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Xan, banished, went to wash his hands and tidy his cravat, staring at himself abstractedly in the glass for a moment afterwards. He was feeling much more hopeful than he had earlier, and did not know if this was because of Adrian’s slight improvement in health, or Miss Constantine’s presence in the house, or both. He still found it hard to disentangle the two, and after all, just now, he need not fatigue himself with the effort. She was here, she was not leaving in the immediate future, and they would all be the better for it.

He found that his aunt and his unexpected guest had not long sat down to dinner, and was able to give them a good account of Adrian, who had eaten and drunk and seemed likely now to sleep again under Nanny’s watchful care. Once more he expressed his gratitude to Miss Constantine, and once more she shrugged her actions off as nothing more than anyone else would have done in the same position. Xan wasn’t sure if this was true, or rather he did not wish it to be, but it was certainly no fit topic for an argument. He found himself hungry, and helped himself to several of the dishes set before him, though he would have been hard pressed afterwards to say what he ate. He only sipped a little wine and did not allow his glass to be refilled.

When they had done with dessert, he had no desire to be left alone over port, and went directly to the drawing room with his two companions. This could not be considered an ordinary evening, and he was in great need of company. He was by no means sorry, though, when his aunt offered to go upstairs for a moment and check on Adrian, leaving him alone for a few precious moments with Miss Constantine.

Bianca was looking very well in a dark green gown he had not seen before. She wore no jewellery and her hair was very simply arranged; he became aware that he was staring like a mooncalf and hurriedly looked away. ‘I hope your sister was not too inconvenienced by your absence,’ he said, since he must say something, and You look lovely tonight! And always! did not seem appropriate.

‘We had no evening plans that needed to be cancelled,’ she told him. ‘Not that that would have signified in the least, I need hardly say. She sent me a note along with my things. Of course she understands why I had to stay, as a fond mother herself, and is most grateful that I did not carry any possible contagion back to her, and to the baby in particular. She has enough to do without any of the children falling sick, even if – as we must all hope – Adrian’s complaint turns out not to be very serious after all, and passes quickly.’

‘How many children are there? I’m not sure you have ever said.’

Bianca appeared to be counting. ‘Joachim is almost eighteen, Fred turned sixteen… There are eight of them. Though several are away at school, naturally. And Allegra has five. Viola has four, with a large age gap, from her two marriages, and Cecilia is just now expecting her first.’

‘Your sister Beatrice is not married?’ He found he had stored their names in his head.

‘She lives with a female companion. Marriage is not a question for her. I suppose if she should wish for children, they might think of adopting. There are so many unwanted children in the world. But they seem content as they are, at least for now.’ She was watching him closely as she said this, and he wondered if she thought he might be shocked. It seemed important somehow to demonstrate very clearly to her that he was not.

He said easily, ‘I have another aunt, my father’s youngest sister, Lady Alice Challender, who has lived in a similar fashion with her dearest friend for over thirty years; they are among the most esteemed and longest-established residents of Bath. Aunt Deborah has often said that she envies them their peaceful and ordered household. But also that it took a great deal of strength, and most unpleasant family arguments over the course of years, for Aunt Alice to resist my grandfather’s grand marriage plans for her.’

The door opened before she could respond to this, and Lady Deborah returned, smiling. ‘He is still sleeping peacefully,’ she told them. ‘Nanny is quite willing to stay with him, but I have told her she must not. She is too old to be sitting up all night and bustling about after him all day.’

‘Of course she is. I will go up and relieve her shortly.’ He saw that Bianca was about to speak and stopped her. ‘No, Miss Constantine, you will not take a turn. It would be unconscionable to expect that of you. Perhaps you will be good enough to sit with him again in the morning, when you have had a decent night’s sleep and he, we hope, should be more rested and wakeful, and happy to converse with you. That too is more than I should ask of a guest, but I know you will not suffer to be here and do nothing.’

It seemed the evening was over, and they all headed upstairs. It was odd to be climbing the staircase in his own house with Bianca at his side – absurdly intimate and quite unlike anything they had done together before. And he enjoyed the sensations it awoke in him, though he did not enjoy parting from her on the landing. He could so easily picture her in his bedchamber, or in the one traditionally occupied by the countess, which had been empty since his mother died and was in dire need of refurbishment.

If she were his wife, they would be sharing this current worry, and a great deal more. She would come to him in the night in her dressing gown, her dark hair braided or loose about her shoulders – he did not know how she normally wore it for sleeping, and suddenly it seemed wrong that he did not – and put her hand gently on his shoulder – he would raise it and kiss it – and perhaps they would watch Adrian together for a while, talking quietly and giving each other comfort through the darkest hours and watching the dawn break in beauty and hope over London.

The angry, hurt man he had been when he first laid eyes on her in this house a few short weeks ago seemed quite alien to him now. It was not that his sexual obsession with Bianca Constantine had lessened – for God knows it had not; if anything, it burned stronger and clearer now – but he understood her much better after all that she had told him, and knew that her decision to leave him in Venice had been a rational one, made for her own protection. He knew too that he would not easily have accepted this at the time, and so she had been right to depart as she did, hard as it was to acknowledge this and all the unwelcome things it told him about himself.

And she did not want to be anyone’s wife, least of all an earl’s; she had made that clear enough when they had spent that precious night together. The uncomfortable truth was, Bianca Constantine had so much more to offer him than he could ever offer her. Her life would be full without him in it, whereas he feared that the reverse was not true. The loss, he thought, was entirely his. And he must bear it. She was here now, and it felt so right to him that it was almost painful, but soon she would be gone.

