“So she’s really not here? She’s not going with you?”
Grimly, he shook his head.
“I would have sworn you would have taken her with you, though you told me she would not.”
“I don’t lie,” he said conversationally. “And she does not change her mind.”
“I don’t see why not,” she said reasonably. “If you’re both so near to death as you think? If you loved each other so much?”
His crooked smile showed the pain that her words caused him. “I love her still,” he said quietly.
“But not enough?” she taunted.
“Not enough,” he confirmed.
She laughed. “Ah well, if you won’t quarrel with me, then I shall have to send you away with my good wishes. I shan’t come to Yorkshire in the summer, you know, we are going to Bath for the queen to take the waters. God knows what will happen.” She lowered her voice. “They’re barely talking, and she is worse than ever. It’s only the priests that are keeping them together.”
He looked grave. “I hope her health improves. I have said my farewells to her and to the king, but you might tell her that I wish her very well.”
She gave him her impudent smile. “The best thing you can do for her is leave me with her,” she said. “No one else makes her happy.”
“I am glad she can find any happiness,” he said, still not rising to the bait of her teasing. “And you may stay with her. I don’t want you at my home, not even at my end.”
He took her gloved hand and raised it. He barely touched the perfumed leather with his lips. “Good-bye,” he said formally. “I doubt we will meet again.”
“Not in this world,” she said, as if his death meant nothing to her.
“I will be with her in the next,” he said with certainty.
She laughed in his face. “Allora!You are very sure. But anyway… your will is unchanged? I have my dower as agreed? If you do… if you happen to…”
He laughed as he turned and climbed the steps into the carriage. “My dear, you never disappoint me!” he told her. “It is as we agreed. If I should die this summer, you will have my name, the Dower House for life, and your dower.”
She flushed. “The entail?”
“The estate goes to my cousin. Matteo gets nothing.”
“This house?” She gestured to the grand London house.
“Goes to my cousin. I assume—as I have always assumed—that Matteo’s father will provide for him, or you will.”
“Oh! His father?” she said smiling, as if it were a private joke. “Would you like to know his name? To take to your grave?”
“Whoever he is does not matter to me anymore.”
The footman folded the steps into the carriage and closed the door. She stepped forward, and James lowered the glass of the window so that she could whisper.
“You have no jealousy?” she asked. “Is that why you won’t leave your own stepson a bequest—what about the house? Avery House? You could leave it to him and prove to me that you are not jealous?”
He shook his head, leaning back against the silk squabs of the carriage. “I have only loved one woman, and that was never you. I feel nothing—no jealousy, nothing. And I won’t leave Avery House to Matteo, for—whoever he is—he is not an Avery, and I respect my name.”
Pale with irritation, she stepped back, and James raised the window at once. The footman swung up behind, and the coach moved away.
HATTON GARDEN, LONDON, SPRING 1686
The two girls, Mia and Gabrielle, escorted by their cousin Matthew, arrived at Rob’s front door, as the waiting footman threw it open.
Mia turned on the step to Matthew. “Why don’t you come in?” she asked.