Page 52
Monsieur Rouget returned to the table, a bottle of wine in his hand.
“English baking,” he said. “I like it not too much. But perhaps you can persuade me.”
“Persuade me, please,” said Kessler. “With a cheesecake.”
“Chocolate tarts,” suggested McAdams.
By the time Nina closed the baize-covered door behind her they were singing “La Marseillaise.” She hummed the tune on her way to the butler’s pantry. Kuznetsov was writing in such a storm of inspiration he didn’t lift his head. Fritz’s tail waved by his ear. She left them to it.
Instead of walking to her room, she walked out the front door and stood in the small front garden. The warm, clear day had become a cool, clear night. Across the street, beyond the embankment, the river was slipping by. A bone-white moon hung overhead, nearly full. She started toward the gateposts with the idea of looking out at the water, watching the barges float under the bridge, counting the bobbing lights.
She was still gazing up as she walked and so almost struck De’Ath as he came down the path.
They both stopped. He was a dark figure in evening dress, his top hat casting his eyes in utter blackness.
“Miss Finch,” he said, low. “Out for a stroll?”
“It’s a lovely night.” His sudden presence made her heart flip in her chest.
“Lovely,” he agreed. He took off his hat and tipped his face toward the sky. “But only a scattering of stars.”
“It’s lovely, but it’s still London.” She shivered as the wind riffled her dress, fluttered the silver leaves of the olive tree. The city always smelled vaguely rotten, but here, surrounded by aromatic garden herbs, the wind carrying the bergamot scent of De’Ath’s Brown Windsor soap, she found herself breathing deeply, like she did when she stepped off the train in Hensthorpe.
“I’d wanted to point out the Corona Borealis, Ariadne’s crown.” He shrugged and straightened. “It’s there in the west, but too faint to see.”
“We saw it once today already.” She smiled. “In the painting. The circle of stars above the clouds.”
He took a step nearer. “You noticed.”
She sucked in an inaudible breath.
Titian’s sky is ultramarine and lead white, she could have said. The sea beneath is azurite. He used fourteen different pigments to paint the whole.
Her throat filled. She despised her omissions and lies, and not entirely due to conscience. No, her selfishness gave her guilt another dimension, a layer of reckless, frustrated longing.
She wanted more, more from their conversations. She wanted to speak unguardedly. She wanted them to look at paintings, or at the stars, or at each other, without this awful bulwark of dishonesty keeping them apart. She wanted to lean close to him, and . . .
Lean close to him?
Nina, she chided herself. Nina, Nina.
“You notice everything,” De’Ath murmured, “don’t you, Miss Finch?”
Despite the shadows, she knew he was looking her dead in the eye. His gaze seemed to heat the darkness.
“I wish Bancroft Broughton possessed a fraction of your powers.” He closed the distance between them. “Enjoy your stroll.”
He blocked the moon and seemed a shadow himself. Then he was moving past her, entering the house.
Bancroft Broughton, of Broughton’s Auction House.
Hell. She wasn’t here to look at the bloody stars.
“Mr. De’Ath!” She hurried after him, and he waited on the threshold in a wedge of light, holding the door.
“Do you have the time?” she panted, climbing the step. “It’s too late to stroll, I think.”
They both turned as Kuznetsov banged down the hall. He was conducting two sides of a conversation in thunderous Russian. Nina considered plucking Fritz from his waistcoat, for comfort, but Kuznetsov spun too quickly, racing back to the butler’s pantry, shaking De’Ath’s hat and overcoat as he spoke, like puppets.
