Chapter Ten
When Constance arrived at her disreputable establishment off Grosvenor Square that evening, she had two tasks in mind.
Solomon, who had correspondence to deal with and particularly wanted to write to his brother David in Paris, had not come with her.
Often, he didn’t—his form of tact and trust and keeping his own promise of her independence.
She valued that in him. And yet she missed him. She wanted to spend the evening at home with him, and sleep late on a lazy Sunday…
But everyone at the establishment greeted her with their usual fervor. Although they were increasingly capable of managing without her—indeed, had done so for the two months and more she had been away in Venice—her presence tended to lift the evening for both staff and guests.
She knew this without arrogance. She had worked damnably hard for a decade to perfect her professional, sparkling persona.
Like Caterina, she dazzled men and drew them in.
And also like Caterina, she still managed to maintain her distance.
For Constance, it was a deliberate part of her charm, the alluring butterfly too elusive to be caught.
Until Solomon. Only Solomon, who had always seen beneath the bright feathers, and yet still loved her.
Had Caterina picked the wrong husband? Or the wrong lover? The very existence of the latter should have proved the former, and yet life was complicated and often messy, and Constance could not be sure.
She had arrived early at the house in order to talk to Edith before the evening’s party got underway. She found the girl already in the main salon, alone, playing soft, sweet phrases on her violin. Her face lit up at once, and she lowered the bow.
“Evening, ma’am!”
“Edith,” Constance said, sitting beside her on the sofa. “I’ve come to pick your brains again. About Carl Darrow. Where did he study?”
“At the Royal Academy, I think.”
“Do you happen to know when? Or how old he is?”
Edith’s eyebrows flew up. “No,” she said blankly. “But he can only be twenty-four or -five at the most, don’t you think?”
“Do you know anything about his family background? Where he comes from?”
“We only ever spoke about music.” Her brow twitched. “He might be from Manchester originally—he mentioned it once in my hearing—but I don’t think he can have lived there since he was a child. He doesn’t sound northern, does he?”
“No. No, he doesn’t.” But then, I don’t have to sound as if I come from the gutters of Seven Dials, either. “Was his affair with Caterina di Ripoli common knowledge?”
Edith’s eyes widened. “Not to me!” She sighed. “Of course, I don’t move in such rarefied circles, do I?”
Constance smiled. “Not yet.” She rose. “I think the first of our guests is arriving.”
Hastily, Edith sprang up too, raising violin and bow to begin her repertoire of the evening, a gentle, charming background to the ultimately mercenary transactions of the salon.
The evening was as familiar to Constance as breathing.
She laughed and chatted according to the tastes of her company.
She flirted while she watched the rest of the room, performed introductions, and made sure the wine flowed in just the right quantities to make a relaxed and civilized evening.
She had no illusions about the nature of the enterprise, and nothing had changed, and yet…
she felt curiously detached from it. It may have been Caterina’s case that was distracting her, or the thought of Solomon alone at home, where she would rather be.
And vague discontent because neither of the men she sought had turned up.
It wasn’t as if she could beard them at home or at their offices. She wasn’t even sure how they would greet a visit from Solomon.
She was just about to give up and go home when Sir Francis Fanshaw walked into the salon with a familiar gleam in his eye.
“Constance, my jewel! How delightful!” he exclaimed, taking her proffered hand and bowing over it punctiliously. “It’s an age since I’ve caught even a glimpse of you.”
“Nonsense, you just don’t notice when your eyes are all on Deborah.”
Sir Francis laughed. “Trust me, you are too modest. Where is Deborah?”
“Around,” Constance said. “Before I let you go to her, I want to ask you if you know one Sebastian Kellar, a diplomat lately posted in Italy.”
Something flickered in Sir Francis’s good-natured eyes. She couldn’t quite read it, and the next instant, the expression had vanished. “I know Kellar. Good fellow.”
“Then he is valued by the Foreign Office?”
“Without doubt.”
She gave him a few more seconds, but he merely smiled and sipped the wine presented to him by Max the footman.
“You are reticent,” she observed.
Sir Francis laughed. “My dear, I am always reticent about the office. Work is a dull subject for a Saturday evening in such company.”
