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hear?”
    “Oh, Klaus, what a bear you are.” Mrs. Nemo’s voice took on a coquettish edge. “Minerva will think you very cruel towards me.”
    Herr Schick directed his glower towards Minerva. Behind the spectacles his black eyes burned like hot coals. “Fräulein, I hope you do not smoke.”
    “My cousin would never cultivate such a vile habit.” Mrs. Nemo linked her arm through Minerva’s. “But Minerva is in a terrible rush right now, aren’t you, dear?”
    There was no mistaking the pressure of Mrs. Nemo’s grip, and Minerva wasn’t sorry to take her leave of the formidable Herr Schick. She gave the German a faint smile. “I’m afraid so. Good day, Herr Schick.”
    In the hallway Mrs. Nemo looked ready to push her out the front door, but Minerva stood firm. Pulling herself free, she declared, “I’m not leaving this house until I have some answers.”
    There must have been something implacable in her expression, because Mrs. Nemo didn’t try to force her out the house, but instead shrugged and led her down the hallway into a small room.
    As soon as the door was shut, Minerva continued hotly, “You may call yourself Isolde Nemo these days, but once upon a time you were Charlotte Lambkin. I know it. You are my mother.”
    Grimacing, the other woman stared at her for some moments, her face like marble. “I shall tell you about Charlotte Lambkin. She’s gone forever. She wished to separate from her husband. In return for his agreement, he insisted she go into exile on the Continent and everyone be told she’d died of influenza there.”
    “Father insisted?” Minerva choked. “I don’t believe you. He’d never do something like that.”
    Mrs. Nemo’s eyes burned like ice. “He was cruel, controlling. He flew into a rage every time Charlotte so much as smiled at another man.”
    Minerva caught her breath. Yes, she remembered the bewitching little smiles her mother used to bestow on her admirers. There’d been many swains besotted with her, she now realized. But not once could she recall her father reacting with jealousy. He’d usually been too absorbed in his work to notice. Perhaps that had irked her mother the most—that her own husband hadn’t appreciated how much she was adored by others.
    “And me? Why was I left behind?” Minerva heard the quaver in her voice, the needy child still in her after all these years.
    “Silas insisted. He was brutal to the very end.”
    “I—I don’t believe you. Father has many faults, but brutality isn’t one of them.”
    “You don’t believe me?” Mrs. Nemo stiffened, temper flashing through her eyes. “When I asked Silas for a formal separation, he flew into a rage. Told me I would never see you again, that you were better off without me.”
    “So you do admit to being my mother!”
    Mrs. Nemo pouted with annoyance. “Why must you insist—very well, yes, I am.”
    Emotion clogged Minerva’s throat. Her eyes stung. “I was only eight. I missed you terribly. Mother.”
    The other woman let out a sigh as she squeezed Minerva’s frozen hand. “You must call me Isolde, Mimi.”
    Mimi . Her mother’s pet name for her. She hadn’t heard it in so many years.
    “Oh, if only you knew what I’ve had to endure.” Crossing to the fireplace, Mrs. Nemo examined her face closely in the large mirror above the mantelpiece. Swift, practiced fingers darted about, tucking hair, smoothing lips, patting cheeks, straightening lace. “Mercies, I don’t look like anyone’s mother,” she said to herself. Then she turned round and addressed Minerva. “You’re upset, but your father was right. It was better for you to believe I was dead.”
    No, it was the other way round, Minerva realized in a sudden burst of perspicacity. Her mother had been better off without her. Without her and Silas. Her beautiful, restless mother had grown tired of marriage and motherhood. So she’d embarked on a Continental sojourn, and then informed her husband she was leaving him.