He took the coin, the first she had ever given him. “Won’t he send for you himself?” he asked.

“I am ordering you to come and tell me before he arrives,” she repeated, her voice sharp. “Of course, he will send for me, but I want to be ready. I want to know the moment he plans to return to London. Do as you’re told, and I will pay you again.”

Glib bowed and palmed the coin.

“And bring me any other news,” she added. “If he writes to say the house is to be opened. If he writes to say the house is to be closed. Tell me his plans.”

“Won’t he write you himself?” Glib asked impertinently, but then wilted under the dark look of spite that she shot at him.

“When I am Lady Avery, and you can be very sure that I will be Lady Avery, shall you want a place in my household? Because I will be Lady Avery and I will be the one that hires the household staff. Or dismisses them.”

He dropped his head. “Yes, your ladyship. Of course I want to keep my place.”

“Then I have told you how to earn it,” she said, and turned to the warehouse door, clicked the latch, and went in.

* * *

Alys was in the counting house at the high clerk’s desk. Livia came in taking off her cape and leaned against her sister-in-law’s shoulder, seeking comfort. Alys put an arm around her but kept the page open, finishing her work. Livia ran her eye down the column of figures. “Is that all?”

“Yes, that’s all.”

“It’s hardly worth doing?”

“It keeps us.”

“It wouldn’t have paid for my shoes in Venice!”

“I expect you had very lovely shoes,” Alys said with a smile. “We earn enough to keep a household; but there’s very little profit. We’re too far from the legal quays to pick up waiting ships, and I can’t afford to bribe the lightermen for them to bring us trade.”

“We have to buy a new warehouse. You have to borrow the money, Alys. We have to move upriver. You know I’ll help.”

“I know.” Alys turned and kissed her sister-in-law on the lips. “You are the greatest good in my life, in every way.”

“My second batch of antiquities will come soon,” Livia observed. “We should buy the warehouse now and show them there.”

“Livia…” Alys took a breath, determined to tell Livia that Sarah would come home with the antiquities. “Livia, I have to tell you…”

Livia crossed the room laid her cheek against Alys’s. “Mia amica del cuore.”

“What does that mean?” Alys leaned from the clerk’s stool into Livia’s arms.

“My sweetheart,” Livia whispered. “My heart.”

DECEMBER 1670, VENICE

Sarah and Signor Russo dined in a little canalside restaurant and then he took her home by gondola, seating her in the stern and smiling at her delight. Behind her, standing tall, was the gondolier, who poled them down the canal with casual grace. When they entered the Grand Canal it was clear that all of Venice was boating on the clear frosty night. Some gondolas had little cabins and when the doors were closed and the lights flickered from the windows there were hidden lovers inside, enjoying an assignation. Other gondolas carried single ladies, robed in capes, masks held over their faces, weaving through the crowded river so that they could meet their friends and attract attention. Single noblemen reclined in the prow of their gondolas, scanning the boats for new beauty, novelty. Young men shared a bottle of wine and someone was singing, a clear tenor voice echoing over the water.

“They meet? People meet each other?” Sarah asked, trying to hide her shock at the open licentiousness.

Signor Russo smiled at her. “I told you everything was for sale,” he said. “And everyone.”

They turned down the canal that washed at the great doors of the Russo house, and with careless skill the gondolier spun his craft around and swirled them into the internal quay. Signor Russo helped Sarah from the rocking boat and guided her up the stairs to the hall. The house was scented with the light smell of clean cold water.

“And now, are you tired, would you like to go to your bed? Mamma will make you a hot chocolate to help you sleep? Or would you like to see the Nobildonna’s collection?”

“I should like to see her collection,” Sarah replied. “If it’s not too late for you?”

He smiled. “Ah, I am a night owl. Like justice, I never sleep.” He smiled at her. “That’s what they say at the Doge’s Palace, you know? That justice never sleeps. It’s to remind us all that they can arrest anyone at any moment.”

“It must be…” Sarah could not find the words. “Uneasy?”

“They do the torturing at night,” he remarked. “So as not to disturb the clerks working in the nearby offices during the day.”

“They torture?”

“At night. We never forget that we are being watched,” he told her. “We never forget that they are listening. To be a Venetian is to be continually under suspicion. But there is a pleasure in knowing that your neighbor, your friend, even your husband is under constant suspicion too.” He laughed at her shocked face. “So! We trust nobody.”

He opened his jacket and took a key from around his neck. He went across the grand hall towards the back of the house, and opened a small locked door. “The Nobildonna’s collection,” he said. “And my humble store.”

* * *

The long vaulted room was cold and eerie in the light of the candles. All around, on the floor, on tables, and mounted on their own ivy-winding columns, were bodies, and pieces of beautiful bodies, their sightless eyes gazing at Sarah as if they were a frozen ballroom of dancers. Sarah recoiled on the threshold and looked around her, towards the back where cleft and clipped torsos were stored on shelves, where odd arms faced right and left with exquisite fingers and perfect nails. At the foot of the shelves were beautifully shaped calves and the dainty feet of nymphs and the sandaled feet of heroes with arched insteps. On the top shelf were chipped heads with braided stone hair, ribbons fluttering forever in an ancient wind, and the occasional noble profile and the strong smile of a hero.

Stone dust made the floor snow white, ghosts filled the room like stone mist.

“They were real people?” the girl whispered.

“I don’t know,” he said casually, as if it did not matter. “They are beautiful. And old. That’s all we care about now.”

“But this woman—” Sarah gestured to the top half of a face, sliced by a plow, whose eyelids still crinkled in a smile. “We don’t know who she was, nor where she came from? Not who she’s looking at, to make her smile on him?”

Signor Russo was interested, for a moment. “She’s looking down, so perhaps she was smiling at a baby in her lap. Venus with Cupid? But we don’t know. It’s not our task to—you know—part the veils of time. It’s our task to find the lost, to show, to admire. Of course, to sell!”

“And how much of this is… the Nobildonna’s dower?”

He threw a grand gesture. “She can claim all of it!” he declared. “Her husband was an outstanding collector of ancient sculpture. I store it for her. I have my own collection, of course, and on the floor below I have my workshop where I make, repair, and polish, but it is nothing to hers. You can choose from all of this.”