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Isidore raised an eyebrow. “I had no idea you spoke Italian.”

“I don’t really, but I can improvise from Portuguese.” He turned back to Signora Angelico who was declaring herself felicissima to encounter, finally, the marito of her darling little duchess, whom she had loved since the moment she first saw her.

“Signora Angelico made gowns for my aunt for many years,” Isidore explained.

“Your aunt?”

“I lived with my aunt after we married.”

“Of course! Your aunt.”

“Augustina Del’Fino,” Isidore filled in.

So he didn’t know every bit of information about what she’d been doing for the last eight years since they married…well, perhaps it was more than eight years.

Signora Angelico turned away, her hands in the air, scattering her seamstresses in all directions.

“How long have we been married?” Simeon inquired.

Isidore glanced at him. She would make an excellent politician; she had a way of putting a fellow in his place with nothing more than a raised eyebrow. “Don’t you remember?”

“Why would I ask if I did?” he said, surprised.

“We were engaged in June, 1765, married by proxy in June, 1773.”

“Of course. You said you were twelve when we actually married.”

Signora Angelico was gesticulating madly from the other side of the room.

“And you were eighteen.”

“I was in India. How long did you live with my mother?”

“A matter of a few months. I’m afraid that we were not suited temperamentally, and we all agreed that I would be happier with my aunt.” She turned away. “Cara signora, arriviamo!”

Signora Angelico was chattering away with Isidore in Italian, so rapidly that Simeon couldn’t follow. She was pulling bolts of cloth from the shelves and throwing them on the table, screaming at her assistants, waving her hands around…

Simeon went back to thinking. So Isidore went to live with her aunt and presumably expected him to collect her up at some point.

Signora turned away so he said to her, “Just when did you think I’d come back for you?”

“When I was sixteen.”

“But that was—”

“Seven years ago.”

He stared down at her.

“You’ve been waiting for me for seven years?”

“What did you think I’ve been doing?” And she turned away, cooing over the signora’s choice of cloth.

Simeon stared down at the bolt of fabric. It was spun of a material so fine that it looked like cobwebs, and yet he knew he had finer in his warehouses. He had shipped home trunks of fabric.

“Did you ever receive fabric I sent from India?”

She glanced up at him and her eyes were like chips of blue ice now. “They must have gone as astray as you yourself.”