Page 2

Bianca found her working rhythm, absorbed in how she might convey the difference between soft English light filtered through trees and its fiercer Italian counterpart, and so was somewhat irritated when she became aware that someone was speaking to her. It was a very quiet little voice, and it said patiently, ‘Excuse me, miss, I think you dropped this.’

She looked down. A small boy in frilled shirt and nankeen trousers was holding up a paintbrush. It was indeed hers, and presumably she had let it fall by accident, as he said. She took it from him with a smile and a word of thanks, wiping it absently on a rag, since it had become rather grassy.

‘You must have approached very quietly,’ she said with a smile, her fugitive interest snagged. Children, in her vast experience, were generally noisy creatures; not this one.

‘I don’t think so, really,’ he said seriously. He was perhaps six or seven years old, dark-haired and pale. ‘I think you were concentrating hard and that is why you didn’t hear me. I’m sorry for interrupting, but I worried you might lose your brush and be sorry later.’

Bianca had not brought a stool today, but was working with her easel at its highest setting, and she became aware now that she hadn’t moved for ages, and that her back was stiff from standing motionless, her limbs too. She stretched, and shook out her numb arms, in what was no doubt an unladylike fashion. ‘No, don’t worry; it’s time for me to stop for a while, I think.’

‘May I please look? It’s fine if you don’t want me to, though. I understand that things are sometimes private,’ he hastened to add. Perhaps he was older than she had thought at first. He was certainly a very polite little boy.

How could she refuse when he asked so nicely? ‘You may,’ she said gravely.

He stood up and moved hesitantly to her side, and she watched him as he studied her work, frowning intently. Another thing about children was, they wouldn’t lie. Not at this age and in these circumstances. If this strange child thought her painting was the worst atrocity ever committed to canvas, he’d probably convey this to her in his own fashion. This would do her good, or should, because she had discovered in herself these past couple of years of travel a passion for honesty in art (though in life, she’d found, it wasn’t always possible). She’d had a very spirited debate with one of her nieces last week about what colours people’s faces actually were, if you really properly looked, not merely accepted what you were told, and they’d both learned from it, she believed.

She was extremely fond of children, it was true, perhaps because of their lack of guile; she just wasn’t sure she wanted ones of her own, or at least, not yet. She certainly didn’t want a husband – she’d established that last year with sufficient certainty in rather trying circumstances – and the one generally came before the others, unless one cared nothing at all for scandal and disgrace.

‘I like it,’ the child said after due consideration, and she was oddly touched. ‘I like the way the shadows are all smudgy. My aunt has a picture in her rooms that’s like that.’ Bianca was absolutely not going to indulge her pathetic human vanity by asking this infant if he knew the name of the artist who had painted his aunt’s picture with the smudgy shadows, even though a family who lived in one of these mansions might easily own all manner of masterpieces. She would not enquire, and so retain the illusion that it might have been Gainsborough or Goya rather than, say, his mad cousin Algernon who couldn’t draw a cat so that one might recognise it.

‘Do you live with your aunt?’ she asked. He looked like the sort of small boy who lived with his aunt, or some other older relative; he seemed a little sad, and over-accustomed to adult conversation.

‘Yes, ma’am, or rather my aunt lives with us at present, although my father is back now from his travels and perhaps I might go to live with him in the country.’ He didn’t seem entirely enthused by the prospect, but it was none of her business, after all.

‘Families can be complicated,’ she said vaguely. That was a safe sort of a comment; her own certainly was.

‘Yes,’ he responded again, with a fair amount of feeling, and a little silence fell. Then he told her abruptly, with an adorable little bow, ‘My name is Dawbney. But also Adrian.’

‘And I am Miss Bianca Constantine. I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr Dawbney.’

‘Oh no,’ Adrian said, flushing vividly, and she had a sudden fleeting sense that he reminded her of someone else she’d met in vastly different circumstances, though she couldn’t in the moment remember who. ‘I’m sorry not to be clear; my aunt would reprove me if she heard me. It’s Lord Dawbney. Papa is an earl now, he is Lord Fairmount, and so I am Lord Dawbney, a viscount, by… by courtesy. It isn’t a real, proper title. I can’t sit in the House of Lords.’

‘I’m glad we’ve cleared that up,’ she replied, imagining him with his thin little legs dangling under scarlet robes – were they scarlet? – making laws for the nation. ‘I am pleased to make your acquaintance, then, Lord Dawbney. I’d curtsey, but I have been standing here in one place for so long, I fear I might fall over.’

