“My God! Forgive me!” he said the moment he returned to awareness. “Forgive me! I should never! I did not mean…”

For a moment she was quite still and then she languidly turned her head towards him. As she opened her dark eyes she saw his troubled face and realized that she must reassure him. At once she found the right words: “Oh, I too am in the wrong,” she said remorsefully. “For it was I who kissed you. I felt such a longing…”

He stood up at once, arranging his clothes, bitterly ashamed of himself. “And in my house! When you are my guest!” he said almost to himself. “In my care. Under my protection! God forgive me…”

“Ah well,” she said, sitting up and rearranging her cap. “We are engaged to marry, after all. There is no great sin in it.”

He could not understand her calmness at the assault on her honor. “No sin! But such a breach of… Forgive me, Livia. Did I hurt you?”

She realized that he was deeply shocked and that she must agree. She jumped up from the bed as if she were ashamed of lying back. She drooped her head so that all he could see was the enchanting line of her dark eyebrows and the dark eyelashes on her cheek. “Of course, you hurt me a little. It is only to be expected. A man such as you…” She turned her face to hide her blush.

“I’m a brute.” He fell to his knees before her, and she leaned forward and gathered his head between her full breasts so he smelled her perfume of rose petals and the warmth of her skin, and desire for her rose up again.

“But we have to marry at once now,” she whispered to him. “There can be no delaying.”

“Yes, yes,” he agreed, his lips at the smooth skin of her neck, as she guided his hand to her breast under the tight silk bodice.

“Just think! We might have conceived a child already!” she whispered with a lilt to her voice. “We will have to marry now.”

“My God! Yes,” he said. “Of course. Livia, trust me! Your name, your honor, is safe with me. Believe me! I shall go to Northallerton at once, and get the banns called. I shall send for you as soon as I can. And in the meantime I will get a minister to instruct you here in London, and tell him that you must convert at once. I need not say why: there are many people who convert to avoid the penalties. And Matteo can be christened as you say, when we are married…”

She rose to her feet and shook out her crumpled black gown. “Very well,” she said, smiling. “Of course, it shall be just as you wish, my love. We shall do it just as you want. As long as it is at once. Before Christmas.”

He took her hand and pressed kisses into it. “You forgive me?”

Sweetly, she brought her face to their clasped hands and kissed his fingers in reply. “You are my husband,” she whispered. “I will always forgive you, everything.”

* * *

All was ready for their guests to come. There were only half a dozen gentlemen, and they had no interest in the tea that Livia insisted on serving. Two of them took glasses of brandy with them as they walked in the garden and looked at the statues, at the apple trees bowing over rotting fallen fruits and the river beyond. The rest of them took cold Rhenish wine and talked to Livia in the gallery.

Nobody mentioned money, and Livia, glancing at James, realized that he was quite incapable of broaching the subject to these, his friends, even when they had come to his house to complete the purchase.

She tucked her hand in the arm of Sir Morris, an ugly middle-aged man in an elaborately expensive coat, and smiled up at him. “You must forgive my boldness,” she said. “But these antiquities are my dower. I have to sell them for the benefit of my little son. I cannot leave it to anyone else, nobody in England but rare connoisseurs like you understands marble, nobody outside Italy would understand their value. So I must talk to you directly.”

“Delighted,” he said with a leer. “I never mind doing business with a lady. Though this is the first time I’ve discussed marble!”

“Indeed,” she said coolly. “It is the Caesar heads you are interested in?”

“Got my steward to measure my dining room. They can all fit in, he tells me. If I want them. And I have a man who buys art for me, he’ll come and look at them before I conclude.”

She flicked out her black fan and looked at him over the top. “Perdono! I am not that bold!” she protested. “I cannot deal with agents and salesmen. You must excuse me.”

She had surprised him. “I wouldn’t buy a horse at this price without advice.”

“These are Caesars, not horses.”

“It’s the question of provenance,” he said.

“Exactly. They come from the collection of the Fiori family, my first husband’s family. Their provenance is perfect.”

“Yes, I suppose. But it’s rare to have a full set, isn’t it?”

“Extremely rare,” she said unblinking. “That’s why they are so expensive.”

“You think they are expensive?”

“Would you rather they were cheap?”

He laughed, despite himself, at her contempt for the word “cheap.”

“Nobildonna, you have mastered me. I shall buy them without asking for anyone else to look at them.”

“But only if I will sell them to you…” she countered over her fan. “Perhaps I am not sure that you value them sufficiently?”

“If you will be so kind,” he replied. “Am I begging you to fleece me now? Did we say two hundred pounds?”

“We said two hundred guineas.”

He reached into a pocket in his jacket and brought out a folded piece of paper. “A promise to pay,” he said. “On my goldsmith. Immediately.”

She took it without looking at it, as if she disdained normal business practice.

“You don’t check it?” he asked her.

She widened her eyes at him. “Do I need to? Would I question the words of a gentleman?”

He gave a little bow. “You are superb,” he said, as if she were an actress in one of the new playhouses.

“Shall I send the antiquities to you, or will your people collect them?” she asked.

“I’ll send my own people,” he said. “I’m taking them to my country house. It’s a pleasure to do business with you, Lady Peachey.”

She inclined her head and stepped a little closer. “And I have more,” she whispered. “I have a reclining female figure in the most beautiful marble, a creamy color marble just like skin. Completely naked, a Venus resting, with a dolphin under her feet, his head lying…” She turned aside and raised her fan to hide her blush. “Along her thighs. The contrast of the skin of the dolphin and her… her… it’s very beautiful. The great classical artists put beauty before everything…” she recovered. “We moderns, we are bound to be limited by modesty. But not, I hope, blinded by it. This is a private piece, for a gentleman’s study or his private gallery.”

“I should like to see it,” he said eagerly. “Quite naked, is she?”

“I would have to order it to be shipped from my late husband’s store in Venice,” she said. “I could show you a drawing and you could order it. I could not undertake to bring it into the country without a guaranteed purchaser. I would have to deliver it directly to you; I could not show it in Sir James’s house, it is a piece so…”