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If you think so you are mistaken, and have forgotten too much.”
    “I forget nothing. Still—”
    “I told you not to interfere.” He caught a glimpse of himself, eyes and face suddenly hard, in the damnable mirrors. He forced the rancor down. “She will not be harmed in any way. I will not permit that.”
    “As always, you are very sure of yourself. Perhaps, as always, it will be as you plan. So let us put aside my larger concerns. I will not worry about them until I have cause to. However, the woman in me finds herself also wondering about something much smaller and more ordinary.”
    Jeanette rarely worried about small, ordinary things. He saw to it that she did not have to anymore. “What is that?”
    “You have asked me to look after her. She will be my responsibility and you are a legendary seducer. Therefore I am duty bound to repeat my first question, but in this smaller, more ordinary context. What are your intentions?”
    He laughed, to indicate the question was completely absurd.
    She did not react. She knew him too well and had probably seen that it was not absurd at all.
    “She has her father’s eyes. Do you think that I could pursue her, always seeing that?” It was what he had told himself several times during that long carriage ride. Except sometimes she looked at him in that steady, unflinching way and he forgot to see the resemblance for a very long while.
    Like just now, upstairs in the Chinese chamber.
    “That hardly reassures me,” Jeanette said. “But if you plan what I think, you need her innocent. That will check you, should you ever be tempted.”
    “Now you truly wound me. I do not corrupt young women.”
    “There are some things even you cannot plan, Daniel. Things that even you cannot control.”
    “Perhaps, but my appetites are not among them. I am not a total devil.” He rose to leave, annoyed with her insinuations. That he had, in fact, been recently moved by something difficult to control did not help his mood.
    She laughed. The mirrors showed them facing each other, her shaking her head in amusement and him looking down, a tall dark tower bespoiling this little, glittering, pastel world.
    “Ah, Daniel,” she said with a sigh. “I am not implying that you are a devil. I am suggesting that you are a normal man. But perhaps that is a bigger insult.”

chapter
4

    G ustave Dupré plucked two tomes from their shelves and carefully placed them on his desk, angling and opening them to create a haphazard arrangement that spoke of scholarly disarray. It was important for a certain type of visitor to understand that this was the study of a busy man whose advanced intellect did not like distractions of a mundane nature.
    He awaited such a visitor now.
    He fondly surveyed the many leather bindings on their mahogany shelves while he chose the next book. It was an unsurpassed scientific library, the envy of everyone who knew him. Hadn’t Fourier himself come to borrow from it? He had enjoyed making him wait just a bit before receiving him, especially since it had been Fourier who all those years ago had found the flaw in the mathematical proof that Gustave had expected to secure his fame.
    Yes, he had enjoyed humbling Fourier. Only a little, of course. They were brothers in science now, equal in status and repute. Another proof had secured that for Gustave, one which even the great Fourier could not pierce.
    Adrian, his new secretary, entered the library. “His carriage is here.”
    Gustave settled himself in the chair behind the desk. “Bring him here when he comes in.”
    “Do you want me to stay?”
    Gustave bristled at the impertinence. Did Adrian dare to suggest that he, Gustave Dupré, could use the counsel of a young pup barely out of university?
    If so many of France’s own sons had not been killed in the war, he would not have been forced to resort to this English upstart. The young man had been so bold last week as to correct the Latin that Gustave had used in a