JUNE 1670, LONDON

Livia left the baby with Alys, so that she could take Carlotta as a chaperone on her visit to Avery House. She used the last of her money to hire a wherry to cross the river from Horsleydown Stairs and a hackney carriage to the imposing gates that faced onto the Strand. She wished very much that she had a footman to walk with her up the steps and to hammer the big bronze knocker on the door. But Sir James opened his own front door to her, which made her feel at home, until she had an adverse thought: “Do you not want your servants to see me?”

“No!” he said, genuinely surprised. “I thought you would like it better if I greeted you myself.”

He liked how her face, which had been a little pinched with anxiety, warmed under his attention.

“I do like it. That was kind of you,” she said. “I would have preferred my own carriage to bring me here.”

“Perhaps when you have sold your antiquities,” he said, and was rewarded by a sudden smile. “I’ll pay the hackney,” he said when he saw that the driver was waiting and that she had not pulled a purse from her pocket. He gave the man a few coins and came back up the steps to lead her into his house.

“You don’t have a carriage?” she asked.

“I don’t need one in London. And I am here very seldom.”

“Then I shall have to buy my own, when I have made my fortune. Now.” She took his arm. “My antiquities! Where do you think we should show them? They need to be in good light, and a big space.”

He hardly noticed that his help was now an accepted part of the plan as her maid took a seat in the hall and he guided Livia up the stairs.

“And where is your baby?” he asked.

“He is with Alys. She quite dotes on him. I would not be distracted by him while I am visiting you,” she said. She gave him a quick promising smile. “You shall have my full attention!”

He said nothing as they reached the top of the stairs but gestured to the gallery that ran the length of the building, along the wide front, where the portraits of his ancestors took up only half of the walls. “Here,” he said.

“There is room for busts, and heads, and columns,” she said, delighted. “And these wonderful high windows for light. Why do you have so few things?”

“Some pieces were sold,” he said. “The house was commandeered during the Cromwell years, and some things went missing. Stolen, by common soldiers. They didn’t even know what they were taking. Probably hanging on some merchant’s wall right now. I doubt we’ll ever get them back.”

“Why can’t you get them back?” she demanded.

“It would be a hard claim to prove.”

“Why don’t you steal them back?”

He gave a shocked laugh. “I couldn’t! Of course not!”

Quickly, she agreed with him. “No, of course not. So you must buy some new. I can give you an excellent price on some Caesars. Quite original, in historical order, on their own marble columns. They would be perfect here.”

He laughed. “You would offer them to me at a good price?”

“At ten percent under the market price if you keep them here, in this gallery, and show them to your friends.”

“I was joking…” he said.

“I never joke about money,” she said seriously. “You can have ten percent under market price for anything you like if you will show them to people. Now, is there anywhere else that my antiquities could be shown? Do you have any space outside, for the big statues?”

“There is the garden,” he said unwillingly, for the garden was his private haven in London, a long run of wide green space, down to the river, planted with apple trees and plum trees, dancing with blossom in early summer, bright with scarlet and bronze leaves in autumn when the boughs were laden with fruit. It had been his mother’s favorite place, where she had held midsummer balls when the old king had been on his throne and everyone thought that nothing would ever change.

“Show me!” Livia demanded, and he gave her his hand and led her through the great glazed doors to the terrace at the back of the house, and then down the steps to the garden that led to the river.

“This is what I thought London would be like,” she breathed. “Not a dirty little warehouse, run by two sad women, but this! A big English garden, and a river like silver.”

“Are they sad? Would you call them sad?”

“No, they’re where they want to be, it suits them—but this is like another world! High tide, and no wharves and noisy unloading, just the birds singing in the trees, and the fruit forming on the bough, and the grass under my feet! This is the England I dreamed of!”

He was exhilarated by her joy in his garden. “You like it? I love it here—but you should see my lands at Northallerton.”

“I should love to come!” She took it swiftly, as a direct invitation. “For this is a paradise!”

“This is a pleasure garden, but at Northside Manor I have orchards, and herb gardens, and vegetable gardens and a dairy and a bakehouse and… it is a manor that can keep itself. It can feed and house and manage itself. I can live off my own.”

“When I was a little girl that’s how we lived,” she told him. “In the vineyards, outside Florence. We kept hens and cows and ducks and bees. I kept the hens, we had twenty eggs a day. I have always longed to live in the country again. Matteo should be brought up in the country.”

“And yet your home was Venice,” he observed.

Her dark eyelashes veiled her bright eyes. “You know that a young woman cannot choose,” she said quietly. “My parents married me to Signor Fiori. He took me far from my home, and the countryside that I loved. I came to Venice like an exiled child. Do you know how that feels?”

“Yes,” he said, the exiled child whose home had been stolen by the parliamentarians before he could inherit it from his royalist father. “I know what loss feels like.”

She put her hand in his with her quick sympathy. “Ah, let us make each other happy again? I am bold with you because I understand your feelings so well. We are one and the same.”

He flushed, but he did not drop her hand. “I should not mislead you; you know I am a new widower. I am not ready for another marriage.”

She bowed her head. “I will wait for you to speak,” she promised him. She looked up; he thought her lips were so warm and red that she must rouge them. “You must take as long as you like. I will wait for you to say the words that I long to hear.”