useful? What if I actually want to be a silkwoman? What if I want to be’, she lingered, ‘independent? Of other people's whims?’

      ‘You can't do it,’ he said hotly. Both hands clutched at the table edge.

      ‘Why?’ she replied, eyeing him insolently back.

      ‘Because I forbid you to!’ he yelled, startling her as he leapt to his feet. ‘I forbid you to humiliate the Lamberts, and drag our family name down!’

      ‘You can't forbid me to!’ she cried back, standing up too. ‘I don't have to obey you any more! I'm a widow! Widows are legally responsible for themselves! I'm not a Lambert now – I'm a Claver! And I can choose my own future!’

      They eyeballed each other like fighting dogs. There was a long, ominous silence. She'd never disobeyed him before; not like this. He didn't look as though he'd forgive her easily for betraying him into this undignified shouting match – for losing his temper again, like he had at the Guildhall.

      He turned and walked out, without a backwards glance.

      Isabel had thought Jane would be contemptuous of the idea of working in the markets. But when she first told her older sister, Jane was endearingly practical. ‘Ten years,’ she said gently, wrinkling her nose but trying to understand; not sneering. ‘That's a long time. What if you hate it in a month?’

      Isabel nearly cried at her sister's sympathetic tone. She was moments away from confiding in Jane; but she couldn't. She didn't know if Jane – who was glowing even more beautifully than before now she was married – would tell her husband; if word would get out. So she shrugged and tried to look unconcerned.

      ‘There'd be no going back,’ she said laconically.

      Jane tried again. She put a hand on Isabel's arm and looked very sweetly into her eyes.

      ‘I know you're in mourning,’ she murmured. ‘I can imagine how terrible it must feel …’

      Isabel nodded mutely, looking away; looking down; willing herself not to weep.

      ‘But, Isabel,’ Jane went on, in the same sweetly reasonable voice. ‘It was just an arranged marriage. Don't you remember? A month ago, you didn't want Thomas Claver for a husband. You can't really believe you're heartbroken enough now to sign away half your life to his mother.’

      Isabel flinched. She'd known, really, that Jane wouldn't understand.

      ‘Even if you really do think now that you'll always feel like this, you must know it will pass,’ Jane said, and now Isabel could hear the familiar patronising big-sister note creeping into the voice in her ears. ‘What if a year goes by and you want to marry again? If you're an apprentice you'll have to wait till you're twenty-four. And you'll be even older before you can have a baby.’

      Twenty-four, Isabel thought, before her defences came up against that tone of voice. An eternity. Then, with startling simplicity, it came to her that she didn't want to marry again and become a hostage to someone else's fortune. It wasn't just something to say defiantly to her father. It wasn't just that she had no choice but to apprentice herself to Alice Claver if she were to protect Thomas's memory. This future might actually be for the best. Widows were legally free; their fathers couldn't control them; they could make their own money and spend it as they chose. Alice Claver was robust. She'd used the freedom of widowhood to make a good life. Maybe she'd teach Isabel to do the same thing. With a flash of defiance, Isabel thought: ‘I won't marry again. Not unless I'm free to choose someone who makes me feel …’ She didn't know what she would want to feel; the nearest she could come to it was something like that brief moment, before all this, in the tavern, when the touch of a man who was not Thomas Claver had sparked through her like lightning. So she smiled, tightly, and crossed her arms against her sister, and repeated: ‘No going back.’

      Jane sighed. ‘Well,’ she said, rather sadly, ‘I suppose we all find our own escapes.’

      Isabel could see her sister had given in. She thought, suddenly, that she might have judged Jane's intervention too harshly. Jane was only doing her best in uncertain circumstances. She hadn't meant to give offence.

      Jane started pinning a dark gown from the wardrobe against Isabel. ‘You've lost weight,’ she said, with a mouthful of pins. Then: ‘You must have found something better than you expected in Thomas Claver …’ There was a question in her eyes.

      Isabel pressed her lips together and nodded. She felt tears near. To stave them off, she answered with her own question: ‘Doesn't everyone?’ She hadn't even asked Jane how things were turning out with Will Shore, she realised. Hastily, she added: ‘Isn't living with Will better than you expected?’

      It seemed a safe question. Jane had given no sign of being unhappy. If anything, she was more radiantly beautiful than ever; her skin glowed gold.

      Jane laughed. It was such a joyful laugh that Isabel thought she must be agreeing. It was only later, going back to Catte Street, with one dark gown on her back and another in a basket, that Isabel realised she hadn't paid attention to what Jane Shore's words had been: ‘Will is exactly what I expected.’

      It