“Could just as well be death for them here,” she pointed out. “No surety we all get through the winter—what with the savages and the weather and hunger? No doctor if you have an accident, no apothecary if you get sick. No surety at all.”

“So why d’you stay here, Mrs. Rose?” Ned asked her. “Fearing it as you do? Why not go home when your indentures end?”

She turned her head away from him, so that her grim expression was hidden by the wings of her cap. “Same reason as everyone,” she said tightly. “I came in the first place as I had hopes of a better life. God called me and my master ordered me. I didn’t know it would be like this. I hoped for better, I still hope. And I don’t have the money for my passage back home anyway.”

NOVEMBER 1670, LONDON

Livia was determined to arrive at Avery House looking her best, and spent the shillings Alys had given her for her earrings on a waterman to take her to the private water stairs at Avery House. She tipped him to carry her up the green wet steps so that her black silk shoes would not get wet. “Oughter wear boots,” he remarked sourly.

She gave him a penny without replying to him, and turned away to walk through the orchard, past the garden statues and the pretty marble fawn, and up the stone steps to the handsome terrace and the big glazed doors at the rear of the house.

Sir James was waiting to bow; but she slid into his arms and raised her face for his kiss, without even taking off her bonnet. He could not step back and kiss her hand, she was in his arms in a moment. The broad wings of the bonnet meant that he could not peck her on the cheek; there was nothing he could do but return her kiss and feel, with astounded desire, her warm lips part, as he tasted her mouth and the liquid softness of her tongue, which licked his. Raised as a celibate, and lately as a widower, he felt Livia’s shameless sensuality like a physical shock. He felt an immediate burn of desire that drove all doubts from his mind. He tightened his grip on her and felt her lean back against his arm, as if he could have her, right there, on the terrace.

He forced himself to release her and step back from her, though he was breathless with desire, to find her eyes were bright, and she was laughing. “Allora!” she said delightedly. “I see that we must marry at once! We will shock the servants. Is this how you Englishmen greet your fiancées?”

“Forgive me!” At once, he was ashamed of his own need.

She laughed and untied her bonnet strings, the wide silk bow unfolding and tumbling down, reminding him of a petticoat opening on nakedness. He flushed at the thought and hoped that she did not guess it.

“No, there is nothing to forgive!” she assured him. She lifted the bonnet from her head and held it carelessly, swinging by the ribbons, so the black plume brushed the floor. “I am so glad to be an English wife again, you know we say in Italy that the only nation that loves their wives are the English? I cannot wait for our wedding day.” She stepped a little closer so he could hear her whisper: “I cannot wait for our wedding night.”

His desire for her drove any caution from his mind. “Oh, Livia… I…”

She turned and preceded him into the house without invitation, opening the glass door to his study and sitting in his own high-backed chair before his desk as if she were already his wife. She picked up the replies to the tea party and glanced through them. He seated himself on the visitor’s chair, rather glad to have the desk between them. “Will you take some ale? Or wine and water? Or tea?” he asked.

“Shall we have ratafia again?” She smiled at him. “I think I will love the taste of it forever, as it will always remind me of last time I was here, when you told me you loved me and asked me to be your wife.”

He served them both from the bottle on the sideboard and spoke as his back was turned. “My brother-in-law, George, wrote to me,” he said. “He apologized for what he had said.”

“As he should,” she agreed smoothly. “I daresay we will forgive him, but never forget his rudeness to me.”

He had to turn to hand her the glass. He was grave. “He did not repeat his challenge to the authenticity of the statues; but, my dear, I do fear…”

Her smile was warm but her eyes were very bright. “You fear?” She laughed. “I don’t want a fearful husband!”

“Any doubt about their authenticity would be most embarrassing,” he said, cautiously picking his words. He hardly knew what to say to her. He hoped that she understood at once that the thought of selling dubious goods, from his family home, to his own friends was unbearable to him. “I can’t put it too strongly. If there is any doubt at all…”

“It’s only one opinion,” she said, as if that were the point. “And if he says he will not repeat it…”

“If there is any doubt about any one of the antiquities, they must all be withdrawn from sale,” he said firmly. “I cannot be in the position that I am selling, at a profit, to my friends, something which might be—”

“Might be what?” She dared him to speak out.

“Uncertain?”

“What do you mean?” she demanded flatly.

He swallowed. “False.”

The word dropped into the room like a stone into a deep well. She widened her eyes at him; but said nothing.

“In any way,” he faltered. “Of course, without your knowing… nobody is saying that you…”

“You see yourself, that they are all things of supreme beauty,” she pointed out.

“I do. But are they…?”

“Lustrous,” she said. “With the luster of beautiful age.”

“They are surprisingly well polished. For things so old…”

“They were chosen by my first husband, a famed and most tasteful patron of the arts, out of all the things that he could have bought with his vast fortune. Each object you have here, he saw, and considered, and judged it to be worthy of his collection.”

“Could he have been misled?”

“No.”

“Could someone have substituted a false one for his good one, a copy of an original, perhaps after his death? Or when the goods were stored? Or when they were shipped here to you?”

“No,” she stated flatly, though they both knew she could not possibly know.

“It’s not likely that my brother-in-law is wrong,” he said very quietly. “He is an authority. If he says that some of the Caesar heads are copies, even very good copies, then we must listen to him. My dear, he is certainly right.”

“No, he is not,” she said flatly. “It is not possible that my antiquities are not good. And anyway, we do not have to listen to him. I certainly am not going to listen to him. He speaks to you, not to me. It is you who are going to have to choose who you believe. The brother of your dead wife, who resents your new happiness? Or your promised wife? Your betrothed wife?”

She saw the dilemma he was in and tightened it a notch. “You have offered me your good name and your fortune and I bring you all of mine. These are your antiquities now, are you going to undermine your own honor? Are they to be false, and you to be false, when you have spent your life struggling to be true?”