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‘I can live my life as I please now, thank you, and I don’t need an allowance. I’m an heiress. I have as much money as anyone could need; it’s certainly enough for me.’

They stared at each other in mutual antagonism and incomprehension, electricity crackling pointlessly between them. They could easily fall on each other ravenously even now, tearing at each other’s garments, tumbling to the ground, but that would solve nothing. Had any other woman ever suffered such a reluctant and insulting proposal?

‘You want me to marry you so you can feel better about yourself,’ she said suddenly, realising the sordid truth of it. ‘So you can continue to believe that you are morally superior to your brother with his terrible reputation, or your father. That’s probably the worst reason for marriage I’ve ever heard. You didn’t seduce me – you know I was willing. Obviously you didn’t make me pregnant, so no need to worry about that, and nobody knows what passed between us.’

He pounced then. ‘Your sister Viola plainly knows.’

She had to concede that this was true. ‘Very well, yes, she does, because I had a weak moment and let it slip to her, but nobody else does, not even Sabrina, and I assure you Viola is not going to tell anybody at all. Use your good sense. She’s hardly likely to smear my name, her own sister, and even if she wanted to harm you because she mistakenly feels you deserve it, she cannot attack you without implicating me. So she will keep silent, just as I will. Do not tell me that you’ve offered for me in such a ridiculous manner just simply because my sister knows about us and spoke to you a trifle sharply. I refuse to believe such a thing. It’s all to do with how poorly you feel about yourself, and I can’t help with that. Most people come to accept that they aren’t perfect plaster saints once they’re not children any more – maybe it’s time you did the same. I repeat, my lord, none of this has really got anything to do with me. It’s all about you.’ And she turned and walked away from him, leaving him staring silently after her.

31

Xan was a sad mess in the days that followed. He could not forget the bitter words Bianca had flung at him. The worst of it was, once the heat of his anger had cooled, he feared that they might be true. Men were not defined by their virginity – the idea barely existed, society would consider it to be perfectly preposterous – and women only were, surely, because of the value they had in the marriage market. This was indeed to make them little better than objects.

Very well, a man did not want to risk bringing up another man’s child, leaving his name and property to someone who did not share his blood. But it happened all the time nonetheless – he could think of a dozen examples off the top of his head, where all the world knew it and the husband in question did too. So the whole structure such ideas supported was effectively meaningless.

He wasn’t sure if anything he was thinking made sense – he only knew that Bianca was right. He’d asked her to marry him not because of any concern for her – though his claim that she had been ruined by his actions paid lip-service to this idea – but because he did not like the image of himself that he was now confronted with. And as she’d said, that was most decidedly his problem, not hers. Why should she give up her precious freedom just to make him feel better? She could not be supposed to give a damn about his feelings now. If she refused to accept that she was ruined, if such a notion held no particular weight with her, as she had demonstrated that it did not, then by simple logic, she was correct and he was wrong. What did he intend – to prove to her by some mad and public act of cruelty that she was indeed ruined, so that she would be forced to marry him even though she quite clearly didn’t want to? That didn’t sound much like honourable behaviour even to him in his state of extreme distraction.

Was it true, he had to ask himself, that what he really minded was the fact that she had walked away from him? Was he so conventional and so bound up in his masculine pride that that was what he could not endure? Or was there an even more uncomfortable truth – that despite her lies, he was quite simply desperate for Bianca, far beyond all reason, and would seize on any excuse, however nonsensical, if it would allow him to have her?

Maybe he was. But even if this was true, there was nothing he could do about it. He was not so far gone that he would seize her and carry her off – though the idea sometimes played itself out in his brain, with images that made him toss and turn in his lonely bed. He wasn’t sleeping well, and during the daytime he was struggling to concentrate on anything.

His aunt and his son had probably noticed his distraction, but they would likely imagine that it came from his concerns about the estate, and the mess in which Philip had left it.

It was easier not to challenge this quite natural assumption. There was some truth in it, but not as much as there might have been, because the late Earl had not, thank God, been a gambler, unlike so many of his peers. Since Philip had possessed absolutely no restraint in any aspect of his life, he’d have ruined the family forever if cards or dice had been to his taste, or wagering on the outcome of sporting events, or even the deaths and marriages of public figures or the progress of raindrops down a windowpane. Many aristocrats bet in such a fashion, and destroyed their lives and futures because of it. But this was not so in the late Earl’s case. He’d been a simple soul, in his way. He’d liked to imbibe cheap spirits till he was sodden, sing lewd songs, and consort with women of low character, but unlike so many of his class, he hadn’t had a taste for expensive mistresses. The kind of temporary companions he’d favoured hadn’t asked for diamond necklaces or the newest kind of barouches – or if they had, they hadn’t received them.

Even if one drank from noon to night and paid for endless bottles of blue ruin for every person in the low taverns you favoured – and as far as he knew, Philip had done that almost every day since boyhood – there was a physical limit to how much could be spent in this fashion. No doubt his pocket had been picked often enough when he was insensible. No doubt small items, or even large ones, had been filched from the house when he’d brought his highly disreputable companions home with him. But all that was done with now.

The issues were years of neglect and a lack of oversight, with everyone on the estate from the steward to the individual tenants largely managing by themselves because they’d known there was no point trying to involve the Earl in decisions that should by rights be his. This was bad enough, but much easier to set right than active plundering to sustain the unsustainable.

