DECEMBER 1670, LONDON

James Avery rushed to pull out a chair for Livia. “Please, sit!” he begged her.

She sank down into the chair opposite him and found her sweetest smile. “I’m so glad you are home!” she said. “I could not wait to see you! I could not wait another moment for you to send for me!”

He flushed, shuffled papers, stacked them into a pile, and then put them in a drawer. “I should have sent the coach tomorrow,” he said. “I have only just arrived. The house is not ready for visitors.”

“I’m no visitor!” She made her eyes warm on his face, her gaze on his mouth to make him think of kisses. “I am the mistress of the house. I am ready, Beloved.”

“There were difficulties at home,” he said awkwardly.

“This is your home.”

“No, no, this is my London house. The London house of my family. I always think of my home as Northallerton. Northside Manor, Northallerton. And there were difficulties. My aunt…”

She laughed as she stripped off her black leather gloves and dropped them, like a gauntlet in a challenge, on the desk. She unwound a shawl of black lace from her neck, as if she were undressing before him, as if next she would open her bodice. “Your aunt?” she repeated, as if to invite him to share a joke. “The English aunt?”

“She requests, indeed, she insists, that she meet you before the banns are called. So she is…”

She widened her eyes. “The aunt wishes to inspect me? As if I am a horse?”

“No! No! It’s just that she has been as a mother to me, and she longs to greet you as a daughter.”

“And I her.”

“And she wants to prepare you for your life as the lady of Northside Manor.”

“Does she know that I am a Nobildonna, and that I had a palace in Venice?”

“Yes, I told her,” he said miserably. “I did tell her.”

She raised her beautifully arched eyebrows and she smiled at him. He felt his anxieties melt away under the warmth of her beauty and confidence. “I think I can run a little house like yours,” she assured him.

“She insists,” he said haplessly.

“Then we will welcome her,” she assured him. “Together. When does she arrive?”

“She’s here now. We came together in my coach.”

She raised a white finger to reprove him; she did not show her temper. “Now that was very wrong, my love, to invite her here without agreeing with me. But—ecco!—I forgive you. I should have liked to have been here to welcome her—but no matter. The English have no manners, and I daresay she is not offended. I shall order the cook to prepare dinner for us and she shall dine with us. Where is she now?”

“Out,” he said shortly.

“Out where, cara mia?”

“She has gone to visit my brother-in-law.”

“The brother of your former wife?” she specified, as if she did not know in a moment who he meant.

“Yes.”

“The gentleman who accused me of fraud, and malpractice?”

“You remember, he withdrew his words, and apologized?”

She shot him one sharp look and then she looked down, her long dark eyelashes brushing her cheeks. “I remember everything,” she whispered. “I remember what you did. I remember what you did to me—that afternoon in your bedroom. I remember what you promised me.”

“I did,” he said grimly. “I was wrong, but I do not forget it.”

“I will never forget it,” she told him. “It was the happiest of ordeals for me as it proved to me that you loved me—beyond restraint.” She let that sink in. “So I shall tell the cook to prepare the dinner for later—when the aunt returns. I suppose she dines in the afternoon? Will she bring the brother-in-law with her?”

“She may invite him. She has every right to invite him to this house. She is my honored guest and she has lived with me for many years. This house is as her home.”

Livia rose in a rustle of black silk. “Of course. What a pleasant dinner we shall have.”