Chapter Ten
When Constance arrivedat her disreputable establishment off Grosvenor Square that evening, she had two tasks in mind. Solomon, who had correspondence to deal with and particularly wanted to write to his brother David in Paris, had not come with her. Often, he didn’t—his form of tact and trust and keeping his own promise of her independence.
She valued that in him. And yet she missed him. She wanted to spend the evening at home with him, and sleep late on a lazy Sunday…
But everyone at the establishment greeted her with their usual fervor. Although they were increasingly capable of managing without her—indeed, had done so for the two months and more she had been away in Venice—her presence tended to lift the evening for both staff and guests.
She knew this without arrogance. She had worked damnably hard for a decade to perfect her professional, sparkling persona. Like Caterina, she dazzled men and drew them in. And also like Caterina, she still managed to maintain her distance. For Constance, it was a deliberate part of her charm, the alluring butterfly too elusive to be caught. Until Solomon. Only Solomon, who had always seen beneath the bright feathers, and yet still loved her.
Had Caterina picked the wrong husband? Or the wrong lover? The very existence of the latter should have proved the former, and yet life was complicated and often messy, and Constance could not be sure.
She had arrived early at the house in order to talk to Edith before the evening’s party got underway. She found the girl already in the main salon, alone, playing soft, sweet phrases on her violin. Her face lit up at once, and she lowered the bow.
“Evening, ma’am!”
“Edith,” Constance said, sitting beside her on the sofa. “I’ve come to pick your brains again. About Carl Darrow. Where did he study?”
“At the Royal Academy, I think.”
“Do you happen to know when? Or how old he is?”
Edith’s eyebrows flew up. “No,” she said blankly. “But he can only be twenty-four or -five at the most, don’t you think?”
“Do you know anything about his family background? Where he comes from?”
“We only ever spoke about music.” Her brow twitched. “He might be from Manchester originally—he mentioned it once in my hearing—but I don’t think he can have lived there since he was a child. He doesn’t sound northern, does he?”
“No. No, he doesn’t.”But then, I don’t have to sound as if I come from the gutters of Seven Dials, either.“Was his affair with Caterina di Ripoli common knowledge?”
Edith’s eyes widened. “Not to me!” She sighed. “Of course, I don’t move in such rarefied circles, do I?”
Constance smiled. “Not yet.” She rose. “I think the first of our guests is arriving.”
Hastily, Edith sprang up too, raising violin and bow to begin her repertoire of the evening, a gentle, charming background to the ultimately mercenary transactions of the salon.
The evening was as familiar to Constance as breathing. She laughed and chatted according to the tastes of her company. She flirted while she watched the rest of the room, performed introductions, and made sure the wine flowed in just the right quantities to make a relaxed and civilized evening. She had no illusions about the nature ofthe enterprise, and nothing had changed, and yet…she felt curiously detached from it. It may have been Caterina’s case that was distracting her, or the thought of Solomon alone at home, where she would rather be. And vague discontent because neither of the men she sought had turned up.
It wasn’t as if she could beard them at home or at their offices. She wasn’t even sure how they would greet a visit from Solomon.
She was just about to give up and go home when Sir Francis Fanshaw walked into the salon with a familiar gleam in his eye.
“Constance, my jewel! How delightful!” he exclaimed, taking her proffered hand and bowing over it punctiliously. “It’s an age since I’ve caught even a glimpse of you.”
“Nonsense, you just don’t notice when your eyes are all on Deborah.”
Sir Francis laughed. “Trust me, you are too modest. WhereisDeborah?”
“Around,” Constance said. “Before I let you go to her, I want to ask you if you know one Sebastian Kellar, a diplomat lately posted in Italy.”
Something flickered in Sir Francis’s good-natured eyes. She couldn’t quite read it, and the next instant, the expression had vanished. “I know Kellar. Good fellow.”
“Then he is valued by the Foreign Office?”
“Without doubt.”
She gave him a few more seconds, but he merely smiled and sipped the wine presented to him by Max the footman.
“You are reticent,” she observed.
