JUNE 1670, LONDON

“It is quite ridiculous that we meet like this,” Livia said sharply to Sir James the next afternoon. “Like a maidservant creeping out to meet a footman! You must write down for me the address of your London house and then I can write to you and suggest a time and place to meet when we need to talk.”

He felt himself flinch at her bluntness. “Of course, I am honored,” he said quietly.

“Because we have much to do together.”

“We do?”

They were taking their usual path, along Savoury Dock, as St. Saviour’s Dock was ironically known to its neighbors who were sickened by the stink of the industries pouring their waste into the river. They turned right into Five Foot Lane, ignoring the catcalls of street urchins and the occasional appeal of vendors of small goods, and they wound their way through the line of little cottages to the fields where the sheep grazed in the distance and she could sit on the tree that he now thought of as “theirs.”

“We do,” she confirmed smartly. “And this is not a place of business.”

“I am not a businessman,” he said gently. “I have no place of business.”

She peeped up at him in her charming way. “I know,” she agreed. “You are above all this. But I have to toil and sow and reap for my boy, you know. For his inheritance. And his family, this family that I find myself among, these are working people and I cannot be idle. They need my help and I am going to help them.”

“But I…” he started.

“You can just leave, of course,” she offered him. “You need never see any of them again. You have been forgiven for your sins and no doubt you forgive them theirs. You tried to reenter their lives and you have been shut out. There is nothing more for you here. You could go now and never come back, arrange another marriage and hope for a son of your own.”

He blinked. “I could,” he said cautiously.

“Or you could help me save them,” she said, her voice a little lower, beguiling. “You could help this poor family to make a living, better than it is now. You abandoned them in poverty, and they cannot rise without our help. You can have no contact with Mrs. Reekie, you know, but her grandson should grow up as a prosperous English boy. You will tell me where he should go to school? I am sure that he should go to your school? At what age does he have to start? Should you introduce him?”

He flushed with embarrassment. “I didn’t go to an English school,” he said. “I was tutored at home and then I went to a seminary. I was intended for the priesthood.”

“Dio!” she exclaimed. “You? An English Milord?”

“There are many English Roman Catholics,” he said awkwardly. “But I lost my vocation, I had… I had a crisis of faith… and, like many, I converted to the Protestant Church and took up my title and my lands.”

She had no interest in his religion. “Oh! So! Where should Matteo go to school?”

“Perhaps Westminster?” he recovered. “I could assist you with that.”

She clasped her hands. “I ask for nothing from you but a little help. I was impulsive before, you understand that I am Italian? I see a happy outcome and I long for it all at once. You will find me passionate! You will forgive me that. But I will never trouble you with my dreams again. I thought that I could be a wife to you and give you a son—I thought it like a miracle that we should meet when I am the very thing that you want. But I see I was too quick for you! From now on we shall be nothing more than friends and partners.”

He was flushed with embarrassment at her frankness, but stirred by her words. “I could not engage myself to do more than make introductions for you, to gentlemen who are buying antiquities, and their agents,” he said stiffly.

“Nothing more than that,” she agreed. “Alys will arrange the shipping, I shall order the antiquities, you shall do nothing more than invite people to your house and make the introductions, and I shall sell the things.”

“At my house?” His refusal was immediate; but she laughed gaily and put her hands on his. “Not your beautiful house in the country,” she assured him. “I don’t ask for that. No, no, all I want is to be allowed to place some of my best and most beautiful pieces in your London house so that your friends and acquaintances may come and admire them, in your salon. That is how they should be seen.” She paused as a thought struck her. “Oh, but you do have a salon? This is not two rooms over a coffeehouse? In some shabby corner? You do have a proper house?”

He was stung. “It is Avery House, madam, on the Strand.”

She jumped to her feet in delight and kissed him on both cheeks. “That will do splendidly!” she exclaimed, as if he had agreed. “I will come tomorrow.”