He loved her. He did not know when it had begun, but it was the chief fact of his life now. There it was; he had faced it at last. Lord Fairmount sighed deeply, and went to his chamber to undress, so that he would be more comfortable as he sat at his son’s side through the long night, with Bianca just a few rooms away, for the first and last time, but as far out of reach as if she had been on the other side of the world.

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When she awoke, Bianca did not know where she was for a moment. The chamber with its extremely comfortable feather bed was much the same size and shape as the one she occupied at Sabrina’s house, and the bed was in the same position facing the window, but the colour was different, green instead of yellow, and the morning light fell differently too; the curtains had been opened to the sunshine and an unfamiliar maid was bringing her a tray of tea. Of course – she was in Lord Fairmount’s home, across the square. She sat up hastily and asked after Lord Dawbney, to be told that he had only been a little restless at one point in the night, and that the general feeling – promulgated by Mrs Hodge, who must be considered the expert in the matter of childhood ailments – was that he was on the mend, though still frail and weak. The maid added stoutly that one consolation must be that now the little lad was properly protected against that dreadful smallpox, so deadly as it was, and Bianca agreed.

A short while later, she entered the breakfast room, feeling ridiculously shy to be there, to find Xan alone with a newspaper and a steaming cup of coffee, looking considerably better than he had yesterday afternoon, though his eyes were still shadowed and weary. He rose, smiling, and pulled out a chair for her at his side. Lady Deborah was nowhere to be seen, so her chaperonage must be considered as more theoretical than actual just now.

‘I was with him till the early hours,’ he told her in answer to her unspoken question, ‘and then my aunt came in and insisted that I get some sleep. As you must have realised, she is not a woman to be argued with, and I did not venture to do so. She has just left him to get some rest herself, and Nanny has taken over. He was asleep almost the entire time I was with him, and when he woke it was only to have a drink of barley water because he was excessively thirsty. But he says his throat is no longer sore and his head not paining him as it was before. He was much cooler this morning when I went in to look in on him again half an hour ago, and seems appreciably better.’

‘I’m so glad to hear it,’ she said, helping herself to pastries as he poured her a cup of coffee. ‘I will go and sit with him after breakfast, if you are happy that I should.’

‘Of course. You know by now that he will be so glad to see you.’ There was a warmth in his voice and his gaze that unsettled her a little – more than a little. She hoped he did not imagine that her being here for Adrian meant anything more than a simple act of… She did not like to put a word to it. Compassion or kindness sounding nauseatingly self-regarding, as though she were congratulating herself for what she had done, when no such congratulation could be required. A child who was fond of her and of whom she was fond had asked to see her; of course she had come to him without stopping to consider the consequences. There was no need for anybody – Lord Fairmount, or anyone else – to refine any more on it. Above all, she must not examine her behaviour any more closely herself. No good could come of it.

She spent most of the morning sitting with Adrian, who had been bathed and given clean sheets, and who did indeed look much brighter than he had the day before. The Watteau had been removed, the curtains had been opened more widely, and the window sash was raised to let in some warm spring air, though it could hardly be considered fresh, even in this most aristocratic of London squares.

The recovering patient wanted to draw with her, and asked for pencil and paper, but she knew that his father would think it a little too soon for that, and likely to be tiring, so she entertained him instead by creating quaint little sketches, with subjects of his own choosing. She was not a cartoonist or a caricaturist, but she could produce a tolerable likeness of people she had met, if they happened to have made an impression on her. Once she had presented Lord Dawbney with versions of Mrs Hodge and Lady Deborah that he deemed acceptable, he resolved to give her a greater challenge, and amused himself in proposing several increasingly ridiculous scenarios she might produce. In the end, he asked to see Mr Arbuthnot engaged in his epic battle with Joseph Grimaldi, and – once she had consulted his extensive library for a picture of a monkey, since she’d never seen the animal in question – she set about the task with a will.

Mr Arbuthnot was perfectly endowed with facial features expressive of surprise and shock – his protuberant eyes did that by themselves even when he was in a tranquil mood – so that part, at least, was not hard. She and Adrian were laughing together over the finished product when Xan entered the room. His son invited him to admire what Miss Constantine had achieved, and he let out a crack of laughter when he saw it. ‘I think this should be framed and displayed, if not in public, certainly here, where we may enjoy it,’ he told them both. ‘Poor Arbuthnot – I understand that the bites have healed satisfactorily, but I do not think he will ever recover from the experience, all the same. Somehow it was the fact that the creature wore a little jacket that distressed him the most, and I understand from my aunt that he still cannot refrain from becoming agitated on the topic. Indeed, there is a tendency among his friends to rename him Monkey Arbuthnot, and I fear it may stick for life.’

‘And Miss Constantine has done the jacket very well, as you must have observed, Papa!’ Adrian put in. ‘All it wants is colour; I am sure it can only have been red. But now she must draw you. Just you, with no monkey.’

‘That is rather impolite,’ his father said gently. ‘I am sure our guest must be fatigued and has no wish to draw any more, and indeed we should not abuse her kindness in such a peremptory fashion, even though you have been ill.’

The boy’s face fell, and Bianca said quickly, ‘No, I do not mind doing one more. But perhaps we can agree that this should be my last effort. I am not at all tired, but I am sure Mrs Hodge will come in soon to scold me for over-exciting you, Adrian, and say that you need to take a little nuncheon, and then a nap. We must not forget how unwell you have been till quite recently.’

Xan sat down on his son’s bed, shooting her a look she could not interpret, and Bianca began to draw him – to draw them both, she soon decided, with very different emotions than had attended the production of her earlier, much more trivial sketches. When she had done, she could not have said how long had passed, and her eyes were a little misty as she held up the result, wordlessly, so that her subjects could see it.