The place fell silent and Dorcas turned to see who it was had come through the door. She stopped. All motion around her seemed to stop. Puzzlement briefly showed on her face and then something akin to a slow delight came over her. She took a step towards him, reached out a hand. ‘Seeker.’
He looked about him, awkward in the silence of the place, began to move towards the small room they had spoken in before. She followed him, and closed the door behind him, before pulling out her own chair and urging him to sit.
He shook his head. ‘I can’t stay. I leave London in the morning, for Yorkshire. I . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘I wanted to know that all was well with the girls before I left, to ask if they recover.’
Not sitting herself, Dorcas stood with her back to her accounts table, leaning her hands against its edge. She nodded slowly. ‘They recover, day by day. Isabella is almost as strong as ever, as you see, and already asking about books and writings and I know not what that the boy Edward spoke to her of, in their captivity.’
‘I’m glad. And your daughter?’
He could see the rush of warmth, of love, go through Dorcas. ‘She does well, Seeker. And each day better. She would have us call her Liberty, and although she asks about Lady Anne, she wants all the time to know of her father, and of me, and talks of how long she dreamed that I would find her, long, long before Lady Anne ever saved her from these city’s streets. You have mended both our lives.’
Seeker cleared his throat, and tried to find words about his duty, and the good order of the city, but Dorcas shook her head. ‘It is all right, you know, that you have a heart. I will not tell anyone.’
He gave a quiet laugh, and looked towards his boots and back to her. ‘I doubt if they would believe you anyway.’
Dorcas straightened herself at the table. ‘It’s nothing to me, what the rest of London believes. But must you really go tomorrow?’
‘The Lord Protector wishes it, and so I go.’
‘And when do you return?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’
The sounds from the tavern parlour only magnified the silence in the small room. Seeker stood a moment, then reached for his hat from where he had set it down.
Dorcas took a breath. ‘It’s a cold night, Seeker. And a cold bed you go back to, I think.’
‘I . . . I can offer nothing,’ he said.
‘And I ask nothing. I make no demands, have no expectations. And when you return from Yorkshire, you may come back here again, or not, as you will. If you do, you will find me here still, and still I will ask nothing of you. But it’s a long road you have ahead of you tomorrow, Seeker, and the night is cold.’
The Black Friar Page 35