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of—” She stood with a tired little gesture of her hands.
    He waited. There was sufficient understanding between them that it would have been faintly insulting for him to have reasoned with her. She was as capable as he of seeing the nuances, the shadings of suspicion and fear.
    “I suppose it is better that I tell you than you learn it from backstairs gossip,” she said irritably, angry not with him but with the circumstances.
    He understood. “And probably more accurate,” he agreed.
    “Alicia,” she said simply. “It was an arranged marriage, as what else could it be between a sheltered girl of twenty and a comfortable, unimaginative man in his mid-fifties?”
    “She has a lover.” He stated the obvious.
    “An admirer,” she corrected him. “To begin with, no more than a social acquaintance. I wonder if you have any idea how small London Society really is? In time one is bound to meet practically everybody, unless one is a hermit.”
    “But now it is more than an acquaintance?”
    “Naturally. She is young and has been denied the dreams of youth. She sees them parading in the ballrooms of London—what else do you expect her to do?”
    “Will she marry him?”
    She raised silver eyebrows very slightly, her eyes bright. There was a dry recognition of social difference in them, but whether there was amusement at it or not, he was not sure.
    “Thomas, one does not remarry, or even allow oneself to be seen considering it, within a year of one’s husband’s death; whatever one may feel, or indeed do in the privacy of the bedroom. Provided, of course, that the bedroom is in someone else’s house, at a weekend, or some such thing. But to answer your question, I should imagine it is quite likely, after the prescribed interval.”
    “What is he like?”
    “Dark and extremely handsome. Not an aristocrat, but sufficient of a gentleman. He has manners enough, and most certainly charm.”
    “Money?”
    “How practical of you. Not a great deal, I think, but he does not appear to be in need of it, at least not urgently.”
    “Lady Alicia inherits?”
    “With the daughter, Verity. The old lady has her own money.”
    “You know a great deal about their affairs.” Pitt disarmed it with a smile.
    She smiled back at him. “Naturally. What else is there to occupy oneself with, in the winter? I am too old to have any affaires of interest myself.”
    His smile widened to a grin, but he made no comment. Flattery was far too obvious for her.
    “What is his name, and where does he live?”
    “I have no idea where he lives, but I’m sure you could find out easily enough. His name is Dominic Corde.”
    Pitt froze. There could not be two Dominic Cordes, not both handsome, both charming, both young and dark. He remembered him so clearly, his easy smile, his grace, his obliviousness of his young sister-in-law Charlotte, so painfully in love with him. It had been four years ago, before she met Pitt, at the start of the Cater Street murders. But do the echoes of first love ever die away? Doesn’t something linger, perhaps more imagination than fact, the dreams that never came true? But painful. . . .
    “Thomas?” Vespasia’s voice invaded his privacy, drawing him back to the present: Gadstone Park and the disinterment of Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond. So Dominic was in love with Lady Alicia, or at least sought after her. He had seen her only twice, yet had gathered an opinion that she was utterly unlike Charlotte, far more a memory of Dominic’s first wife, Charlotte’s sister Sarah, who had been murdered in the fog. Pretty, rather pious Sarah, with the same fair hair as Alicia, the same smooth face. He could think only of Charlotte and Dominic.
    “Thomas!” Vespasia’s face swam up at him as he lifted his head; she was leaning forward touched with concern now. “Are you quite well?”
    “Yes,” he said slowly. “You said ‘Dominic Corde’?”
    “You know him.” It was a statement rather than a question. She