Readers will not need second sight to distrust Livia, but it’s fun to watch her swindle-involving ancient statuary-take shape. Alinor is suspicious-her clairvoyance would have warned her of Rob’s death. “La Nobildonna” (title courtesy of her first late husband) seeks shelter with her infant son, Matteo. Into this modest but content household slinks Livia, a sultry Venetian, self-professed widow of Alinor’s son Rob, a physician in Venice who accidentally drowned. White-haired Alinor, “not yet fifty,” whose health never recovered from her near drowning, has been shunted into an advisory role. He's also hoping to claim the child she was carrying at the time of her exile as his heir, but Alinor rejects him, telling him cryptically that he has no child. Now, in 1670, Sir James, Alinor’s former lover, who failed to defend her against the witch-hunters, has come into his noble estate and arrives, far too belatedly, to offer to marry Alinor. Twenty-one years after their escape to London, Alinor and her older daughter, Alys, run a small import-export warehouse while 21-year-old twins Sarah and Johnnie are learning a trade. When we last saw Alinor Reekie, she had been cast out of her Sussex tidelands home after being “swum” as a witch. In the second of Gregory’s Fairmile series-after Tidelands (2019)-Venetian intrigue meets English gullibility.
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