“And you have a duty of confidentiality that I would never ask you to break. My interest is more personal. What sort of a man is he? Besides a good one.”
“A trustworthy one, of course. Good company, well read, knowledgeable in all sorts of matters.”
“Is he from an important family?”
“He is a gentleman, if that’s what you mean. Gentry stock. I thought such issues didn’t interest you?”
“They don’t as a rule. I just find him…elusive.”
“He does travel around a good deal,” Sir Francis said.
“Or he did. He is being considered for a highly important, London-based post. He says he wants to settle down at last. And, of course, it would be a wonderful promotion for him. A reward for years of loyal service, if you like. Is that what you want to hear?”
“I don’t know,” Constance said honestly. “Is he married, Sir Francis?”
Sir Francis’s eyebrows flew up. “Not to my knowledge.”
Constance drew him away to an even quieter corner. “Confidentially, Sir Francis, has he ever been in trouble in his career? I’m thinking particularly around 1848.”
Sir Francis hesitated, though whether over his memory or some knotty problem of ethics was unclear.
“There was some mess in Rome,” he said at last.
“Was that when he brought Caterina di Ripoli here?”
His face smoothed into a relieved smile. “You know about that already? He pulled some strings he probably shouldn’t to make it happen, but he is such a useful man, he was forgiven.”
“Then the mess in Rome was already forgiven?”
“There was nothing to forgive,” Sir Francis said. “Arguably, he risked too much bringing the girl here, but he felt responsible. One likes that about him.”
One did—if it were true. Or was the full story not yet revealed?
“This position in London,” she said. “Will he get it?”
“Probably,” said Sir Francis, smiling right past her as Deborah walked seductively across the room toward him.
Constance bowed out gracefully and sent for her carriage.
*
Solomon woke on Sunday morning with the feeling that all was well in his world and was about to get considerably better. With a low growl of hunger, he reached for Constance—and found only the cooling patch of bed where she had lain.
He opened his eyes, aware of the sunbeam spreading through the half-opened curtain.
In its light, Constance sat at her little escritoire, dressed only in her nightgown, busily writing.
For several seconds, he let himself just appreciate her in silence, then he rose from the bed and padded naked across to the desk, pulling the curtain fully closed as he went.
She glanced up smiling. “Solomon.”
“Constance. Writing our notes?”
She generally did, with precision and conciseness, not because she could not remember every word she heard or read, but because it helped them both see patterns from unlikely or even conflicting facts.
From their very first case together, when they had co-operated from defensive self-interest, this was how they had worked. And yet this time, she blushed.
“No, actually. I’m just experimenting.”
“With what?” he asked. He could see it was a list of some kind, but gentlemanly tact prevented him from reading it without her permission.
“With the names of people who might conceivably accept an invitation from me without disgracing you.”
Surprised, he glanced down, and she picked up her piece of paper and handed it to him. He skimmed down the names. “Tizsas, Lord and Lady Trench, the Swans…Zenobia Paul…Jason Madly?”
“I like him, now that he’s given up the notion of taking me to bed. Besides, I wondered if Mrs. St. John might come with her daughter.”
Both Madly and the St. Johns had been involved in the mystery of the two bodies found on the establishment doorstep a couple of months ago.
“I don’t know if they’ll come,” Constance said. “I’m trying to work out how disastrous it would be if everyone on my doubtful list stayed away. What do you think?”
She sounded almost nervous, and he realized how much she was trying.
Her instinct was against this party, but she was prepared to try her best to make it work, to please him.
And perhaps because something had shifted in her mind, maybe the sad ending to the Montagues’ marriage, or just from her natural generosity.
“I think it’s an excellent list,” he murmured. “I’d like to add a few more names and see what you think.”
It was the right thing to say. And to do. He was still inclined to lay down the law, however benign and well intentioned, and that was neither fair nor sensible where Constance was concerned.
He let the paper flutter to the desk and placed his hands on her shoulders.
Bending, he kissed her cheek and her nape, heard the familiar catch in her breath.
Slowly, he drew her to her feet and against his naked body for a long, slow kiss.
And then another. It was she who made the first tiny move toward the bed, and that was all the invitation he needed.
He swept her up in his arms and laid her on the pillows beneath him.
Everything else could wait.
*