“Yes,” Ned repeated. “Of course. Yes.”

OCTOBER 1670, LONDON

Livia met Sir James in the black-and-white marble hall of Avery House.

“I was just going out,” he said, hat in hand.

“I was just coming in to see if there were any letters for me,” she said, turning to the gilt-framed ornate mirror and taking off her hat.

He could not help but think that hers must be the most beautiful face that the mirror had ever reflected. He paused for a moment to watch her as she regarded her own heart-shaped face with the dark wide eyes, removed the hatpin, stabbed it into the bonnet, and then her gaze turned to him and he looked away.

“Are there any letters?” he asked awkwardly.

“I don’t know,” she said with a smile. “I’ve only just arrived. I haven’t looked for them yet.”

“They leave them on that table for you,” he said. “They don’t bring them to me.”

“I know.” She was as self-possessed as if he were a visitor to her house and not the other way around. She moved with easy grace to the half table that he indicated, took the letters, and sat on the chair beside the table.

“If you need to write, you may use my study,” he said. “There are pens, and paper.”

At once she rose up and followed him into his study. He gestured that she might take the seat behind the great desk. It was tidy, but there was a closed ledger marked Avery House, and another marked Northside Manor, and a third marked Douai. Her quick glance flickered over all three but when she sat on the great chair and looked up at him, she was blandly uninterested.

“Pen,” he offered. “Paper. If you leave anything that you want posted I can frank it for you.”

“Frank it?”

“I’ll sign the envelope and your letters go for free, under my frank, as I am a member of the House of Commons,” he explained.

She inclined her head to hide her triumphant smile. “Thank you. If someone wants to see the antiquities again, may I invite them?”

“Of course,” he said. “I can be here.”

“I wouldn’t take up your time,” she said politely.

“It would be no trouble, and… if they were acquaintances of mine it would be wrong of me, it would be impolite—not to be at home.”

“How right you are!” she exclaimed. “People would wonder what I was doing here without you. I should be taken up for a burglar!”

He did not laugh with her.

“And so, shall we say a week on Tuesday?” she went on smoothly.

He did not think she would suggest a day so near, but he bowed. “Certainly,” he said. “Of course.”

Her smile was very charming. “And may we give them—I don’t know—tea? Or something?”

“Yes, of course. I’ll tell the cook to be ready.”

“Oh, please let me,” she said. “You should not be worried about things like tea for the ladies.”

“I do entertain.” He was nettled. “This is not a complete bachelor den. I am not a barbarian.”

She made a little apologetic gesture with her black-mittened hands and placed them on either side of her face so that he looked, despite himself, at her warm rosy mouth. “I never thought such a thing,” she protested. “I wanted to spare you more trouble.”

He nodded. “It is my wish to help you. Ordering tea is nothing.”

She smiled and took up the three letters. “I am so pleased that we can do this together,” she said. “The warehouse family would never accept help from you, but this way, they don’t even know what you are doing for them. I am your gateway to helping them. We do it together. I have very high hopes that we might buy them a better warehouse upriver, in a cleaner part of town, and they might be happy.”

“You’re generous,” he conceded, though there was something about her tone that grated on him. “And knowing that the money is going to them makes all the difference for me.” He looked out of the window at the garden that ran down to the river and then turned back to her. “I would like to buy the statue of the fawn. It looks so well out there.”

She nodded, not at all eager. “Ah, you are the second person to admire it. Well, the third in truth. But I will sell it to you. At the discount we agreed.”

“I don’t want the discount,” he said, a little irritated. “If you are going to buy a house for Mrs. Reekie, I want to contribute to that. Indeed, I should like you to let me know if I can help with the cost of the house, or the hire of the servants, or the cost of moving, or anything that she needs.”

“You would have to give the money to me,” she specified. “They would never accept it from you.”

“I understand.”

“So, you would have to trust me with a large sum of money,” she pursued.

“I do trust you, of course. I know your plans for the ladies are nothing but generous and good. I know that you love them.”

“Just as much as you do,” she said quietly. “We can join together in our kindness to them. We will be partners.”

He shifted his feet a little, as if he wanted to walk away from her talk of a partnership of charity.

She saw it at once. “I’ll tell my buyers that it will be a week on Tuesday at three,” she said, and he bowed and left the room.

When she heard Glib close the front door behind him, and the footman’s lazy stroll back to the servants’ stairs, she pulled the ledger marked Douai towards her and turned the pages. It seemed to be a list of donations credited to a religious house in France, a seminary for Roman Catholic priests. Livia guessed he was acting as a treasurer for his old school and she had no more interest in it. She put it precisely in its original position and opened the ledger marked Avery House. She widened her eyes at the cost of running a great house in London and pursed her lips in irritation that James should spend so much on candles while she had to scrape together shillings from the bottom of her traveling trunk and wheedle them from Alys.

The Northside Manor book was longer and more complicated, showing rent from the farms, profits from sales of animals and goods, rent from the mill, from the bakery, from the brewhouse, and wages, gifts, and purchases. She did not understand at first that one page was costs and one page was profits, and that there was a balancing figure at the bottom of each page. She had never seen an accounting book like this before, and she looked bewildered, able only to see that there were large sums involved, and that James was, genuinely, very wealthy.

A noise from the hall made her slam the book and push it away and bend over her own letters as Glib knocked on the door and asked if she wanted her messages delivered by hand.

“I’ll leave them for Sir James to frank for me,” she said.

Glib nodded. “That’s what her ladyship used to do.”

“I know,” Livia said, waving him away. “That’s why I do it.”

* * *

On her return to the warehouse, walking through the hot dirty streets, Livia found Alys setting out to the coffeehouse for her regular noon meeting with captains and merchants who might use the wharf, as the wait for the legal quays was lengthening in these shorter days of autumn.