He grinned, and his grave little face lit up for a brief moment. ‘It’s silly, isn’t it? All the curtseying and so on. My aunt doesn’t think it is, but I do, and I believe Papa does too. Though I don’t know him very well yet. I don’t think he particularly wants to be an earl, and do whatever earls do. I wouldn’t. I’d rather be an artist, like you. I don’t have a painting tutor at present. But I do have a music tutor. And French. As well as the normal one for Latin and history and mathematics and… et cetera.’

Of course he did. Poor little thing. ‘Do you have any brothers or sisters, Adrian?’ She felt as though she knew the answer to this question already.

‘No. Nor first cousins. My mama was an only child, and my father’s older brother didn’t have any children, and now he is dead, which is why Papa is an earl suddenly. My aunt has lots of children, but they are all grown up. They have children of their own, though, it’s true; mostly very loud ones that I don’t care for much. But in the house here and down in the country there’s just me. Do you? Have brothers and sisters, I mean, Miss Bianca?’

‘Just sisters. Five of them, and more than a dozen nephews and nieces, some loud, some not. We are all quite close, I think it’s fair to say.’

‘That must be nice,’ he said seriously, and now that he said it, she acknowledged that, actually, most of the time it was.

‘You should come and meet them,’ she said impulsively. ‘My younger relatives. Not all at once – that would be terrifying, there are so many – but some of them. I’m living with my sister at the moment, just across the square, and she has children your age.’ She wasn’t quite sure if this was exactly true, but – probably it was. Sabrina did have a great number of children, as did Allegra. There was almost bound to be one.

Bianca didn’t learn what Lord Dawbney’s reaction to this unconventional suggestion might be, because at that moment a harassed-looking grey-haired woman, presumably His Lordship’s nanny, came bustling across the lawn, tutting to herself, and before Adrian could say another word, he was bundled up in a quite unnecessary overcoat and dragged away, amid flustered apologies to the young lady for his bothering her. Miss Constantine said quite honestly that he hadn’t been, but it was too late; Lord Dawbney was gone. Wondering if he’d escaped his guardians specifically so he could speak to her, she packed up her materials and made her own way home, to a house that was, she felt confident, far livelier than that of her new acquaintance.

3

A couple of days later, Bianca was back in the sunny garden with her easel. Her meeting with lonely little Adrian had given her a fresh appreciation of her family, which hadn’t quite worn off yet, but that didn’t mean she wanted to spend every waking hour with them. There were so many of them, and they were so noisy. She worked in blessed silence for a long while, and when once again she was interrupted, in what was after all in some sense a public place, she was barely annoyed but welcomed a moment’s break.

It wasn’t Lord Dawbney this time, though; it was a very superior-looking butler, who might well have been coughing politely in the hope of attracting her attention for quite some time before she looked up from her canvas and noticed him. ‘I apologise for disturbing you, Miss Constantine,’ he said austerely. ‘Please be assured that I do not do so idly. Lady Deborah Townshend, my employer’s aunt, would like to invite you to take tea with her. You have recently become acquainted with her great-nephew, Master Adrian, I believe.’

This was a startling proposal to be passed on from a complete stranger, and one of elevated social standing besides. Bianca looked down involuntarily at her paint-smeared hands and deplorable apron; from past experience, she thought it quite likely that there might be pigment on other parts of her that she couldn’t see but others could, chiefly but not exclusively, her face. The man appeared to read her mind, and said, ‘Perhaps tomorrow, at four, if that would be acceptable, miss? Her Ladyship currently resides at number six, Lord Fairmount’s townhouse.’ Another, lesser person might have pointed in the mansion’s direction, but this precise little middle-aged man was far too correct for that. He merely exuded by mysterious means the impression that the house was the large, imposing one over his left shoulder.

‘Very well,’ Bianca said impulsively. ‘Please do thank Lady Deborah for her kind invitation, and let her know that I will be delighted to see her tomorrow at the appointed hour.’ The man bowed, and left her as silently as he had arrived.

Bianca packed up her belongings, wondering what was afoot. She would tell her sister where she was going before she went, but she couldn’t seriously imagine that she was putting herself in any danger by accepting this rather peculiar invitation. She had travelled and lived in all sorts of places across Europe more or less by herself and come to no harm – she could surely manage to cross a London square without serious mishap.