Glib knocked at the door and came into the room with a dewy bottle of ratafia and a dusty one of claret and three glasses.
“Pour.” Sir James, harassed, gestured him to get on with his task. “George—you didn’t say, as we were looking round…”
“No, for what would you know, old fellow? I wanted to speak to the owner, of course, her ladyship here.”
Livia said nothing until the cold glass of wine was in her hand and Glib was gone from the room. She took a sip. “Of course it is a question of value to me,” she said quietly. “As a measure of the judgment of the Conte—my late husband, a famous patron of the arts. Value to me as my dower. And value to Sir James as a means to help a most deserving family, poor cousins of my husband’s family. Poor but proud widowed women who will accept help from me, but from no other quarter. If you devalue my antiquities, sir, you damage many people. Including, I think, your brother-in-law, who houses them.”
“Alas, madam. I have to speak, when I see my dear late sister’s house being used as a shop for some goods that are most definitely—”
She rose to her feet, summoning all her courage. She did not glance to Sir James but knew his eyes were on her. “This is Avery House,” she reminded Sir George icily. “Not Pakenham House—if there is such a place? It is Sir James’s house; not yours. Your late sister is mistress here no longer. If Sir James admires the statues and they seem good to him, if he wants them to sell at a profit because he has a charitable ambition for the profits, then what do you do here, sir, but disturb Sir James, diminish the profits for a charitable cause, and distress me?”
She was magnificent, James was speechless. George put down his glass with a heavy hand and rose to his feet to go. “I’ll see you at the coffeehouse,” he said over his shoulder to Sir James. He took Livia’s hand and bowed low over it. “You rebuke me, madam—” he started.
“Lady Peachey,” she corrected him, unblinking.
“You rebuke me, your ladyship, and I apologize if I have offended you. I will not say another word against your antiquities. Not here or elsewhere. I wanted only to know what was your intention in bringing these… these objects here for sale? What is it that you hoped for? And now I think I have a very good idea!”
He walked to the double doors, threw them open himself, turned on the threshold, and bowed himself out.
Livia hardly dared to look at James. He came quickly round the desk to her and she had no clever words to turn the situation. She turned to him white-faced, her mouth working. Without a word, he reached out for her, drew her in to his embrace. “Forgive me, forgive me for letting him speak like that to you. I had no idea that was his opinion.”
“Ohhh,” Livia sighed, leaning against him, her mind racing.
“I should never have shown him… I should never have let him…”
Livia trembled a little, with unshed tears.
“I suppose he grieves for his sister, my late wife. But he has no right to say that you should not show your beautiful statues here! He has no command in my house, I shall do as I wish, and he shall never, never insult one of my guests again. He overreaches himself. I can only apologize.”
“So unkind!” Livia breathed shuddered with relief. “I was so shocked!” Her tears brimming onto her cheeks were completely real. She was weak at the knees at the narrowness of her escape; he felt her yield to him and he tightened his grip on her to hold her up and then kissed the tears away, one and then another, and then a rain of kisses on her face, as he drew her close to him, one arm around her waist, his hand pressing her breast.
“I can never come here again.” She trembled. “I can never be alone with you again. My honor… He said such things of me…”
“Marry me,” he whispered. “This shall be your house and you will do what you damn well want. I won’t hear a word against you! Marry me, Livia!”
“Yes!” she gasped. “Yes, Sir James, I will.”
He hardly knew what he had said or what she had agreed as she broke from him, at once, called in the baby from the hall, told Carlotta—the only witness that she could summon—and proposed a toast to the betrothal in a glass of ratafia. Carlotta took a glass and drank to her new master. “We will be happy,” Livia promised him. “I know it. We will be so happy.”
Sir James took a seat behind his desk, his head whirling. “But what about the ladies at the warehouse?” He found that he had adopted Livia’s way of speaking about the woman he had loved.
“I won’t say anything there yet,” Livia decided. “They don’t like to be unsettled. We will wait until my statues have sold and I can give them the profits, and I will order another batch and they can sell them. I shall make them importers of fine art rather than wharfingers of corn and apples. We will buy them a house, a storehouse, in a better district—you will know where!—and they can sell my antiquities. We will get them established in a better trade, with a better house.”
“You won’t tell them now?”
“Not until they can manage without me.” She remembered her plan for Johnnie. “But in the meantime, we can place their son in a good position.”
“We can?”
“Ah yes, he wants to enter the Company, you know? The East India Company?”
“Yes, of course I know it, I am an investor.”
“So you can give him a letter of introduction, and he can get a post?”
“I can write the letter. But I thought his mother would take nothing from me…”
“From me! It will come from me! I shall swear him to secrecy. And then, when I leave them to marry you, we will have provided for all of them, the girl in her shop, the boy in his post, and the two ladies with agreeable work. There can be no reproach. You know how Alys can be! So angry and sad! And Alinor so very weak, and so old. Let me set them up in a little business and then we will be free to be happy ourselves.”
“My dear, of course. You know how I—”
“But we can marry in the meantime,” she interrupted him, twinkling. “I don’t ask you to wait! Married and as happy as swallows on the wing. And little Matteo will be your son and take your name. And soon—perhaps next year—we will have a child of our own together.”
“You want to marry at once? And for Matteo to be—er—mine?” He felt his head spinning and he put down his glass of the strong wine, thinking that he had taken rather a lot for early morning. “I thought you meant to wait… Marry without telling them? Secretly? I mean—why?”
“Of course,” she said limpidly. “We shall marry at once. You have swept me off my feet.”
NOVEMBER 1670, LONDON
The second shipment from Venice was arranged between Alys and Captain Shore at his usual table in Paton’s Coffee Shop.
“I had the address written out for you…” Alys opened her book but could not find the paper where Livia had written the address of her storehouse. “I am sorry, I thought I had it to hand…”
“Same place as before?”
“Yes, the lady’s steward.”