Philip had had surprisingly few debts; he just hadn’t cared about anyone or anything beyond his own rough notions of pleasure. No land needed to be sold nor mortgages taken out to pay them; long-overdue repairs to cottage and farm buildings were in hand even now. The case was far less desperate than it might have been. But Xan didn’t have to share these facts with anybody, even his own relatives, unless he chose to. Setting the estate in order made a convenient cover for his present extreme perturbation of mind, and God knows he needed it as the days passed and he felt not a whit better. He did not set eyes on Bianca, but that did not mean she was absent from his thoughts and from his dreams. Far from it; she obsessed them.

32

Bianca decided she would not leave Town just yet, even though a large part of her knew she should. A fair number of the people she’d met at Lady Deborah’s tea party did approach her to ask for portraits, as Sabrina had predicted, which was after all one of the reasons she was here, and she swiftly began on the first of them: a quite complex piece featuring Mrs Arbuthnot’s children and several of their pets. It was impossible to get the boisterous young people and their exceptionally foolish spaniels to keep still, certainly all at the same time, and the dogs in particular spent a great deal of their time engaging in unsavoury behaviour – but then, who was she to criticise a fellow creature and his – or her – uncontrollable urges?

Miss Constantine was reduced to doing quick sketches for the overall composition and then painting the individuals, human and canine, separately. It was a sort of puzzle she must complete. No wonder they were using her instead of, say, Sir Thomas Lawrence. She was almost positive that, before or after his knighthood, this august gentleman had never been obliged repeatedly to detach one of his subjects from his own lower leg during a painting session. This annoyed her when it was one of the dogs, and even more when it was a child, climbing her as if she were a tree. Plainly, it was going to be a protracted process. She could not help feeling nostalgic for her quiet mornings alone with well-behaved Adrian. But she must put that sort of thought resolutely from her mind; it did her no good.

It wasn’t just the uncontrolled children and animals that made this new experience more trying; also, Mrs Arbuthnot seemed to think that portraiture was a spectator sport, and often brought friends and acquaintances to see Bianca at work. It was her house, so there was no way to prevent her. If Miss Constantine stopped what she was doing and laid down her brush every time there was an interruption of this nature, she’d be here till she grew old and the children became adults, so she quickly developed a thicker skin and feigned concentration even when she wasn’t really capable of it. But as the days passed, she found herself developing a real and useful ability to rise above her imperfect surroundings and ignore these unwelcome observers and their idle chatter.

So she was unprepared when she found herself addressed insistently on behalf of one of the ladies who’d been brought to witness the unusual spectacle of a woman painting a picture for money. ‘Miss Constantine!’ her temporary employer was saying with an edge of impatience. ‘Miss Constantine! This lady believes that she knows you, at least by sight, but there seems to be a certain confusion about your name.’

Her stomach lurched as the fatal import of these words sank in. It was an effort to retain her composure as she raised her head and saw someone in front of her who did indeed know her by another name. It was – of all inconvenient and unwelcome people to appear in a house in Mayfair – Lady Wellbeloved, wrapped in shapeless bright silks as always. They stood looking at each other in wild surmise; they were both a long way from Italy, and plainly neither had expected to see the other here of all places.

There was no point trying to pretend the lady was mistaken in thinking she knew her. Or… was there? Bianca took a calming breath, curtsied appropriately, and said, ‘Lady Wellbeloved! How delightful to see you. I don’t think we’ve actually been introduced, but of course I recognise you from Venice, where you are so well known. I spent a few months there last year, and I am flattered that you should remember me at all.’

‘I know you did spend time there, child. But I was under the impression that you were a widow – Signora Rossi, wasn’t it? – and yet here I am being told that you are a Miss Bianca Constantine. Which I find most odd.’ The dark eyes, set deep in wrinkles, were sharp and unforgiving under the jewelled turban.

Bianca preserved her composure; if she lost it now, she’d be finished. ‘It is a natural mistake. We are both artists, it is true, but Signora Rossi is my first cousin; our mothers were sisters. Half-sisters, in fact, but we still share a strong family resemblance.’

‘Very strong,’ the old lady said drily, still surveying her sceptically. ‘Uncannily strong. And I was under the impression – perhaps I was wrong, but I so rarely am, it seems unlikely – that her Christian name was also Bianca. It is an unusual name.’

‘Not in my mother’s family. We were both named after our grandmother,’ Miss Constantine said shamelessly, getting into her stride now and soaring even higher into the airy realms of invention, ‘but luckily she is Bianca Maria, and I am just Bianca. It is no wonder, perhaps, that people should confuse us, when we look somewhat alike and our first names are so similar. A common problem in Italy, as I’m sure you know after your long residence in that country, ma’am; I myself have three cousins called Luigi, two of them sharing the same surname, which leads to endless muddles.’

Lady Wellbeloved was not cowed yet. ‘But your cousin – Bianca Maria, if you please – was raised in England here, with you? I’m sure I remember hearing that she was, if she is the young woman I am thinking of.’

Bianca shook her head emphatically. ‘No, indeed not, ma’am; your informant must have had us confused once more. It’s only within the last couple of years that the separate branches of my family have re-established regular correspondence, and I did not meet her or any of my cousins until I arrived in Italy. She does know some English, having had extensive lessons, but not to the degree that she could be mistaken for a native, naturally. If you had ever spoken to either or both of us directly, I assure you, the confusion would not persist for five minutes. And I must mention that she is a few summers older than me, too – she was married for some five or six years, before her poor husband so sadly died, and I am only two and twenty, and had never left England until 1815.’

The old woman harrumphed, thwarted and plainly unused to the experience. ‘Where is she now, this cousin of yours?’