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Nina’s Sweets. How would she ever buy a bakery? He could buy one, along with the fruit market, if all went according to plan. Buy it for her. Act as a patron. Patrons funded artists, writers, musicians. Why not a baker?

Her Victoria sponge was light as air. He’d felt as though he was eating a cloud.

He stood, and he knew that unless he exerted effort, his feet would direct him down to the kitchen.

Only Laocoön struggled more, but he managed to gather hat, gloves, and overcoat and head out the door.

On the ride to the Royal Academy of Art, he jotted down questions for anyone who might remember Jack Reeve.

Chapter Seventeen

Nina sat on her favorite bench, watching children fly a kite over the meadow. The wind was fitful, and the kite kept diving to earth, which caused the children to shriek and fight one another for the string. Nina had seen them yesterday too. Across the week, she’d come to recognize several of the afternoon regulars. There were many children, children galore, children of all shapes and sizes.

But never the Duke of Umfreville’s.

According to Alan, their nursemaid often took them to the park after lunch. But which nursemaid? The duchess was jealous of the girls’ affections. The kinder the nursemaid, the shorter her tenure.

Today, Nina had brought Fritz on her vigil. He’d seemed a bit jealous lately, of the cats. And he loved Hyde Park, big and green, littered with picnickers’ detritus, which he found so irresistible.

He was emitting mellow cheeps on her shoulder, and she reached up to rub his fur.

Eventually, she abandoned her bench and walked between the trees, up the gentle slope of the hill. She had a better vantage from the hill and could surveil the park gate properly.

In the two days since Alan had proclaimed his hand good as new, she’d let herself fall under a cozy domestic spell. She baked, and then she wandered Hyde Park, and then she baked more, and at various intervals Alan presented himself in the kitchen to dock biscuits or to ask her some unexpectedly fanciful question, most recently, how she imagined ambrosia, the food of the Greek gods. She was lulled by the regularity, and pleasantness, of her routine, and by the company, Kuznetsov, Rouget, and the rest. And of course, Alan himself, who overflowed her heart when he tasted the vanilla extract and grimaced, and when he whipped egg whites, laughing in delight at the moment they came up in peaks.

Now that she didn’t write out his letters—some of which had continued his queries into Sleaford’s whereabouts—she could shove her real life out of her mind. She could pretend her greatest concern was overbrowning the puff paste for her lemon cheesecake. She could pretend that she had no ulterior motives.

But real life kept niggling away at her.

She monitored Alan’s movements, so that Jack could evade the net.

It was soothing to bake and soothing to look for the duke’s children. In these two arenas, she didn’t play Alan false, or Jack either.

Her gaze stayed trained on the sky. The low, scuttling clouds threatened rain. Their silver was ominous, and beautiful, and very like the silver of Alan’s eyes.

Night after night, she replayed their kisses and grew sweaty and restless in the narrow bed, and her urge for release felt perilously like an urge to confess.

And if she did? What then?

Her stomach lurched, and she lowered her gaze.

For a time, she watched people passing through the arched gate into the park. Redheaded twins in knee pants with a big, twinkly, white-haired lady who looked like a fairy godmother. A widow walking three Pekingese. Courting couples.

She decided to return to the benches and resume her seat.

She started down the hill and almost tripped on her skirt.

Those two girls on the path. One was gangling, with a black fan of hair on her narrow shoulders. The other, a tinier girl, had a birthmark on her cheek and a halo of dark curls. Lady Arabella and Lady Mary. They were following a nursemaid. Miss Milford trailed behind them, and so did the little marquess himself.

Nina straightened her skirt and walked briskly after them.

The little party was heading for the Serpentine. When they reached the shore they stopped and surveyed the scene. Heart tripping, Nina sat on an empty bench at a few yards’ distance. The nursemaid opened her basket and handed bread to the girls with a sweet smile. The little marquess skipped forward to claim his own piece of bread, but Miss Milford called him back sharply. The nursemaid’s smile faltered, and the girls studied their bread, lower lips bumped out.

“Come along, moppets,” said the nursemaid gently. “The poor ducks are famishing.”

“The ducks prefer Claud.” Lady Arabella looked up hopefully. “Can’t he feed them too?”

“Perhaps next time.” The nursemaid’s smile reappeared, and she took Lady Mary’s hand.